About this sermon
Malachi closes the Old Testament with a series of disputes: God makes a charge, the people answer back, and the prophet presses the point. Blemished animals on the altar, broken marriages, withheld tithes - the complaints are domestic and unglamorous, and they land on a community that had rebuilt the temple but misplaced its sense of the holy. The book ends looking ahead to a messenger who will prepare the way.
