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Preacher: Pastor David Ball
Scripture: Malachi 1:1-14
God’s love is the beginning of all honest self-awareness and self-assessment. The Season of Lent is preparing for Jesus’s death and resurrection through honest self-assessment. Through His prophet Malachi, the Lord called His people to repentance for their sins and how their love for Him had grown cold. But His prophetic rebuke began with the words, “I have loved you”. Come and begin a season of honest self-assessment, repentance, and renewal by rejoicing in the Love of God for you.
Transcript
Have you ever heard of the cargo Cults cargo Cults were a phenomenon that that popped up around World War II and and there and then after that uh cargo Cults are something that happened in the the South Pacific as uh military would drop Cargo in strategic places on on certain islands that they planned on using as Supply bases and setting up uh setting up uh airports and and lots of things like that uh and they would drop these before anyone arrived they would drop this these cargo onto these islands uh where these indigenous people who had had very little contact with uh with outside human beings at all uh and then they show up and they take all the stuff and build these uh build these you know airports and these bases in order to help Supply the the troops and to to Aid the efforts that was going on in the Pacific uh and these indigenous people saw all this and they thought this was this was all from from a God right and all this wonderful provision that was provided and uh all this wonderful stuff and then at the end of the war they packed up and they left and they packed up and they left they took most of the stuff with them uh and and these indigenous people were left left confused over what was going on and what they found as people visited some of these islands in the aftermath uh was they continued uh to build airst strips and to try to recreate what had happened because they thought if they did that something might happen uh but you know the the cargo might come provision might be provided they might experience the abundance and and the blessing of it uh but nothing ever happened but nothing they couldn’t recreate it just by going through the mo just going through the rituals you know when I think about you know our life as a community and our life as Christians can’t that often become the case where we may have experienced at one point some of the amazing blessing and the joy of Salvation that we have in Christ and in his in God’s love for us but after a while it can go cold it can grow dim and yet we can still go through all the motions we can do all the rituals and we can do all the practices and just kind of go through the motions and yet nothing seems to happen it just seems dead Christianity can over time become spiritually dead right when it’s reduced to uh when it when it’s reduced to just habit or it’s just reduced to appearances what other people think and about us and see about us or imitation being stripped of any authentic connection and tension and transformation that that God who loves us intends in our lives well lint uh in in the Anglican Church is the season uh of
taking assessment of our life through self-examination it’s a preparation for The Passion of Christ it’s a preparation for the cross it it’s a time where we’re supposed to really reflect on ourselves and take stock of of where we are spiritually uh it’s not meant to be uh well this is what we say in the invitation if you weren’t here for uh RH Wednesday which actually I wasn’t for the first time ever because I was sick uh this is what the invitation to to lent says you’re invited to observe a holy lint by self-examination and repentance by prayer fasting and charity and by reading and meditating on God’s holy word that’s when the season of Lent is supposed to be all about but it’s we don’t do those things we’re not called to those things as acts to try to make us more worthy of God or deserving of of Christ’s coming uh and making us worthy of the Cross but it’s a way of Reviving our our awareness of our great need it’s reminding us of who we are our need of his love and his saving work in our lives that we’re so desperate for it you know the only way is we just say saying the oh the Wondrous Cross the only way the cross is truly wondrous is when we are truly honest and authentic in evaluating and assessing ourselves and where our hearts really are and where have they grown cold so that when we get there when we get to the Cross when we get to Good Friday when we get to to Easter that our hearts May Rejoice once again for the joy of our Salvation you know Revelations 3 gives us uh some warnings about this uh for those who who don’t know Revelation 3 gives the warnings to uh the various churches uh and you know and two of them for Sardis and Le oia uh you know this is this is what it says to Sardis God says I know your works you have the reputation of being alive but you’re dead wake up and strengthen what remains and is about
