![]() The people of Malachi's day were falling away from the set-apart lifestyle God called them to live. "You have wearied the LORD with your words." Malachi 2:17a The Book of Malachi Reaffirms God's People Live Set Apart Photo credit: ©GettyImages/VladimirZapletinĤ. "Doubting God's covenant love (1:2) and no longer trusting his justice, the Jews of the restored community began to lose hope," the NIV Study Bible explains, "So they continued their traditional worship but lost the living hope that was supposed to be at its center." Malachi's message was to ignite the heart of God's people again by reassuring them of the reality of God's unchanging and everlasting love for them, and all that entailed. When we feel lost because we can't see around the corner to the next day or our future, it can become hard to trust God with all of our hearts as we obediently follow the godly boundaries God's laws advise us to live by. "The book's purpose is to motivate Israel's faithful obedience to the Lord by reassuring them of God's love and reminding them that His promises would be fulfilled by the Messiah in the eschatological day of the Lord," Michael Rydelnik explains, "Malachi intended to exhort the people to faithfulness in their own day in anticipation of God fulfilling His promises in the last days." (Moody) We, too, are tempted to allow our worship of God to become lackluster in seasons of doubt and hardship. God's people of the Old Testament just returned from exile, but stuck in a season of waiting for all God had promised to come to fruition, they began to get lazy in their faith. We are called to live set apart from the world. "'I have loved you,' says the LORD." Malachi 1:2a Malachi Delivered a Message of Reassurance to God's People After Exile The people had returned from exile, but their land was still being restored, and their faith was in shambles.ģ. There is little personal information known about Malachi the prophet, but from cultural clues of the time, it's been determined that he preached this message around 450 B.C. "In the entire Bible, the prophet Malachi is mentioned by name only once," Mike Nappa teaches, "in the first line of the slim Old Testament book that bears his name ( Malachi 1:1)." Some think since Malachi's name translates messenger, that perhaps it wasn't in actuality his name, but a title given to the one who wrote the prophetic book. ![]() ![]() "A prophecy: The word fo the LORD to Israel through Malachi." Malachi 1:1 ![]() "Because we are fallible in the way we perceive and speak prophecy," John Piper explains, it does not carry Scripture-level authority." 2. The gift of prophecy still exists today but not equatable to the infallibility of Scripture, the inspired Word of God. ![]()
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