God’s Word for You
Malachi 1:9 This is repentance
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Saturday, December 19, 2020
9 O now, please, plead with God, that he may be gracious to us. With such a gift in your hand, will he show favor to any of you? says the LORD of Armies.
Unless we take this to be bitter sarcasm in the mouth of the Lord, we must see the first sentence here as coming from the prophet, the second one from God.
First, Malachi begs the people of Judah to ask God’s forgiveness. He uses the unusually polite term -na, “please,” to emphasize his strong feelings. This is the last element in the word Hosanna, “save, please.” This is not only the role of a pastor or a prophet, but of any Christian who sees another stumbling into a sin, whether just once, or again and again. “Go and show him his fault,” Jesus said, “just between the two of you” (Matthew 18:15). “If he listens to you, you have won your brother over.”
Malachi could see that the people hadn’t really learned their lesson, and that mankind will never quite learn this lesson. The devil will keep attacking, keep dressing up temptations to conceal them, so we must run to the Lord for help. We need his forgiveness, and we need his help to turn away from the world’s enticing suggestions, from the devil’s poking and prodding, and from the weakness of our human flesh.
Second, the stinging rebuke is hurled like a lightning bolt from the hand of God, direct and true, right to man’s heart. The prophet calls us to repentance, but God warns: What is in your heart when you use all the right words? Do you say, ‘Forgive me,’ when you have no intention of turning from your sin? Do you imagine one of two terrible things? Do you imagine that my love and graciousness gives you a free pass to sin in whatever way you want, as long as you quick rinse off the filth from your hands? Or worse, do you imagine that I the Lord your God am not really here at all, and that your lip service to me will keep up your good luck?
The Lord hits his people hard with this punch, and then he follows it with his fearsome title, “the LORD of Armies.” The Lord’s Armies of uncountable angels are more powerful that any human armies or worldly weapons. His power includes the power to punish, to sentence the sinner to hell for all eternity and to agonies untold, whether worm or fire, relentlessly ruining and hurting without quite destroying, forever.
When man’s sinfulness gets so obstinate that God must talk this way, we still see his desire to save us. The upraised arm of God will surely strike. “The Lord will, by no means, leave the guilty unpunished” (Nahum 1:3). His warning is meant to crush us, to pulverize our arrogance and our obstinance, and to silence all of the arguments we raise that burble up out of the opinion in man’s heart, that I am somehow worthy of being saved because of something good in me.
What is worthy is Christ, and he alone has the merit that can stand up before God’s holy judgment. When I am crushed by the law of God’s judgment, by the cutting words of the scriptures, or by the honest rebuke of a true friend, then the sterile soil of my heart is changed, turned over and ready to receive the water of God’s grace and the seed of the gospel. Then God’s forgiveness at last truly works in my heart, and a new man grows where there was only a sinner before. Then the Lord “will be a refuge for his people” (Joel 3:16), then we will no longer follow the stubbornness of our hearts (Jeremiah 3:17); then we will call urgently on God and give up our evil ways (Jonah 3:8). And we who believe in him will not be condemned (John 3:18). This is repentance: to be crushed by God’s rebuke, and to be lifted up by God’s promise in Jesus.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.