Between the close of the Old Testament and the opening words of the Gospels there are about 400 years. We often call this space between “the 400 silent years” but God is anything but silent. Long before these so-called “silent years” God announced His appointments to his prophets. If you have ever wondered about that space between Malachi and Matthew, Sunday we are going to open God’s “appointment book” and see what Paul meant in Galatians, “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman to redeem…”
If you read the Gospel of Mark, the first words in red are “The time promised by God has come at last!” We have a Father who keeps his promises. Sunday we will listen to his prophets. We will feast on his promises.
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Buddy Hoffman
Series: One Story: Digging Deeper
March 10, 2013
Expectation: How Do We Get Home from Here?
Malachi
If you’re here this morning and you don’t have a Bible with you, slip up your hand. We want to put a Bible in your hand, and we’re going to go through an entire book of the Bible, which is the book of Malachi. You also want to take a look at that handout sheet, because on the back of that handout sheet, there is a graph.
I seriously considered preaching through this graph this morning, but considering it’s Daylight Saving Time and all of those things… There’s a passage in the Bible in Hebrews where it says, “I have some other things I would like to tell you, but I don’t think you’re really ready to dig into them right now.” I’m afraid I would have a whole lot of nodding heads if I tried to take you through this graph, but if you want to, and you feel so inclined, this is a great road map to figure out what happens in between the Testaments.
Let me just take you down through it just for a moment. Up on the top there is that 400 years of what is most often called the 400 silent years. It’s that period of time from the close of Malachi to the opening of the book of Matthew. I’m not going to get into the technicalities of it. Matthew probably wasn’t the first gospel written. Some people would say it’s Mark.
Some people would say the first book of the New Testament that was written was probably 1 Thessalonians or Galatians, but in terms of the material they cover, it’s the Gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all cover the same time span. So 400 years to the opening words of the Gospels.
It’s interesting when you read the book of Mark, if you have a red-letter edition, the very first phrase in red, which are the words spoken by Jesus, is, “The time is fulfilled.” There is this expectation that something is going to happen. Not just something that’s going to happen, but literally, the kingdom is going to happen.
The King is going to come, and there is this amazing amount of preparation that takes place. In Galatians, this is the way Paul phrases it. “In the fullness of time.” That word actually is the same word that would be used to describe someone who was pregnant. Just at the right moment, when everything was in its proper place.
Now this graph shows you how that whole process takes place. It is amazing what happens here. Up under the next big, kind of dark line there, you see the word Maccabees. If you didn’t grow up Catholic, you probably don’t even know who that is. It’s really actually an important part of what God prepared. Particularly that 1 Maccabees gives you some really important information of what happens in there.
That timeline there, if you’re noticing (and I’m sure you already know this, but sometimes you might forget), it runs backwards. So you have 450, 400, 350, 300, 250. Back up here, in the 400s, 457, that’s Ezra. That’s Nehemiah. This is also about 400 when Malachi is written. You see all these kingdoms that happen underneath here. You see Babylon, Persia, Greece, and then Rome.
You might even notice there are the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. Now I know many of you right now are saying, “Oh, I thank you so much for not preaching on this.” But it’s fairly important. If you look across the bottom, you see Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Aristotle actually was the mentor, was the tutor, for Alexander the Great. When you look across that bottom line, what you see is the statue Nebuchadnezzar dreams in Daniel 2.
Daniel is one of the most debated books of the Bible. Part of the debate is that there is no way that Daniel could’ve described in detail these kingdoms. “How is that possible?” If you’re coming from a non-supernatural perspective, you have to come to the conclusion Daniel had to be written post these empires.
Now if you’re coming from a position that actually none of this surprised God, then it’s fairly easy to know how he did it. It just makes it marvelous. But if you’re coming at it from a perspective of, “There’s no way that predictive prophecy can happen with such detail,” and it is amazing the detail… There’s no debate that the detail is described so powerfully. That’s one of the reasons it makes people’s minds boggle.
You look at Acts 1. Jesus meets with the disciples for 40 days. Do you remember what he talks about with the disciples, that post-resurrection conversation? What was he talking about? He talked to them about the kingdom of God. That’s what he talked to them about. He talked to them about the kingdom of God. When Jesus opens his ministry, he talks about the kingdom of God. Three years Jesus trains his disciples about the kingdom of God. Post-resurrection, 40 days, refresher course on the kingdom of God.
