THE LORD PAID ATTENTION AND HEARD THEM, Malachi 3:13-18 We step back this week in the lectionary. Last week we were in Malachi 4 and today we read from Malachi 3. Today’s text is one of hope. We are told that the Lord paid attention to his people and heard them; what an encouraging confirmation of the love of God. When God’s people cry out to him he listens. I love the line in the Aaronic blessing that says, “May the Lord lift of his continence upon you and give you peace.” The image is of a person standing in the presence of the Lord and the Lord lifts up his head to recognize their presence before him. God recognizes his people. Our text jumps in, in the middle of a conversation between God and his people. The Lord is complaining about the grumbling of his people. “Your words have been hard against me,” he says to them. His people true to form deny everything, “How have we spoke against you?” Isn’t that how it works? It’s never our fault. We complain about God all the time because of the situations we find ourselves in and it’s always, “What? Who’s complaining?” It is never our fault. We are fast to blame God for whatever mess we are in. What is the nature of their complaint? Serving the Lord doesn’t work. “It is vain to serve God. What is the profit of our keeping his charge or walking as in mourning before the Lord of hosts?” Serving God doesn’t work. What a warped understanding of what it means to serve God.If you believe that coming to Jesus means that you get anything and everything you want, if coming to Jesus all your problems will be solved what happens to you when life happens? If Jesus is an insurance policy against all of life’s struggles what do you do when the inevitable struggles come? If you believe that God wants you happy what happens when you lose your job? What happens when your family relationships break down? What do you do when a disaster strikes? What happens when you don’t get the promotion you deserve? What happens when life happens? Malachi writes at the end of the Old Testament? Things had not worked out so well for Israel. Way back when they left Egypt they were to enter the Promised Land and life was to be good all the time. They were to inherit a land flowing with milk and honey. They disobeyed the Lord early on and things started to unravel. They finally ask for a king to rule them so that they could be like everyone around them and that didn’t work out your so well either. Over and over again they turned their backs on the Lord and then wondered why things didn’t work out for them. Earlier in the chapter God rebukes them for robbing from him for not paying their tithes. They neglected to give for the work of the temple and were wondering why God was not listening to their prayers. We forget that we are called to serve God by laying down our lives for him. He who loses his life will gain it but he who keeps his life shall lose it. We are called to pick up our cross, the instrument of our death, and follow Jesus. This is not what we want to hear or what we really think we are called to. How does one reconcile give your life for Jesus with the idea that God exists for our happiness? Serving God doesn’t work. Not if your standard is this world. We are coming up a holiday that is a time we set apart to give thanks to God for all that we have. It is a time to gather with family and friends to be thankful for all that we have. It is or should be a response to our prayer, “give us this day our daily bread.” God continues to answer that prayer and Thanksgiving Day should be our corporate response to answered prayer. Yet Christians will be on line Thanksgiving night to worship the god of consumption at the temple know as the shopping mall. We have no time to say thanks because there is still so much we don’t have yet. God doesn’t work and so we turn to a different god. If the God of the Bible doesn’t make us happy we will turn to the god of consumerism and he will make us happy, right? “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. Let’s look at this for a minute. Notice the objection to serving the Lord. What is the profit in it? I serve the Lord and I don’t get what I want. I am not happy. The arrogant seem to be doing well. They are the blessed ones. Look around you. Who’s making all the money? Who is living in the big apartments? Who has all the perks? The Evildoers not only test the Lord but they escape any punishment. Why serve God when it doesn’t work. What we need is a change our paradigm. God isn’t there to work for us. It is not about you but about God. You exist to bring glory to him. What we receive from God is salvation. God so loves us that he took on flesh, lived among us, died for our sins and gave us eternal life. The struggles of this life are momentary light afflictions compared to what God has in store for us. What doesn’t work is the god of this world. The things you wait on line for will bring momentary pleasure but in a short time will have little or no value. The joy they promise is short lived. There reward is immediate but short lived. So what are we to do, how are we to respond? “Then those who feared the Lord spoke with one another.” The response to this world on a very basic level is a conversation among the faithful. The reason we have started mission groups is so that we can talk to one another about what it means to serve the Lord in this time and place. The gathered community, the church needs to be a place of encouragement. It is among the people of God where my values are challenged and my faith is molded. It is in the church that God is conforming me to the image of Jesus his Son. When the people of God spoke among themselves and encouraged one another in the faith the Lord paid attention. The Lord listened in on the conversation and reminded them of their future glory. There is a book of remembrance. Those who fear the Lord are in that book. If your name is in that book God will remember you, you belong to him. On the Day of Judgment when God will make up his treasured possession these people, us, will be remembered. Remember the sheep? They were invited into the kingdom because they served the least of these; the sick, imprisoned, the naked and the hungry. It had nothing to do with their happiness. They were content to serve the needy. God promises that his people, those who fear him will be spared. We need a long-term vision. We see the wicked prosper and the people of God struggle and we question, where is God. When in fact we need to understand that God puts up with injustice in order to give the wicked time to repent. But a time is coming when the righteous will be remembered. We have had a free ride for a long time in this country. As one author put it, our religion shape this country and this country shaped our religion. We got to incompatible ideas confused and in the end our faith suffered. Instead of standing on the outside with a prophetic voice we let the culture co-opt our faith. We confused good citizenship with good Christianity. Freedom to serve Christ became freedom to do whatever we want. We forgot what the early church understood clearly. When Paul spoke of obeying the government he understood that Rome killed his God on Calvary’s tree. We forget the Washington DC, this country that we live in, killed our God on Calvary’s tree. The kingdom of this world is at war with the kingdom of our God. We need to be good citizens but we wait for the city whose builder and maker is God. At some time in the future the distinction between the righteous and the wicked will be clearly seen. The first in this life, the one’s who seem to benefit from the system, will be last and the last those of us who struggle with our faith in this ungodly place will be first. Serving God doesn’t work if what we mean by working is that we will be happy and fulfilled but the promises of this world. Only God works if what we long for is to be in his presence.
Posted on: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 16:11:34 +0000
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