Meadowbrooke Church

A Tale of Two Trees

Primary reading (Slide 1 Reading for the Day):
8And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (Gen 2:8,9 ESV)
(Slide 2 Reading for the Day):
1 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. 3 No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. 4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5 And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. (Rev 22:1-4 ESV)
Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Meadowbrooke. I am so happy you have joined us today. For those who dont know me, my name is Ben McKay, and I am filling in today for our lead pastor, Keith. He and the staff were at a conference this week, so I am stepping in to help amidst their travel and activities. I am one of the elders here at Meadowbrooke and have served in that capacity for a couple of years. As I shared last time I gave a sermon, I count it as one of the most distinct privileges God has blessed me with to join these men who are completely sold out for Christ. My wife, Michaela, works as the office administrator here, and we have two boys, Brayden and Grayson. Michaela and I also host a life group and serve in other ministries here.
All that being said, I am not a pastor by occupation. So please remember that and be kind as we work through todays message. After all, we are in church and told to be charitable toward one another. Professionally, I work in software development and AI applications. Part of what drew me to this line of work is my love of data and how software makes it easier to show us how things relate to each other and how those relationships behave.
Now, you may be asking, what does this have to do with Genesis and Revelation? Well, that is a fantastic question. One of the key takeaways that I hope to leave you with today is that the Bible, a compilation of 66 books, is, in fact, a complete and cohesive narrative of Gods plan of salvation. This fact is astonishing because the Bible was written over approximately 1,500 years. This started with Moses somewhere around 1,400 BC[1][2][3] when the first five books of the Bible were written and ended with John writing Revelation somewhere around 95 AD[4]. During this time, over 40 individuals contributed to writing the various books of the Bible. Some wrote just one, like Isaiah the prophet; some wrote many, like Moses and Paul; and some books had multiple people contribute, like the books of Psalms[5] and Proverbs[6].
Let that sink in for a minute. At least 40 people, who were separated by centuries, came from very different backgrounds (some were kings and others were fishermen) and whose cultures had undergone drastic change (consider how different life looked for people living under King David when compared with those living in exile in Babylon) wrote accounts of God and his plan for salvation that were not only internally consistent individually but also consistent with each other. Thats incredible! Ive been to movies that cant stay internally consistent for an hour and a half! Many social media posts cant even stay internally consistent across two sentences.
I want to move our hearts from being merely impressed by this fact to seeing the intricacies and internal consistency of the Word of God in awe and wonder. This is one of my favorite data visualizations of all time[7]. It shows the biblical cross-references that the creator of this image had identified. Each arc shows a verse referencing another verse. The Bible is quite literally in conversation with itself. We can see concepts come up repeatedly, prophecies being made and then fulfilled. God tells us something about Himself and then elaborates on it further. Throughout it all, we see the fulfillment of Gods eternal plan to redeem His creation back to Himself. This has led people like Jordan Petersen, the renowned psychologist, who is not an avowed Christian by the way, to say, This is the first hyperlinked book[8]. He means you can navigate through the Bible like web pages on the Internet. Instead of following hyperlinks, though, we follow cross-references. This is one of the reasons that lifetimes wouldnt be enough to get everything out of this book that it has to offer; another is that these are the words of God, and well, hes a lot smarter than us.
8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isa 55:8,9)
What were going to do today is to pull on one of those threads, click through the hyperlinks if you will, and we will get to stand in awe at how the gospel, the good news of God, radiates from the pages of scripture. You probably have seen the thread Im alluding to from our readings, the Tree of Life. This tree makes its first appearance in the second chapter of the Bible and appears again in the very last chapter. I bet thats just a coincidence.
We will go back to Genesis, the story's beginning. In Chapter 2, we read,
7 Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. 8 And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9 And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (Gen 2:7-9 ESV)
Here, we see Adam being placed into an idyllic garden (Adam was created outside of the garden and then brought into it), filled with life, sustenance, and beauty. Trees seem to abound. But the author immediately draws our attention to two. The first, we are told, is in the midst of the garden. This phrase has significance throughout the Bible, especially in the first five books. Moses would have written these books during the 40 years of Israels wandering in the desert. This was when God had the nation of Israel, his earthly representatives to the nations, build the Tabernacle. This was where Gods presence was most vividly and intensely seen. Check this out.
45 I will dwell among the people of Israel and will be their God. 46 And they shall know that I am the Lord their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt that I might dwell among them. I am the Lord their God. (Ex 29:45,46)
Its not easy to see in the English translation, but where we see dwell among them, the Hebrew word that gets translated among is the same word that gets translated in the midst of. Throughout the Tabernacle's description, we see that Gods plan is to be literally in the middle of his people; the word Tabernacle even means dwelling place. God goes so far as to have the Tabernacle placed in the very center of the camp. He didnt just want to be the God of the people. He wanted to be God dwelling with His people. The people of this time and this place would have literally seen Gods glory settle over the Tabernacle in the middle of their camp.
Therefore, they would have seen the deep imagery intended within this passage. The garden was where God intended to dwell with His people; we see Him literally walking in the garden in Chapter 3. And as the Tabernacle was placed in the middle of their camp, so too was something in the middle of the garden, the Tree of Life. Now, we dont know much about this tree except that it could have permitted the man and the woman to live forever. God intends that his image bearers will have life. He is, after all, the living God. So, God placed life, which only He can give, in the middle of the garden where it could be seen and easily accessed. Jesus reinforced this idea that God wants his image bearers to have life when he said, I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. (Jn 10:10b). But more on that in a moment.
The only other tree mentioned by name is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I want to pause here because this name has been misunderstood and misused. This is not the tree of knowledge. Knowledge is not the thing that hurts humanity. Read Proverbs. Knowledge is a good thing when it begins with the fear of the Lord, Proverbs 1:7. It is the knowledge of something very specific here that causes a problem, namely good and evil. This tree represents our choice to have moral experience, put ourselves in the place of God not through fear but through disobedience, and define good and evil for ourselves. Lets look at the narrative.
1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, Did God actually say, You shall not eat of any tree in the garden? 2 And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 but God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.4 But the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. (Gen 3:1-6)
There it is, right there. The temptation was, You will be like God. Open a newspaper, and you will see the consequences of believing this lie. This is the underlying heart condition that has plagued humanity since this moment. Want to know how people like Putin come to be? Want to know how people can commit genocide and call it justified? Want to know how people can murder children and call it righteous? Want to know how people can enslave each other? Its all right there in that one fragment of a sentence. You will be like God. God doesnt get to tell me right from wrong; I get to. He is not the center of and reason for all creation; I am.
Eve reached out to grasp the forbidden fruit. We also reach out to grab what only God can define: good and evil. They ate the fruit because they believed the lie that God was holding something back from them. Their belief led them to eat from a false tree of life. This should be seen as a representation of what was to come. We reach out to things that cannot offer life, yet we pretend they do. We do this, brothers and sisters; I do this. We believe we know better. We buy into the lie that Gods law is meant to enslave us rather than free us from bondage.
Moreover, they were image-bearers of God and believed the lie that they werent. Look at this.
26 Then God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.
27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them. (Gen 1:26,27)
They were already image bearers of the God whose power was awesome enough to speak the universe into existence. They had access to the Tree of Life. Notice that God did not issue a prohibition against eating from the Tree of Life. He wants us to have life and have it abundantly. However, humanity chose rebellion, and death came into the world with rebellion.
Now, the question may arise: Why couldnt Adam and Eve then eat of the tree of life? Why did God take that away from them? They still could have lived forever. Embedded in this question is, I think, a profound misunderstanding about God in the modern age. He is both perfectly holy and the exact definition of perfect love. He is both things at the same time. Because of our separation that was caused by sin, this would have resulted in eternal separation from God. Sin and Gods holiness cannot exist together. And, as we saw from Exodus, God is not content to leave us as we are and, therefore, remain separated from Him for eternity. So, we were banished from the garden, and we became subjected to death.
Here, we see a split in the underlying symbology of trees in the biblical texts. To the ancient Hebrew mind, trees represent something inherently linked to life and vitality. Look with me at the first Psalm.
1 Blessed is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
2 but his delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
3 He is like a tree
planted by streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither.
In all that he does, he prospers.
4 The wicked are not so,
but are like chaff that the wind drives away. (Ps 1:1-4)
The tree, in this case, is said not to wither. In opposition, we see chaff, which is fleeting and blown to and fro. The tree is planted. This is in opposition to the chaff, which is driven away. Now, turn to Psalm 92.
12 The righteous flourish like the palm tree
and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.
13 They are planted in the house of the Lord;
they flourish in the courts of our God.
14 They still bear fruit in old age;
they are ever full of sap and green,
15 to declare that the Lord is upright;
he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him. (Ps 92:12-15)
Notice here that the same attributes we see in Psalm 1 are also found in Psalm 92. Trees are used as a representation, an image, of flourishing, strength, yielding fruit, and maintaining that vitality for a long time. This makes sense since trees can live for hundreds or even thousands of years. They make excellent metaphors for abundant life. But, notice something important here. It is not just anybody that is like a tree. It is the person who is what? Psalm 1 says they delight in the law of the Lord. Psalm 92 says they are planted in the house of the Lord and declare that the Lord is upright. Their roots are solidly well rooted in the only source of eternal life.
Now, lets look at the opposite imagery of trees. Trees are used to represent darkness and evil. It ties back to the trees in the garden, where we exchanged the truth for a lie, life for death. There was a warning that Moses left the Israelites with as they were about to enter the land of Canaan. Nested within commandments about how Gods people were to act is this.
21 You shall not plant any tree as an Asherah beside the altar of the Lord your God that you shall make. 22 And you shall not set up a pillar, which the Lord your God hates. (De 16:21-22)
This command was given because the surrounding cultures built idols to worship pagan gods. One of the most prominent among these was the fertility goddess Asherah. One of the ways to worship Asherah was to plant a tree or make a pole on a hill; the Bible often calls these high places. Now, if you read your whole Bible, which I strongly encourage you to do, you will notice this tendency. People will take a piece of Gods creation and then worship the created thing instead of the Creator. We exchange a true thing for a false thing. Doesnt that sound reminiscent of what we are told happened in Genesis? Paul put it like this in Romans after describing how we can understand some of Gods attributes, namely his power and divine nature, because of the grandeur of creation. However, he then talks about people who disregard God and worship created things instead.
22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. (Rom 1:22-25)
But it gets worse. A lot worse. Instead of heeding the warning of Moses, Israel participated in and went beyond the worship they were prohibited from. In 2 Chronicles, we see what Gods people chose instead of worshipping the one true, living God.
1 Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. And he did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord, as his father David had done, 2 but he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel. He even made metal images for the Baals, 3 and he made offerings in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom and burned his sons as an offering, according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel. 4 And he sacrificed and made offerings on the high places and on the hills and under every green tree. (2 Ch 28:1-4)
A lot is packed into these four verses, and I could spend an entire sermon unpacking just this. But I want you to see a couple of things. First, just like we saw from Pauls letter to the Romans, who we worship has real consequences beyond just the worship itself. Paul talks about God handing people over to the lusts of their hearts, resulting in them dishonoring their bodies because of their worship. Similarly, Ahaz murdered his own sons because of whom he worshiped.
Second, we see a direct tie between Moses's warning and the sins the nation of Israel committed. Some are very quick to talk about Gods judgment of the Canaanites when the people of Israel drove them out. What is missed is that God judged them because of practices like these. People also leave out that God judged his promised people the same way. He held them accountable in the same way. If you read on to the end of 2 Chronicles, you will see that God used the nations to judge Judah in the same way. Their rejection of God and subsequent sin led directly to exile in Babylon.
I know this probably seems like a bleak story so far. But this is a foundational truth that we have to understand to grasp the gospel. We are fallen. It is not just Adam, Eve, Ahaz, Israel, or the Pharisees. It is all of us. This is my story. This is your story. But, it is not the end of the story.
We see the promise of this story even as God puts a curse on the earth and removes humans from the garden. There will be one who comes who the snake, the evil one, will wound. But it will be the snake who is crushed. God promises Abraham that all of the world's nations will be blessed through his family. He then reiterates that promise to his son and grandson. King David was told that one of his descendants would be the promised Messiah, whose throne would be established forever. We can read the promises from the prophets in detail. I want to focus on one of these, but there are hundreds more examples.
1 Who has believed what he has heard from us?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
2 For he grew up before him like a young plant,
and like a root out of dry ground;
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
and no beauty that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
4 Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turnedevery oneto his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away;
and as for his generation, who considered
that he was cut off out of the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people?
9 And they made his grave with the wicked
and with a rich man in his death,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.
10 Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him;
he has put him to grief;
when his soul makes an offering for guilt,
he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;
the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. (Is 53:1-10)
Sound like anybody you know? The miraculous thing is that this was written over 700 years before Jesus lived[9]. It accurately renders the same scripture Jesus read while undertaking his ministry. We know that this is true because we have the archeological evidence. This is the Great Isaiah Scroll. It was found in the caves of Qumran in a collection commonly known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. It contains the entire text of the same book we read today. And youll never guess what. When the archaeologists carbon-dated it, they found that it predated the birth of Jesus by 100 years. Let that sink in. We have archaeological proof that this prophecy and the entire book of Isaiah predated the events. And this is not unique to Isaiah. Modern translations use this and other ancient manuscripts. You are reading the exact words that Jesus read about himself.
And what we see in prophecy is precisely the suffering servant that we encounter in the person of Jesus. He was pierced by the nails that held him to the cross. He was ridiculed and mocked, deemed smitten by God. Like a sheep, he was led to slaughter. He was buried in the tomb of a rich man. And in so doing, he took on the iniquity of us all. As Luke, the author of Acts, put it,
30 The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree. 31 God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. 32 And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him. (Acts 5:30-32)
And there it is again, the tree. We were allowed to eat from the tree of life. Instead, we chose a false tree, where we attempted to put ourselves in the place of God. We were told to be rooted in the word and knowledge of God and thus be like trees planted by a stream. Instead, we chose idols and rejected the Creator, the giver of life. We were given the Son, the second person of the Trinity, who said, I am the way and the truth and the life. Instead of accepting him, we rejected him and killed him on a tree. Do you see the pattern? There is a choice here. And we dont seem to choose very well.
Why does Luke mention a tree? Wouldnt it have been enough just to say you killed him? And this is where the biblical narrative, imagery, and deep interconnectedness get so incredibly good. Please turn with me to Deuteronomy chapter 21.
22 And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, 23 his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God. You shall not defile your land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance. (De 21:22,23)
This section of scripture is Moses giving his final commands to the nation of Israel as they are about to enter the promised land. Notice here the language. A hanged man is cursed by God. This is in reference specifically to a man hanged on a what? A man hanged on a tree. If you happen to be using a study Bible right now, you almost certainly have this cross-reference. Please turn with me to Galatians 3:13.
13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for usfor it is written, Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree 14 so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. (Gal 3:13,14)
If this doesnt stop you dead in your mental tracks, I dont know what will. When I say that the Bible is in conversation with itself, this is precisely what I mean. Trees are used repeatedly in the Bible to represent images of life. But humans used them not only to replace the worship of the one, true creator God for the worship of created idols but also as a means of torture and death. Exodus was written 1,400 years before Jesus lived and well before crucifixion was invented as a method of execution, yet it perfectly fits within the biblical narrative. Jesus knew he was to die at the cross well before the events and that this verse was pointing not just to how he would be killed but to the underlying reason why. He was to take on the curse even though he didnt sin to take away the consequences from us who did sin. This is grace, unmerited favor.
Ive covered a lot of ground just now, so I want to recap just a bit before moving on.
Humanity was given the Tree of Life in the garden. Instead, we chose disobedience, ate from the forbidden tree, and through sin, we received death.
We were to worship the one true God, the creator of the universe. Instead, we chose to worship what was created, including trees.
We were told to be like trees, rooted in Gods word. Instead, we chopped trees down and made them idols and tools of death.
We were given the Son of God, who was and is the way, the truth, and the life. Instead, we nailed him to a tree.
Looks pretty bleak, right? Thank God it doesnt end here. As Paul Harvey would have said, And now its time for the rest of the story. God uses the imagery of trees to take us to the good news, the gospel of God. We see it foretold in the Old Testament.
1 There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.
2 And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,
the Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and might,
the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. (Isa 11:1,2)
This will sound like a ridiculous question, but what is a stump? What is left over after a tree has been cut down, right? Isaiah prophesied that the kings of Israel would cease. That happened, and it was because of Israels sin. There was no royal family when Jesus was alive, and there is no royal family in Israel now. But Isaiah promised something else. A branch will come from that stump, which was supposed to be dead. And it will bear fruit. We see this also in Jeremiah.
14 Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 15 In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David, and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. (Jer 33:14,15)
Out of the spiritual death that was a consequence of sin and disobedience, God brought life. That branch, Jesus, was righteous and bore fruit. He would execute not only justice but also righteousness in the land. That branch would come out of a stump, which was supposed to be dead. But, like the stump, Jesus didnt stay dead, did he?
And if you are still on the fence about all of this, if Jesus is not your savior yet, this is the most important point I will make today. The cross is empty. As was commanded in Deuteronomy, Jesus was taken down from the tree that day and, as prophesied by Isaiah, was buried in a rich mans tomb. The cross could not hold him. And guess what? The grave couldnt either. The empty cross and the empty grave are some of the best-attested facts of the ancient world. This is so much the case that critics and skeptics have resorted to developing all sorts of implausible theories. An example is that Jesus just fainted on the cross, and the cool air of the tomb brought him to. Another is that Jesus had a twin, and nobody noticed the difference. These hypotheses are put forward without any evidence or historical justification.
Instead, the truth is that Jesus lived the life that you and I cannot, died the death that we deserve, and then rose from the grave to new life, something you and I cannot do ourselves. And because of the work of Gods divine grace, our debt has been paid in full by the Son of God. Paul puts it extremely succinctly in Romans.
3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. (Rom 6:3,4)
You may have guessed this already, but the Bible also has a tree metaphor for this. In this same letter to Rome, Paul wrote the following as he compared Gods chosen people, Israel, to the Gentiles.
17 But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, 18 do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you. 19 Then you will say, Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in. 20 That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but fear. 21 For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. 22 Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God's kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off. 23 And even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again. 24 For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree. (Rom 11:17-24)
In this metaphor that Paul uses to describe how we achieve new life, Jesus is the root that we are grafted into and receive life through Him. I was shocked to learn that this is a thing. You can take a branch from a tree, cut it completely off, and then graft it into another tree, and it will grow. Im really curious how humans first learned to do this. But to be honest, Im not sure I want to meet the person who first figured it out. I cant help but picture that they looked something like Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein[10].
All joking aside, this is a crucial and pivotal point that I dont want us to miss. We receive life because we have been supernaturally grafted to Jesus. As Paul said in Galatians, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Gal 2:20) There is now no distinction between Jew and Greek (thats you and me). We are all able to receive life through Jesus. It is not our life but His that we live by.
If you have been saved by faith through Jesus, you will experience this by the Spirit of God dwelling inside you. And the life you experience will be ever more witnessed by the fruit from that life. Lets return to the chart that I showed before. The bad news we discussed was all driven by our decisions to disobey the one true God and instead live by our own standards and desires. If not for the grace and love of God, that is where we would have been left. But, praise God, that is not where He left us. Well look at this in reverse order.
We were given the Son of God, who was and is the way, the truth, and the life. Instead, we nailed him to a tree. But he rose again to new life, conquering the grave.
We were told to be like trees, rooted in Gods word. Instead, we chopped trees down and made them idols and tools of death. We, as believers, are now grafted into Jesus, the root, and receive His life.
We were to worship the one true God, the creator of the universe. Instead, we chose to worship what was created, including trees. We now worship the one true God in spirit and truth because the Holy Spirit dwells within us.
That leaves us with one obvious stepthe Tree of Life. And we saw its return in our opening readings this morning. Please turn with me again to Revelation 22.
1 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. 3 No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. 4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5 And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. (Rev 22:1-4 ESV)
Chapter 22 of Revelation is the very end of the biblical narrative. The apostle John was being shown a glimpse into eternity. This is after death has been destroyed, the enemy has been defeated, and the servants of God are eternally with Him. We will get to see His face. There will be no more night. Life flows directly from the Lamb and the throne of God. And on either side of the river, we see the Tree of Life, healing the nations. Because of Jesuss sacrifice, the host of heaven sings. We get a picture of it when John writes the following in Revelation.
11 Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, 12 saying with a loud voice,
Worthy is the Lamb who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might
and honor and glory and blessing!
13 And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying,
To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever! (Rev 5:11-13)
We will ultimately see restoration. As sure as I am that Jesus lived, died, and rose again, I am sure that believers will see this. If you have placed your trust and hope in Jesus, you will have eternal life; you will experience complete healing, and you will see the face of God. This brings us to the last theological point that I want to make.
Humanity was given the Tree of Life in the garden. Instead, we chose disobedience, and through sin, we received death. Because of the work of Jesus, we will again gain access to the tree of life and will be in the presence of God for eternity.
Despite the incredible theological implications of what we have covered today, there is a considerable risk. And that is that we all walk out the doors of this building and live like the rest of the world. If we are genuinely grafted into the life of Jesus, we should bear fruit. Now, that does not mean that we are perfect, not by any means. But we should all seek the sanctification that the Bible promises we will see in increased measure. And I think this scriptural journey weve been on today can guide us.
Tree of Life: We should start with a reverent fear of God. As Proverbs tells us, the fear of the LORD is the beginning of both knowledge and wisdom. Unlike Adam and Eve, we need to rest in the trust and faith that God is not holding anything back from us. His laws are good, His intentions are kind, and He wants us to have abundant life.
Get rid of idols in our lives: We all can have idols in our lives. They are as real as the Asherah poles that the Israelites and the nations surrounding them stood up. It can be sports, it can be wealth, it can be our spouse or kids, it can even be our very selves. Remember, who we worship has implications beyond just the worship itself. You will become like what you worship, and only the worship of God will result in a life that bears fruit and eternal salvation.
We should root ourselves in the Word of God: If we turn back to Psalm 1, we see what it means to be rooted. We are to meditate on the law of God day and night. We are to delight in His law. We should get rid of whatever we need to get rid of to make this possible. If you have to get up before kids, do it. If youre not in a LIFE group, join one. If you need to listen to Bible readings instead of the radio on your way to work, do it. Get into scripture, memorize it, meditate on it, and your life will bear fruit as the Holy Spirit works on your heart.
Have confidence in the truth of the Gospel: Jesus really did come and live the life you and I could never live. He really did die the death that you and I deserve. And he really did rise from the dead, walk out of the tomb, and conquer death. He then offered that same life to anybody who would believe in and follow him. Root yourself in this, the rock of our salvation. It doesnt matter what happens to you if you are rooted in this; you will not be moved because of who you are rooted in.
Benediction
I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family[c] in heaven and on earth is named, 16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faiththat you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. 20 Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Eph 3:17-21)
[1] Introduction to Genesis, ESV Study Bible, pp 39
[2] Introduction to Deuteronomy, ESV Study Bible, pp 325
[3] Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary, Moses, pp 973
[4] Introduction to Revelation, ESV Study Bible, pp 2453
[5] Introduction to the Psalms, ESV Study Bible, pp 936
[6] Introduction to Proverbs, ESV Study Bible, pp 1129
[7] https://www.chrisharrison.net/index.php/visualizations/BibleViz
[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-wWBGo6a2wt=4280s
[9] Introduction to Isaiah, ESV Study Bible, pp 1233
[10] https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e7d0e87853917613964998c/1586365377311-5U14I8VN4HY3NVLWV2FM/f2e1ab082e83ac27c667ae2d6102a3fe.jpg