I remember the first time I read that and recognized that. I realized if you ask me… I remember reading that in Acts, going, “Man, if you were to ask me to talk 40 minutes on the kingdom of God, I don’t think I could.” Then I started realizing this whole thing is the overarching theme of the Bible. The mega metanarrative is about the kingdom of God.
Here you find in Acts 1, Jesus talking about the kingdom of God, and then in verse 8, he says this. Now we always read this completely as a commission. This is what we’re supposed to do, but you need to remember that when it was spoken, it was not just a commission; it was a prediction. “You will be witnesses.”
Now up until this time, they haven’t done that real well. They just walked around watching. “You’re going to be witnesses unto me. The power of the Holy Spirit is going to come upon you, and you’re going to be witnesses to me in Jerusalem.” Things had not gone that well in Jerusalem. I don’t know if you remember this. We have Easter coming up pretty soon. Things went pretty sideways in Jerusalem.
I remember talking to a missionary in Beirut, and they had gone into a certain neighborhood, and literally, they were stoned. They threw rocks at them and ran them out of the neighborhood. This was when he was young in ministry. He went back to his mentor, and he says, “That didn’t go really well. They threw rocks at us. Where should we go now?” He says, “You need to go back.” He goes, “You want us to go back? They threw rocks at us.” He says, “Of course, you have to go back now, because now they’ll know you’re serious.”
So, “You’re going to be witnesses to me where I was crucified in Jerusalem, Judea, the uttermost parts of the earth.” If you come back tonight and listen to Jon, you’re going to see pictures of the uttermost parts of the earth. Do you realize when Jesus gave this command, it’s predictive? Nobody could believe that would be possible. They didn’t even have Twitter. They didn’t have the World Wide Web. They didn’t have email. They didn’t have cars.
“You’re going to be witnesses to me.” They didn’t even know the Mayans existed. This is a very closed-in world. We look back on this, and we go, “Whoa.” Predictive prophecy isn’t really a problem, but here’s what we want to look at this morning. Flip that sheet back over, and you’re going to have an outline of Malachi.
During this period of time, they go home, they rebuild the temple, they reinstitute the feasts, they reinstitute the sacrifices, but during this waiting period for the Messiah, a lot of bad things happen. Kingdoms come. Kingdoms go. At one point, one of the kings comes in and actually takes over the temple and sacrifices a pig on its altar. It’s terrible times.
Malachi is really about…How do we not become bitter? How do we not become jaded when our expectations are not met, when we are expecting God to do something, and he doesn’t perform on our timetable, when we think we hear God and we think God is doing something, and it just feels like we’re standing on the corner where God told us he would meet us, and we just show up day after day after day, but it doesn’t seem that God shows up at all?
We’re going to look at two big things: What’s the problem? What do they do that presents the problem? And what do you do when you get into that state to get out of that problem, when you get into that situation that you really become disengaged and numb to what God is doing, and wondering about things and wondering about the love of God? Does God really love me? Does God care? Does the work I do for God matter?
How do you escape that “stuckness” you get into? If you’ve walked with the Lord for any length of time, you’ve been stuck. Can you say amen to that? Where you just felt like you didn’t feel anything. Like, “God, I’m doing my job here. I don’t think you’re holding up your end of the table. What’s going on here?”
Malachi literally just means messenger. It may not even really be his name. It may just be the fact he is the messenger. Let me just say one more reference here. In Nehemiah 9, the Levites have this prayer, and they describe their state this way. “So now today we are slaves in the land of plenty that you gave our ancestors for their enjoyment! We are slaves here in this good land. The lush produce of this land piles up in the hands of the kings whom you have set over us because of our sins. They have power over us and our livestock. We serve them at their pleasure, and we are in great misery.” (Nehemiah 9:36-37)
That’s the emotional state they’re in. They’ve gone back. The exile is over. They build the temple. They do what they think they’re supposed to do, but the temple is minus the ark of the covenant, and it’s minus the shekinah glory. What they have are the festivals. What they have are the rituals. What they have is the building. What they have are the walls. What they have are the songs again. But what they don’t have is the presence of God. All the stuff, absent a genuine encounter with God, only leads to frustration.
Let me just say this really clear. Religion is never the answer…never, ever, ever. Most of the time, religion is the problem. Really. If you grew up in a real tight kind of legalistic environment and the joy of serving God has just been squeezed out of you, let me just tell you, there is a pleasure God feels in you, and it starts right here, as a matter of fact. Verse 1. Let’s look at it.
