How often have you heard, "if God loves me then why _________?"
You fill in the blank.
This was Israel's response. The Lord God through his prophet Malachi, which means messenger by the way, shows concern over the spiritual condition of the nation of Israel by sharing a back-and-forth conversation with Israel and their God.
Malachi 1:2a
The word of the Lord to Israel through Malachi.
“I have loved you,” says the Lord.
And Israel replies...
Malachi 1:2b
Yet you ask, “How have you loved us?”
And the Lord replies...
Malachi 1:2c-3
“Wasn’t Esau Jacob’s brother?” This is the Lord’s declaration. “Even so, I loved Jacob, but I hated Esau. I turned his mountains into a wasteland and gave his inheritance to the desert jackals.”
The Lord jumps right into the heart of the matter. Esau forfeited his inheritance for a bowl of stew. His brother Jacob steals his rightful fortune and took his place in the hands of the Lord. And God is less than pleased with Esau for having sold out his soul for an earthly pleasure.
The Lord points out that there is a serious sense of cynicism among his people as to whether or not God truly loves them. And this disillusioned cynical attitude is affecting the people and their honor, and their respect for God's word. They've been withholding their offerings. They've been mingling their faith and their families with foreign gods. They've been divorcing their wives and marrying foreign women. Their priorities have been sold out for present day pleasures. And they argue that God loved them before in the days of their ancestors, but obviously (from their perspective) God no longer loves them today.
They basically say, "hey God, what have you done for me lately?"
And The Lord gives them an example as to what it truly would be like if He didn't love them, and if He was completely against them. He recognizes that they have been through many generations of wrath, war, occupation, exile, and return, many times over. And they know that the Lord chastens those whom he loves. Yet they've suffered so much for so long that they've lost faith in His love. They've lost sight of his love. They've lost the ability to see his blessings even in the struggle and in the remnant that he secured in them. And so, God tells them what true hate on a God level looks like. He tells them about his relationship with Edom.
The Lord says...
Malachi 1:4a
Edom may say, “Though we have been crushed, we will rebuild the ruins.”
The Edomites were the people of the Transjordan region, the desert area to the northeast of Israel. They were cursed for eternal destruction by God for their constant attacks and lawlessness against Israel. And he kept his word.
No matter how much the Edomites tried to rebuild their country, the Lord is always against them and will defeat their efforts every time. The Edomites cannot exist, they've been marked for total destruction and failure. And nothing can stop God's wrath.
God explains to Israel what real God hatred looks like...
Malachi 1:4b-5
But this is what the Lord Almighty says: “They may build, but I will demolish. They will be called the Wicked Land, a people always under the wrath of the Lord. You will see it with your own eyes and say, ‘Great is the Lord—even beyond the borders of Israel!’
The Dishonest Offering
The conversation turns quickly now, the Lord digs down deep into what's really going on inside their temple and inside their hearts. The temple priests are identified as the most guilty in this respect. God charges them with indifference. They've been making love offerings that are less than even second best.
We've all seen this; the people give the church their cast offs. They ditch their worn-out clothes and furniture at the good will, while on their way to the mall to pick up some new stuff. They drop a dollar in the offering plate and fill up on the yummy goodies in the fellowship hall. They fill their bellies and pantries with the same food they serve to the needy. And they withhold their offerings when the Pastor isn't meeting their personal preferences.
Israel knows that the ancient instruction has always been that sacrifices must represent the first and the best of what the people have. The Lord through Malachi points out that they've been offering less than satisfactory service. Their animal sacrifices are blemished. And these ritually unfit offerings reveal that their hearts are not joyful about giving back to the Lord. They're keeping to best animals for themselves and giving the crippled and diseased animals to the Lord.
And the Lord makes a proclamation about these people that should ring loud and true, even today, for every church going person out there.
Malachi 1:6b, 10
"You have shown contempt for my name!"
“How I wish one of you would shut the Temple doors so that these worthless sacrifices could not be offered! I am not pleased with you,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, “and I will not accept your offerings."
The Lord says he'd rather see them close the doors of the church, rather than continue to make their worthless offerings in his name. They're dishonoring his name with their actions. And worse yet they claim it's right and good to do this thing.
How does this happen?
Are the religious people really just a bunch of liars, lawyers, cheats and criminals?
There's a story I read that always rang true to me...
There was village long ago that learned that their king would soon pay them a visit. The village was very honored by this news, and the village elders came together to celebrate this honor and determine a way to honor the king when he comes. They decided to hold a feast so that every villager could offer the king something. All the people, great and small, were asked to bring a pitcher of their finest wine and pour it into a vat from which the king would be served. Everyone promised to do this. And they all did, one by one, each family poured their wine offering into the vat.
The king arrives and is greeted with great fanfare. Then the moment came for him to taste the rich wine from the vat that everyone had contributed to. However, when one of the officials turned on the spigot, out came water.
How embarrassing!
Each villager had assumed that all of the other villagers would pour in their very best and therefore they each thought one pitcher of water wouldn't make any difference.
As you might imagine, the king was very disappointed.
Friends,
Listen, I understand the challenges of making a decision to make an offering from the best of what we have to offer. I've lived in poverty, in bankruptcy, in debt, and in blessings. And I've not always kept up with offering my best. And I know it's easy to get cynical about it, especially in the hard times. I've been there.
I'll tell you what I've learned in those hard times. I've learned to give myself. All of me. Not a monetary number, not a percentage, but everything. Jesus wants 💯 of you and me.
I heard another story. A story about a very old first peoples man who had attended a Christian church one day. And the service eventually got around to the offering being gathered. When the ushers came to him with the offering plate, he said, "lower it please."
The usher bent down some to lower the plate, and the old man again said, "lower please."