The Three F-Words of the Christian Life

Today marks the fifth anniversary of the first sermon I preached as the Lead Pastor of Meadowbrooke Church, which was on November 4, 2018. The passage I preached on that day was Isaiah 6:1-8, and the only two sermon points I had on that day was: 1) God Calls Us to Know Him, and 2) God Calls Us to Send Us. There were seven truths I wanted Meadowbrooke to know on November 4, 2018, about God from Isaiah 6; those seven truths were and still remain the thing I want you to know today:
God is alive.
God is sovereign.
God is great.
God is majestic.
God is God.
God is holy.
God is missional (He is on mission).
The irony for me is that here we are, five years later, and we have just finished up a series in Malachi title Worth-ship with the hope that I can, on a very practical level, help you understand what it means to be the kind of person described for us in Malachi 3:16-18,
Then those who feared the Lord spoke to one another, and the Lord listened attentively and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before Him for those who fear the Lord and esteem His name. And they will be Mine, says the Lord of armies, on the day that I prepare My own possession, and I will have compassion for them just as a man has compassion for his own son who serves him. So you will again distinguish between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve Him.
I sat in front of my Bible for several hours earlier this week staring at it helpless and not knowing what text from the Bible for us to dive into. My mind was finally drawn to Hebrews 11:1-12:3 and as I meditated upon those verses, I realized that the author of Hebrews wrote his epistle (which is really a sermon) with the same motivation that I have for you today. My hearts desire for our time together this morning is that you leave here with a better understanding of what it means to be a Christian. As I meditate upon this passage in Hebrews and the time we spent in Malachi, there were three words that came to mind. The title of my sermon today is simply this: The Three F-Words of the Christian Life.
So, what are the three words I believe are characteristic of anyone who belongs to God? The words are fear, faith, and fellowship and are true of anyone who has been reconciled to God through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins and redemption of all whose faith and trust is in Him. These are not the only characteristics, but they are the primary ones that come to mind; it is also important to note that these words are not sequential but overlap each other.
Fear (yārēʾ): A reverent fear that compels the Christian to lean into God.
Last week I explained that there were three types of Hebrew words for fear related to how one responds to God in the Old Testament. There is a fear where the response is dread; there is a fear where the response of the person is terror, and then there is the kind of fear that was characteristic of those described in Malachi 3:16 and every other person who pressed into God through worship rather than recoiling from Him, and that fear is a reverent and respectful fear.
If you recall, I showed you that it is the fear described in Proverbs 9:10, Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil. You can see it here: There is a fear that causes those who belong to God to recoil from evil for the purpose of pursuing and pressing into God. It is the kind of fear that inspired Abel to offer a better sacrifice to God (Heb. 11:4). It is the kind of fear that compelled Abraham to obey God by leaving the city of Ur to go to a place God would eventually show him even though Abraham did not know where he was going (v. 8-10). It is the kind of fear that compelled Moses to endure ill-treatment rather than the temporary pleasures of sin (v. 25). It is the type of fear that compels the Christian to, run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking only to Jesus, the originator and perfecter of the faith (12:1-2).
What compels a man, woman, or even a child to worship God even if to do so is costly? These are the kinds of people described in Hebrews 11:37-38, They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were put to death with the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented (people of whom the world was not worthy), wandering in deserts, on mountains, and sheltering in caves and holes in the ground (Heb. 11:3738).
The kind of fear that results in the kind of reverence for God that the people described in Hebrews 11 had comes out of an understanding of who He is. Under some of the most severe seasons of suffering and persecution, what has been proven time and time again is the truth of Daniel 11:32, but the people who know their God will be strong and take action. To a people who were about to experience the terror of Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian empire, the prophet Jeremiah wrote these words: Let no wise man boast of his wisdom, nor let the mighty man boast of his might, nor a rich man boast of his riches; but let the one who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord who exercises mercy, justice, and righteousness on the earth; for I delight in these things, declares the Lord (Jer. 9:23-24).
If you ever hope to revere God in the same way those described in Hebrews 11 did, you better seek to know Him! The way to know Him is to seek Him and to do so in the way that He has revealed Himself. How has He revealed Himself? He has done so by showing He exists by things seen, and more specifically through His Son, Jesus Christ and through His written Word!
Faith: A trust in God that deepens as the Christians knows Him more.
What is faith? We are told what it is in the very first verse: Now faith is the certainty of things hoped for, a proof of things not seen. This faith begins with a confidence (NIV), an assurance (ESV), a certainty in a God, who, as the opening sentence in Hebrews states, has revealed Himself, to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son (Heb. 1:1-2).
It is a faith that begins with a rational and intelligent presupposition that God exists. It is a faith that is rational and intelligent because it makes a lot more sense than the alternative. We are not an accident, there is design in the universe, and you and I bear His image: By faith we understand that the world has been created by the word of God so that what is seen has not been made out of things that are visible (11:3). It is the kind of faith that came about in Noahs life because God revealed Himself to him in a very real and tangible way. Out of his understanding of who God was, Noah believed Him when he was told by God Almighty that it was going to rain. It was faith that compelled Noah to build a boat to escape the judgment of God.
It was out of a growing knowledge of who God was that Abraham was not simply looking for a land promised to him by God. It was through faith in a good and holy God that Abraham looked, for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God (v. 10). It was through faith that Abraham responded in obedience to a sovereign and loving God that he, offered up Isaac because he considered that God was able to raise people even from the dead (vv. 17-19). It was out of a growing understanding of who God was that the men and women of old, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies (vv. 33-34). It is the type of faith that emboldens the Christian to, run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking only at Jesus, the originator and perfector of the faith knowing with certainty that there is a great joy waiting for us on the other side of eternity.
As the Christian grows in his/her understanding of God, so will a reverence for God and faith in Him deepen. This cannot happen unless your reverence of Him moves you to know Him more, for the better that you know Him, the easier it will be trust Him.
Fellowship: A union in God that overflows into community with His people.
The forgiveness of your sins is not conditioned on anything that you do. If you are a Christian, it is all because of Jesus! What about the saints of Old before the birth of Jesus? It was their faith in the promise of God. The promise is not a what but a who. The who is Jesus, and the saints of old longed for His appearing: These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect (Heb. 11:39-40).
The point of Hebrews is that Jesus is sufficient to save us from our sins and reconcile us to a Holy God we have sinned against. It is all of Him and none of me! Throughout the book of Hebrews, Jesus is shown to be better than everything that has come before. This is why in the very first paragraph of Hebrews, we read:
God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom He also made the world. And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high (Heb. 1:1-3)
After Jesus lived the life we could never live, died the death we all deserved under the wrath of His Father for our sin, was buried, then rose three days later He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. What He accomplished was complete and there is not a thing or deed we can add to what He already accomplished. If that were not enough, the author of Hebrews added in 10:11-14, Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins; but He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time onward until His enemies are made a footstool for His feet. For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.
We have the promise the saints of old look to and longed for! Therefore, it is out of a reverent infused fear that serves as the fuel of a faith that turns our eyes away from everything else and sets our hearts on Jesus and only Jesus as the originator and perfector of the faith.
Notice that it is Jesus we are running to, the One who is our Promise! There is a favorite phrase used by the apostle Paul, couched in three different ways that describes the kind of fellowship that is first and foremost rooted in Jesus, and that phrase is in Christ, in the Lord, and in Him. That phrase in its various forms is used about 164 times by the apostle Paul alone! It is the kind of fellowship Jesus described in John 15:1-5,
I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Remain in Me, and I in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself but must remain in the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; the one who remains in Me, and I in him bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.
To abide in Jesus is to take up residence in Him; it is a union with Him as you walk with Him. It is the sort of thing Paul describes in Philippians 3:7-11,
But whatever things were gain to me, these things I have counted as loss because of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them mere rubbish, so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; if somehow I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.
How does one abide in Jesus? You need to not only hear His words, but you must listen to them. Do not stop at listening to His words though, you must take them into your mind and heart and obey them. As you obey Him, you must follow Him and go where He goes to learn from Him. This is the very thing the Savior invites us to do, for He has said:
The one who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and the one who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And the one who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. The one who has found his life will lose it, and the one who has lost his life on My account will find it. (Matt. 10:34-36)
Come to Me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is comfortable, and My burden is light. (Matt. 11:28-30)
From Adam and Eve all to those described in Malachi 3:16-18, and the faithful followers of Jesus who endure to the end all the way up to the end of the age (Matt. 24:13), the three F words that are characteristic of those who belong to God are fear, faith, and fellowship. We do not do this alone but do it within the community of His people before a great cloud of witnesses (Heb. 12:1).
I have been with you for five years Meadowbrooke. I am not sure what tomorrow will bring, but I do anticipate, with a heavy heart, that in the next five years, we may see and experience great global sorrows. Therefore, I leave you with Hebrews 10:19-25 as what I believe to be the most appropriate way to conclude this sermon on the fifth anniversary of what I consider to be a great honor to serve our great Savior as your incompetent and flawed pastor:
Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, through His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, lets approach God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Lets hold firmly to the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; and lets consider how to encourage one another in love and good deeds, not abandoning our own meeting together, as is the habit of some people, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.
Amen.