“This is the burden that the LORD gave to Israel through the prophet Malachi.” (Malachi 1:1) Look at this phrase. It is so important. If you don’t get anything else this morning, but you get this… How many of you’ve heard a sermon on Malachi before? Okay. How many of you heard a sermon on Malachi and it was only out of chapter 3? Yes. Yeah. We drag that out in our building programs and our budget crises. “You have robbed God!” “Wherein have we robbed God?”
Now I don’t mean to make fun of that. That’s a serious thing, but listen carefully to what I’m saying. There’s more in Malachi than Malachi 3. I mean, there’s actually a whole book here, and this is the theme of the book. Here’s what God wants you and me to know. Here are the words. “I have always loved you…” (Malachi 1:2) Yeah, we should clap for that.
Do you remember when the person you love said, “I love you” to you for the first time? I do. It took me like five days to get Jody to say it to me back. She has a different story on this, but mine’s correct. I’d never told anybody who I dated or felt strongly about that I loved them. I’d made up my mind that I was never going to tell a girl I loved her until it was the girl I was going to marry. I wasn’t going to do it.
Now my problem was that Jody was a very, very close friend before I ever had any kind of romantic inclinations toward her. So she knew everything there was to know about me. When you’re not dating a girl, and they’re just like a friend, you’ll tell them anything. Then you think back, “Oh no, I probably shouldn’t have told her that.” She knew everything about me. That was something I kept in reserve. I wasn’t going to tell a girl I was in love with her unless I was going to marry her.
So when I told Jody, “I’m in love with you,” she knew that meant, “I want to marry you.” When I said, “I’m in love with you,” it was in the fall. We were out by a lake near Chicago. She looked at me and she said, “I’ll have to think about that.” Do you know that funny part about it is? It didn’t discourage me at all, because the object is to marry over your head. I didn’t blame her, because I wouldn’t have married me. It wasn’t like, “Yeah, you should do this.”
But anyway, here’s what God says. “I’ve always loved you.” This is something we need to understand. God absolutely always has loved us. This is an interesting word choice the messenger uses here, because over and over in the Bible, you find that the word that is used is checed, and it’s referring to God’s covenant love for us. This is that kind of love that God has that is best probably translated in the New Testament agape love. It’s God’s love. This is this the unquestioning, never-failing, absolute choice love God has for us.
But the word that is used here actually isn’t that checed. It’s the word that is used…I would use the word like, but it’s more than that…is more like, “I adore you.” Do you understand the difference? We know God loves us because he’s God and he has to. Right? This is his character. No matter where you go, you’ll never not be loved by God. I mean, God so loved the world.
God loves the world. God loves people. I love that phrase in one of Rich Mullins’ songs, and it has captivated my heart over and over every time I hear the phrase. “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy I cannot find in my own.” It’s a wonderful thing that God is love, but what he is saying here is, “Do you know what else? I adore you. I like you. I like you.”
Now again, if you’ve been raised in religious legalistic environments, you probably do know that God loves you, but you may not feel God’s pleasure. You should. This is the big story of Malachi. He’s going to say some really tough things here. He’s going to point out some really tough things, but here’s what he says first and foremost. More than anything else, you need to understand this. “I adore you. You’re the light of my life.”
You may have been raised in an environment that has made you doubt the pleasure God finds in you. Here’s what you need to do. You need to reject that religion and receive this relationship that God delights in you. How many of you have kids? Okay, you know. How many of you have grandkids? You really know.
What do they have to do to make us like them? We had grandkids at the house all week. You just look at them, and your heart melts. Why? Because they built the house? Because they cleaned the room? Because they pay the mortgage? No. They do exactly opposite all those things. They cost you money. You have to clean diapers. You have to buy diapers. But when you change those diapers, you don’t go, “Oh, this is such a terrible job!” You go, “Oh look, you did such a nice little poop. Good for you. Honey, look at this nice little poop.”
Now we can see that, and we experience that delight as a father and a mother, but here’s what happens. Sometimes in the process of this broken world, because we live in this broken world, and God is at work redeeming this world, and he’s going to redeem the entire planet, and he’s redeeming people, that in this process of brokenness, what we tend to do is go, “I’m not really convinced God delights in me.”
