Jexit: Judah Comes Home
Coming Full Circle Again
Malachi 2:17-4:6
We all know this doesn’t actually happen. But, if I was God, I think there would be days when I would get very depressed about being God. It would be very depressing watching people just make the same mistakes over and over again.
Falling into the same temptations.
Seeing your children go on that same spiritual rollercoaster ride.
The spiritual highs and the spiritual lows in a never ending cycle.
Commitment. Failure. Sin. Repentance. Forgiveness Commitment.
It is like déjà vu - everything goes in full circle in our lives … again and again.
As we get to the end of this Jexit series we are looking at Malachi … written 440 and 400BC … it’s definitely the last word to God's people.
Indeed it will be the last time that God speaks, and then he'll go silent for 400 years, and there will be no more word from God that comes to us through the Scriptures.
Just before he goes silent this is the word he speaks … so you know it is going to be an important word.
And what is that word?
Everything has come full circle once again.
Let’s turn to Malachi 2:17 and we will start our focus on the Scripture from there.
17 You have wearied the Lord with your words.
‘How have we wearied him?’ you ask.
By saying, ‘All who do evil are good in the eyes of the Lord, and he is pleased with them’ or ‘Where is the God of justice?’
Malachi 2:17
Here is the issue! The people have said this all before.
7 “Will the Lord reject forever? Will he never show his favour again?
8 Has his unfailing love vanished forever? Has his promise failed for all time?
9 Has God forgotten to be merciful? Has he in anger withheld his compassion?”
Psalm 77:7-9
That is what they said it in the days of the Psalmist. They were also saying it in the days of Jeremiah.
19 Have you rejected Judah completely? Do you despise Zion? Why have you afflicted us so that we cannot be healed? We hoped for peace but no good has come, for a time of healing but there is only terror.
Jeremiah 14:19
There is this cycle that the people go through. Accusing God of forgetting them. Accusing God of ignoring them. Ignoring their plight. Ignoring what they want.
And here we are again at the end of the book of Malachi and it's the same thing. “God you're not listening. You’re not responding to us. You don't care about us.
Another example is seen in Malachi 3:13-15
13 ‘You have spoken arrogantly against me,’ says the Lord.
‘Yet you ask, “What have we said against you?”
14 ‘You have said, “It is futile to serve God. What do we gain by carrying out his requirements and going about like mourners before the Lord Almighty? 15 But now we call the arrogant blessed. Certainly evildoers prosper, and even when they put God to the test, they get away with it.”’
Malachi 3:13-15
The people are saying, “God’s not being just. So if God’s not just what's the point of being faithful?” We have heard this before as well.
14 There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: the righteous who get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked who get what the righteous deserve.
Ecclesiastes 8:14
Many hundreds of years before the Book of Malachi this is what people were saying about God. In Jeremiah before the exile they say,
1 You are always righteous, Lord, when I bring a case before you.
Yet I would speak with you about your justice:
Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all the faithless live at ease?
Jeremiah 12:1
The same things being said over and over again.
The people still have the same short sighted focus which they've been having for their whole history.
After all that happened through the exile.
After all that they've gone through now they have returned.
After all that's given to them.
All that has happened is that we are right back where we started.
They keep going in circles.
In the days of the Judges.
When the 10 tribes when they were taken away by the Assyrians into permanent exile.
Now after the Babylonian exile.
Over thousands of years of history and they haven't learnt. They've come full circle again.
This reality raises a really good question for each one of us today:- do you ever feel like your life is going in circles … again?
Sometimes we make the same bad choices.
I see this in some people when they're dating. They’ll date a person and then after a while they realise that that person that they're dating is not good for them for a whole range of reasons - and so they stop dating that person. Then they go to the next person and these people are exactly the same as the people that they left … or worse.
There's this cycle that comes with people constantly being attracted to the wrong people over and over and over again.
What about falling into the same temptations.
How many times do we find ourselves sinning in the same way. We say to God “I've been here before. I've been tempted by this before.
I've said to God heaps of times before, “I don't want to be here. I want to change. I wanted to be different.”
Yet here I am and my life is just going round in circles again and again.
Or what about the same promises for change.