A Tale of Two Types of People

Through a reading of the Bible and an understanding of human history, you will discover that there exists a major fault line that divides those who are a part of Gods true family and those who are not. The fault line divides those who honor God and those who do not honor Him, the righteous and the wicked, and those have been reconciled to Him and those who remain alienated from Him.
From the beginning we are introduced to Cain and Abel. We are told that both men participated in the worship of Yahweh, but it was Abels worship that was accepted by God and because Cain was jealous of Abel relationship with God, Cain murdered his brother. Noah had three sons who experienced the miraculous salvation of their family by God through the Ark, yet it was Noahs youngest son, Ham, who did not walk in the ways of his father (Gen. 9:18-29). Isaac and Rebekah had twins who grew up in the same household under the same roof, yet it was Jacob who became the son of promise and Esau who followed the appetites of his own flesh and was rejected by God.
The thing that set Abel apart from Cain, Noahs sons Shem and Japheth from Ham, and Jacob from Esau was fear. There are three types of fear used throughout the Old Testament. There is the kind of fear (pḥd) which means to dread (e.g. Isa. 33:14). A second type of fear used in the Old Testament is the kind of fear (mrāʾ) where one experiences terror (e.g. Isa. 8:12). The third type of fear (yareʾ) is a type of fear that includes reverence and respect; it is the kind of fear the people of God are called to in Proverbs 3:7, Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil. The same Hebrew word for fear is used for the word fear in Proverbs 9:10, The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.
Everything we have read in Malachi regarding the people has been negative so far. What have we learned of the Priests and the people to whom the book of Malachi is addressed?
They questioned the love of God (1:2)
They gave the poorest and cheapest of offerings to God (1:6-2:9)
They were covenant breakers with their spouses, neighbors, and with God (2:10-16).
They were stingy in their giving (3:8-9)
They questioned Gods character (3:13-15)
Finally, we learn of another group of people in verse 16 that look very different than the unfaithful priests and people addressed previously. We see the same fault line that exists between those who truly belong to Yahweh and those who do not especially when you see verse 16 in contrast to verses 13-15. Notice the stark difference between these two groups of people:
Your words have been hard against me, says the Lord. But you say, How have we spoken against you? You have said, It is vain to serve God. What is the profit of our keeping his charge or of walking as in mourning before the Lord of hosts? And now we call the arrogant blessed. Evildoers not only prosper but they put God to the test and they escape. (Malachi 3:1315)
Now, notice the contrast between the above verses with verse 16,
Then those who feared the Lord spoke with one another. The Lord paid attention and heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared the Lord and esteemed his name.(Malachi 3:16)
What I find interesting about those described in Malachi 3:13-15 is that they assumed they belonged to God while questioning the value in serving God, obeying the Word of God, or what reward there was in walking as in mourning before the Lord (denying the pleasures of the world and sin). Their conclusion about life and the worship of God was very different than those who are described in Malachi 3:16.
Those Who Feared the Lord Belong to the Lord
Those who feared God, spoke with one another. Out of a reverent awe of God, these people spoke with one another about God do not miss this point! We are not told what they said to one another, but what we can assume is that their language was shaped by a genuine love of who God is. My guess is that those who feared the Lord, most likely testified about the goodness of God, believed that His infinite goodness was enough to stand on when things were difficult, and understood that He was not only worthy to be treasured but sufficient to be trusted.
Unlike those words that have been hard against God (v. 13), those who feared the Lord did not look at their relationship with God in the same way Cain or Enoch did before them. Those whose words were hard against God, viewed their religion as a transaction, and if you could put their attitude into a phrase, it would go something like this: You scratch my back, and I will scratch your back. One commentator describes those who had hard words against God as religious people who viewed their worship as something God needed from them: They gave something to Godsacrifices, offerings, and a variety of religious activitiesand they expected a return on their investment: the blessings of prosperity and welfare. As a result, if their religious efforts didnt materially benefit them in measurable ways, it meant that the Lord had not kept his end of the bargain. God owed them something in return for their obedience.[1]
Those described in verse 16 understood their worship of God as relational. They not only feared God, but they honored Him as their heavenly Father, and they trusted Him as being totally sovereign over their lives even when things did not go the way that they had hoped. They understood themselves to be children of the God Almighty instead of his customers.Because those who feared God, had a relationship with Him, we learn that Yahweh, paid attention and heard them. Those who fear Yahweh experience Him very differently than those described in Malachi 2:13 who, cover the Lords altar with tears, with weeping and groaning because he no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from their hand.
There are two things that need to be noted here: The first thing I have already stated, and that is that those who truly fear God love to talk to others about God. The second thing to be noted is that those who fear God live for God. This is why there is a book of remembrance written of those who, feared the Lord and esteemed his name. As one commentator wrote: The fear of God affects both their attitude toward Him and their actions before Him.[2]
The book of remembrance is different than the Book of Life that lists all those who have been reconciled to God through the blood of Jesus as the Lamb of God (see Rev. 13:8), it is also unlike the Book of the Lord that records the judgment of God against the nations (Isa. 34:16), nor is the book of remembrance the same as the books that will be opened on the Day of judgment (Rev. 20:12). The book of remembrance is only for those who fear (yareʾ) God because they truly belong to Him; it is a book that records the righteous words, motives, and deeds of those who are treasured by God because they belong to Him as a son or daughter belongs to a father.
For those who do not fear Yahweh in verses 13-15, they see no value in serving God, no point in rejecting worldly pleasures in light of eternity, or the benefit in obeying the Word of Yahweh because they do not think He is able to see. However, those who fear Yahweh, know better! God sees, they know it, and they sing it: Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there (Ps. 139:78, NASB). God sees you Christian! He sees when you turn from sin out of a desire to please Him. In his commentary on Malachi, Robby Gallaty makes the following observation:
Every time a woman respects her body and rejects intimacy with another man before marriage, God sees and honors that decision. Every time a husband refuses to engage in immoral talk at work or to be seduced into looking at pornography, God recognizes it. Every time you avert gossip, every time you bear the burden of an injustice and refuse to lash out, God sees that. Every time a family opens their home to be a Christian witness to the world, God sees that. Every time you share the gospel with a lost family member or friend, God sees that, whether or not anyone else does.[3]
Not only does our God see, but for those who fear Him, this is what He says about such people: They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, in the day when I make up my treasured possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him (v. 17). Those who belong to God are not only seen by God, but are treasured by Him! Why are they treasured by Him? Not because of their deeds, but because of Him who spares out of mercy (v. 17b).
Dont forget what was already promised in Malachi 3:1-4. A messenger would come to prepare the way for Yahweh, and He will come to His temple as a refiners fire to purify the sons of Levi by suffering the fire of Gods justice for our sins. The same mercy that will purify Levi, is the same mercy spoken of in verse 17. Jesus, as the Fathers refiners fire, will purify a people, and if you are a Christian, you are that people!
We learn from 1 Peter 2:9-10 that all those whose have been reconciled to God through His Son belong to God as His treasured possession: But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are Gods people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy (1 Pet. 2:910). This is what sets the righteous apart from the wicked, look at the next verse in Malachi: Then once more you shall see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve him (v. 18).
Those Who Belong to the Lord Will Enjoy the Salvation of the Lord
In Malachi 2:17, those who did not fear the Lord said of Him: Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and he delights in those who does evil. This is why the same people claimed that it was, pointless to serve God. Their view of God and lack of reverence for Him is the reason why they could have the audacity to show up for worship while asking: what benefit is it for us that we have done what He required? (v. 14).
Gods answer to the ridiculous accusations of those who claimed to worship Yahweh is found in Malachi 4:1, For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. You wonder where is the justice of God? Do you think that because you have not seen His justice yet that you can live the way you want to live? Do not mistake His mercy for indifference! Consider what the apostle Paul wrote to those who had similar questions related to sin and the justice of God: Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and restraint and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God (Rom. 2:45, NASB 2020).
Gods kindness, restraint, and patience is meant to lead you to repentance! But, if you take for granted His kindness, restraint, and patience so that you can continue in your sin, then the refiners fire will fall upon you and you will be consumed by it, but in the way the prophet Isaiah and Jesus described: For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh (Isa. 66:24b).
There is good news though! It is good news for those who fear the Lord and it is good news for those who do not presently fear the Lord: But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall (4:2). This is good news because the sun of righteousness is the Lord our Righteousness and the righteous Branch of David (Jer. 23:5-6). This is good news because the sun of righteousness is the Son of God who is also the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29).This is good news because the sun of righteousness is the resurrection and the life who is making all things new (John 11:25; Rev. 21:5). This is good news because the sun of righteousness is the One who, loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father (Rev. 1:5-6). I am not sure who wrote this, but what this person wrote in light of Malachi 4:2 is too good not to share with you:
As the rays of the sun spread light and warmth over the earth for the growth and maturity of the plants and living creatures, so will the sun of righteousness bring the healing of all hurts and wounds which the power of darkness has inflicted upon the righteous. Then they will go forth from the holes and caves, into which they had withdrawn during the night of suffering and where they had kept themselves concealed, and skip like stalled calves which are driven from the stall to the pasture.
Malachi 4:2 is good news for those of us who have placed our faith and trust in Jesus out of a right fear for God. When the sun of righteousness appears, we will experience the promise of Revelation 21:4, He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away (Rev. 21:4). Listen, for the one who does not yet fear God because you do not know Him, this promise is available to you through the same Jesus who experienced the wrath of God for sinners like you. You only need to come to Him in faith to receive the forgiveness of your sins.
So, of the two groups of people described in Malachi, who are you? Are you religious in words and empty deeds? Is your relationship with God merely commercial in that worship of God is no more than a transaction to you? When it comes to your worship, do you despise Gods name with your actions? Can you hear the Spirit of God ask you this question: A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If then I am a father, where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is my fear? (1:6)?
Oh, wont you come to the sun of righteousness who invites all sinners to lay down their sin and pride to find their rest in Him: Come to Me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest (Matt. 11:28, NASB 2020).
If you are the person described in Malachi 3:16, then you belong to God. With the cry, It is finished! from our Savior upon the cross, can be heard through the echo: They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, in the day when I make up my treasured possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him (Mal. 3:17).
Amen.
[1] Duguid, I. M., Harmon, M. P. (2018). Zephaniah, Haggai, Malachi (R. D. Phillips, P. G. Ryken, D. M. Doriani, Eds.; p. 176). PR Publishing.
[2] Fries, M., Rummage, S., Gallaty, R. (2015). Exalting jesus in zephaniah, haggai, zechariah, and malachi (D. Platt, D. L. Akin, T. Merida, Eds.; p. 264). Holman Reference.
[3] Ibid.

The Way Back to a Generous God

Last week I said that this passage was not about money. What this passage is about is the spiritual health of those who say they worship God. When we read through Malachi, what we discover is that between the relationship that God and Israel shared with each other, there was one in the party who was consistently faithless. Israel demonstrated time and time again that as a people and nation that she was guilty of breaking her covenant with God.
After God demonstrated his power over Pharaoh and the Egyptian gods, which not even Pharaoh could ignore, Israel complained when they saw Pharaoh and his army pursue Israel one last time: Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt (Exod. 14:11)? For forty years Israel would be known for her complaining over Gods ways verses their own ways; it did not matter how much manna came down from heaven, how much water came out of a rock in the desert, the way God stopped time one day to deliver the Amorites into the hands of Joshua and the Hebrew army and the many other ways He protected Israel in the wilderness. Israel still complained against her leaders and her God.
After Israel crossed through the Red Sea and saw the great power of God deliver them from Pharaoh and his army, on the other side of the sea, God promised: You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel (Exod. 19:4-6). What was Israels verbal response? It was this: All that the Lord has spoken we will do (v. 8). Yet, because the people thought Moses was taking too long up on Mount Sinai to receive the covenant Israel agreed to honor and obey they decided to make the Golden Calf, to worship it in place of Yahweh.
When Israel finally came to the threshold of Canaan, the land God promised to Israel and heard the report that there were giants in the land (Numbers 13-14), they believed that the giants in Canaan were bigger than God. They believed that the One of whom Scripture testifies: sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in; whom brings princes to nothing, and makes the ruler of the earth as emptiness (Isa. 40:22-23) was too weak to honor His own Word! In response, God said of the Hebrews: How long will this people despise me? And how long will they not believe in me, in spite of all the signs that I have done among them (Num. 14:11)?
When we read Israels story, it is not that hard to see our own story in theirs is it? We have something better than 10 plagues, manna from heaven, water from a rock, and a land flowing with milk and honey. We have the Christ who came as the Lamb of God to atone for our sin and liberate us from a greater tyrant than Pharoah and Egypt (John 1:29)! We have the Christ who is the Bread of Life who satisfies a deeper hunger (John 6:35). We have Jesus, who is the living water, who alone is able to satisfy the thirsty soul (John 4:14; 7:37-39). We have Jesus Christ, who not only died for our sins, but after being dead for three days, He conquered death by rising from the grave (John 19:38-20:29).Concerning Jesus and His power to redeem lost sinners, we have this promise: Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you (Eph. 5:14).
How many times have you chosen to sin knowing that it would only lead to shame and disappointment? How many times have you sinned only to promise God that you will not do it again? Is your experience really all that different than Israels? What does set us apart from Malachis contemporaries is that they looked to the promise of the refiners fire who would purify Levi (Mal. 3:1-4), but we are able to look to Jesus as the fulfillment of that promise. If you are a Christian, you have the refiners fire who is Jesus! What was true of those in Malachis day is true for our own day: We have a God who is faithful: For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed (3:6).
Against the backdrop of Israels unfaithfulness and the heaviness and shame you may be feeling over your sin right now, I want you to see that the news of Malachi 3:1-6 is good news for you.
Return to God and He will Return to You (vv. 6-7)
The history of the Hebrews, according to verse 7, is a turning aside from Gods commandments. Because Yahweh does not change, those who have sinned against Him, can turn to Him. How does one return to Yahweh? The answer to verse 7 is in verse 8-10, Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say, How have we robbed you? In your tithes and contributions. Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.
The story of Israel is mankinds story. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve trusted the lie of the serpent over the goodness of a God who wanted life and thriving for the first couple. They were free to choose the lie of the deceiver over the truth of the Life-giver, and the lie is what they chose. To sin is to choose to act upon the lie that the thing God forbids is the thing that will ultimately satisfy; this is what is at the heart of idolatry. Listen, idols make promises that they not only are unable to keep, but they will rob you of the life God intends for you.
Think about what it was that the people were guilty of doing. They doubted the love of God, but at the same time did not pursue Him (1:2-5). Their worship was not accepted by God because they really had no interest in attributing worth to Him (vv. 6-14). They did not value the covenant of marriage because they did not enjoy the covenant with God as the people of God (2:13-16). Everything that we have learned from Malachi so far is that the disconnect between the people and God was due to a heart problem the people had. The Hebrew contemporaries of Malachi had religion but what was missing was a genuine relationship with the God of their forefathers.
Why do you think the people offered cheap sacrifices instead of the best that they had? Why were the men divorcing the wives of their youth so that they could have the pagan women from other nations? The answer to these questions is the same answer for why they doubted the love of God and questioned His character as a just and holy God. Their problem was that they had the religion of their forefathers, but they did not have a relationship with Yahweh who was a Father to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Noah, David, and every other man and woman who walked with God.
The problem of Malachis contemporaries was the same as the rich man who asked Jesus the following question: Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? The way Jesus answered the mans question is brilliant and will help you see that Malachi 3:6-15 is addressing something much more significant than giving ten percent of your income to church! Turn to Luke 18:18-30; Here is what we read of Jesus conversation with the rich man:
And Jesus said to him, Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: Do not commit adultery, Do not murder, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother. And he said, All these I have kept from my youth. When Jesus heard this, he said to him, One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me. But when he heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich. Jesus, seeing that he had become sad, said, How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. (Luke 18:1925)
There are two questions you need to answer from Jesus dialogue with the rich ruler: First, why did Jesus initially respond to the mans question with the question, Why do you call me good when no one is good except God alone? The second question you need to answer is why did the man walk away sad? The answer to the first question is that Jesus is no mere man, for He is God in the flesh! Since He is God in the flesh, Jesus is good! The reason why the man walked away sad was because he loved his wealth more than he loved God, but that is not all. The man walked away because although he was very religious, he never experienced God as a Good Father! Knowing this makes sense for what we read in the verses that follow:
Those who heard it said, Then who can be saved? But he said, What is impossible with man is possible with God. And Peter said, See, we have left our homes and followed you. And he said to them, Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive many times more in this time, and in the age to come, eternal life. (Luke 18:2630)
Do you see how Jesus interaction with the rich religious man helps us understand the point of Malachi 3:6-15? You can really see it in Peters response: See, we have left our homes and followed you. You are correct Peter, and the reason why you have chosen to do so is because I am the treasure you seek, therefore as the One who is truly good: I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive many times more in this time, and in the age to come, eternal life.
The same thing that was missing in the rich mans life was the same thing missing in the religious Hebrew men and women of Malachis day! What was missing was their hearts; what was missing was joy because they did not have love!In Malachis day, the people had a temple and they had religious programs, but they did not treasure God; they did not know the treasure Jesus spoke of: The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field (Matt. 13:44).
Give God Your Heart and He will Give you Infinitely More
Lets turn our attention back to Malachi. Remember what Gods response was to the way the Priests and the people treated God in their worship: Oh that there were one among you who would shut the doors, that you might not kindle fire on my altar in vain! I have no pleasure in you, says the Lord of hosts, and I will not accept an offering from your hand (1:10). The point in Gods command was to offer the best of what you have, not that He needed it.
You may be familiar with Psalm 50:10-11, which states: For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the hills, and all that moves in the field is mine. However, consider the point Psalm 50 is making about God:
The Mighty One, God the Lord, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting.
Hear, O my people, and I will speak; O Israel, I will testify against you. I am God, your God. Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you; your burnt offerings are continually before me. I will not accept a bull from your house or goats from your folds. For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the hills, and all that moves in the field is mine.
If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine. Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High, and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me. (Psalm 50:1, 715)
Another passage to consider is one we already looked at during this series in Malachi:
Thus says the Lord: Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest? All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the Lord. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word. (Isaiah 66:12)
The answer God provides for Israels question, How shall we return to God? is given in verse 10, Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need. The point is not that God needs anything, but that we were made for Him! He is the treasure worth having, not the best of your flock that you think belongs to you. The great danger we face as humans is that we make the good things God has given us into ultimate things. We take good things and make them ultimate in our lives and put them in the place of the God who is ultimate. We have the propensity of worshiping the gift over the Giver. The only thing that will satisfy is a Person, and He is the Giver of life!
The way back to God is to surrender the things you have made ultimate in your life, to Him. The way back to God is to find in Him your greatest treasure, and the only way you can do that is to trust Him to be that treasure that is worth having above all other things! This is what the priests and people of Malachis day failed to do. They thought by being religious, by having the best of their crops and flocks, by using their time to gain more stuff, or by pursuing another person to experience a better joy or more pleasure would ultimately satisfy, but all that they found were idols of the heart that could not give them what they needed.
The reason why the tithe is singled out in verse 10 is because the way we treat money and stuff is an indicator of what we really value. Gods promise in these verses is that the people test Him by trusting Him. How do you test God by trusting God? If you really believe that He is infinitely good, then let go of the idols of your heart by surrendering or giving them to Him. How do you do that?
If your idol is money, then begin by deciding a certain percent of your gross income that you will give back to Him regardless of your circumstances.
If it something or someone you are holding onto that you know God has told you to let go of, then trust Him as wanting what is good for you by giving whatever it is back to Him.
If you are afraid to step out in faith and trust God for knowing what is best for you, decide to finally step out in faith and obey Him.
The point of Malachi 3:6-15 is not that God needs anything from you, but it is really about what He wants for you. The way to receive what it is that He wants for you is to give Him your heart. What God wants for you is a treasure worth having more than anything else in this world, because only God is good! What God wants for you is the only relationship that will satisfy; it is the relationship Jesus promised:
All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:2730)
Oh, dear friend, find the rest you were made for. Find your treasure and rest through a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Behold the Refiner’s Fire