But here’s what he says to you. “I’ve always adored you.” Here’s what they say in response. “Like how?” You can be honest with God. “This doesn’t feel like adoration. We’ve come back. We’ve been in the temple. We do the feasts. We do our jobs, and you haven’t shown up yet! We came back and we obeyed the prophets and we rebuilt the temple. We sacrificed ourselves, and you haven’t shown up! What’s going on here?”
Here’s what he does. In his defense, when they say, “Wherein have you loved us?” the first thing he says is a phrase that if you’re not familiar with Bible terms, it’ll throw your mind off a little bit. He says, “Jacob have I loved; Esau I have hated.” Those words are idioms that are used to describe a choice.
Like, for instance, when in the New Testament it says, “If any man is going to be my disciple, he must hate his father and his mother.” That doesn’t mean that if you really are a good disciple, you’ll go home and spit at your parents. What it does mean though is that your relationship with God is more important than your relationship with your parents. That’s reality. If you have to make a choice, that’s the choice you make. If that comes to that choice, then your love for God makes your love for them look like hate.
He says, “Here’s the first way you know I loved you, is that I called you. I called you. I chose you.” Now then, every one of you here who have come into the kingdom of God, and probably if you’re here at all, unless somebody bribed you to be here (and that happens), but that even might be God drawing you to himself…
“How do you know I love you? Because I have drawn you to myself. I’ve called you. I like you because I have called you to myself.” What’s the problem? They’re questioning God’s love. The three things that are there regarding God’s love is that he called them, he protected him, and he gave them his presence.
Now then, what they do is they insult God’s character. I have to really move on with this or we’re really not going to get there. Verse 6 says, “‘A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If then I am the Father, where is My honor? And if I am a Master, where is My reverence? says the LORD of hosts to you priests who despise My name. Yet you say, “In what way have we despised Your name?”‘” Now look at verse 7.
“‘You offer defiled food on My altar, but say, “In what way have we defiled You?” By saying, “The table of the LORD is contemptible.” And when you offer the blind as a sacrifice, is it not evil? And when you offer the lame and sick, is it not evil? Offer it then to your governor! Would he be pleased with you? Would he accept you favorably?’ says the LORD of hosts. ‘But now entreat God’s favor, that He may be gracious to us. While this is being done by your hands, will He accept you favorably?’ says the LORD of hosts.” (Malachi 1:6-9)
How is this lack of understanding God’s grace and delight evidenced in their lives? It is evidenced by how they go about God’s work. In that particular environment, there were animal sacrifices. It’d come time for the feast or the Passover or one of the festivals. They would go out and they’d look and they’d see some lamb that had a broken leg and was blind. They’d take it down there and offer it as a sacrifice.
It wasn’t a sacrifice. They couldn’t sell it. The lamb probably had worms. They couldn’t eat it. So they’re going, “Yeah, look at me. I’m offering to God my sacrifice.” Now here’s the reality. Oftentimes what we give to God is just the leftovers. That’s what we give to God. I’m not talking about money right now; I’m talking about time, intimacy.
How do we start our days? What do we do with our best moments? The time that is not at the end of the day, and you’ve come to the end of your day, and you’re going, “Man, I haven’t read my Bible today. I haven’t prayed. I haven’t really spent any time with God, but I’m really tired. I’ll do my quiet time in bed.” How’s that working for you? Do you know how it’s working? You’re falling asleep. It helps you go to sleep. “Okay, I just have to go to sleep.”
You spend most of your time confessing. “God, I shouldn’t have done this. I had a bad attitude about that. I should’ve made this choice.” What we need to do is instead of getting the car repaired, we need driving lessons. If you’ll start the day giving it to him, you’ll probably have a whole lot less to confess. Can we get an amen out of that?
This is what God wants from us. Not our leftover time. Not the space we have that’s just convenient, but real (I’m going to use it) sacrificial kind of time, where maybe you have to set the alarm clock a half an hour early and you have to get up and actually make an appointment with God…and keep it!
Where maybe you have to say, “Instead of going and eating lunch today, I’m going to walk and memorize some passages, and I’m going to spend time with God marinating in him and with him and just enjoying him and giving back to God what God so graciously has given to me.” I’m going to tell you something. It’ll free you. It will release you.