“God I'm sorry. I'm going to do things differently. My life is going to be different from now on.” And it's like this new year’s resolution that we make. But it doesn't happen every year … it happens every week, or every month. And here we are saying the same things.
God I've let you down. I'm going to change again. I'm going to do things differently again.
The same promises. The same temptations. The same choices.
And we looking at this and we just go, “Our life is just going around in circles.”
We don't have to look at the people of Judah and then accuse them of being so bad.
That is easy to do isn't it. Easy to point to other people and say, “Look at how bad they are.” Here we are at the end of the Old Testament. God your people there are not much good.
We point our accusing fingers … but how many fingers actually come back to you.
Usually when you point, three fingers come back to you.
Unless you have been in the army. There you learn to point with all your fingers in the same direction.
But most of us just point at those around us … knowing that we're just as bad.
Whatever we say of the sin of others we are constantly pointing back to ourselves.
So we all go round in circles!
The question God is helping us answer here is, “How does God help Us Stop Going Around In Circles?”
There is three areas that we are going to focus on briefly this morning.
God helps us stop going around in circles by giving us a reminder of the consequences so we can change what's happening.
You don’t see these much in parks anymore. But there was piece of playground equipment which you sat on … basically you sat on a few bars … and then you would spin around.
You needed to be pushed … usually by a bunch of Dads. And the Dads would push as fast as they could with the kids all on the inside and eventually the whole thing is moving too fast.
At some point as a kid you've got three choices.
1) Because it is too fast you can't hang on and you just get flung off.
2) You're going so fast that you start feeling sick and you're going to puke.
3) You know you've got to get off because you don't want to puke, but you also don't want to fall off. So you jump off and you still hurt yourself anyway.
It is hard to understand why playgrounds don’t have these play toys anymore!
There are consequences to just going around in circles.
And God gets to the end of the Old Testament he says to the people, “Look I'm telling you these things because I want you to change. I want you to stop going around in circles.”
So Malachi records a series of passages for us – passages that tell us about the consequences
‘So I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud labourers 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.
Malachi 3:5
And you will again see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not.
Malachi 3:18
‘Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and that day that is coming will set them on fire,’ says the Lord Almighty. ‘Not a root or a branch will be left to them.
Malachi 4:1
The consequence is that there is a judgement to come. God wants to bring about change by reminding the people that, at the end of time, there is going to be an ultimate consequence. We are going to be held accountable for our decisions and our actions.
The history of Israel has been a history of God intervening and bring judgement.
In the days of the judges he did it.
In the days when the 10 tribes were taken and distributed amongst the Assyrian Empire he did it.
In the days of the exile he did it.
And here is God reminding them again, “Remember the judgement. Remember that as you go through life that there is going to be a time when you are going to be accountable.”
People don't like hearing about judgement. Because they think that makes God into a terrible God and Vengeful God.
But that's not what judgement is about.
God talks about the consequences because he wants us to change
Think about electrical work. In Australia we constantly have advertisements. If you're not an electrician don't touch electrical wires. Don't do your own electrical work.
The current ad is very visual. There's the guy up in the attic and he dies up in the attic because he didn’t listen.
Why the warning and judgement against people who are not electricians?
The purpose is to bring about change. There are still all these stupid handy man who try and do their own electrical work. But it is causing death.
Similarly God is saying to us “I’m telling you the consequences because I want you to change. I'm saying this because I love you I want you to understand the outcome. I want you to get out of this Circle of Life.”
“How does God help Us Stop Going Around In Circles?” He tells us about the consequences.
But that is just one part of it. God also helps us by reminding us that he wants to bless us.
Have a look at Malachi 3:10-12
10 Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,’ says the Lord Almighty, ‘and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. 11 I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not drop their fruit before it is ripe,’ says the Lord Almighty. 12 ‘Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land,’ says the Lord Almighty.
Malachi 3:10-12
The picture we are being given here is along is something like this:-
The people are sitting there at the moment saying, “God’s looking after us and it doesn't matter how you're acting.”
And God is saying, “Well no that's not true. I am a God who wants to bless you I am a God who cares for you. But you've lost perspective on life.”
It's easy isn't it - to lose perspective.
I saw it a couple of times many years ago, and I'm glad it's many years ago now, when we would be visiting Kirsten in hospital. She was recovering from a back operation.