Seven times, God makes a critical statement about Israel in the book of Malachi, and each time Israel responds with a challenge to that statement. Here are those statements and Gods answer to Israels objection.
God: I have loved you. (1:2)
Israel: How have you loved us? (v. 2)
Answer: I have chosen Jacob over Esau, remained faithful to Jacob, and will bless the nations through Jacob even though Israel has shown herself to be faithless. (v. 5)
God: You despise my name. (1:6)
Israel: How have we despised your name? (v. 6b)
Answer: Your worship of me is lackadaisical at best. (vv. 7-14)
God: You have offered polluted food on my altar because honoring me with your whole life is a weariness. (1:7)
Israel: How have we polluted you? (v. 7b)
Answer: You offer what is cheap and sick because you do not regard my Name as holy. (vv. 9-14)
God: You cover the Lords altar with tears, with weeping and groaning because He no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand. (2:13)
Israel: Why does he not? (v. 14)
Answer: You have been faithless to the wife of your youth. (vv. 14-16)
God: You have wearied the Lord with your words. (2:17)
Israel: How have we wearied Him? (v. 17b)
Answer: You have said, Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and he delights in them. Or by asking, Where is the God of justice? (v. 17c)
God: You are robbing me. (3:8)
Israel: How have we robbed you? (v. 8b)
Answer: In your tithes and contributions. You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you. (vv. 8c-9)
God: Your words have been hard against me. (3:13)
Israel: How have we spoken against you? (v. 13b)
Answer: You have said it is vain to serve God. What is the profit of our keeping His charge or of walking as in mourning before the Lord of hosts? And now we call the arrogant blessed. Evildoers not only prosper but they put God to the test and they escape. (vv. 14-15)
It is Gods response to Israels fifth objection that we now turn our attention, and it could not be more timely!
On October 7, Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and murdered babies and children, abducted and raped women before killing them, and gunned down as many Israelis as they were able. Israel is at war, and the death toll of human causalities will continue to rise. China and Russia seem to be moving closer to a formal alliance, and it is not beyond reason that Iran and North Korea may join them. Based on what I read in my Bible, I am not surprised that this is happening, and it would not surprise me if Russia and Iran got involved in what is happening between Israel and Hamas.
Now, if you consider what is happening between Russia and Ukraine, the conflict with Israel and Hamas and possibly Iran, and Chinas plans to have its military ready by 2027 to annex Taiwan, what we have is the recipe for a cataclysmic global war. If that were not enough to worry about, represented in this room is a sea of worries (some legitimate and some illegitimate). If you are anxious, if you are bothered, if you are feeling hopeless, if you are tired, or if you are discouraged Malachi 3:1-6 is for you.
The problem of Israel and our problem can be traced all the way back to Adam and Eves great sin, there was a type of darkness. After Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, God drove them out of the beauty of Eden into the despair of the wilderness. Before God forced Adam and Eve outside the place of life and into the place of the curse, He promised them a deliverer who would destroy all that is an enemy of life (Gen. 3:15).
Outside the Garden is the place of the curse the wilderness. It is the place of pain, distrust, frustration, thorns and thistles, weariness, sweat, burdens, and death. The Bible says, sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come (Rom. 5:12, 14). In being cast out of the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were driven away from the face of God.
Gods Justice is Not Deficient (2:17)
The people have wearied the Lord. The Message Bible, which is a paraphrase of the Bible, interprets Malachi 2:17 this way: You make God tired with all your talk. I think this is a terrible translation of Malachi 2:17! God does not get tired, he does not need a break, and He does not get frustrated because things do not go His way. Based on the Hebrew word that is used for wearied, for God to be wearied is for Him to be troubled or irritated. Have you ever had to deal with a person whose hypocrisy is so blatant that it is aggravating? Think about what God accused Israel and her priests of in chapter two. They were guilty of breaking their covenant by marrying people who worshiped terrible gods, such as Molech, whose worship included child sacrifice. The men were divorcing the wives of their youth to marry younger women who also worshiped other gods. If anyone was guilty of injustice, it was Israel.
Israel has been on the receiving end of nations and people groups who wanted nothing but their destruction. Do you think what is happening today is new? No, what is happening between Israel and Hamas is nothing new, for throughout her history, her story is about a God who rescues and delivers. God liberated Israel from the tyranny of Pharaoh, He saved Israel from Goliath and the Philistines, He delivered His people from the Amorites, He sustained and preserved rebellious Israel through the exiles of Assyria and Babylon. Now, here they are in Jerusalem with a temple and walls by the grace and mercy of God, having demonstrated that they had no real desire to serve and worship Him, and now they have the audacity to question His moral character.
Now, this question that Israel asks in 2:17 is different than the kind of lamenting those who love God demonstrate, such as the one we are introduced to in Habakkuk 1:2-3, How long, Lord, have I called for help, And You do not hear? I cry out to You, Violence! Yet You do not save. Why do You make me see disaster, And make me look at destitution? Yes, devastation and violence are before me; Strife exists and contention arises (NASB). Wow, Habakkuks question could not be more relevant for what we are seeing in our world today! His question is very different than the one Israel asked in Malachi, and it is very different than some of the questions you have been asked, questions like: How can you believe in a good God when there is so much suffering in the world? Or How can God be in control, when the world is so out of control?
We tend to measure the justice of God against our own sense of justice. The problem with that is that our sense of justice is only as pure as we are good human beings. The crazy thing is that most Americans (80%) rightly believe that most of the suffering in our world is caused by humans. The bad news is that we have tried all kinds of things to fix ourselves, but only seem to make our situation worse. There are more slaves today than ever before. An increase of over 100 million people faced hunger in 2022, with a total of 783 million people who continue to go hungry in our world today even though there are more than enough food producers to meet the needs of the hungry. With all of our talk about peace, we humans are still the most dangerous species on planet earth. Our problem is as old as the Garden when Adam and Eve bit into the forbidden fruit: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23). Or, as the prophet Jeremiah put it: The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it (Jer. 17:9; NASB)?
I have preached whole sermons on the topic of Gods goodness alone, but I do not have the time to do that here. What I will say is that God is good (Nah. 1:7) because He is Holy (Isa. 6:3). Because God is God, for Him to be good, He must be infinitely good. What does it mean for God to be infinitely good? What it means is that there is absolutely no room or any need for improvement for God. Therefore, if God is infinitely good, then He is equally just! This is why the Psalmist says of our great God: Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne; steadfast love and faithfulness go before you (Ps. 89:14).
Gods Plan is Redemptive
Gods answer to Israels question regarding the justice of God is Malachi 3:1-6. Where is the God of Justice? Oh, He has never left! He has always been with His people. He has been with His people because He is also a God of mercy. When Moses asked to see the face of God, he was permitted to see Him pass by while not being permitted to see His face; when God passed by, this is what Moses heard Him say:
The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the childrens children, to the third and the fourth generation. (Exod. 34:6-7)
Gods justice was coming, and the people who deserved to experience it first were all of Israel, beginning with her priests who did not regard Gods name as holy. However, the way that He would do it would be in a way where His infinite justice and his infinite mercy will intersect with His infinite holiness and His infinite love. How would He do it? The answer is in the first verse: Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.
The One that Israel calls Father (2:10), is the One who will send His messenger. Who is the messenger that will be sent? It was John the Baptist, who is a type of Elijah, who went before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah (Luke 1:17). Who is the Lord that would, come to his temple? He is someone greater than Elijah or John the Baptist. The Lord whom John was sent to prepare the way for is the One who owns the temple. He is the One spoken of in Jeremiah 23:5-6, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: The Lord is our righteousness.
The first word in Malachi 3:1 is Behold and it literally means: Here am I. Israel asks: Where is the God of Justice? Gods answers: Here I am! I am sending my messenger before me who will prepare the way for Me to come to my Temple that you have polluted, for when I come, you will call Me: The Lord is our righteousness. Who is this Lord our righteousness? He is the righteous Branch of David! If Israel and the Priests had the sense to ask, they would have asked God: How can Yahweh come as the human descendant of David? This is the question the apostle John answers over 400 years later:
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.
The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John bore witness about him, and cried out, This was he of whom I said, He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.) For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Fathers side, he has made him known. (John 1:618)
Jesus is, The Lord our righteousness who came, but the priests and much of Israel did not receive Him. What was the purpose of his coming? Well, Malachi tells us in verses 2-3, But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiners fire and like fullers soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the Lord.
Gods Love is Restorative
The story of humanity is one where we cannot help ourselves, for there is no remedy we can create to fix our sin problem. Our story is also Israels story, and the promise of Malachi 3:3 is that God would not and does not abandon impure people like us not because we deserve salvation, but because He is committed to his promise to bless the nations through Israel and the way that he would do it is through the righteous branch of David, namely Jesus the Christ.
Through Jesus, a day will come when Israel says, Great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel (Mal. 1:5)! Through Jesus, a day is coming when the nations will worship Yahweh: From the rising of the sun to its setting, my name will be great among the nations says the Lord (1:11)! How will he do it? Through Jesus, the righteous branch of David, He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring the offerings in righteousness to the Lord (3:3), and when he does, the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord (v. 4).
The question begs for an answer; how will he do it? How can He refine out of mercy without the fire of his perfect justice? He would do it and He did do it by entering into our wilderness. Jesus lived the life Israel failed to live and by doing so was the perfect Jew (Heb. 1-2), the sinless and better Priest then Levi (Heb. 3, 5-7), and better than Moses because the covenant He mediates is better than the old (Heb. 8-10). Jesus entered into our wilderness for the purpose of suffering the fire of the Fathers perfect justice on our behalf; the fire fell upon Jesus instead of us. This is why the messenger said of Jesus when he saw him: Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29)! The Lamb was crucified and on that cross the wrath of God the Father was satisfied while His perfect justice, mercy, love, grace, and holiness intersected without contradiction.
After Jesus died for our sins and was buried, he rose three days later! The refiners fire has come to us for the purpose of redeeming lost sinners. His work continues as His fire continues to remove the dross from our lives! As the author of Hebrews exhorts the Christian, we set our eyes on Him to, run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking only at Jesus, the originator and perfecter of the faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God (Heb. 12:1-2).
As for the rest of the wilderness and those who refuse to turn to the One who suffered the fire of Gods justice for sin, a judgment awaits and will come: Then I will draw near to you for judgment. I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired worker in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, against those who thrust aside the sojourner, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts. The Lamb of God is coming to bring the fire of Gods justice as the Lion of Judah! Jesus will come as the King of kings and Lord of lords; we are told that when He comes, all of the tribes of the earth will wail on account of Him (Rev. 1:7).
You may be tempted to ask: Where is the God of justice? His answer is simply, Here I am, I never left. In the same way God answered Israels question in Malachi 3, He does the same for us in the last book of the Bible:
Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay each one for what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates. Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood. (Rev. 22:1215)
Amen.

