THE BOOK OF — ON TRIAL Shallow Worship Malachi 1:1-2:9

I hope you enjoyed last week’s baptism service. I love hearing about the life transformation God is doing in people as they take the step of publicly declaring their faith through baptism. Days of celebration are great, but they’re only a small part of our life as a church family. I’ll never forget a statement I heard at an Engaged Discovery Weekend Greta and I attended when were preparing to get married. The seminar leader said, “95% of life is routine. Only 5% of life is exciting.” I didn’t like that statement at the time, but I’ve come to realize he was probably right. The large majority of life is routine, common, day to day experiences. As followers of Jesus, we love times like last week when we celebrate life change— those times encourage us in our walk with Jesus. But most of our walk with Jesus is about consistently being faithful in the routines of work, school and family. We’ll be looking at that call to live faithfully today as we begin our study of Malachi. Along with the names Habakkuk and Haggai, I’d characterize Malachi as one of the most unique names among the prophets. Ken Hepner, my predecessor as senior pastor at McBIC, used to refer to Malachi as “The Italian prophet Malachi,” and he called another staff member and me the “Malachi brothers.” Last Sunday someone told me that when he looked at the sign promoting this series in the lobby he didn’t recognize the name and at first glance thought it said, “Malarkey.” Malachi is a unique name, and many Biblical scholars question whether there actually was a prophet by this name. The name Malachi means, “my messenger” and so the thinking is that this name may have been attached to this book based on the opening words of the prophecy, “The word of the Lord to through Malachi (or through my messenger). The obscurity surrounding the identity of the author is common for the 12 Old Testament books known as “The minor prophets.” In Jewish history these 12 books were often grouped together as one book known as, “The Book of the 12.” It’s clear as we read the writings of the Minor Prophets that their inspired message from God is of much greater importance than their personal identity. The writings of the Minor Prophets contain some of the most hard-

1 hitting words of judgment in the . The prophets called God’s people to stop their rebellion against God and to return to their relationship with Him as God’s “chosen people.” For the past 3 or 4 years I’ve been preaching through one of the Minor Prophets during the weeks prior to ADVENT. These prophets all point ahead to a day in the future when the Messiah will come, and studying the writings of the Minor Prophets is a great way for us to prepare our hearts and minds for the season of ADVENT— coming of Immanuel— God with us. As I read the Old Testament I try to make it a practice to ask the question, “Where is Jesus in this passage?” That may seem like a strange question to some of you, because most of the Old Testament was written hundreds of years before Jesus’ birth and some of it was written a thousand or two thousand years before Jesus came to earth as baby. But the entire Scripture is God’s revelation to his people, which culminates in Jesus’ birth, death, resurrection and then the sending of the Holy Spirit. The song, “He Is…” by Aaron Jeffrey powerfully highlights the identity of Jesus throughout each book of the Bible… “He is” by Aaron Jeffrey The name and presence and power of Jesus echoes throughout the Bible from cover to cover— even in the books of the Old Testament. Before we begin our study of Malachi and consider what God has to say to us about worship, I’d like to give you a bit of background for this book of prophecy. i Malachi was written between 460