And at times you'll be standing in the lift and there would be this lady there or man. And they would be talking about how terrible the injury they had …
… it was like a broken finger.
… or they had cut.
And sometimes I felt like just shaking these people and go, “Do you have any idea of the sicknesses of the people in this place? You're going on and on about this sore finger.”
Losing perspective.
But this is what happens doesn't it when we have so much in life. We lose perspective.
We are a blessed nation. And we are a blessed people. Just like the people in the day of Malachi. They were getting to the time where everything was coming together.
The temple was restored.
The walls have been restored.
Jerusalem has been restored.
God has given the Persian Kings a heart for the people. Twice they pull out money for the people.
Everything is coming together. And then when everything comes together they all start complaining. So God is reminding them, “I want to bless you, but you have got to have the right perspective.
If we want to break that circle again and again we need to be sitting here and our perspective needs to be … “God I know you bless me. I know you're a God it cares for me. I know you're a God who loves me. And I know that you're a God who wants the best for me.”
We can use this approach to help us to stop going around in circles in my life. Knowing God is for me even when I make mistakes. They are my consequences yet God is still for me and helps me to break the cycle.
The question God is helping us answer here is, “How does God help Us Stop Going Around In Circles?” The third thing that God does is to put a new process in place. There is a circuit breaker. A circuit breaker is the switch in your power board that, if you're going to be electrocuted, rather than you dying the circuit breaker switches off the power and it saves you from dying.
There's a circuit breaker built into the last section of the of the scriptures. It starts at Malachi 3:1.
‘I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,’ says the Lord Almighty.
Malachi 3:1
So there's this promise of someone who will come. Malachi repeats that promise right at the very end – these are the last words of the Old Testament
5 ‘See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. 6 He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction.’
Malachi 4:5-6
There is a promise of a messenger. The messenger who will point the way.
Most of us can guess pretty quickly who it is. We read about him in Mark 1:1-8.
Before we read understand the context. Mark is the first gospel that was ever written so Mark is one of the first connections between the Old Testament and the New Testament in terms of telling the story. Here Mark tells us about John the Baptist. And John the Baptist is the Elijah figure. The messenger in Malachi is John the Baptist. He will be the first person to bring the message of God after 400 years of silence. This is what happens.
Mark 1:1-8 (read)
That's the new process. Something very different is needed.
It is God in the flesh who breaks the cycle.
Jesus Christ born of the Virgin Mary. Who suffered under Pontius Pilate. Who dies. Who rises again. Who ascended to Heaven. Who now sits at the right hand of God the Father intervening for us. Praying for as we bring about transformation through the Spirit of God.
That is the story.
We see it in all four gospels. This message comes across and again and again.
This is the transforming Jesus. This is the one who has power.
Think of all of the stories of people whose cycle in their life is changed.
Nicodemus come to Jesus. His cycle is about laws of rules. And then he talks to Jesus and Jesus shows him that it's not about laws and rules. When it comes time to bury Jesus Nicodemus along with Joseph of Arimathea are there.
In the Jesus day there were people caught in a life of prostitution. And Jesus comes into their life and he breaks the cycle. The result? Some of the closest people who care for him and gave him the most care and support came out of that background. Mary Magdalene being one of those.
Story after story of Jesus stepping into people's life and breaking the cycle. This is the new process because God loved us so much that he just couldn't keep on staying at a distance. The prophets were sent so that people would listen.
But no-one was listening.
That's what the whole of the Old Testament is about. No one is listening.
So the New Testament story is a change. God is saying, “I come maybe they’ll listen to me.”
Jesus comes to help us to recognise there is going to be consequences.
Jesus talks about judgement just as much as he talks about love.
But he says, “I'm here to help. I'm here to break the cycle.” Jesus comes and he gives us this clear indicator that God wants to bless us.
At the end of Malachi we see a new process … a new way.
So here's the calling and here's your opportunity.
You don't have to keep on going around in circles.
Jesus comes in and he breaks the cycle. Because in Jesus we are not put onto a circle Jesus is a roundabout.
Roundabouts have the exits and you can get off and you can go in a new direction.
That's the message of the gospel isn't it the transforming work of Jesus Christ in our life to draw us out of this cycle and into a trajectory that ends up into eternity.
Prayer
