Ml1 The problematic v3 rejection of Esau. We might problematise this as unjust predestination, or problematise this as a license for the teacher's pet to carry on sinning that grace may abound. But the greater problem of such awkward 'good news' is that election demands a commensurate response which is not less than everything. You are God's favourite, is He yours? .. Esvsb describes Mal as standing against 'diluting the strenuous demands of proper worship', against 'cynicism' and issuing a call to 'renewed covenant fidelity'. Our response to election should entail a Pauline anguish at nominality Rm9v3 in our lives and our church. So because God looks at the heart, get the heart before the course(works), in the horse and cart of faith and works. .. The line of Jacob is not so much a closed bloodline Rm9v6, but a blood-bought open door adoption to a grace. .. As we finish the OT, remember Jn5v39, it has all been about Jesus.
Ml2 v2 Because you do not lay it to heart. v1 This command is to you, oh royal priesthood: lay it to heart, your prayers & texts, your words & workmates, your ideas & practices. Holding in the centre of your heart both people's pain and lostness and the aliveness awakeness life and peace of God the uncomplicated exposed reality of this v5 life and peace, awe and imperative. The covenant, of life and peace is a promise given and received, so marriage is a three-way covenant, and honouring God cannot be done without honouring Phil. v10 We are faithful to each other because we are both God's, v15 we will be made one by a new portion of God's spirit, a new things, a holy emergent thing, more than the sum of our parts. So we are premised on God and made to be something new by God. We were once in darkness but we are brought into light, as we search each other's eyes, a veil is drawn back. Face to face with each other's possible in being face to face with this God, a geometry-defying face face triadic covenant. v15 so guard yourself, for you stand on holy ground. Guard yourself from faithlessness, which has many faces. Jesus, we ask that you show us all the ways we are faithless to each other, to the church and the world, let us name these things, repent, dialogue, forgive, accept, learn and be built up. Thank you that you bring us into a wide open space, let our witness to that be on our lips, today.
Ml2 v5 'My covenant with him was one of life and peace, and I gave them to him. It was a covenant of fear, and he feared me.' v6 He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and he turns many from iniquity.' Peace is walking with, and iniquity is turned away from. Life and peace are given, and we are to live in fear of the one who gives them. And may take them tomorrow, perhaps 'this very night'. How can we be courageous in this? Perhaps by fearing God rather than man ('what can man do?') And remembering he who ran to greet his son (the prodigal did not count himself worthy, in contrast to the indignant other, non-fearing son)
Ml3 v8 Can one rob God? And other questions. Malachi is full of questions as a satirical device. Difficult questions considered in both of two: (1) as honest questions, (2) as rhetorical questions. (1) 1v2 Does God Love? All of a favouring four loves love? How can it be? 2v10 Is he 'Father'? Is there really a creator of all this? 3v17 Is He just? How? - Honest questions, several pints into an evening we reach these. They hurt a little. They hurt a lot. Presuppositional foundations in the architecture of reactive unbelief. How is my sense of urgent responsibility to articulate these, even tacitly, to a hurting world? (2) Rhetorical questions. Somewhat as Jb38-41, God uses questions as a refining soap/fire v2. We know the answers, we are without excuse, and questions draw out our inconsistencies. Am I listening to Jesus' questioning? Jn21v15
Ml4 v2 Sunrise,, new morning, towards a new testament. Mornings are different to the prison of the night before. The sun of righteousness will rise, with healing in its wings. Healing unfragments and righteousness restores. Righteousness my gifted blamelessness. Healing my belovedness known. Christ the Rv22v5 sun, whose 22v4 face is our light and who 21v5 makes all things new: I believe you. Come now. New.
Ml4 v1 A root and branch review, for Barclays, for us. v2 'But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in it's wings.' Righteousness – a sun, a bird – the result of fearing God more than/rather than man. v5 'Behold, I will send you Elijah'
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