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?’
The hubris and pride are so striking. It reminds me of a teenager being caught doing something they shouldn't who shouts, “It’s too late to turn back so what do you want me to do now?” It’s still defiance but it puts the onus on the authority figure. In this case, the culture had accepted, and rationalized, sin knowing it was wrong. Like any good father offended by his children, he asks a rhetorical question, answers it and waits for their denial…
8 “Will a mere mortal rob God? Yet you rob me.
“But you ask, ‘How are we robbing you?’
“In tithes and offerings. 9 You are under a curse—your whole nation—because you are robbing me. 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.
In a moment of love, God asks them about another sin. One as grievous as the ones listed earlier in verse 5 because He wants to connect the trust they have in money with the trust they should have in Him. He even reminds them of the fruitfulness of trusting in Him at all times. It’s the Sunday school lesson - Good is Good, Response: All the time. All the time, Response: God is good.
Unfortunately, people forget the truth of God’s promises the less they interact with Him. They conveniently forget their commitment to Him as well as the disrespect that their words and actions have caused.
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.’”
God has taken offense to his heirs, his chosen people, whining that the bad people are not getting what they deserve and then using this observation to justify their own selfish behavior. Like Adam and Eve in the Garden pointing to the devil or a child caught coloring on the hallway wall with crayons declaring their friend or sibling suggested it first. Justification has never proved worthy of its utterance. If a person is justifying, they are aware of the error and want you to agree. Or as an old friend said, if you're justifying, you're lying. If you're lying, you're dying. Truth never needs a justification.
So what would you do knowing you had been wronged and the other person is now aware? God waited. He was confident in their ability to recall their faith.
16 Then those who feared the Lord talked with each other, and the Lord listened and heard. A scroll of remembrance was written in his presence concerning those who feared the Lord and honored his name. 17 “On the day when I act,” says the Lord Almighty, “they will be my treasured possession. I will spare them, just as a father has compassion and spares his son who serves him.
God does not need a written record in order to keep track of human deeds. However, like a loving parent cherishing their child’s achievements, God captures our heartfelt prayers, our acts of kindness, and our moments of obedience. As Malachi spoke the prophecy to God’s people, they would have understood what a book of remembrance represented. The kings of Persia kept such books, records of those who had rendered service to the king, that those servants might be rewarded.
It is also important to note that the reward was often delayed. That’s why books were needed, so that no worthy deed for the king went unrewarded. In Malachi 3:17 the Lord says, “‘On the day when I act . . . .” He is indicating that faithful service may go on for years with no apparent reward, but He is taking note. There will be a day when He will act. Verse 18 acts as a promise…
18 And you will again see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not.
The warning doesn’t end there. The rest of the book reminds everyone of the future coming of the messiah and the day of judgment.
So what major point should we consider from this book?
Time leads to forgetting. Jesus was clear. We will never know the time or day when Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead so it's best to never put off what you can do today.
Forgetting leads to apathy. The brain has a wonderful mechanism to forget pain. It serves a purpose in childbirth and our ability to get along with others. However, it can subtly lead us to forget the benefit of faithfulness and obedience.
Apathy leads to Complacency. Our thoughts about how and when the Lord will return are dangerous. We will never know the mind of God. We know his nature but not his mind. So to ever think: “He’s not coming” or the flipside “He’s coming tomorrow” leads us to action and inaction that demonstrates our rejection of His will.
Complacency leads to self and self centeredness. It’s instinctual to think of oneself. It’s an animal urge to survive. However, we are more than animals. We are created in the image of God and possess souls and a desire to be in relationship with God. If we stay centered in the self, we are led by our physical desires versus the spiritual.
Self centeredness leads to rejection of the basic tenets of being a Christian, love of God and others over self. Or in other words, self centeredness produces a lack of interest in God is the same as rejection without declaration.
Creative: https://bibleproject.com/explore/video/malachi
References: Quest Bible Overviews p:1400-1404, The Bible Exposition Commentary (Wiersbe) p.462-464,
https://shalomonline.net/shalomtidings/tit-bits/tidings-tit-bits5/item/727-giving-when-it-counts#.UERhkJZmrGA ,
To watch this sermon presented go to facebook video @church4therestofus
