On this Thanksgiving Sunday, we come to
the end of our sermon series, “Who Are These Guys?” We’ve been looking at the Minor
Prophets. We finish with the prophet
Malachi.
Scholars think the book of Malachi was written somewhere around 400 B. C. It’s not just the last book of the Minor Prophets. It’s the last book of the Old Testament. And while the entire Old Testament is not arranged in chronological order, a lot of people think Malachi is the book that was written last. After this, there were about four hundred years that the Bible does not talk about, with the silence broken with the birth of Jesus in the gospel of Matthew.
The Bible verses we read today are the last verses of the book of Malachi, and so of course the last words of the Old Testament. You may remember that last week, when we discussed Zechariah, we talked about the Day of Judgment. Malachi picks up on that theme. And Malachi basically says each of us has a choice. We can follow God and be saved, or we can refuse to follow God and be destroyed.
God, speaking through Malachi says that twice in just these six verses. Here’s how the passage puts it: “All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and that day that is coming will set them on fire…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 rays. And you will go out and frolic like well-fed calves.” And later, God says, “I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day comes. He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents, or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction.”
It’s a pretty clear distinction God makes. That can make us kind of uncomfortable, really. You know, a lot of times we don’t like things to be that clear cut, to be that black and white. We’re more comfortable with grey areas. We like to think the answer always lies in the middle, that the answer always lies in compromise. And in some situations it does, of course. I’m not saying compromise is always a bad thing. But when it comes to following God, there’s not a lot of room for compromise. The way Malachi is written, we either follow God or we don’t. That’s it.
Now, I do want to point out a couple of things. First, Malachi was written for the people of Israel. The first words of the book are “A prophecy: The word of the Lord to Israel through Malachi.” The reason I point that out is that this means this book was written, this prophecy was made, to people who had heard the word, who knew who God was. That means this prophecy applies to people who have the ability to make a clear choice whether to follow God or not. It does not necessarily apply to people who don’t know God and are not able to make that choice. Now, I still believe there will be a Day of Judgment for those people, too, but how that’s going to work is something for another day. It’s not something that Malachi explicitly addresses, because again, Malachi was written for the people of Israel.
And the other thing I want to point is that saying we either follow God or we don’t does not mean we’re required to be perfect. We’ve talked before about the fact that we’re not capable of perfection and that God understands that. We are to revere God’s name and remember God’s laws and decrees. If we revere God’s name and do our best to obey God, God will forgive our flaws and our flubs and our mistakes.
So let’s look at that word “revere”. It’s not a word we use a lot these days. We remember Paul Revere, some of us remember the musical group Paul Revere and the Raiders, and some of us even remember when the Twins had an outfielder named Ben Revere. Other than that, though, “revere” is not a word we hear much. What does it mean to “revere” God’s name?
Well, if you look in the dictionary, you find that the word “revere” means “to treat with respect tinged with awe”. And “awe” means an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, or fear.
Do we feel that way about God? I think we should. I think most of us know we should. But do we?
How many of us think we have the right to tell God what to do? I suspect a lot of us do. Now, we’d never say it that way. None of us would ever say we have the right to tell God what to do. But how many times has something happened, and we think or even say, “God, why did you do that? Why did you make that happen? And if you did not make it happen, why did you let it happen? How can a loving God let such terrible things happen to so many people?
I suspect a lot of us have said that. After an attack like 9/11 or what happened in France last week. After a disaster like a tornado or an earthquake or the flooding that’s going on in Texas. After a young person dies in an accident or gets cancer or some other terrible disease. After we lose a job. When things like that happen, we say, “God, why don’t you do something about that?” And sometimes we get upset with God when it looks like God is not doing anything about it.
That’s not exactly revering God, is it? That’s not exactly holding God in awe.
But I suspect God understands when we do things like that. That does not make it right, but I think God understands why, when we’re grieving, or when we’re scared, or when we’re stressed, or when we just plain cannot understand what’s going on, why we start trying to tell God what to do. And I think God will forgive that.
But I think there’s a subtler, more dangerous way that we don’t revere God. It sneaks up on us. It can happen without us even noticing it, which is why it’s dangerous. It happens when we believe in God, and we believe in Jesus as our Savior, but we just kind of put that belief in a little box, a little compartment of our life. We keep our belief locked away and don’t let it affect the rest of our lives.
It seems to me that’s the tricky one. We don’t flat out reject God. We say we still believe. Maybe we go to church, at least sometimes. Maybe we even pray. Maybe we even read the Bible. It’s just that we keep that church time, that prayer time, the Bible time, separate from the rest of our lives. We leave church, we say Amen, we close the Bible, and then we go on about our business as if nothing had happened. And, in fact, nothing has.
We talked last week about our need to pray for God to put God’s Spirit into our hearts, into our souls, into our minds, into every aspect of our lives. I think that’s how we get that feeling of reverence for God. I’m not saying it’s the only way, but it’s the best way I know. When we pray for God to put God’s spirit into our hearts and souls and minds and lives, and when we do it sincerely and consistently, we start to get an idea of just how incredible, how great, how awesome in every sense of the word that God is. And when we start to get an idea of just who God is, we start to feel that reverence for God. In fact, when we get an idea of who God is, we really will not be able to do anything but feel reverence for God.
Malachi sets this up as a pretty clear choice. We can be among the people who revere God and be saved. Or, we can be among the arrogant and the evildoers and be stubble that gets set on fire. That’s pretty much it. Frankly, it’s not the way I’d like it to be set up. I’d like there to be more grey areas. But God did not ask me how to set this up. God does things God’s way, not my way. And the way this is written, we cannot just sort of follow God part of the time. We either follow God—not perfectly, because we’re not capable of that, but the best we can, asking for God’s Spirit to be in our hearts and souls and minds and lives—or we don’t. Period.
As the saying goes, we are free to choose, but we are not free from the consequences of our choices. The consequences here are pretty big. In fact, they’re eternal.
We each have to make that choice. And none of us knows how long we’ll have to make it. None of us is ever promised tomorrow. We need to make this choice now, today. And we need to keep making it every day. We need to choose to ask for God’s Spirit to be in us, so we can truly follow God and feel reverence and awe for God.
In a few days, it will be Thanksgiving. Many of us will think about all the things we have to be thankful for. When we do, let’s remember to thank God for giving us the chance to choose salvation. And let’s make that choice, today and every day.
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