Home > Sermon Notes > Malachi 4
|
Home > Sermon Notes > Malachi 4 |
![[Photo of Cinderella's glass slipper]](../images/glass_slipper.jpg)
I got an email the other day entitled Signs that you live in
the year 2001. Amongst the 'signs' were:
Although tonight's talk is down as Malachi 4, I'm actually going to focus on the end of Malachi 3 and skim over 4. I know I should stick to the programme, but God doesn't always work that way. Maybe we're not ready for the end of the world yet? Maybe after Christmas?
As I'm sure you'll recall from our previous excursions into Malachi, God had a bee in his bonnet about the Israelites attitude to him. Their hearts were hard. God wanted love, not penny-pinching grumblers.
Mal 3:13-14
"You have said harsh things against me," says the LORD. "Yet you ask, 'What have we said against you?'
"You have said, 'It is futile to serve God. What did we gain by carrying out his requirements and going about like mourners before the LORD Almighty?
Oh boy! The word translated here as 'harsh' is chazaq {pron. khaw-zak'}. In other translations it's rendered 'stout' or 'strong'. It's usually used in a positive sense, of something being strengthened or fortified over time. But here God is talking about the attitude of a people towards to him. The Israelites' hearts have become strong, toughened, calloused towards God. They say "It is futile to serve God. What did we gain by carrying out his requirements?"
I'm sorry? What did we gain? Stick, end of, wrong? These people are like the prodigal son. On a farm there are two kinds of workers: family members and hired labour.
The son does not get paid for working on the farm, though he may well start earlier and finish later than the hired hand. He gets his food, clothing and a roof over his head, but not much else.
The hired hand gets paid a daily wage for the work he does. If he is not paid at the end of today, he will not come back tomorrow. He receives his reward now. The son's reward is his inheritance, which he may not receive for many years (especially if he lives in the Bible where life-spans were so much longer!)
God calls us sons. We have an inheritance waiting for us in heaven, though it will be a lifetime before we see it. Like the prodigal son, the Israelites envied the hired hand, the nations around them. They got their 'just desserts' there and then. They complain that they gained nothing by working for their father and had to go about like mourners compared to the people around them who could have all the fun they liked.
Is it any different today? We are still God's children, living in a world that can satisfy our every need if only we'll pay the price. But this coin depreciates rapidly. Last year's state of the art is this year's bargain buy. Whatever you buy, it's never enough. I got one of these little diary things. I justified the cost because it would make me work more efficiently. Sure enough it has - I haven't missed an appointment since I bought it, which as some of you will know borders on miraculous. But now I find I could do with more memory for storing more documents, and yesterday I saw this cool 'half-keyboard' thing you can get for it, and there's even a version that you wear on your arm with velcro to hold it in place and you can get a phone attachment and a camera attachment and a... and a... and a...
This life, in the raw, is hard - the earth is under a curse (Mal 2). Our sovereign God will bestow blessings, but we must not try to create our own - the wages of sin is death, remember? No-one would buy a bag of death would they? Well, if the packaging were good and it had a catchy jingle, you never know.
The farmer's son has food on the table & a bed to sleep in and the knowledge of his inheritance. He has all he needs. But to turn into a prodigal son he doesn't even have to leave home, just to let go of the principle of sonship & begin to desire the wages of the hired hand to buy the world's goods.
These days we can get our worldly experience delivered to our door via the internet - we don't even need to set foot outside the house. Half-keyboards, memory cards, mobile phones. Can you manage without yours? Our lives are full of things we never knew we didn't have. Marketing & advertising departments spend millions to create a desire for things for which there is no need.
As the son who stayed at home knew, this world is not meant to be fun, or easy, or prosperous. God may make it some of those things but we should not expect them. If you stay focussed on God then you'll find true happiness.
If you don't, you start talking like the people in verse 15:
Mal 3:15
But now we call the arrogant blessed. Certainly the evildoers prosper, and even those who challenge God escape.'"
Hello? Nothing changes eh? Two thousand four hundred years after the Israelites were grumbling these things, we're grumbling them right back. You've heard people say, "I could never become a Christian: I'd have to give up too much." Well that's okay, the rich young man who Jesus advised to give all he had to the poor if he wanted to enter the kingdom of heaven said the same thing.