In that land of slavery, you will find freedom when you give back to God your life and your house and your car and everything you have. If you’ll take those things and release them, you will not live in bondage to them. You won’t be slaves in your own land. Does anybody want to feel that bondage or you’d like to be able to go, “God, it’s all yours, everything I have”?
Have you ever noticed that oftentimes we treat the people we love the most with the least respect? I remember this from years and years ago. How many of you grew up going to church? Okay, let me ask you a question. How many of you, the biggest family fights you ever got into was on the way to church? I’ve seen people pulling into church. I can remember my dad saying, “Listen, we’re almost at church. Everybody just calm down.”
I’ve seen people pulling into church fighting with each other and trying to, “Okay, we’ll just settle this later.” Did anybody ever read Family Circus, the comic? I remember one time in the Family Circus, the mother is talking to the kids and the father, and she says, “Why don’t we do it in reverse today? Let’s be kind to each other and mean to all the strangers.”
Sometimes the people we adore the most we will treat with the least amount of reverence. Here’s what God is saying, “You don’t really reverence me. The reason you don’t reverence me is because you are filled with these doubts about the fact I delight in you.” There’s a principle in Scripture, and I don’t have time to dig into it right now, but you might want to jot it down. It’s called the first fruits principle.
I think I put those references down on your sheet. Exodus 13:11-12. Nehemiah 10:35-37. Proverbs 3:9-10. “Honor the LORD with your possessions, and with the firstfruits of all your increase…” This is what he says, “So your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will overflow with new wine.” (Proverbs 3:9-10)
Here’s what God says to the children of Israel, “When I bring you in that land, I want you to bring the first fruits, the first seeds, the firstborn.” It’s over and over and over again. It’s the first. Why is it the first? Because this is the commitment that, “It’s all yours. It’s all yours, God. But here we’re giving you back the first, the best.”
In that kings story, it’s a phenomenal story there. It’s about Elijah. Elijah is living in a time of famine. God is punishing the nation of Israel, and it’s not raining. Elijah has made this announcement, “Until you turn from your ways, there’s not going to be any rain unless I say so.” Man, I don’t have that kind of confidence. I predicted spring was going to break out this week, and it didn’t. I’m hoping for next week.
But God said to Elijah, “I’m going to let the ravens feed you.” A raven was an unclean bird. Would you eat a burger a buzzard brought you? I would say, “Mmm? Okay.” Then God says, “Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to go up north.” Remember Jezebel was trying to kill him. Just a little south of Jezebel’s hometown, which is a terrible place to hide out. He says, “There a widow is going to feed you.”
Now nothing sounds right about that story. So he obeys, and he goes up north. He finds a widow, and he says, “Do you have anything to eat?” She goes, “No.” Now if I had been Elijah, that’s where I would’ve stopped. The widow said, “No.” You don’t ask a widow twice for food. She says, “As a matter of fact, we’re going to starve to death, and I have a child. All I have is just a little bit of flour and a little bit of oil. I’m going to go feed my child, and my son and I are going to eat this last little piece of bread we have, and then we’re going to die.”
Do you know what I would’ve said? “I have the wrong widow.” Now you’re laughing at me. Would you do the same thing? Yes, you would. You’d say, “Oh, you poor widow. I’m so sorry. This is a big problem. I’ll go try to raise some money for you.” But do you know what Elijah said? “Go make that and bring it to me first.” Notice? First.
Do you know why he did that? Because he believed God’s Word. Because God said, “Go up there. There’s a widow there who’s going to feed you.” He’d already seen buzzards bring hamburgers or manna or whatever. So he actually believes God is going to come through. She goes in there, and I’m sure she’s thinking, “That is a bad prophet.” But she obeyed! She went in there and she made him the last little bit of meal she thought she was going to have. Man, it’s amazing. He ate it!
He ate it, but she goes back inside, and as long as the famine lasted, there kept being meal in there, and there kept being oil in there. It didn’t run out. Do you know why? Because she gave it to God. She just gave it to God, and she said, “If we’re going to die, what difference does a day make? If we’re going to starve, what difference does it make? We’re going to starve. We might as well just go ahead and give it to him because he’s going to eat, and we’re all going to die, and one little bit of this is not going to change the fact we’re going to live or die. Just give to him.”
Now here’s what I want to say to you. When you give first to God…not just about money, but about time and about passion and about energy and creativity and your thoughts and your love for God…when you make out time for him first, he is not going to ruin his reputation on you. He is the Creator. He is good.