Broken Relationships and the Worship of a Faithful God

Jesus was asked what he believed the greatest of Gods commandments was, and his answer was simple: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets (Matt. 22:3740). Jesus answer can be reduced to seven words: Love God and also love your neighbor. How you love God will affect the way you treat the people in your life, and the way you treat the people in your life can serve as a barometer for the spiritual climate of your heart and relationship with God.
What does this have to do with Malachi 2:10-17? The way the people were treating one another and the way the men were treating their wives, was symptomatic of their relationship with God. Because the men did not think highly of the promise made to their wives, God did not regard or accept their worship. We will unpack verse 13 but consider the shocking tone of this verse to set the tone for the whole passage: You cover the Lords altar with tears, with weeping and groaning because he no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand.
I am reading a book titled, The Great Dechurching; what got my attention before I purchased the book is what it said in the back: We are currently experiencing the largest and fastest religious shift in US history. This shift is greater than the First and Second Great Awakenings combined (when America experienced the largest religious shift in the Church towards growth) but in the opposite direction. In the opening pages of the book, Jim Davis and Michael Graham glean from the largest and most comprehensive study of dechurching in America: About 40 million adults in America today used to go to church but no longer do, which accounts for around 16 percent of our adult population. For the first time in the eight decades that the Gallup has tracked American religious membership, more adults in the United States do not attend church than attend church. This is not a gradual shift; it is a jolting one.[1] What this means in the words of Davis and Graham: More people have left the church in the last twenty-five years than all the new people who became Christians from the First Great Awakening, Second Great Awakening, and Billy Graham crusades combined.[2]
Here are some of the takeaways so far from my reading of The Great Dechurching:
Dechurching is happening on every income level, regardless of educational status, and area of the country people live, which means that people all over the country are, deciding to forgo their in-person worship for other activities on Sunday morning.[3] And they are doing so for a variety of reasons.[4]
The children of the dechurched will inevitably become unchurched, which in the words of the authors of their book will change, the nature of spirituality in America significantly.[5]
One of the most alarming findings that I have read in The Great Dechurching so far is what the authors state at the beginning of their book: We learned in our research that 68 percent of dechurched evangelicals said their parents played a role in the decision to leave the Church.[6] There was something about the culture of the home these evangelical dechurched Christians experienced that turned them away from the church. I believe Malachi 2:10-17 speaks into the phenomena of the great dechurching.
Know God as Your Father
Tozer said it well when he wrote, What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and mans spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God.[7] I have used this quote so many times in sermons, Bible studies, and classes I have taught; it still has not lost its punch because it is so true!
So, who is this God we identify as our Father? Or as Malachi states in the form of a question: Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us? (v. 10). If you are a Christian, then our Father is the creator God who spoke the galaxies into existence with only the word of his mouth in only six days (Gen. 1:1; Exod. 20:11; Heb. 11:3). Our Father is El Elyon, which means, The Most High God. There is no God like him and there is not god above him (Gen. 14:18-20; Ps. 57:2; Isa. 46:8-10). Our Father is El Roi, which means, The God Who Sees. Nothing goes unnoticed by him. He sees our circumstances, he sees the secret places, he sees when no one else notices, he sees all things (Gen. 16:13-14; Prov. 24:12). Our Father is El Shaddai, which means, The All-Sufficient One. He lacks absolutely nothing, he cannot be outdone, and he is able to do what he says he will do. Our Father is Yahweh who is the covenant keeping God; He does not break his promises and He is faithful even when we are faithless (Exod. 3:13-14). Dear brothers and sisters, what comes to mind when you think of the God that you call, Father?
As Yahweh, our Father provides (Yahweh-Jireh) for his children (Gen. 22:11-14). In Exodus 15:26, we discover that our Father heals his children (Yahweh-Rapha). In Exodus 17:15, our Father is a banner for his people in Whom we find our true identity and purpose (Yahweh-Nissi). In Exodus 31:13, we discover that our Father loves his children too much to leave them as they are, for He is the one who sanctifies His people (Yahweh-Mekoddishkem). In Judges 6:24, our Father is the only One who is able to bring peace (shalom) to His children (Yahweh-Shalom). In Psalm 46:7, our Father is a refuge and fortress for his children even when you find yourself standing on the ashes of what once was (Yahweh-Sabaoth). In Psalm 23, our Father is our Good Shepherd (Yahweh-Raah). But wait, there is one other name I want you to see that describes what our heavenly Father will do for His children in Jeremiah 23:5-6,
Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: The Lord is our righteousness.
Now skip down to Malachi 3:1; the Messenger Malachi prophesied would come to prepare the way for the Lord, is the One Jeremiah described as, The Lord is our righteousness. The messenger would be John the Baptist: Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.
Malachi 3:1 is a part of next weeks sermon, but before we look at the rest of Malachi 2, I want you to hear two things:
The Righteous Branch from David is Jesus, the righteousness of all whose faith rests in Him, for in Jesus we discover a Father who is our righteousness who sent His Son to be our righteousness: For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Because of what Jesus accomplished for you, Christian, we read in five verses earlier in 2 Corinthians 5:17, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold the new has come. Richard Gaffin wrote something that amplifies the significance of what it means to have God as your Father in the following statement: At the core of their being, in the deepest recesses of what they arein other words, in the inner selfbelievers will never be more resurrected than they already are. God has done a work in each believer, a work of nothing less than resurrection proportions that will not be undone. Such languageis not just a metaphor.[8]
If you can truly call God, Father because you have reconciled to Him by faith through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, then you, will never be more resurrected at the core of your inner self than you already are. Before we can go any further, I want you to let that truth settle upon your heart for a moment.
Recognize the Bond You Share with Gods People
If you are a Christian, then God has done a work in your life that has changed the DNA of your inner self is such a way that what was once spiritually dead is now alive! That work will and can never be undone (if you doubt that, just read Ephesians 1:3-14 and Romans 8). So, if you are tempted to believe the lie that you cannot change, you need to preach to your own heart that the same resurrection power that raised Jesus from the grave, is the same power that has made you spiritually alive and empowers change in you. The power at work in your life is a power those addressed in Malachi 2 did not know.
The evidence that a person can truly call God, Father is seen by that persons loving response to God and those who bear His image. So, for those in Malachis day who claimed to know God as Father, but were faithless to one another received the following rebuke:
Why then are we faithless to one another, profaning the covenant of our fathers? Judah has been faithless, and abomination has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem. For Judah has profaned the sanctuary of the Lord, which he loves, and has married the daughter of a foreign god. May the Lord cut off from the tents of Jacob any descendant of the man who does this, who brings an offering to the Lord of hosts! (Malachi 2:1012)
What was the covenant of the fathers that was being profaned? It was the covenant that included certain prohibitions, and one such prohibition was not to marry individuals from certain people groups who did not love or worship Yahweh because they worshiped other gods. Specifically, God instructed His people: You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods (Deut. 7:34). Generations before Malachi, Solomon married women from other people groups who worshiped other gods and they turned his heart away from God and the consequences where catastrophic for the nation of Israel. Solomons disregard of Deuteronomy 7 was the soil that resulted in nation-wide idolatry and the eventual discipline of God that exiled the Hebrew people, yet the men of Malachis day ignored all of that and went and married women who worshiped other gods anyway.
If God is a Father to you and you know Him to be all that He has identified Himself to be, then why on Gods green earth would you enter into the one covenantal relationship that was instituted by God with a person who does not love or worship that same God as you do? If God is God and He is a Father to you, then why would you risk entering into a relationship with someone who will at best make the worship of Him burdensome and at worst turn your heart against Him? If the God who instituted marriage where is to be enjoyed and the procreation of children to be shared for the purpose of raising them up to know the One True God, why would you willingly enter into a relationship where your child/children will inevitably be torn between whatever god is worshiped by one parent verses the true God worshiped by the other?
Listen, Malachi 2:10-12 is not just for Malachis contemporaries, these verses are for the Church too! What is in Malachi 2:10-12 is not an Old Testament principle to be ignored by New Testament saints in the name of grace or missionary dating, for we are told in the New Testament: Do not be mismatched with unbelievers; for what do righteousness and lawlessness share together, or what does light have in common with darkness? Or what harmony does Christ have with Belial, or what does a believer share with an unbeliever (2 Cor. 6:1415, NASB20)? Listen carefully, the point being made in these verses is that the only reason you would want to marry someone who does not love or know the true God is because you love the unbelieving man or woman more than you love God.
To profane the covenant of marriage in verse 11, is to treat the covenant of marriage as common and nothing more than simple romance that can be disregarded when the feelings fade, or the intimacy is gone. If what I just said seems harsh to you, then how else do you explain verse 13, which states: And this second thing you do. You cover the Lords altar with tears, with weeping and groaning because he no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand. This is exactly what Esau did after he found out that by trading his birthright for a bowl of stew and after the blessing was given to his younger brother, he wept (see Gen. 28:30-38); Hebrews 12:17 describes Esaus response this way: For you know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no chance to repent, though he sought it with tears (Heb. 12:17). Sin is simply the trading your birthright in for a bowl of stew that will not satisfy your soul.
Faithfully Nurture the Covenant You Have Entered
The other thing the men in Malachis day were doing, was that they were divorcing their Hebrew wives to marry women who worshiped other gods. The way the men were treating their wives was evidence that they really had little regard for the covenant of marriage. There were some who desired marriage with foreign women who worshiped another god, and then there were men who married a Hebrew wife who did worship Yahweh but divorced them to marry women who worshiped other gods. To these men, Malachi addresses in verse 15, Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth (Mal. 2:15).
We read in Genesis 1 something that Malachi and his contemporaries would have been familiar with: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them (Gen. 1:27). God then commanded the man and woman to create and fill the earth with people like themselves and to manage creation. Furthermore, we are told in Genesis 1:28 that God told Adam and his wife, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth (Genesis 1:28). This is the covenant of marriage, and in Genesis 2:24-25 we are told of the sacredness of marriage and the place that had within that covenantal relationship: Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed (Genesis 2:2425).
By profaning the covenant of their fathers (Mal. 2:10), the people (mostly the men) treated everything about marriage as common. Their primary reason for doing so had more to do with than anything else. The way Malachis contemporaries were treating marriage and was not all that dissimilar to the way marriage and is treated by our own culture where marriage and is treated as common instead of sacred. Malachis day and our own treats marriage as something to be experimented with or to be experienced with few barriers, if any. As it is treated in our day, so it was in Malachis day: Marriage was not viewed as a sacred covenant by those who claimed to know God, nor as a covenant instituted by God. The reason why this was, is the same reason for our own day: They did not stand in awe of Gods name. Gods response and feelings toward the way the people treated the covenant of marriage in Malachis day is still the same for our own day, and we see that response in verse 16. There are two legitimate ways Malachi 2:16 can be translated; both ways are seen in the way the ESV and the NASB translates this verse:
For the man who does not love his wife but divorces her, says the Lord, the God of Israel, covers his garment with violence, says the Lord of hosts. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and do not be faithless.(Mal. 2:16; ESV)
For I hate divorce, says the Lord, the God of Israel, and him who covers his garment with violence, says the Lord of armies. So be careful about your spirit, that you do not deal treacherously. (Mal. 2:16; NASB20)
What is the point? God hates divorce because of what it does to the institution He has called sacred. Why is it sacred, well besides the obvious, marriage is also a portrait of something much greater than the love two people have for one another. Here is what the apostle Paul said of marriage: Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband (Eph. 5:3133).
Not only were the men and women of Malachis day faithless to those within their community of faith as worshipers of One true God, but they were faithless to God because they desired the women of foreign gods over the women who loved Yahweh. This was evil in the sight of God, but what was even more detestable was the way the Hebrew men treated their Hebrew wives by divorcing them because they desired to be with the women of a foreign god more than they wanted to be with their own wives because they did not really know, love, or stand in awe of the God they offered sacrifices too.
Conclusion
Remember Jesus answer to the question regarding the greatest of the commandments: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets (Matt. 22:3740). I will reiterate again that the way you love others is symptomatic of the kind of love you have for God. The apostle John picked up on this in his epistle by writing: Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes (1 John 2:911).
Did you know that there are at least 59 one another verses in the New Testament? At least 12 of those 59 one another statements include: Love one another. Do you know why that is? Because if you are a genuine Christian, you are able to love God in such a way that it will affect the way you treat others. What is different about you is that you, will never be more resurrected at the core of your inner self than you already are because of what Jesus has done for you and in you. Now that you know God and are loved by Him, you are able to love others in a way unlike the rest of the world.
I am going to say something that might shock you into wanting to leave frustrated or angry, but it really needs to be said. So here it is: the point being made in Malachi 2:10-16 is that the reason you treat people, , and the institution of marriage as common is because you love the act of and or the person you are with more than you love God. The good news is that this does not have to be the legacy of your life.
In the words of Richard Gaffin, if you are a Christian, then At the core of your being, in the deepest recesses of what you arein other words, in your inner selfyou will never be more resurrected than you already are. God has done a work in you, and that work cannot be undone if you really are a Christian and not only religious. What this means is that it is not too late for you! I asked you last week: What threshold were you hesitant to cross to go all in to follow Jesus? What are you holding onto that Jesus is asking you to surrender to Him? What act of obedience have you not taken because you are more afraid of what others might think than you are of what God thinks?
God wants life for you. He is not against your joy He is for your joy! The same appeal that was always before Israel is before you today:
I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them. (Deut. 30:19-20)
That relationship you participated in that included outside of marriage does not need to define you. That marriage you entered into with your unbelieving spouse is worth investing in and your spouse is not beyond the reach of grace of God. That divorce you initiated or pursued and now you are in your second or third marriage your present marriage can thrive! If you are single, married, divorced, or remarried if you are a Christian, Gods will for your life cannot be any clearer that what is found in 1 Thessalonians 4:3, For this is the will of God, your sanctification. For the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is doing the impossible in your life too! In closing I leave you the hope of Romans 8:11 to combat the lie of the enemy that would convince you that your old self is who you are: If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. Amen.
[1] Jim Davis, Michael Graham; The Great Dechurching (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan; 2023), p. 3.
[2] Ibid; p. 5.
[3] Ibid, p. 24.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid, p. 33.
[6] Ibid, p. 9.
[7] A.W. Tozer. The Knowledge of the Holy (San Francisco, CO: HarperSanFrancisco; 1961), p. 1.
[8] Paul Miller; A Praying Church (Wheaton, IL: Crossway; 2023), p. 73.

The Danger and Delight of Spiritual Leadership

Francis Schaeffers book, How Should We Then Live, was published in 1975. Francis Schaeffer was a theologian, philosopher, and a highly respected evangelical thinker in his day. In his book, Schaeffer shows how the decline of a society from the fall of Rome up through the twentieth century begins when that society shifts from Gods design for humans, and the rest of creation. Towards the end of his book, Schaeffer lists five attributes of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire that is true of any culture in decline; according to Schaeffer these are five signs of a society that is about to break down:
A mounting love for affluence.
A widening gap between the very rich and very poor with little to no middle class.
An obsession with .
Freakishness in the arts.
An increased desire to live off the state.
Out of our love for affluence, we as a nation are now 48.9 trillion dollars in debt with the average household debt owing to $14,241 in credit card debt, $58,112 in student loan debt, $31,142 in automobile loans, and $202,454 in mortgage debt. The middle class in America is shrinking, for it used to be that 61% of Americans made up the middle class, but that percentage has shrunk to 50% and looks as though it will continue to shrink.
When it comes to an obsession with , very little needs to be said with the ever-increasing list of types of sexualities a person can identify with, the oversexualization of our youth, and gender reassignment. Now, in the arts, anything deviant can be passed off as art to the point where you can have Sam Smith dress up as Satan with his dancers performing promiscuous acts as part of an intentional satanic chorographic ritual for a song titled, Unholy. Sam Smiths performance was not the only deviant performance either.
So, what does all of this have to do with Malachi 2:1-9? Without a right and proper fear of God, the heart becomes an idol factor that does not lead to life, but death. This is the human condition that has been our problem since Adam and Eve bit into the forbidden fruit. The root cause for Adam and Eves rebellion was the same for the Priests Malachi addresses in 2:1-9, and it is the same for us today: The root cause for mankinds rebellion is the absence of a right and proper fear of God.
The Fear of the Lord
Remember how Malachi 1:6 begins: A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If then I am a father, where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is my fear? says the Lord of hosts to you, O priests, who despise my name. The priests did not honor or fear God, and the evidence for their lack of honor and fear for God was seen in how they worshiped Him. To fully grasp just how serious the lack of fear and honor the priests had for God was, we need to understand the type of fear and honor the priests lacked.
The kind of fear for God that is expected from His people is not a fear that is contrary or at odds with genuine love. A biblical fear of God is not at odds with a love for God. We do not love God in the same way you love a sunset, nor is it the same kind of love that you have for your dog. To fear God is to love and enjoy God for all that He is. It is a love that truly appreciates and honors God as infinitely perfect and overwhelmingly beautiful in his holiness, righteousness, graciousness, justice, mercy, love, and majesty. In the words of Michael Reeves: In a sense, then, the trembling fear of God is a way of speaking about the intensity of the saints love for and enjoyment of all that God is.[1] Reeves points out in his book, Rejoice Tremble, that the fear of God, is not at all what we, with our cultures allergic reaction to the very concept of fear, might expect. Instead, we can say with Spurgeon that this is the sort of fear which has in it the very essence of love, and without which there would be no joy even in the presence of God.[2] Of the fear of God, Charles Spurgeon said, It is not because we are afraid of him, but because we delight in him, that we fear before him.[3]
So that you can see what I just said from the Bible, consider the following scripture passages on the fear of the Lord:
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight. (Prov. 9:10)
And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul (Deut. 10:12)
Then you have this promise from the prophet Jeremiah concerning a New Covenant when God would address the problem with mans heart:
And they shall be my people, and I will be their God. I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever, for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. (Jer. 32:38-40)
What is it that would encourage the Priests to offer sacrifices before the Lord that he said he would never delight in? How on earth could they ever consider service to Yahweh as a burden? Why would they not listen to Gods word or give honor to His name? It is because they did not fear Him.
What it Means to Delight in the Lord
The presence of a right fear of God and a genuine love for God is to delight in God. This is what the priests of Malachis day did not do, and it is the absence of such delight in the true God for why cultures, nations, kingdoms, and empires crumble. It is a system failure in that the One, we live and move and exist (Acts. 17:28), is not delighted in because He is ignored. In ignoring Him, we live in a society that is drinking from the broken cisterns of affluence, , and self-assigned identity, be it sexual or national.
Because our world is fallen, it is understandable that those who do not yet know God, do not delight in Him. But it is a great evil to know who God is and chose something or someone else to take His place. Of the people that should have known the joy of what it means to delight in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, it was the priests. The purpose of the priests was that they served to mediate between the people and God just as Aaron did as he walked alongside Moses. In contrast to Malachis contemporaries, God said of Levi: My covenant with him was one of life and peace, and I gave them to him. It was a covenant of fear, and he feared me. He stood in awe of my name (v. 5).
Who was Levi? Levi is the ancestor of Levites from whom all the priests came. You could not serve as a priest unless you belonged to the tribe of Levi. From Levi is a history of godly men who feared God more than they feared people and were known for speaking on behalf of God to the people. Concerning those who served God out of fear and love, God said, True instruction was in his mouth, and no wrong was found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and he turned many from iniquity (v. 6). The priests were known for guarding knowledge and the people at one point in time knew that they could seek the priests for guidance because it was clear that the priest was a messenger of God almighty (v. 7). Why? Because the legacy of Levi was that he delighted in the Lord! The relationship Levi had with Yahweh was one where he rightly feared and loved God while he stood in awe of His name. He stood in awe of the name of God!
What does it mean to stand in awe of the name of almighty God? It is a type of fear that includes reverence, pleasure, joy, and a filial fear. Filial fear is the kind of fear experienced by a son for his father as they enjoy a healthy relationship with one another without the son confusing who it is that is in authority. In many ways, I had that kind of relationship with my father; I understood that although we were very close and that I could trust him, I also understood that I could not talk back or disrespect him. The line between father and son was always clear.
God is all-powerful. God is all-knowing. God is all-present. God is just, He is wise, He is love, He is so much more, and He is holy. He is the One from whom heaven and earth recoil at His presence (Rev. 20:11), and before whom the prophet Isaiah heard the angels proclaim: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory! and in response to the majesty of the Almighty, Isaiah responded: Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts (Isa. 6:3-5). Isaiahs response is what it looks like to stand in awe of God. To stand in awe of God is to understand who you are in light of who He is:
Tremble before him, all the earth;
yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved.
Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice,
and let them say among the nations, The Lord reigns!
Let the sea roar, and all that fills it;
let the field exult, and everything in it!
Then shall the trees of the forest sing for joy
before the Lord, for he comes to judge the earth.
Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
for his steadfast love endures forever! (1 Chron. 16:30-34)
This is what the priests in Malachis day lacked, but of all the people in Jerusalem, the priests should have known better.What was true of Levis legacy was the antithesis of priests addressed here, for they were living in disobedience of the Lord. Instead of guiding the people of Israel, they were causing them to sin against the Lord. Instead of embracing the promises of God, they openly and defiantly violated the covenant of Levi. Instead of deciding cases with godly wisdom and impartiality, they showed favoritism and were unjust.
Gods response to the priests disregard for His name is staggering: If you will not listen, if you will not take it to heart to give honor to my name, says the Lord of hosts, then I will send the curse upon you and I will curse your blessings. Indeed, I have already cursed them, because you do not lay it to heart. Behold, I will rebuke your offspring, and spread dung on your faces, the dung of your offerings, and you shall be taken away with it (Malachi 2:23). The curse that God warned would come upon the priests are the curses God warned would come upon His people if they turned from Him in disobedience (see Deut. 28).
The dung of the sacrifice was to be burned outside the camp of Gods people. With the threat of God to spread dung on the faces of the priests, was to say that their behavior was so repulsive to God, that they would remain ceremonially unclean and indefinitely unqualified to serve as priests. To spread dung on their faces was to cover the priests in their own shame for all to see, so God concludes: But you have turned aside from the way. You have caused many to stumble by your instruction. You have corrupted the covenant of Levi, says the Lord of hosts, and so I make you despised and abased before all the people, inasmuch as you do not keep my ways but show partiality in your instruction (Malachi 2:89).
What God wanted was the hearts of His priests, he did not need their worship. This is why His response to their lackadaisical and half-hearted worship in Malachi 1:10, Oh that there were one among you who would shut the doors, that you might not kindle fire on my altar in vain! I have no pleasure in you, says the Lord of hosts, and I will not accept an offering from your hand (Malachi 1:10). What the priests lacked was the kind of awe we read about in Isaiah 66:1-2, Thus says the Lord: Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest? All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the Lord. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.
Conclusion
So, what does any of this have to do with you Christian? We have a better Priest than Levi! Levi mediated the Old Covenant, but Jesus is not just any PriestHe is the High Priest of a better covenant:
But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. (Heb. 9:1114)
If you have placed your faith and trust in Jesus Christ as the One whom God, made Him who knew no sin to be sin in our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Cor. 5:21; NASB), you are a Christian. If you are a Christian, then what is written in 1 Peter 2:9-10 is true of you: But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are Gods people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy (1 Peter 2:910).
Jesus is our High Priest, but He is so much more! He is the Almighty and the Alpha and Omega (Rev. 1:8; 22:12-13). He is the Author of Life (Acts 3:15). Jesus is the Bread from Heaven (John 6:32), the Bread of Life (John 6:35), and the Bright Morning Star (Rev. 22:16). He is the Chief Shepherd (1 Pet. 5:4), He is the Christ (Col. 3:15), and He is the Deliverer (Rom. 11:26). He is the Good Shepherd of the 23rd Psalm (John 10:11). He is the rightful Heir of All Things (Heb. 1:1-2). Jesus is the Holy and Righteous One (Acts 3:14), the Horn of Salvation (Luke 1:69), and the Great I Am (John 8:58-59). He is the Light of the World (John 8:12), the Gate for the Sheep (John 10:7), the Resurrection and the Life (John 11:25), the True Vine (John 15:1), the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6)!
Jesus is the Lion of the Tribe of Judah (Rev. 5:5), He is the Lord of Glory (1 Cor. 2:8), and He is the Pioneer and Perfecter of our Faith (Heb. 12:1-2). Jesus is the Word made flesh (John 1:1), He is the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53, He is the Savior (Luke 2:11), and He is the King of kings and Lord of lords (Rev. 19:16). If Jesus is who He says He is, and you say that He is the sum of all that He is to you, then how are you living in light of His Lordship over your life?
In this very moment, can you hear the Savior ask the following question directed at your heart? Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not what I tell you (Luke 6:46)? You, who are a priest before Jesus, are you listening to His words? Are you taking His life to heart? Do you stand before the Father and the Son with awe? Is your life motivated by a right fear and genuine love for the One who ransomed your soul and made you a son or a daughter? As His priests, we should be known as men and women whose lips, guard knowledge? Are you in a place in your relationship with Jesus that people are able to seek instruction from your mouth? Of those who know you, can it be said that you are a messenger of the Lord of hosts? In conclusion I leave you with two appeals from the Bible, the one is from Jesus and the other is about Jesus:
From Jesus: Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name? And then will I declare to them, I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. (Matthew 7:2123)
From the Psalmist: Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him. (Psalm 2:1112)
Amen.
Discussion Questions:
Read Malachi 2:1-9 and Deuteronomy 28 as a group. In what ways is Deuteronomy 28 similar to Malachi 2:1-9?
What does it mean to delight in the Lord?
Pastor Keith said in his sermon on Sunday: To fear God is to love and enjoy God for all that He is. It is a love that truly appreciates and honors God as infinitely perfect and overwhelmingly beautiful in his holiness, righteousness, graciousness, justice, mercy, love, and majesty. How is this kind of fear different than the kind fear one might experience when facing their abuser?
Based on what you know so far about the priests Malachi 2:1-9 addresses, do you think the above fear was missing in their worship?
God said of Levi, that he feared me. He stood in awe of my name (v. 5). What does it mean to stand in awe of Gods name (hint: Read 1 Chron. 16:30-34)?
In what ways can our worship reveal how highly or lowly we esteem Gods name?
According to 1 Peter 2:9-10, the Christian is a priest as representative of Jesus Christ; in what ways does Malachi 2:1-9 challenge you in light of what you read in 1 Peter 2:9-10?
How does Jesus as our High Priest (Heb. 9:11-14) encourage you as you strive to follow Him?
Pastor Keith listed the following names and titles of Jesus (read them to the group):
Jesus is our High Priest, but He is so much more! He is the Almighty and the Alpha and Omega (Rev. 1:8; 22:12-13). He is the Author of Life (Acts 3:15). Jesus is the Bread from Heaven (John 6:32), the Bread of Life (John 6:35), and the Bright Morning Star (Rev. 22:16). He is the Chief Shepherd (1 Pet. 5:4), He is the Christ (Col. 3:15), and He is the Deliverer (Rom. 11:26). He is the Good Shepherd of the 23rd Psalm (John 10:11). He is the rightful Heir of All Things (Heb. 1:1-2). Jesus is the Holy and Righteous One (Acts 3:14), the Horn of Salvation (Luke 1:69), and the Great I Am (John 8:58-59). He is the Light of the World (John 8:12), the Gate for the Sheep (John 10:7), the Resurrection and the Life (John 11:25), the True Vine (John 15:1), the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6)!
Jesus is the Lion of the Tribe of Judah (Rev. 5:5), He is the Lord of Glory (1 Cor. 2:8), and He is the Pioneer and Perfecter of our Faith (Heb. 12:1-2). Jesus is the Word made flesh (John 1:1), He is the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53, He is the Savior (Luke 2:11), and He is the King of kings and Lord of lords (Rev. 19:16).
In light of the above, read Luke 6:46-49. In what ways do you find Jesus words in Luke 6 challenging, frightening, or encouraging?
In what ways do you believe God is challenging you so far in this Malachi series?
Conclude with a time of prayer with your LIFE Group.
[1] Michael Reeves, Rejoice Tremble (Wheaton, IL: Crossway; 2021); p. 52.
[2] Ibid, p. 50.
[3] Ibid.