But what if the Christians start saying that the people with all the stuff are the lucky ones. They've got Daisy the prize cow and all we've got is this lousy bag of beans. They've got a cave full of treasure and we've got this lousy lamp. Can it be that God thinks we're better off sweeping cinders for the rest of our lives than riding in a golden carriage and marrying the prince? Surely that can't be right?
Oh yes it is!
Oh no it isn't.
Oh yes it is!
Actually, it is right. All those people are getting their reward in the here and now, in the coin of this realm. God has something better for us, but the question of course is, "Do we believe it?"
Do we look forward more to our treasure in heaven than our monthly pay cheque? Are we prepared to clean cinders in this world knowing we'll live be living in the king's palace in the next?
This has been very real for us as a family over the last few weeks. I wouldn't normally do four sermons in a row, but I felt God wanted me to do these so I have. But there has been a cost. It's meant Catherine and I getting up before the kids during the week to study together. We work as a team: she has all the insights and I just write them down and give the talk. It's meant Catherine having to look after the kids on her own over the weekend, which she does all week, so she's not getting a break. I've not had the same time with the kids that I normally would, and the few evenings we've been in together have been spent studying Malachi. Which we never mind when we do one sermon a month, but four in a row has been a bit of a killer.
But at the same time, God always makes sure that the sermons we do are firstly for us, and secondly for you lot. This series on Malachi has been about our attitude to God, our lives being living sacrifices, our focus being on treasures in heaven not on grafting in the here and now. And the hard answer is the one that Job gave when God allowed Satan to take away everything he had: "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away."
We are in his hands. If life's hard, it's hard. If it's easy, it's easy. Either way it doesn't matter, because this life is temporary. God has a place prepared for us in a golden city that will last for eternity. The things of this world are as dust.
Mal 3:16-18
Then those who feared the LORD talked with each other, and the LORD listened and heard. A scroll of remembrance was written in his presence concerning those who feared the LORD and honored his name.
"They will be mine," says the LORD Almighty, "in the day when I make up my treasured possession. I will spare them, just as in compassion a man spares his son who serves him. And you will again see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not.
Verse 16 is like so many other passages in the bible. Whenever a people harden their hearts to God, there will always be a remnant. A small group who fear the Lord and seek his face. They will be spared. They were Abraham and his family, Noah and his family, Joshua and his family, Nehemiah and several families. And us. The church family in Burley. Look around you - we are the remnant. In the UK there are more Muslims in the Mosque on Saturday than Christians in the Church on Sunday. We are the remnant.
But it won't be like this forever. God may move slowly by our standards, but he is going to act. As we were preparing this study, we got an uneasy feeling about the use of the word 'soon' in Scripture. "Surely the day is coming". Well this was a long time ago and it hasn't happened yet. Jesus kept saying that the kingdom of God was at hand, but 2000 years later we're still waiting on "The great and glorious day of the Lord." But 'soon' is a very relative term. Depending on your current age, you have a maximum of seventy years left on this earth. Is that soon enough? Whatever happens between the end of your life and the end of this earth will be of absolutely no consequence to you. Soon is soon enough.
And what will happen on that day? Verses 1 to 3 say:
Mal 4:1-3
"Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and that day that is coming will set them on fire," says the LORD Almighty. "Not a root or a branch will be left to them.
But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. And you will go out and leap like calves released from the stall. Then you will trample down the wicked; they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when I do these things," says the LORD Almighty.
This picture of heaven is not here to shock or frighten us into loving God. It is a promise to a people who have walked the hard road, through thick and thin, rich and poor, and entered by the narrow gate. It is the embodiment of 'faith' - a glimpse of our inheritance whilst we work the farm. Don't worry about the wicked. They've had their reward.
The message is clear: Love the things of this world and you can have everything it has to offer. Love God for the next seventy years and spend eternity in the King's palace. A bag of death that'll turn to dust at midnight or the keys to eternal life? You choose.
Rev 21:15-19a
The angel who talked with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city, its gates and its walls. The city was laid out like a square, as long as it was wide. He measured the city with the rod and found it to be 1400 miles in length, and as wide and high as it is long. He measured its wall and it was 200 feet thick, by man's measurement, which the angel was using. The wall was made of jasper, and the city of pure gold, as pure as glass. The foundations of the city walls were decorated with every kind of precious stone.
And we will call it 'home'.