INTRODUCTION:
Scientists tell us that among the approximately 7.8 billion human
inhabitants of Planet Earth there are no two people exactly alike. Even those pairs that we call “identical twins” are quite
different one from another. Oh yes, all humans share certain genetic and
physiological similarities but in many ways each of us is unique.
This fact sometimes creates problems. For example, law
enforcement officers always want to be certain that they have the right person
in custody. There are cases of people getting arrested, convicted, and
imprisoned for crimes they did not commit, just because they bore such a
striking resemblance to the person who did commit the crime. To avoid such problems police investigators
look for any DNA evidence, pore over fingerprints left at the crime scene, show
comparative photos to the witnesses, and interview the possible suspects at
great length. They do all of this to try and sort out the good guys from
the bad guys, the guilty from the innocent.
Now on TV it has always been much easier to tell them apart. In
the old westerns, for example, bad guys usually wore dark coloured hats, smoked
stinky cigars, shaved only on rare occasions, and leered at the girls. The
good guys always dressed better, were clean-shaven, had smarter horses, wore
white hats, spoke to the ladies politely, and sang songs on the trail. But
that is television. In real life, it is not always so easy to tell the
good guys from the bad.
TRANSITION:
So then how can we do it? How can we tell a righteous person
from a wicked person? Do they look differently? Do they talk
differently? Are there any defining physical characteristics we should
look for? Oh, that it should be so simple!
Unfortunately, wicked people often look good, and they try to pass
themselves off as righteous. Some of them even have religious titles and TV
programs on Christian networks. They dress nice, sing well, talk about Jesus,
then lie and stick it to you to try to get you to send them money. To use
a biblical phrase, they are “wolves in sheep’s clothing.” Moreover, they
sucker many unsuspecting people into their evil, money-grubbing schemes because
folks do not know how to spot a phony. In our text for today, the LORD
tells us how we can tell the righteous from the wicked. That may turn out
to be an especially useful skill, indeed. Let’s look at Mal. 3:13-18.
MAIN BODY:
Verse 13: “Your words have been arrogant against Me,” says
the LORD. “Yet you say, ‘What have we spoken against You?’”
·
You will remember that in our last study we looked at verses 7-12
where Jehovah God invites the people of Israel to put His promises to the test
to see if He would make good on them. He accused them of stealing from Him
by their unfaithfulness in giving the tithes and offerings they owed
Him. As a result, He warned them of what would happen to them if they did
not repent of their waywardness and begin doing what He required of
them. At the same time, He promised to open the windows of Heaven and pour
out blessings upon those who repented and returned to love and serve Him with
their whole heart.
·
Now the LORD brings up another issue. They have been speaking
evil things of the LORD. But how did He know? He knew because He knows
everything. The Word says, “Nothing is hidden from His eyes.” What is
done in darkness or in secret is laid bare before Him as though it were
daylight. That just means we cannot get away with anything. You
thought your mother had eyes in the back of her head? God is way more
perceptive than your mother. He does not have to guess. He knows
exactly what you are thinking, and He hears every word you utter. You can
run but you cannot hide!
·
In verse 13 the LORD declares, “Your words have been arrogant against Me.” The word arrogant means puffed-up,
inflated. We sometimes say that a person is “full of hot air.” That is
the idea here too. This is also the word for “proud.” Their sinful pride is what has
been driving them. And right on cue, just like all the times before in
this Book of Malachi, the people respond with, “What have we spoken against You?” They
plead ignorance. They act like they do not know what He is talking
about. So, He lays it out for them.
Verse 14: “You have said, ‘It is vain to serve God; and what
profit is it that we have kept His charge, and that we have walked in mourning
before the LORD of hosts?’”
·
Basically, they have begun to view their worship and service of
Almighty God in terms of dollars-and-cents. They have been saying, “It is not worth it to serve Him and to do the
things He asks of us. If there is no material prosperity coming from it,
why should we keep doing what we do? If we are not getting anything out of
it, we might as well quit.” That is the kind of thoughts
that were going through their heads, and God could hear those thoughts.
