Malachi 1:2 I have loved you, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, “Wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacob’s brother? Saith the LORD: yet I loved Jacob
In the news every month and nearly every week there are stories of people who are living double lives. Maybe you read about a spy. You think they are in business, but they are really a spy. They are living a double life. There are stories like a guy who might live in Cincinnati and travel on business to Maimi, and also lives in Miami and travels on business to Cincinnati. Come to find out, he has a wife and kids in each city. He is living a double life. All of us have a natural disdain for such people. We think them hypocrites. We don’t see it in ourselves so often, but we quickly see it in other people. These people are living a life of contradictions in which they say one thing and do another. They are not consistent, whole, or complete.
That is a little bit of the message of God’s prophet Malachi to God’s wayward people. These were covenant people. God loved them and they were in covenant with God. Malachi says in Malachi 1:1, “The burden of the word of the LORD to Israel by Malachi.” It is a burden to live a life of contradictions. What was the contradiction? Was it between what they said and what they did? Well, that may have been the case, but that was not the primary problem. The contradiction was even worse. It was between what God said and what they believed, between what God said and what they said, between what God said and what they were living.
In verse 2 he says, “I have loved you, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, wherein hast thou loved us?” You will never be whole until you live in harmony with the truth. You are never going to be complete, consistent, or have integrity until you live in harmony with the truth. That means taking God at His Word, living in faith, and trusting God to be honest, loving, and up to the tasks of life. So, the question you might ask yourself is, “What do you feel?” God said, “I have loved you, yet you say, ‘How have you loved us?’” These were people who had returned from captivity and were rebuilding, and they wondered if God really loved them. They thought, “If God loved us, why the horrible history, the drought, and broken families?”
The worst tyrant in the world may be the tyrant of my own feelings. God Almighty is absolute, unchanging, and consistent, but my feeling are anything but. They are relative, related to what happens to me. They change all the time. So, if I am going to live a consistent life, I’ve got to take God at His Word. “I have loved you, saith the LORD. Yet ye say…” There is the contradiction.
What do you honor? Verse 6 says, “A son honoureth his father.” “Where is my honor?” God is saying. He addresses specifically the priests who “despise my name.” He continues, “And ye say, Wherein have we despised thy name?” God said one thing; they said another. God honored one thing; they honored another. Do you honor what God honors? You will never be whole until you live in harmony with what God knows, the truth.
I travel a lot, and recently I have eaten at Chick Fil A at least three times in a week because of our travels. I noticed on Saturday a Chick Fil A sign that said, “Closed on Sunday.” How many times have I wanted to go on Chick Fil A on Sunday and thought, “Oh, they are closed!” You can love or hate that policy, but you have to admire people that live in light of what they believe. I wonder, if you belong to God, are you as consistent about Sunday as is Chick Fil A? It is amazing how little it takes to keep God’s people from God’s church. A little sniffle or problem and we don’t go to church. Now, it is not so much what you are losing by not going, but what the church is losing. We go to church not just to receive, but to give. We are part of the church. Do you honor what God honors? You’ll never be whole until you live in harmony with the truth.
In verse 11 God says, “My name shall be great.” Verse 12 says, “But ye have profaned it, in that ye say…” It says, “My name is great…but you say.” God then says that He has no pleasure in them and will not accept their offering. Why? They didn’t honor or value what God honored and valued. In verse 14 God says, “I am a great King,” yet these people thought about serving the Lord and said, “What a weariness it is” and turned their noses up at it. God said, “Cursed be the deceiver.” They lived in arrogance against God’s values and they were deceived and did deceive.
To be clear, a virtue is not a value. We talk about American values, free enterprise, and the American Dream, all for which I am thankful, but those things are not God’s virtue. A value is not a virtue. It is something to which you attach value. A virtue as talked about here is the truth as defined by the truth personified, God Himself. So, do you value what God values?
So many times we are living a life that is not consistent because we are not living in harmony with God and the truth. What do you feel? What do you honor? What do you value? What is the gap between truth and how you feel, what you honor, and what you value? It is a burden to live a life of contradiction, but we can be whole when we live in harmony with God and His truth.