The Dangers of Careless Worship

Have you ever had someone offer an explanation for why they would not come to a church service with the following indictment: The Church is full of hypocrites.? I have always bristled at that statement not because I am a pastor and want the church that I serve to be full on Sunday, but because I know my own story and my own failures of the past and present. I am very aware that I will continue to fall short of a standard I believe I should meet when it comes to worshiping a God who is holy.
Now, before I go any further, there are three things you need to know about the Old Testament system of worship. Israels worship included all of the things that you would expect such as the teaching of Gods word, the singing of songs and psalms, and gathering together to celebrate feasts and festivals where God was the center of it all. Included in their worship was a sacrificial system unlike the kind of sacrificial systems other people groups had. Israels sacrificial system was not based on paying God back for his grace and mercy, but served three primary purposes:
1. There were the sin offerings. The shedding of blood through the sacrifice of an animal without defect for the atonement of ones sins, which ultimately pointed to the sacrifice Jesus would make in our place upon a cross (see Lev. 4; Heb. 9:22).
2. There was a Thank offering. There was also the type of sacrifice that acknowledged the goodness of God in ones life, which is known in the Old Testament as a Thank Offering. The Thank Offering could come in all forms, shapes, and sizes (see Lev. 7:11-34; Psalm 107:21-22).
3. There was a Tithe offering. The third type of sacrifice given in the Old Testament was the tithe offering which served as a way to acknowledge that all a person had was provided by God. Giving back a portion or tithe was and continues to be a way of acknowledging the goodness of God (see Lev. 27:30; Num. 18:2528; Deut. 14:2224; 2 Chron. 31:56).
To be a priest, one had to belong to the tribe of Levi by birth and their primary responsibility would be to mediate the worship between all of Israel and God. According to the Law, their survival would be through what was brought to the tabernacle (when Israel was transient) and the temple (after they had inherited the Canaan). What was left from the offering, the priests were permitted to eat (see Lev. 6:14-26). When it came to the lifestyle of those serving as priests, they were to meet a standard of moral character and holiness (see Lev. 21-22). There were even certain physical requirements of the Priest to ensure that he was able to fulfill his responsibilities which included defective eyesight (Lev. 21:18-20).
Of the priest, God commanded: They shall be holy to their God and not profane the name of their God. For they offer the Lords food offerings, the bread of their God; therefore they shall be holy. 8You shall sanctify him, for he offers the bread of your God. He shall be holy to you, for I, the Lord, who sanctify you, am holy (Lev. 22:6, 8). And, as for the sacrifices that were allowed:
Speak to Aaron and his sons and all the people of Israel and say to them, When any one of the house of Israel or of the sojourners in Israel presents a burnt offering as his offering, for any of their vows or freewill offerings that they offer to the Lord, if it is to be accepted for you it shall be a male without blemish, of the bulls or the sheep or the goats. You shall not offer anything that has a blemish, for it will not be acceptable for you. (Lev. 22:18-20)
God takes the worship of people seriously. When Aarons two sons, Nadab and Abihu, offered strange fire on the alter where the sacrifice was, they died (see Num. 6:23). When Uzzah touched the Ark when God commanded no one to touch it, because he assumed his hand was cleaner than the dirt, he died (see 1 Chron. 13:5-14). As you are aware, the nation of Israel was divided into two nations as a result of King Solomons sins and disregard for the holiness of God, which eventually led to the exile of the northern kingdom and then the southern kingdom due to the disregard of who Yahweh is and the type of people they were called to be: You shall be holy, for I am holy (Lev. 11:44; 1 Pet. 1:16).
If there were ever a scripture passage in the Bible that serves as a warning to how one ought to approach Almighty God, it is Malachi 1:6-14.
The One Worshiped
Malachi begins with Gods reminder to His people: I love you. God even calls the people by the name given to them out of a promise to bless them and by doing so, he would bless the nations through them. The Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians only understood the Hebrew people as exiles, but God knew them as Israel. Their response was to question His love for them, which was unfounded. The evidence of His love for Israel is seen from their birth, their growth, their faithlessness, through his discipline of them as a people, and his promise to keep His word to them. In verse five, God even assured them: Your own eyes shall see this, and you shall say, Great is the LORD beyond the border of Israel!
Before the worship of the former exiles is even addressed, God reminds the priests and people who it is that they say they worship: A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If then I am a father, where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is my fear? says the Lord of hosts to you, O priests, who despise my name. But you say, How have we despised your name? (Mal. 1:6). In this one verse, God reminds Israel of who He is: He is their Father, He is their Adonai (master), and He is Yahweh.
God is Yahweh of Hosts
To feel the weight of what is being said here, lets consider each name briefly beginning with Yahweh. It is not only the name Yahweh that we must consider, but also what is associated with His name. The God of Israel is Yahweh-Sebaoth, which literally means, Yahweh of Armies. It is a name used of God seven times in Malachi 1:6-14 and 25 times throughout the little book of Malachi, which means that it is really important that Israel understand who it is that they are so indifferent towards. Quite literally, He is the all-powerful God of whom and to whom no god or person can compare. Listen to the way Isaiah describes just how awesome our God really is!
This is what the Lord says, He who is your Redeemer, and the one who formed you from the womb: I, the Lord, am the maker of all things, Stretching out the heavens by Myself And spreading out the earth alone, Causing the omens of diviners to fail, Making fools of fortune-tellers; Causing wise men to turn back And making their knowledge ridiculous, Confirming the word of His servant And carrying out the purpose of His messengers. It is I who says of Jerusalem, She shall be inhabited! And of the cities of Judah, They shall be built. And I will raise her ruins again. (Isa. 44:2426, NASB 2020)
Who is like Yahweh-Sebaoth? The answer: NO ONE! He is the maker of all things! He stretched out the heavens all on His own! How established the galaxies? Who spoke into existence that which did not exist? When the earth was formless and desolate emptiness, who shaped the earth? Who separated the water from land? Who decked the night with billions of stars? Who separated light from darkness? Who blanketed the dirt with grass, flowers, and trees? Who created mankind in His image? To whom belongs all the credit for all these things? Here is the answer: The earth is the Lords, and all it contains, the world, and those who live in it (Psalm 24:1, NASB 2020).
Yet, the response of the Priests, who should have known better, felt that offering the best on the alter in worship of Yahweh was too costly and not worth the trouble: But you say, What a weariness this is, and you snort at it, says the Lord of hosts. You bring what has been taken by violence or is lame or sick, and this you bring as your offering! Shall I accept that from your hand? says the Lord (v. 13).
God is Adonai
Adonai simply means master or lord. It simply means that Yahweh is the Sovereign One. The prophet Isaiah says of our Sovereign God: Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts: I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god (Isa. 44:6). In Deuteronomy, Moses shows just how unlike God is to anything else: For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe (Deut. 10:17). Literally, Yahweh your Elohim is Elohim of elohims and Adonai of adonais.
What is the point? The point is that God does not exist for us, we exist because of Him and for Him! What sets the God who is Yahweh of Hosts and Adonai apart from any other god is that He needs nothing. In fact, when it came to the sacrificial system, from the most expensive of sacrifices to the least, it is God who said: I have no need of a bull from your stall or of goats from your pens, for every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills (Psalm 50:9-10). The point of worship is not that God needs His ego stroked or that he lacks something that only we can give, for if He is Adonai, then He already owns it all!
How is it that you got up this morning? Who is it that is sustaining your life this very moment? It is the One who is, the first and the last of whom there is no comparison! This is why Gods response to the lackadaisical worship of the priests in verse 8 is appropriate: When you offer blind animals in sacrifice, is that not evil? And when you offer those that are lame or sick, is that not evil? Present that to your governor; will he accept you or show you favor? says the Lord of hosts.
The reason why the priests of Malachis day offered the blind, lame, and sick on the alter before a Holy God is because they did not fear Him even though they were fully aware of what was written many generations before them in holy Scripture: And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord (Deut. 10:12-13).
Because neither the priests nor the people approached their worship with reverent fear, God said the thing we have heard others say, but he said it in His own way. When people say, The church is full of hypocrites, they demonstrate their own hypocrisy by not recognizing that they are no better. However, when God says it, He does so as one who is perfectly holy and justified to say what He said in verse 10, Oh that there were one among you who would shut the doors, that you might not kindle fire on my altar in vain! I have no pleasure in you, says the Lord of hosts, and I will not accept an offering from your hand.
God is a Father
I want you to think about something that I believe will help the weight of Malachi 1:6 settle upon your heart. It is in Yahwehs description as a Father that sets Him apart from any other god or gods that other people worship. Gods identity as a Father is infinity linked as an attribute that we like to run to for good reason. The attribute I refer to is love. There are two passages I want you to see, the first is from the New Testament and the second is from the Old Testament; both are stating the same thing about the love of God:
So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. (1 John 4:16).
Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations
God is love. God is also just, gracious, merciful, all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present, and holy. Here is what I want to show you: There is a reason why we believe from the Bible that Yahweh is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit who eternally exists as three distinct Persons as one God. This is why the God of the Bible and the one we worship at Meadowbrooke is not nor ever could be the same god that is worshiped in Islam, by Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, or any other group that denies that Yahweh is one God who eternally exists as three distinct Persons Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Although the word Trinity is not in the Bible, the concept and doctrine of it is everywhere in the Bible. Now I am going to give you an example that will serve to encourage you through Malachi 1:6-14.
If God is not Triune as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit before anything was ever created, how could he be a God of love without the ability to demonstrate His love? If God is not Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then in order for Him to be a God of love he would have needed to create all things include humans out of a need to love. For God to be God, He must be infinitely sufficient. For God to be Yahweh of Hosts and Adonai, he cannot be a God who has needs. Thankfully the God of the Bible is a God who does not have needs because as One God in three eternally and distinct Persons the God who is love was able to express His love within the fellowship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Here is what this means: Creation did not come into being because for God to be a God of love He needed creatures to love. God did not call Abraham out of Ur because He needed a people to love. Israel did not exist as a nation because He needed a nation to love, and Jesus was not born of a virgin because He needed a Son to love. The Father loved the Son for all eternity within the fellowship of a God who has always existed as three person Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Love was shared between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit before time ever existed! This is why Jesus prayed before He went to the cross for our sins:
Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them. (John 17:24-26)
What the priests failed to realize was that their worship was intended to be an expression of their love for a Father who did not need them in order to be a God of love, but redeemed Israel because He always has been and always will be a God who is love! God does not need to be buttered up by His creatures because He is Adonai! So, when we come to verse 9, and read these words: And now entreat the favor of God, that he may be gracious to us. With such a gift from your hand, will he show favor to any of you? The favor of God is not something to be bartered because He does not need anything from you!
Conclusion
Malachi 1:6-14 is a stinging indictment brought upon the lackadaisical worship of an indifferent people and their priests. The question we are left with this morning is whether or not the same could be said about us? Granted, the sacrificial system is no longer needed to be forgiven of our sins or to enter into the Lords presence because of a greater sacrifice that was made on our behalf. After all, we are recipients and benefactors of all that the Law, the Prophets, the Hebrew feasts, and the sacrificial system pointed tonamely Jesus Christ! Can the same be said of us that was said to Malachis contemporaries those of us who claim to look, to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (Heb. 12:2)?
If you are a true Christian, you have experienced the reality of what we read in John 3:16 that states: For God so love the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. Can it be said of you and I, that our worship is cold and halfhearted because we are indifferent to the One who loved us that He gave His Son to redeem us? We may not say with our lips in the way the priests said it in Malachi 1:13, but if we are honest, our posture and our actions has echoed the words of the priests: What a weariness this is.
I want to read for you something Matthew Harmon wrote that I really do not believe I can improve upon, so I will let him say it for me:
How can this be, though? How can God accept cold, halfhearted, easily distracted, and rebellious worshipers like me, whose first thought in times of trouble is to question the reality of Gods love and whose second thought is usually to defend our own inadequate worship as perfectly fine? He did this by sending a true worshiper in our place, a genuinely submissive Son who gave his all as an act of wholehearted worship and love for his glorious Father, a Suffering Servant who obediently offered up his life for us and for our salvation.
Supremely, of course, Jesus offered himself as the perfect sacrifice, laying down his life patiently, for the joy that was set before himthe joy of ultimately being surrounded by a multitude of brothers and sisters from all nations in the worship of the Father. On the cross, the Father turned his face away from the Son, as if the Son were one of the inadequate, halfhearted worshipers of Malachis dayas if the Son were us! For the first time in all eternity, the Father slammed the door of his presence in the face of his own beloved child, as if it were Jesus who had dishonored him and served him insincerely. Yet the Son still submissively committed his Spirit to his Father in death, trusting that the Father would bless and use that perfect gift to accomplish his perfect goals.
This is what enables us now to approach God joyfully, Sunday by Sunday, and gives us hope as weak worshipers. When we come to church, we dont ascend the mountain to a building in Jerusalem but rather come to the true heavenly Mount Zion, into the powerful presence of the living God, who is a consuming fire (Heb. 12:2224, 29). Yet we may come into his glorious presence unafraid, for what the Father sees when he looks at us is not the failures in our worship that flow from our angry and rebellious hearts, but the Sons perfect worship in our place that flowed from his submissive reverence. Christs perfect worship makes our weak and failing worship acceptable in the Fathers sight so that he welcomes us joyfully into his glorious presence.[1]
There is good news for us, because we have a Father who does not love out of need but because He is a God of love, a love demonstrated and proven through the Son. The reason why God states in verse 11 that His plan to redeem the nations will happen regardless of whether or not Malachis contemporaries worship Him appropriately is because: For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name will be great among the nations, and in every place incense will be offered to my name, and a pure offering. For my name will be great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts.
What is the appropriate response from those of us who have been redeemed by the sacrifice of the Son? As we look to the Cross of Christ, we can say: See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God (1 John 3:1).
Discussion Questions:
As a group, take turns reading through Malachi 1:6-14.
In Malachi 1:6, there are three names for God that are listed: Father, Adonai (master, Lord), and Yahweh (Gods most intimate and covenantal name). When it comes to our worship of God, how does knowing that He is Yahweh, Adonai, and your Heavenly Father affect the way you worship Him?
LORD of hosts from Hebrew is literally Yahweh of Armies, which is a name that assures us of the absolute and infinite power of God. Malachi repeats this name 25 times in four short chapters; why do you think this name for God is heavily repeated?
Have members of your LIFE Group read Leviticus 21:6-8; 22:22; Deuteronomy 15:19-21. How were the Priests and the rest of Israel to approach their worship of God? What kind of worship was Israel accused of in Malachi 1:6-14?
According to verse 8, it seems that Israel had more respect for their governor (most likely a Persian appointee) than they did of the LORD of hosts. What are some ways that we may demonstrate more respect for things, events, or persons more than the LORD of hosts?
Based on what you have learned so far from the sermon series in Malachi, how did God treat Israel as a Father of his children? What are some ways Israel failed to treat God as a father?
Read Matthew 22:15-22; have someone in your group volunteer to lend any coin to pass to each person in your group. If the image on the coin reflects our government and the image we bear reflects our Creator, what does it mean to render to God what belongs to God?
Have three members in your group read each of the following passages: 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, 2 Corinthians 5:16-21, and Romans 12:1-2. In your opinion, what should worship look like for the Christian?
In what ways can casual worship resemble Israels defective worship? How does such worship despise the name of God?
Ask members of your LIFE Group volunteer to read the following scripture passages: Malachi 1:11; Revelation 15:3-4; Isaiah 45:5-6, 22-23; Philippians 2:9-11. How do these passages from the Bible encourage you even in full awareness of your failures?
In light of Matthew 28:19-20, how will God accomplish Malachi 1:11? How do the passages listed in question #10, and the Matthew 28:19-20 passage empower your worship?
[1] Duguid, I. M., Harmon, M. P. (2018). Zephaniah, Haggai, Malachi (R. D. Phillips, P. G. Ryken, D. M. Doriani, Eds.; pp. 118119). PR Publishing.