·
“We have walked
in mourning before the LORD of hosts.” The problem is that they had
merely been going through the motions, showing the outward forms associated
with repentance, without ever experiencing true repentance in their
hearts. Their religion was all on the outside. And frankly, God has never
been impressed by religiosity.
Verse 15: “‘So now we call the arrogant [proud] blessed; not
only are the doers of wickedness built up, but they also test God and escape.’”
·
These religious hypocrites go on to allege that the wicked in
their pride say whatever they feel like saying and God does not punish
them. On the contrary, they claim, He blesses them all the more, in spite
of their arrogance and sinfulness. And they do not stop there—they say
that these evildoers deliberately do things to test God, and still they escape
judgment and justice. This is just a rephrasing of their earlier charge
against God stated up in 2:17.
·
These guys are angry, and they do not care who knows it. And
as often happens, in their anger and frustration they misstate the facts and
lose perspective about what was really going on. They are spouting off
and saying all kinds of stupid things that are false about their own innocence
and about God’s supposed injustice and unfairness.
·
Now I think it is important to note that it is not a sin to
question God. He is not intimidated by our honest questions. In fact,
the Psalmist in Psalm 73 struggled with this same issue and questioned why the
wicked sometimes seemed to prosper. Listen to his words starting in verse
3: “I envied the arrogant when I saw the
prosperity of the wicked. 4 They have no struggles; their bodies are
healthy and strong. 5 They are free from common human burdens; they are
not plagued by human ills. 6 Therefore pride is their necklace; they
clothe themselves with violence. 7 From their callous hearts comes
iniquity; their evil imaginations have no limits. 8 They scoff and
speak with malice; with arrogance they threaten oppression. 9 Their
mouths lay claim to Heaven, and their tongues take possession of the
earth. 10 Therefore their people turn to them and drink up
waters in abundance. 11 They say, “How would God know? Does the
Most High know anything?” 12 This is what the wicked are like—always free of
care, they go on amassing wealth.”
·
The difference between the Psalmist’s questions and those of the
people of Malachi’s day was this—the attitude of the inquirer. It is
OK to ask God hard questions in the genuine search to better know the heart and
ways of God. It is not OK to murmur against God and accuse Him and
impugn His motives and His character, especially His justice. God hates
men accusing Him of being unjust! He will not tolerate that.
Verse 16: Then those who feared the LORD spoke to one another,
and the LORD gave attention and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written
before Him for those who fear the LORD and who esteem His name.
·
But notice, all this badmouthing of God has now reached the ears
of some of the godly people who have loved and served God all along for all the
right reasons. It says, “They spoke to one another, and the LORD gave
attention and heard it.” Not everyone in Israel had turned his/her
back on God. There was still a group of righteous people who had remained
faithful to Him. Moreover, that faithfulness was carefully noted by God. “A book of
remembrance was written before Him.” Why would God need a written
record? Surely, He does not suffer from a bad memory like some of
us. No, He keeps accurate accounts so that for all eternity there will be
a public record of the obedience and faithfulness of His people. “…for those who fear the LORD and who esteem His
name.” To fear the Lord means to hold
Him in awe and reverence. His name encapsulates all of whom and what He
really is, so that those who truly love and revere Him will be zealous for His
holy name. We learn here that God rewards people for that.
·
The last part of verse 16 reminds me of Jesus’ words to a group of
His disciples recorded in Luke 10:20. He had sent “the Seventy” out to
preach the Gospel of the Kingdom and to heal the sick and they had returned
with amazing stories to tell of what God had done through them. That is
when Jesus said: “Nevertheless
do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are recorded in Heaven.” But where are those names
recorded? The Book of Revelation speaks of “the Lamb’s Book of Life.” That is
the record of every true child of God, those who are redeemed and will be in
Heaven. If your name is not in that Book, it will not matter how many
times you have been knighted by the Queen, or walked down the Red Carpet, or
been voted into “Who’s Who.” When the time comes, if your name is not in
the Lamb’s Book, the Lord Jesus will say to you, “Depart from Me. I never knew you.”