I don’t want you to raise your hand, but have you ever been in a situation where you just absolutely gave the last you had? Just gave it away? Yeah. I remember when Jody and I went to Idaho to start this church. I went in and I talked to the vice president of the school, who was a mentor of mine. At the time, I called him Dr. Helton, which later was a big breakthrough in our relationship when he said I could call him Max, but at that time, we were on “Dr.” terminology.
I told him we were going to Idaho to start this church, and he said, “Buddy, you’re going to need money. You’re going to need donors.” He reached in his desk, and he says, “We’re going to raise some money for you to go out there.” I said, “Dr. Helton, I’m going out there because I need to know that God wants me to do this and that God will pay the bills.” He goes, “Well, God will pay the bills, but we’re going to help him. We have donors, and I’m going to help you raise some money.”
I said, “I really don’t want your help. All I want is your prayers, and I don’t want your donors.” He threw the notebook back in the desk, and he said, “I’ve never offered anybody my donors before. You’re an idiot to turn that down.” I said, “I may be, but I’m going to go out there and I’m going to see if God will come through.”
Jody and I went to Idaho. We had $500 between us. That’s it…$500. We rented a little furnished apartment. We went through all our money, and it didn’t take long. I had a church call me and say, “I heard about what you’re doing. I’m going to send you some money.” Somebody sent us $1,500.
We had another guy living with us at the time, and he was a real budget-conscious guy. He goes, “Okay, we found a place for the church. What we can do…” and he started writing out this budget. I said, “No, we’re not going to budget this money; we’re going to blow this money.” He said, “What do you mean we’re going to blow this money?” I said, “We’re going to blow every bit of it the first week.”
He goes, “If you do that, you’re sunk.” I said, “No. I actually have a guy in Atlanta who’s offered me a job, paying a lot more than this one. If it doesn’t work, I’ll know God doesn’t want it to happen.” So we just took out an ad in the paper. We printed out a bunch of brochures. We went through ever dime in five days, and we started the church.
Never, ever in the seven years Jody and I were there did that church have a budget shortfall…ever. And never did we go hungry. One time, we ate pancakes for a week because that was all the money we had. We both got jobs. She got a job and got promoted; I got a job and got fired. It was bill collecting, and I was so bad at it. People get into trouble for reasons, and so I would call, and I’d end up praying with them on the phone. It was weird.
Okay, they question God’s love. They insulted God’s character. I’m not going to get into it in this service, but in chapter 2, they distort God’s covenant. The way they distort God’s covenant is they fall into the marriage practices of the cultures that dominate them. That’s what happens to them. They fall into the marriage patterns of the cultures that saturate them.
If you look at the reverse side and you look at those empires…Babylon, Persia, Greece, the Roman Republic, the Roman Empire…if you look at those names that influenced those places, like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, now let me just tell you something. You may not know your history, but if you know your history, those were not pure people. It wouldn’t even be socially proper for me to discuss in church the debauchery of those cultures.
The reason marriage matters has nothing to do with what the king of Persia says it matters. It doesn’t. It doesn’t matter what the Caesar in Rome says. God did not ask the Caesar in Rome to sanction marriage. He didn’t. I’m just going to say this to you. We are citizens of another kingdom. Listen carefully to what I’m saying here. We are not dependent upon any government to give us guidance on what marriage means. We aren’t.
Now let me just be really clear about this in case you think I’m being ambiguous. I’m not. Jesus was a friend of sinners. Can you say amen to that? Somehow or another, Jesus was able to say truth and sinners still liked him. Go figure. I know I haven’t figured that out. I know oftentimes when I say truth it makes people mad at me. That means I must not be as much like Jesus as I want to be, because when Jesus said, “From the beginning, marriage was between one man and one woman,” harlots, prostitutes, evil men, people loved him.
They didn’t go, “You’re sin-ophobic!” No! Sinners loved him. They loved him. They didn’t go, “Oh yeah, I don’t like because you don’t like us.” No. They knew Jesus loved them. They knew it! So somehow I do think we as a church, as a corporate world, as a community, need to make sure people aren’t reacting to our disposition more than they’re reacting to our position. Is that clear? It’s not quite clear for me.
I honestly think we as a church, the church as a whole, not just Grace, but the church in the world, need to recognize we have a problem and people don’t perceive us to look like Jesus. We don’t seem to sound like Jesus. Okay, I’m going to let that go, and I’m not going to be able to finish this whole thing.