And so, the confused usher smiled a confused smile and bent down on his knees so he could lower it to the old man's ankles.
And the old man then said, "lower please."
Finally, the usher set the plate on the floor.
And the old man stepped into it.
This is what I learned in the hard times. The Lord wants everything, all of you and me. He wants all your heart, all your strength, all your mind, and all your spirit. In fact he's commanded it.
There is no balance to weigh your best, it's all or nothing. The offering plate isn't a take a penny leave a penny cup. You must give your best. Love is either everything, or nothing at all. If you can't do it then you might as well close the doors of the church.
Picture this...the Lord is knocking on the door. The door is shut. And the fingerprints on the door knob aren't Satan's, they're yours.
Food for thought.
Philippians 1:10b-11
"Live pure and blameless lives until the day of Christ’s return. May you always be filled with the fruit of your salvation—the righteous character produced in your life by Jesus Christ—for this will bring much glory and praise to God."
Since the fall of man, Adam and every human being that followed, lost the capability to exercise holy reign over the whole of creation. Adam violated the holy command and every generation that followed did likewise. David and the nation of Israel continued this sinful trend. They too were unable to fully manifest God’s kingdom here on earth because of their unrepentant sin. Zerubbabel’s lackluster performance after returning to Jerusalem following the exile into Babylon proved that there always remains a spiritual problem of faithlessness to the law of God, a problem so prevalent that even God's wrath cannot cure it.
And I suppose this is why many Israelites rejected Jesus as the Messiah. His earthly mission was to inaugurate the kingdom and restore ...
Isaiah 5:18-19
"What sorrow for those who drag their sins behind them with ropes made of lies, who drag wickedness behind them like a cart! They even mock God and say, 'Hurry up and do something! We want to see what you can do. Let the Holy One of Israel carry out his plan, for we want to know what it is.'”
The soul believes that God is. The hearts believes that Jesus is the truth and full of grace, the heart believes that he's telling us the truth. And the Spirit through the word of God reveals the truth about grace and brings that truth both into recognition and into remembrance, making that truth clearer and more relevant for the believer. Spirit, soul, and body. By the works of these supernatural forces, faith comes to the hearer. Christianity then becomes what that hearer does with that truth and grace.
Today, there's a dichotomy of worldly ideologies surrounding the Christian church. The polarization is split between progressivism and bigotry. Neither is a good thing. Neither is a Christian worldview. The progressives starting ...
Zechariah 14:4-5
In that day his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives that lies before Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall be split in two from east to west by a very wide valley...Then the Lord my God will come, and all the holy ones with him."
The Mount of Olives is east of the city across the Kidron Valley and is higher than the temple mound. Jerusalem becomes the source of living water when The Lord splits the Mount in two and a valley opens up from East to west. And a vast underground river rises up and pours out over the land towards the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean. The Dead Sea is healed and becomes a fishing resort. And Jerusalem will be raised up, elevated above her geographical surroundings.
Zechariah 14:10
"The whole land shall be turned into a plain from Geba to Rimmon south of Jerusalem."
And all the heavens will change. All we know about the universe will change. There will no longer be day or night. No darkness. Only the light of The Lord. One day, neither day nor night, as if ...
Matthew 1:16
"and Jacob fathered Joseph the husband of Mary, who gave birth to Jesus who is called the Messiah."
Joseph and Mary were engaged. In the Hebrew culture this was the first of three steps in the marriage process. This engagement is basically an arrangement to be married. This could have taken place very early in their lives, even as small children. Engagement was usually arranged by the parents. Espousal followed this arrangement period and lasted about a year in the case where the couple are of age. This espousal stage was considered to be marriage to a certain degree, but the couple were set apart to prepare themselves for full consummation and so they were kept apart sexually. In fact the father kept tokens of his daughter's virginity in case any questions arose later on. It was at this point that "it was discovered before they came together that she was pregnant from the Holy Spirit." (Matthew 1:18b)
Joseph was a righteous man, a Nazarene, a descendent of David. And he didn't want to disgrace Mary and open her ...
Matthew chapter 1
"This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham..."
From Abraham to the Messiah, by his seed (Abraham's), some 42 generations later, the birth of Jesus Christ (the Messiah) came to pass. Jesus' earthly father Joseph, the descendant of king David by the line of David's son Solomon, bore the genealogy of a cursed royal line because of Jeconiah. And yet Luke looks to Jesus as the son of Mary who traces her lineage from Nathan the son of king David, though Nathan is not of the kingly line, but he's also not cursed by the sin of Jeconiah. It seems that Jeconiah birthed quite a bit of trouble, I'm thinking about his grandchild Zerubbabel who was particularly problematic. Looking back to the minor prophets we've recently studied, maybe we'll recall, that Zerubbabel tried to lead a messianic movement for himself. Whether or not he did indeed try to lay claim to Messiah status is a little unclear, but he was indeed involved in the coming of Christ. Both Matthew and Luke list ...
Yesterday I wrote an article/devotion about Nostra aetate and the notion that some hold that there are many paths to God, or that all religious paths lead to the same cross of Jesus. The impetus was the Pope's recent comments about his belief in what I believe is a heretical doctrine.
Today, I want to address what's really going on here for so many in the Catholic Church and in Christian universalism in general. It's really about evangelism, or the lack thereof. Maybe you could say, if you were Methodist, it's about prevenient grace. The desire is to open doors for evangelism. I get that. I also know it only ever really opens the window, but hardly ever the door.
Why?
Why doesn't it work to convert and disciple the worshippers of other "gods" to just meet in ecumenical mingled worship?
Simple answer:
They aren't making disciples, they're making excuses.
And unfortunately this Nostra aetate universalist notion has bled out into all the many Christian communities. And the result is, evangelism and disciple making has been nearly eliminated in most Christian ...