The Unrestrained Goodness and Grace of God

Gods goodness and grace repeatedly overrules His fairness.[1] I read a version of that statement in a commentary on Malachi in preparation for this sermon. The story of Esau and Jacob reveals how true that statement really is. This is also one of the reasons Jacob and Esau are used as an example throughout Scripture in the way their story is used in Malachi to highlight Gods prerogative to love whom He wills.
When God told Abraham that he would bless him, He promised that through his descendants, a child would be born who would bless the nations. To Abraham and Sarah was born Isaac. After Isaac and Rebecca were married, they wanted children together, but for some time Rebekah could not get pregnant; out of desperation Isaac prayed that God would allow his wife to become pregnant, so this is how God answered: Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the older shall serve the younger (Genesis 25:2123). God blessed Isaac and Rebekah with Esau and Jacob.
God told Isaac and Rebecca specifically that the child whom God would choose in the same way that He chose Abraham and Isaac would not be the older son, but the younger. When Rachel gave birth to her two babies, we are told: The first came out red, all his body like a hairy cloak, so they called his name Esau. Afterward his brother came out with his hand holding Esaus heel, so his name was called Jacob (vv. 25-26). Jacob literally means heel grabber. Yet, regardless of what God said of Jacob, Isaac favored Esau more while Rebecca favored Jacob; in fact, we are told in Genesis 25:28, Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game, but Rebekah loved Jacob.
The sad thing about the way Isaac and Rebekah treated their sons is that Esau grew up to be a willful, proud, self-centered man who exercised little self-control, while Jacob grew up to be a self-centered deceiver and manipulator. We see Esaus lack of self-control and the manipulative skill of Jacob in the last paragraph of Genesis 25; one day Esau was hungry and exhausted so he asked Jacob for some of what he was cooking that day: Let me eat some of that red stew, for I am exhausted! (Therefore his name was called Edom.) Jacob said, Sell me your birthright now. Esau said, I am about to die; of what use is a birthright to me? Jacob said, Swear to me now. So he swore to him and sold his birthright to Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew, and he ate and drank and rose and went his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright (Gen. 25:2934).
Esau cared more about his stomach than he did his identity in Abraham; he was willing to trade in what was eternal for what was temporarya bowl of stew! Jacob was no better, for he manipulated his brother in a moment of weakness. Jacobs lying, deceiving, manipulating character reached its climax when he and his mother conspired together to deceive Isaac after he planned to give Esau the blessing of the firstborn, even though God said it would be Jacob who would receive it:
When Isaac was old and his eyes were dim so that he could not see, he called Esau his older son and said to him, My son; and he answered, Here I am. He said, Behold, I am old; I do not know the day of my death. Now then, take your weapons, your quiver and your bow, and go out to the field and hunt game for me, and prepare for me delicious food, such as I love, and bring it to me so that I may eat, that my soul may bless you before I die. (Genesis 27:14)
After Esau went out as instructed by his father, Rebekah pulled Jacob aside and plotted against both her son and husband by telling Isaac to do the following: Go to the flock and bring me two good young goats, so that I may prepare from them delicious food for your father, such as he loves. And you shall bring it to your father to eat, so that he may bless you before he dies. Because Esau was so hairy, Rebekah told Jacob to cover his arms and neck with the skins of the goats so that his nearly blind father would think it was Esau he was blessing (see Gen. 27:5-13).
So, Jacob did as his mother instructed, deceived his father into blessing him while Esau was hunting, and Esau hated his brother for it and even planned to murder Jacob after their father died (see Gen. 27:30-45). Anyone who reads Jacob and Esaus story will discover that Jacob was a deeply flawed man, and that Gods love of complacency had nothing to do with his moral character.
Why Did God Love Jacob?
What was it that inspired God to choose Jacob over Esau? Was there something about him that God liked more than Esau? Was it because Esau was a mans man and Jacob wasnt? Did God look down the corridors of time and see how he would grow tenderhearted towards God or that he would have a wrestling match with Jacob all night because the heel grabber wanted Gods blessing more than anything else? Did God choose Jacob over Esau because He thought Esau was too difficult, and that Jacob was easier to work with? The answer is no to all of these questions.
What we know of Jacobs life is that it would mirror the life of the Hebrew people throughout the ages. When we compare Jacobs life with what we know of Esaus, Jacob looks worse morally. Most of Jacobs life is characterized by a lack of trust and a compulsion to use deception to get what he wanted. Jacob deceived his father and lied to him to his face in order to rob his older brother of what culturally belonged to the firstborn. However, before he lied to his father, he conned Esau into selling him his birthright for a bowl of stew. The birthright was something Jacob wanted all along, although God had told his parents that he was to receive the blessing instead of Esau, he took matters into his own hands to get what was only Gods to give. Jacob would spend a lifetime living with the consequences of his own actions.
What were the consequences of Jacobs sins? Although he received the blessing from Isaac, he was driven from his home and forced to live in exile away from his family with his uncle Laban because his brother wanted to kill him. One of the reasons Jacob lived with his uncle is because his parents told him to seek a wife from one of his daughters.
When Laban learned that his nephew had come to see him, he ran to meet him and embraced him and kissed him and brought him to his house (Gen. 29:13). Jacob stayed with his uncle for a month and fell in love with Rachel, the younger daughter of Laban (v. 18). Why did Jacob love Rachel? We are told why in Genesis 29:16-18, Now Laban had two daughters. The name of the older was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. Leahs eyes were weak, but Rachel was beautiful in form and appearance.
I am not sure exactly what is meant by Leahs eyes being weak; some commentators think that she was cross-eyed, others think that they were sunken, baggy, or even bulging. I think that compared to Rachel; Leah was average while Rachel was gorgeous. Laban recognized the difference in his daughters by the names he had given to them; the Hebrew meaning for Leah can mean wild cow or gazelle while the Hebrew meaning for Rachel is ewe or lamb, which was more of a term of endearment? Leah was average at best, and Rachel was beautiful; Jacob wanted Rachel and would do anything to have her.
Jacob agreed to work for Laban for seven years in order to have Rachels hand in marriage, then when he finished his seven-year commitment to spend a lifetime with what he hoped would be the love of his life, Laban threw a wedding party, and gave Jacob his older daughter Leah when it was dark and her face was veiled. Listen to what happened: So Laban brought together all the people of the place and gave a feast. But when evening came, he took his daughter Leah and brought her to Jacob, and Jacob made love to her. When morning came, there was Leah! So Jacob said to Laban, What is this you have done to me? I served you for Rachel, didnt I? Why have you deceived me (Gen. 29:2225, NIV)?
What was Labans excuse for deceiving Jacob? This is what he said: It is not so done in our country, to give the younger before the firstborn. Complete the week of this one, and we will give you the other also in return for serving me another seven years (vv. 26-27). Laban manipulated Jacob to serve another seven years of free labor for Rachels hand in marriage. So did the three live happily ever after? Hardly! After only a week of being married to Leah, Rachel was given to Jacob and so we are told: Jacob made love to Rachel also, and his love for Rachel was greater than his love for Leah. And he worked for Laban another seven years (Gen. 29:30, NIV). The deceiving heel-grabber was deceived, and for the rest of his life Leah and Rachel would fight for Jacobs attention. Right after we are told that Jacob received Rachel and loved her more than Leah, we hear the broken heart of Leah in the verses that follow and the two words used in Malachi 1:2-3; listen carefully:
When the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren. And Leah conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Reuben, for she said, Because the Lord has looked upon my affliction; for now my husband will love me. She conceived again and bore a son, and said, Because the Lord has heard that I am hated, he has given me this son also. And she called his name Simeon. Again she conceived and bore a son, and said, Now this time my husband will be attached to me, because I have borne him three sons. Therefore his name was called Levi. And she conceived again and bore a son, and said, This time I will praise the Lord. Therefore she called his name Judah. (Genesis 29:3135)
Isnt it interesting that Leah used the same word for love and hate that Malachi used to remind a used-up, beat-up, ragtag Israel that he loved them! Leah would go on to have three more sons, but notice that although Leah was hated by her father, her husband, and even her younger sister, God loved her, God saw her, and God blessed her. He didnt just bless her with children, of the seven biological children she mothered, Levi would become the father of the priestly tribe in Israel and Judah would become the father of the tribe where the line of the kings would come through leading ultimately to Jesus!
But wait, there is more! Malachi specifically addresses the former exiles at the beginning of his book as Israel, but in Gods explanation for how he has loved Israel, Jacobs birth name is used: Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated. The question remains unanswered. Why did God love Jacob? The best answer we have is the one that is repeated of Gods redeemed throughout the pages of Holy Scripture; it may not be satisfactory to you, but it will have to do! Here is the answer he gave to Jacobs descendants the Twelve Tribes of Israel: It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt (Deut. 7:78).
The reason why Malachi uses Jacobs birth name, in my opinion, is because the exiles were aware of Jacobs jaded past as a very flawed man. Malachi identifies the exiles whom God preserved through both the Assyrian and Babylonian exiles, all with the second name that Yahweh gave to Jacob, which was Israel.
How Did God Love Jacob?
Between the day Jacob deceived his father into giving him the birthright and his reunion and reconciliation with Esau was about twenty years. For twenty years, Jacob lived in exile, in fear that Esau would one day kill him. Within those twenty years 14 years were spent as an indentured servantsome may even interpret his years under Laban as a type of slavery. Jacob was deceived into a covenant with Leah he never wanted to be in and robbed of the life he was promised with Rachel.
There are two very significant events in Jacobs life that will help you feel the weight of Malachis words: I have loved Jacob but Esau I have hated. The first event happened just after Jacob was sent into exile where God spoke to him through a dream in the midst of his failure, fear, and loneliness:
And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you. Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it. And he was afraid and said, How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. (Gen. 28:1217)
Just before Jacob entered into a difficult 20-year detour from the life he thought he would have as a result of his fathers blessing, God reminded him of something that he would hold close to his heart throughout the years, and that something was the faithfulness of God and the assurance of his promises.
There was no way Jacob could have known that he would be the victim of a master manipulator such as himself for a good part of his 20 years with his uncle. He planned for one wife, but was deceived into marrying the older daughter of Laban who would long for the kind of delight of her husband that her younger sister took for granted. Although Jacob did eventually get the woman he wanted, he would have to live with the dysfunction of his family until the day of his death.
Leading up to his second and most significant encounter with God, He spoke to Jacob and told him to, Return to the land of your fathers and to your kindred, and I will be with you (31:3), but to do that Jacob would need to break free from his bondage to Laban. The other problem in going back to the land promised to him, Jacob would need to encounter the brother he spent a lifetime hiding from out of fear. After Jacob is freed from the tyranny of his uncle and just before he encounters his brother, Jacob encounters a man while alone and fearful and entered into a wrestling match that lasted all night and into the morning hours (see Gen. 32:22-32).
Jacob would not let the man go unless the man blessed him. The man then asked Jacob: What is your name? (v. 27) The heel-grabber answered: I am Jacob. Here is what happened next:
Then the man said, Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed. Then Jacob asked him, Please tell me your name. But he said, Why is it that you ask my name? And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered. The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. (Gen. 32:2831)
Jacob wrestled with a man who was also God, and the two things he walked way with is a limp that would forever remind him of the other thing, and that other thing is that he received a new name. The name Jacob received was Israel, which literally means: He strives with God. Jacob received a new identity as a result of having a face-to-face encounter with God who appeared to him as man! As a changed man, Israel was able to meet his brother and was reconciled to him.
Conclusion
So, how did God love Jacob? God pursued Jacob, found him, disciplined him, and wounded him deeply for the purpose of using him greatly before he could enter what was promised to him. Sound familiar? Jacobs story reminds me of something we read in the book of Hebrews in the New Testament:
Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? (Heb. 12:37)
How did God love Israel? Throughout her history as a nation, her sins that were many and great, and in her exile God remained faithful to his promises to her, He was with her in the midst of her suffering, and He was sustaining Her through it all. However, Israel did not get away without a limp, but even the limp was evidence that He loved her. Just as Jacobs exile and suffering was not the end of his story, so Israels exile and suffering was not the end of her story.
Esaus descendants were Edomites. During Israels exile and suffering Edom allied themselves with Babylon for the destruction of Jerusalem, but this was not the end of Edoms story, for her destruction would eventually come. Edoms comfort and security was only for a season, just as Israels suffering and exile was only for a season. Because of the promises of Yahweh and His faithfulness to Israel a redeemer would eventually be born through the tribe of Judah, and redemption would be made available beyond the borders of Israel to all the nations! Just as God proved his love and faithfulness to a heel-grabber like Jacob, he will bless the nations through Israel: Your own eyes shall see this, and you shall say, Great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel!
The promised seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was born to a young teenage girl by the name of Mary, who was a descendant of Abraham. To Mary was given the following promise: behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end (Luke 1:3133).
Jesus was born, he then lived a life in perfect obedience to the Law of God, died for our sins on a cross, was buried, and then rose from the grave on the third day. Because of Jesus, the Christian can look beyond the sufferings of this world and claim with the apostle Paul: For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us (Rom. 8:18). How can we say that? Because of the truth of Romans 8:28-32,
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (Rom. 8:2832)
Listen, just as it was true of Jacob whose name was changed to Israel. You have been given a new identity that is wrapped up with the same Man who wrestled with Jacob and gave him a limp to remind him of who he was and to whom he belonged. Your name is wrapped up in that Man the God-Man who is the Lord Jesus Christ! Whatever form you limp comes in, you can claim with absolute confidence what every Christ-redeemed saint has been able to say before you:
Who shall bring any charge against Gods elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who diedmore than that, who was raisedwho is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword. No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom. 8:3339)
Amen.
Group Questions:
Ask your group members to take turns reading Genesis 28:1-10 and have them answer the following questions:
a. What significance do you think there is in the women Jacob and Esau married?
b. Why do you think Isaac told Jacob not to marry from the Canaanite women?
c. Ishmael was Abrahams firstborn son (see Genesis 25:13), but not the son of promise like Isaac; why do you think Esau decided to marry a daughter from Ishmaels descendants?
d. Do you find it ironic that Esau, in an effort to gain the approval of his parents, married a descendant of the firstborn son of Abraham that God passed over in favor of Isaac?
Jacob was sent into exile away from his home, family, and the land promised to him to live with Laban; during his time in exile God visited with Jacob through a dream. Read Genesis 28:10-22 and discuss the following:
a. What parallels do you see with Jacobs story and the story of Israel in Malachis day?
b. Based on what you know of Jacobs story in the Bible, did God keep his promise to Jacob even though he was once exiled from his home, family, and land due to his own sins against Esau, his father, and ultimately against God?
Read Genesis 33:1-11. What did Jacob attribute his prosperity to? What did Esau attribute his prosperity to?
How does the example of Gods love and faithfulness to His promises in Jacobs life assure Israel in Malachis day that their exile would not be the end of their story?
Read Romans 8:18-39 and discuss the following questions as a group:
a. How do you know that your sufferings are not the end of your story?
b. According to verses 28-30, how do you know that God is working all things (even the bad things) out for your good?
c. Paul states that God, did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all (v. 32). According to John 3:16, why did he do that for you?
What significance does Malachi 1:1-5 have for you as a Christian who is experiencing Gods love of complacency through Jesus Christ?
[1] Iain M. Doguid; Matthew P. Harmon. Reformed Expository Commentary: Zephaniah, Haggai, Malachi (Phillipsburg, NJ: PR Publishing; 2018), p. 104.

