The Message

The Message

By

Bishop Melvin L. Maughmer, Jr

PRAYER

SCRIPTURE: - Malachi Chapters 1 - 4

OPENING: - So often in Christendom we get comfortable with tradition and mediocrity, and we become complacent with how things are. We don’t like and are not that receptive to change because that is the way it has always been and that is the way it will always be. The mentality is that was good enough for grandma and grandpa and good enough for mom and dad well it is good enough for me too, but we fail to understand that as you come into the knowledge, we must walk therein. True a lot of stuff that we have floating around Christendom today is superficial fluff that doesn’t hold water to that old time religion, and I will be the first to admit that like the old-time prayer meetings, the revivals, the old saints, and the old songs we used to sing. However, there is some stuff that we must be aware of and come away from because it is detrimental and causes us to miss out on the true beauty and purpose of the message.

For example:- rather either out of ignorance or pure deceit we have lived our entire Christian lives believing a doctrine based on two verses of scripture Malachi 3:8 & 10 “Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings. Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it”. We have been taught, preached, and made people believe that they are condemned to hell if they don’t pay tithes and offerings and are robbing God, we have spent 20 minutes in praise and worship only to turn right around and spend an hour and half taking up an offering quoting Malachi 3:8&10 when it has absolutely NOTHING at all to do with money but has EVERTHING to do with devotion, trust, and FAITH in GOD – I know I messed with some of your theology with that one – GOOD!. We are so quick to do everything else then give God what is left that’s how we rob God, but I will bring more of that out as I go through this message.

We in Christendom and in society have found ourselves in this place of complacency and mediocrity. We find ourselves settling for lies, perversion, atrocities, corruption, heresies, sugar-coated messages, wrong being called right, hypocrisy, the unleashing without due process the deportations of immigrants both legal and illegal, the arresting of a man that has 3 sons all serving in the United States Marines, an Episcopal Priest daughter being arrested and sent to literally a concentration camp who the church actually sent for to be a priest for the Asian community, a United States Congressman is arrested for simply asking a question, a Congresswoman is arrested a found guilty for doing her job for inspecting a facility within her jurisdiction. Federal workers, some with years on the job, but shy of retirement eligibility are fired without cause, kids playing baseball are harassed by ice agents about the immigration status of their parents, a convicted pedophile is transferred to a country club federal prison while the victims cower in pain and agony at the thought and memory of what the experience brought at the hands of this perverted deviant. Lawlessness, corruption, deviant behavior, oligarchy mindsets, dictatorship attitudes, illegal, inhumane, unconstitutional acts and people still just seem to carry on most without a care or concern at all.

Then we have the church that has perfected performance but lost reverence, they have the ritual down to an art form but there is no relationship, the songs are sung but no passion is felt, there is the façade of worship but no wonder, the titles, the grab, the accolades are all in place and are used by people like actors in a play, no power or purpose but perfected performance, pretty speech, and false doctrine. While the people stand by lost unaware that a shift is about to take place, a change is about to come.

This is exactly what was going on in about 440 B.C. when the Book of Malachi was written. Malachi whose name means “My Messenger” is a prophet that was sent from God with a word from God, a word that would not only be for Jerusalem but a word that would fit generation after generation and time after time, because he entered the scene when Jerusalem was comfortable and had settled for mediocrity the walls had been rebuilt, they stood tall, the sacrifice had resumed, the festivals were celebrated once again, the worship hadn’t stopped but the wonder had, the songs were being sung but the passion was gone, the altar was burning but the fire was hallow, the priest dressed in garments of show but didn’t respect the position or purpose, they could quote the law flawlessly but their hearts were corrupt. They offered sacrifice but they didn’t surrender. When they offered sacrifice, they offered blind, lame, crippled, diseased ones and no-one seemed to care or notice because they were just going through the motion. Sure, they still tithed, they still called him Lord, but only with their mouth, religion had become the nationally accepted performance, justice was for sale, worship was mechanical, marriage disposable, honor was lost – so God sent Malachi with a message before the doors closed, before there would be 400 years of silence of the clarion call of the Word of God, one final call would come.