What do we do now? There are three things. You can take this home and do this as homework if you want.
1. Let the Word of God refine us. Chapter 3:1-5 is let the Word of God refine us. That means we need to meditate in, dwell in, drench in, and let the Word of God melt out the dross and the bitterness and whatever is in our souls that is impure. Let the Word of God refine us. That’s in the verses 1-5 of chapter 3.
2. Seek God first. I’ve already said this, so I won’t dig into it any deeper. Do you know what he says? It’s the only time I know in the Bible that he says, “Test me.” He says, “You bring in your first fruits. You bring in your best, and if you will give your best, here’s what I will do. I will open the windows of heaven, and you will receive a blessing that you are not even able to handle it all.”
Yeah, how many of you would just like to be so burdened down with blessing? Yeah, amen. You say, “Isn’t that like that health and wealth gospel, TV preaching?” That’s the Bible. I promise you God will not ruin his reputation on you. He won’t! He will bless you. You say, “Well, what does that blessing look like?” It looks like different stuff, but here’s what he says, “I will rebuke the devourer.” Don’t you want that? “I will rebuke the devourer.”
How many of you have been devoured for the last five or six years? You feel like something is just gnawing at you. You’re just clawing your way out. You feel like the wolf is just right at your heels. Here’s what God says, “I’ll call off the wolf. I’ll open the windows of heaven. I will pour out this blessing on you beyond your imagination.”
Listen. It’s more than money. It’s more than money; it’s relationships. It’s joy. It’s the peace of God. It is the thing that sets you free. It sets you free from your money. It sets you free from that stress you just live under. It sets you free.
You can live under bondage, or you can live in that freedom of saying, “Okay, God, it’s all yours. Here’s how I’m going to do it. I’m going to start my day this way. I’m going to budget my money this way. I’m going to treat people this way because this is how you want it done. I’m going to reorder, rearrange my life, and I’m going to let you… You have to deal with the results. If I starve, cool. We’ll talk about it in heaven, and I’ll just go, ‘Hey, you let me starve, and I gave my money to the prophet, and it wasn’t any profit at all.'” God’s going to go, “Well, you’re here, aren’t you? Feast away.” Amen? God is not just fair; God is generous. Yes, he’s good.
3. He’ll find you. Here’s what he says. He says a group of people gathered together, and they started talking about the goodness of God and remembering how good God was. As they started rehearsing the goodness of God, God drew near to them, and he listened to them, and he said, “Write that down in a record up here.”
Have you ever heard anybody talking about you when they didn’t know you were there? Sometimes people say to me, “Do you know so and so said such about you?” It doesn’t bother me at all, because I have thought worse about them. When people say bad things about me… Somebody said to me awhile back, “I didn’t think what you said was that funny. It was like a second-rate comic act.” I said, “A lot of people don’t think I’m funny, and classifying me as a second-rate comic is above my aspirations.”
But here’s the reality. God delights when we delight in him. When we gather together and focus our delight in him, he goes, “Hey, they’re talking about me. They’re saying I’m great. Write that down. Buddy said I’m great. Write that down. Buddy said I’m gracious. Write that down. They’re talking about the fact that they’re anticipating the fact I’m going to come back for them. They’re going to reorder their lives based on that promise. I’m going to get them. I’m going to rescue them. I’m going to deliver them. They’re counting on me. I can’t not do it. They’re expecting me to do this.” Let’s bow for prayer.
Let’s just take a few minutes and respond to what God is doing. For some of you, you’re in a bad place in your heart with God, and you really need to reorder some things. For some of you, you’re not in a bad place, but you’re in a desert kind of place, and you’re wondering where God is. What I want you to hear this morning more than anything else is you are the delight of his life. He delights in you.
We’re going to take Communion. I’m going to step down front. If you have never made Jesus King and Lord of your life, I would love to pray with you. If you just need prayer about your physical healing or your job or your family, we’re a church here. We like to pray together. We like to pray for one another. We’re going to take just a few minutes during worship here and just listen to what God is saying to us and call out to God to do what he has promised.
For some of you, you really need some radical reordering. For some of you, it’s just a minor little tuning the station in and listening to what he’s saying to you. For some of you, you really grew up in an oppressive environment, and you just can’t break loose and see the Father’s smile. I pray for a breakthrough for you this morning.