Kingdom Keys - Malachi Series

So maybe you’ve heard it said, ‘read your bible’ so you tried and failed. Our hope as leaders is that all of us will pick up God’s word and come to understand the true nature of God. After all, the bible is God’s Word curated over centuries detailing His nature, His will, the meaning of life and humanity’s historical interactions with Him. The Bible details the hidden keys to the Kingdom. Hence, the reason we are reviewing a new book each week.

This week we move ahead to the book of Malachi. His name means “My Messenger” Malachi simplest message may be to stop taking God for granted. Taking God for granted is spiritual abuse. We all have been taken for granted at one time or another. We all have felt the frustration and anger of a relationship we believed was two way only to find its become one way.

The book of Malachi is particularly interesting because of the exchange between his complaining people and God. It is a prophetic word for the Jewish nation around 430 BC, almost seventy years after the temple was rebuilt. It speaks to our complacency and indifference in connection to eternal life.

The book speaks to:

The sins of the spiritual leaders (disobedience, treachery, hypocrisy, purity, hostility)

The sins of men divorcing their wives, marrying outside the faith and then turning from their faith to another (impurity and selfishness)

The sin of indifference (lack of gratitude) and entitlement (You need to do more for me)

The sin of injustice coming from their judgmentalism and lack of connection to God’s precepts

Finally, the sin of living in scarcity over generosity.

Over the last 37 weeks, we have not spoken about the ideas of generosity or scarcity. A scarcity mindset is a win/lose concept. That is, one person must lose something so another can win something. It’s a mindset based on a theory of limited resources. To demonstrate, let me tell you a short story that I read this week…

Many years ago, there was a volunteer at a hospital. He got to know a little girl named Liz who was suffering from a rare and serious disease. Her only chance of recovery appeared to be a blood transfusion from her 5-year-old brother, who had miraculously survived the same disease and had developed the antibodies needed to combat the illness. The doctor explained the situation to her little brother, and asked the little boy if he would be willing to give his blood to his sister. He hesitated for a moment before taking a deep breath and saying, ‘Yes, I’ll do it if it will save her.’ As the transfusion progressed, he lay in bed next to his sister and smiled, as we all did, seeing the color returning to her cheeks. Then his face grew pale and his smile faded. He looked up at the doctor and asked with a trembling voice, ‘Will I start to die right away?’.

Being young, the little boy had misunderstood the doctor; he thought he was going to have to give his sister all of his blood in order to save her.

The saving act of giving blood or platelets does not diminish our ability to live because more is generated by the human body. In the same way, when we live in the Spirit of God’s creativity (generosity) there are unlimited resources. A fact many don’t fully understand in our win/lose culture. This idea is also demonstrated in our unwillingness to let people immigrate to the United States. We often hear the rhetoric that those people will take our jobs. However, while they might, they also bring their abilities to contribute to society. Their willingness to work allows them to pay for more goods and services, start a new business and add to the dynamic fabric of our culture. God is not a God of scarcity. God is the originator of the generosity mindset.

Let’s open up our bibles to Malachi 3:5. As you are going there or pulling it up on your electronic device, the back story is simple. God has said his justice will come soon. Let’s begin with his words as relay by Malachi… verse 5

“So I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, but do not fear me,” says the Lord Almighty. 6 “I the Lord do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. 7 Ever since the time of your ancestors you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord Almighty. “But you ask, ‘How are we to return?’