Malachi 1:1

“Oh that men would praise the LORD for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men!” (Psalms 107:8, 15, 21, 31 KJV)

I quote the above Psalm because praise flows from a heart of gratitude for God’s goodness and all His wonderful works. If we are thankful, then it will show in how we live our lives, in our speech, our attitude, our actions. A heart of gratitude will express itself in worship.

There may be no greater sin than this sin of ingratitude. Shakespeare said, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.” If you have loved and labored and invested much in the health and lives of your children, you know how grieved you are when your children do not seem to appreciate or to be thankful for the sacrifices you have made. Mothers who have labored to bring these precious children into this world and dads who have labored to provide for them know the sacrifice that is demanded by responsible parenting.

So, I think Shakespeare was right. The poet Milton, the blind poet, said that a person with an ungrateful spirit only has one vice, because all of the rest of his vices are virtues compared to ingratitude. Every other sin is a virtue compared to the sin of ingratitude.

At the time when Malachi preached, the Temple had been rebuilt, but it paled in comparison to Solomon’s Temple. The priests and the Levites were the power-brokers of Judah, yet Temple worship was in a sorry state. The apathetic priests actually led people into sin, not out of it. Worshipers offered inferior animals as sacrifices and neglected God’s requirements for tithes and offerings. The hopes raised by Haggai and Zechariah for a revival of David’s dynasty through Zerubbabel seemed to have disappeared.

Malachi confronted a people given to religious cynicism, political skepticism, and spiritual disillusionment. They expected prosperity (Hag 2:7, 18–19), a king from David’s line (Ezek 34:13, 23–24), and the new covenant promised through Jeremiah (Jer 31:23, 31–34), but they saw none of these things. In the minds of many, God had failed his people.

New Living Translation Study Bible. Carol Stream, IL : Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2008, Malachi

Disillusionment often breeds ingratitude. We feel that what we need, what we deserve, what we should expect, has evaporated and we are left with a bitter spirit and an ungrateful attitude. We become careless and indifferent because we think that nothing really matters. No matter how hard we try, nothing changes. Just like Cain, we feel that God should be satisfied with whatever we choose to offer Him, rather than giving Him our best. This attitude of defeatism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We get stuck going through the motions of life. We even find ourselves going through the motions of religious activities and service.

Malachi, a prophet in the days of Nehemiah, directs his message of judgment to a people plagued with corrupt priests, wicked practices, and a false sense of security in their privileged relationship with God. Using the question and answer method, Malachi probes deeply into their problems of hypocrisy, infidelity, mixed marriages, divorce, false worship, and arrogance. So sinful has the nation become that God’s words to the people no longer have any impact.

Open Bible, Introduction to Malachi, Thomas Nelson Publishers

The opening verse calls his message a “burden,” The idea of a heavy load that must be born lies behind this word. Malachi recognized the heavy responsibility of confronting the sad situation of a people who no longer worshipped God as they were supposed to, but were carelessly neglecting worship or were engaging in shallow, hypocritical and even inappropriate worship. God has brought them back into the land from the exile and they have decided that slackness and indifference is permissible, given the current conditions. They aren’t thankful or grateful for what God has done for them. They only focus on their present circumstances.