Persistent Love in the Face of Everyday Apathy

The word worship literally means: To attribute worth to something. The etymology of the word is literally: worth-ship. The book of Malachi is a book about worship and is appropriately placed at the end of the Old Testament and just before the New Testament. The prophet Malachi was one of the last prophets called to speak for God and serves as a fitting conclusion between 450-430 years before the birth of Jesus. His name literally means, My messenger. Whether or not the prophets birth name was Malachi or a word identifying his role as the last voice to speak on behalf of God before the 400 years that would separate the Old Testament period and the New Testament period, marked with the birth of Jesus the Christ, the prophet was the last voice to be heard before God would speak through the birth of His Son.
In our Bible you have 27 books in the New Testament grouped in the following way: The Gospels and Acts, the Epistles (Romans Jude), and the book of Revelation. In the Old Testament, there are 39 books organized by books of history (Genesis Esther) that cover creation to 400 B.C., books of poetry (Job Song of Solomon) that were written between 1400 300s B.C., and books of prophecy (Isaiah Malachi). The books of prophesy are categorized into two groups based on the size of those books known as the Major Prophets and the Minor Prophets; both sets are equally the inspired Word of God. The prophetic books were written somewhere between 850 400 B.C.
The Old Testament points to Jesus Christ while the New Testament reflects back upon Jesus Christ; however, all of the 66 books in your Bible are the Word of God. The great theme of the Bible is Jesus Christ as the promised redeemer who was born of a virgin, lived a life we could not live in perfect obedience to the Law of God, died a death we all deserved under the wrath of God the Father for our sin, and validated all that the Bible said of him and all that he claimed by rising from the grave. This is why the opening paragraph of Hebrews states:
Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. (Hebrews 1:14)
Isaiah, as the first book grouped in the prophetic books, appropriately begins:
Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the Lord has spoken: Children have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me. The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its masters crib, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand. Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly! They have forsaken the Lord, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged. (Isa. 1:2-4)
Malachi, as the last of the prophetic books in the Old Testament, concludes with the great hope of a coming redeemer: For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall (Malachi 4:12).
The Timing of Malachi
After God lead Israel out of Egypt through Moses leadership, He gave them a code of ethics known as the Law. At Mount Sinai, God entered into a covenant relationship with Israel. He spoke to Israel through Moses, and said to them, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (Exodus 19:46).
While Moses served the Hebrew people as a shepherd, God promised that he would bless Israel as a nation if they obeyed his commandments. However, He also promised they would experience his discipline in the form of curses if they turned from worshiping him (see Deut. 30:15-18). One of the curses Israel would experience as a form of parental discipline would be through exile. God warned that the discipline His people would experience would be the forceful removal from the land promised to their forefathers: The Lord will bring you and your king whom you set over you to a nation that neither you nor your fathers have known. And there you shall serve other gods of wood and stone. And you shall become a horror, a proverb, and a byword among all the peoples where the Lord will lead you away (Deuteronomy 28:3637).
After David died, his son Solomon became king of Israel. Solomon wrote most of the Proverbs, many scholars believe he also wrote Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes. Solomon built the Temple which became the center of worship in Jerusalem. However, Solomons life did not end well. In 1 Kings 11, we learn that Solomon, who had been known for his godly wisdom and the building of the Temple, loved many foreign women. We learn that he had 700 wives and 300 concubines he was the Hugh Hefner of his day. The thing is, that Solomon knew his Bible well, he knew what Exodus 34:16 said, You shall not enter into marriage with foreign women, neither shall they with you, for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods. The Bible says that Solomon clung to foreign women in love. So, what happened? Listen to what the Bible says about Solomons ending legacy: So Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the LORD and did not wholly follow the LORD. Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Molech the abomination of the Ammonites, on the mountain east of Jerusalem. And so he did for all his foreign wives, who made offerings and sacrificed to their gods. (1 Kings 11:6-8)
The worship of the gods (idols) Solomon set up involved orgies and child sacrifice. The arms of the image of Molech would be heated up, a child would be killed, and then placed in the red-hot arms of a demonic idol. Solomon set the stage for Israel as a kingdom to be divided into the Northern and Southern kingdoms (930 B.C.). The nation set apart to be a Kingdom of Priests never recovered from the idolatry that Solomon ushered into the nation he pledged to lead and protect. By the time we come to Malachi, Israel had been divided into two kingdoms, God used the Assyrian Kingdom to conquer the Northern Kingdom and carry into exile many from the North into other nations (724 B.C.); then years later, the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar besieged and overtook the Southern Kingdom and destroyed its capital, Jerusalem, leveled the treasured temple Solomon built and the Hebrews treasured, and then carried off many of the people in Babylon into exile.
There were four empires that reigned and ruled over the Hebrew people for generations: Babylon, Persia, Greece, and then Rome. During the Persian Empire, a small group of Hebrews were permitted to go back to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple (Ezra), the walls of Jerusalem (Nehemiah), and eventually the city. Malachi was a contemporary of Nehemiah who built the walls of Jerusalem, and when he arrived, the temple was already rebuilt through the leadership and oversight of Ezra, who also served as a scribe and priest to the Hebrew people (see Ezra 7:11-26).
Because the temple was fully functioning by the time Malachi arrived at Jerusalem, you would think that the people who lived in the city would have been excited about the ways God miraculously brought them back into the land promised to their forefathers. Although the priests and the people participated in worship together with the construction of the temple, many were guilty of adultery, divorce, deception, sorcery, and injustice (see Mal. 3:5-7); they showed up to church with their best-looking church clothes, but the priests and people were spiritually apathetic and bankrupt. You would think that all the years in exile under Babylon and Persia with Gods repeated word spoken through prophets like Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel that Israel would have learned and repented from their sins, but they did not.
The Need for Malachi
About a decade before the first verses in Malachi were spoken to the Hebrew people, with the completion of the temple and the walls of Jerusalem under the leadership and reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah, the people took an oath, here are the words they spoke: We will walk in Gods Law that was given by Moses the servant of God, and to observe and do all commandments of the Lord our Lord and his rules and his statutes (Neh. 10:29). Just three short chapters later in Nehemiah, the people violated their oath with God by doing just about everything they swore they would not do.
The priests swore that they would represent God and serve the people, but they served themselves instead. The people said they would tithe only the best to honor God, but they brought the cheapest and worst of their flocks to offer in worship. The men promised to marry women who loved and worshiped Yahweh by marrying Hebrew women instead of the women of the other nations, but they not only intermarried they also cheapened the covenant of marriage through divorce. And, as you listen to Malachi, there is a series of five statements that serve to gauge just how far the hearts of Israel were from Yahweh; we will look at each of these throughout our sermon series together, but for now, I only want you to see them:
I have loved you, says the Lord. But you say, How have you loved us? Is not Esau Jacobs brother? declares the Lord. Yet I have loved Jacob but Esau I have hated. I have laid waste his hill country and left his heritage to jackals of the desert. (1:23)
A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If then I am a father, where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is my fear? says the Lord of hosts to you, O priests, who despise my name. But you say, How have we despised your name? By offering polluted food upon my altar. But you say, How have we polluted you? By saying that the Lords table may be despised. (1:67)
You have wearied the Lord with your words. But you say, How have we wearied him? By saying, Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and he delights in them. Or by asking, Where is the God of justice? (2:17)
From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. But you say, How shall we return? Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say, How have we robbed you? In your tithes and contributions. (3:78)
Your words have been hard against me, says the Lord. But you say, How have we spoken against you? You have said, It is vain to serve God. What is the profit of our keeping his charge or of walking as in mourning before the Lord of hosts? (3:1314)
How Should We Receive Malachi?
There are two things I want you to see before we conclude this first sermon from Malachi. It is so easy to miss if you are not paying attention. The recipients of the oracle of the word of the Lord are identified as Israel; do not miss the significance of this! Israel was the new name God gave to Jacob whose twelve sons fathered the twelve tribes that made up the nation of Israel. By the time Malachi was sent to speak on behalf of God, the Northern Kingdom that was home to 10 of the tribes had been conquered, scattered, and assimilated by Assyria. Nearly 200 years later, the southern kingdom was conquered and deported to Babylon where the majority of the people belonged to the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. Those who were allowed back into Jerusalem under Ezra and Nehemiahs leadership were minimal, and most likely did not include a representation of the majority of the tribes, yet God calls the beat-up and used-up ragtag group of Hebrews by the name given to Jacob to symbolize the covenantal faithfulness of God in spite of the faithlessness of his people.
The Assyrians raped the Hebrew women and forced the Hebrew exiles to intermarry with other people groups in an effort to dilute their national identity so badly that they would no longer know who they were. The Babylonian empire sought to assimilate the tribes of Judah and Benjamin into the Babylonian culture and religion by changing their names, diet, and who they worshiped. Yet, what mattered was not what the Babylonians or the Assyrians decreed, because God spoke, and those to whom He spoke, He addressed as Israel! What you need to know is that God called the Hebrews who were formerly exiles, Israel because they were the heirs of all the promises he made to his people through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob promises God intended to keep.
The next thing I want you to see is what God stated at the beginning before any form of rebuke that follows. What was needed to be said before anything else: I have loved you. In spite of Israels unfaithfulness, the first thing God wanted His people to know and to be reminded of was that he still loved them. There is mercy in Gods words: I have loved you. In light of Israels checkered past, what they deserved was not love, but wrath, not the blessing of Gods promises, but the curse of His rejection. The oracle they deserved was: Woe to you, for you have strayed from me! Destruction to you, for you have rebelled against me (Hosea 7:13)! Instead, what they heard was, Oh Israel, I have loved you.
What was Israels response to Gods affirmation of love? Objection in the form of a question: How have you loved us? After telling my wife that I love her before I leave the house, it is reasonable to expect her to respond: I love you too. Even after a disagreement or an argument, we both have a history of responding to the other with the affirmation, I love you too. If at any moment, my wife responded to me with the words: How have you loved me? it would indicate that something was seriously wrong with our relationship. Yet, this is the response God received from his people; the people doubted and disputed Gods word to the point that their immediate response to his claim to love them was Show us the evidence! How have you loved us?[1]
What evidence does God give? What is the answer He gives to Israels question? Here it is: Yet I have loved Jacob but Esau I have hated. What does it mean for God to love Jacob and hate Esau? The kind of love and hate that is described in these verses is similar to the love and hate Jesus referred to In Luke 14:26, If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. The love God had for Jacob over Esau was one of preference.
Conclusion
There are three ways that God loves people in the Bible: There is Gods love of beneficence, Gods love of benevolence, and Gods love of complacency. The beneficent love of God is expressed in His pouring out his benefits upon people such as the sun, rain, and the life you enjoy. Gods benevolent love is His goodwill exercised to creation and all people; the word benevolent literally means good will. The opposite of benevolent is malevolent (evil will). Both Jacob and Esau experienced both the beneficent and benevolent love of God. Both men benefited from Gods gift of life and both men enjoyed a level of benevolence that resulted in prosperity. What Esau did not receive that Jacob did receive was the complacent love of God.
The original meaning of the word complacent literally meant: To take great pleasure in, or to be greatly pleased. To be complacent is to "pleased with oneself or self-satisfied. This is very different than our modern understanding of the word. To label a person complacent today, is to say that that person is indifferent or relaxed with a smug satisfaction in his present state. In the case of the complacent love of God, He takes great pleasure in the relationship he establishes with his redeemed people. Jacob experienced the complacent love of God in that God took great delight and pleasure in His relationship with Jacob (more on this next week). Gods answer to Israels objection was that the way that He loved Israel not only included a love that benefited them or a will for their lives that was the result of His infinite goodness, but also a love that was expressed through His great delight in Israel as His people regardless of their faithfulness towards Him. The problem with Israel, was that they as a people were indifferent, which is a danger the Church faces today.
One of the reasons why God took great delight in Jacob over Esau was because there was a promise made long ago to Adam and Eve, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that a redeemer would be come through their linage. That redeemer is Jesus, and it is through Him that we received a better Word than the one Malachi brought to indifferent Israel. That better Word is Jesus:
Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. (Hebrews 1:14)
I will say more about this next week, but if you are a Christian, not only have you received a better Word, but you also are the recipient of Gods complacent love in a much more tangible way, so if you are ever tempted to ask God: How have you love me? Gods answer is and always will be: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16). What is the appropriate response to being on the receiving end of Gods pleasure and delight as it is expressed through his love for you? The apostle John provides us with the answer: See what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called children of God; and in fact we are (1 John 3:1).
Study Questions:
According to Malachi 1:1, God speaks. It is through His speaking that He has revealed His will for our lives. Read Isaiah 66:1-2 and discuss why hearing Gods word is not enough.
In light of what we learn from Malachi what kind of worship do you believe Israel participated in? Do you think it was mundane or vibrant?
What are some ways that it is easy to go through the motions when it comes to worship.
How have you or someone you know been tempted to conclude that God does not love you or that someone you know?
Read Genesis 25:19-26 as a group. Who were Jacob and Esau and why is their story important to understanding the kind of love God had for Israel?
As a parent, how would you respond to a child who doubted your love or asked, How have you loved me?
Ask volunteers in your group to read the following scripture passages: Deuteronomy 7:7-8; Romans 9:6-13; John 15:12-17; Malachi 1:2-3. In light of these verses, what does it mean to be chosen by God? Why is Jacob and Esaus story important in affirming Gods love for us?
According to Hebrews 12:3-11, how do you explain the relationship between the love and discipline of God as a Father?
In what ways does Malachi 1:1-5 encourage you? How does the realization that God loves you affect your worship of Him?
A great description of Gods love of complacency is found in Zephaniah 3:17 (have someone read this verse). How does Gods delighting and rejoicing over you encourage you?
[1] Iain M. Duguid; Matthew P. Harmon. Reformed Expository Commentary: Zephaniah, Haggai, Malachi (Phillipsburg, PA: 2018), p. 100.