·
I believe that Malachi 3:16 also shows the value of Christians
coming together to share openly and prayerfully with one another in the sight
of the LORD. When we come together and praise the LORD, and talk about all
His benefits, and testify of His goodness, and bless His name He is right there
in our midst, and He hears every word we say, and He takes notes! Not one
word is lost! It does pay to serve the LORD.
Verse 17: “They will be Mine,” says the LORD of hosts, “on
the day that I prepare My own
possession, and I will
spare them as a man spares his own son who serves him.”
·
“They will be Mine.” The LORD
says that in the Day of the LORD (cf. 3:1-2) He will claim for His own all
those who have loved Him and faithfully served Him. He regards them as His
children and will spare them the way a man spares his own faithful
son. You can hear the pride in God’s voice when He says this. He is
proud of His children.
·
“…on the day
that I prepare My own possession…” I like the way this verse reads in the
NKJV: “They shall be
Mine,” says the LORD of hosts, “on the day that I make
them my jewels.” The Hebrew
word here translated as “jewels” could be rendered “special treasure,” or
“treasured possession” as we have it in the NIV. This word is a
beautifully endearing term that is used several places in the OT to describe
the value that the LORD places on the people of Israel who have remained
faithful to Him (cf. Exodus 19:5; Deut. 7:6; Psalm 135:4).
Verse 18: So you will again distinguish
between the righteous and the wicked,
between one who serves God and one who does not serve Him.
·
At the beginning of this message I asked the question: “How do you tell the righteous from the wicked?” The
answer to that question is found in this verse. The righteous can be
recognized by their service to God. Specifically, that means loving Him,
putting Him first, obeying His commandments, and finding one’s greatest joy
bringing glory to His name.
·
The wicked, on the other
hand, care nothing about serving God. They are only concerned with what is
in it for them, as we saw up in verses 14-15. They are not zealous for His
name; in fact, it means nothing to them.
·
Notice that He says, “So you will again distinguish
between the righteous and the wicked.” This implies that they used to
know the difference but had perhaps started to confuse the two. The fact
is, we are not always good at telling sheep from goats, but the LORD never
makes that mistake. With a glance He can tell them apart. Even if you
take a goat and dress him up like a sheep, you still have not fundamentally
changed him. In Matthew 25:31-46 Jesus told of a day yet to come when He
will judge the nations. He said: “But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and
all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before Him; and
He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep
from the goats; 33 and He will put the sheep on His right, and the
goats on the left.” In this word picture, the sheep are the righteous and the
goats are the wicked. The end of the story is in verse 46: “These [the
goats, meaning the wicked] will go away into eternal punishment,
but the righteous into eternal life.”
CONCLUSION:
When that great Judgment Day comes, which side will you be
standing on? Are you a sheep or a goat? Will you go into eternal
punishment or into eternal life? For, you see, on that day God will act,
and justice will be meted out. For the wicked it will be a dreadful day
(cf. Zeph. 1:15-18). However, for the righteous it will be a glad day
because they have the promise of the Lamb that He will deliver all those who
belong to Him (cf. Psalm 91:7).
One more thing… the people that the LORD exhorts up in verses
13-15 were religious people who were just going through the motions. Their
hearts were not in what they were doing, so God had not blessed them. In
turn, they blamed God for not blessing them the way they thought He
should. There are a lot of professing Christians who walk around with the
same attitude. They say, “I have tried to do my best to please God, but He
is just never satisfied, so now I am just coasting. It just doesn’t pay to
go overboard on religion.” They may attend church services but often they
do it to criticize. They have little interest in praising God, serving
God, or worshiping God, because they
really do not love God.
Religion for religion’s sake is a chore and a bore. But when
you have a close, intimate relationship with the Living God then worship
services take on a whole new meaning. When your heart is filled with
gratitude to God for all His mercies, then service for Him makes perfect sense
and presents no hardship.
Which are you more concerned about: What you are getting out of following
Christ? Or, What Christ is getting from you? If you are more
worried about what’s in it for you, then you need to go back and truly get
saved!
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