and is about to die for I have not found your Works complete in the sight of my God and then in Le oaia he says I know your Works you’re neither cold nor hot would that you were either cold or hot so because you’re L lukewarm and neither hot nor cold I will spit you out of my mouth and then if we go back even further to uh the first church uh Ephesus he goes I know you’re your Works your toil and your patient endurance and how you cannot bear with those who are evil but have tested those who call themselves Apostles and are not and found them to be false I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake and that you have not grown weary but I have this against you that you have abandoned the love that you had at first this is the danger of the church that we grow cold that we grow lukewarm that we grow dead even forgetting our our first love and so the season of Lent the season is meant to to wake us up to wake us up spiritually to call us back to our first love to light that fire once again of renewal in our hearts for the Wondrous Cross that God sent his one and only son to die on and so we enter into this lint and self-examination and self-examination is hard uh because none of us are good at it uh none of us are very good at seeing our own stuff right and and that’s what happens the the longer we live in it the more we get used to our own sin our own Rebellion uh our own Hardness of Heart the harder it is to see we can’t see it ourselves we need help you know if you have a good friend or a spouse uh or a family member you know God willing if you if they’re if they’re coming in the right way and they can help you and they can point out things and say hey I see this as a way of of you know that that’s hurtful to me in a way that I can see might be in your own sin against the Lord and that is a wonderful gift but it is incredibly hard to honestly self-examine our lives and so together as a church we’re going to go through the Book of Malachi together uh as a way of self-examination yes this is something that happened in a long time ago uh and uh in in Israel in Judah and God calls out a lot of uh of sins in the lives of his people uh but I think in seeing it it serves as that mirror to ourselves because I think we can see a lot of our own sin and a lot of our own failures a lot of the places where our own Hearts have grown apathetic and cold or lukewarm or we’ve forgotten our first love or we’ve even just become dead in our own faith we can see it through what God’s pointing out with uh with his people in Judah uh through his Ser his Prophet Malachi you know Malachi is uh was a prophet of the Lord that uh that lived uh somewhere between Ezra and Nehemiah uh people have returned from their captivity in Babylon uh the temple has been rebuilt we can gather that from the text itself uh the law of God has been rediscovered because it’s referenced here uh by Malachi uh but it was a harsh and it was an incredibly disappointing and disheartening and disillusioned time for the people of Judah what they were experiencing was difficult because according to what they understood from all the earlier prophets uh this is what these are the kind of things that they were expecting to happen as they came back from captivity and they rebuilt that they were going to they were going to experience incredible blessing from the Lord uh Ezekiel 34 tells us that the land would Rebound with miraculous fruitfulness Isaiah 54 the population would swell to a mighty throng these are the expectations that they have uh they said that in uh Jeremiah 23 the nations would R the nation would rise to Mighty esteem to the Glorious reign of a new David that’s the expectation they’ve got and that all nations would come to serve them again that was spoken through Isaiah that’s the expectation they have got but as they experienced life around them this is what they experienced realities on the ground were really in many ways quite the opposite the land was frequently under drought Malachi tells us a little bit in chapter 3 uh the population remained a fraction of what it had been before and the nation continued under under the thumb of Persia and its Governor this was a hard time they weren’t seeing the the the the fruits of all the blessing that they were expecting from God and so there is a sense of of apathy there’s almost a a sense of uh um you know that they that God may be there but he’s not here for us they weren’t seeing any real heartfelt connection with the Lord and because of it uh there was all all kinds of of sin that was taking place first you know it talks about the priest and uh we’re going to get into that in the later chapters as well because to as a result people had grown cold they went through the rituals with apathy at best at worst God calls them out for Clear deceit they were intentionally deceiving him they had become spiritually dead unable to see their own State and so God sent his messenger that’s what the word that’s what Malachi means by the way uh the name Malachi means my messenger God sent his messenger Malachi to wake them up to call them out of this spiritual death to reawaken them and call them back God was calling them back to himself to light that fire in their hearts for the glory of God in the world we’re going to walk through our own self-examination through God’s examination of his people through Malachi that our hearts might be renewed and our passion for the gospel might burn once again for the mission that God has called us to because it’s hard it’s hard and we all are prone to this we all find ourselves in times and seasons of of apathy or or bitterness or anger even against the Lord in times where we’re just kind of going through the motions and there’s no heart behind it whatsoever and so the Lord’s calling us back to him he’s calling our hearts to come alive Malachi 1 veres 1-14 there is lots of sins that God’s calling out uh but today we’re not going to get to those yet uh I’m not I’m not chickening out because yes it is about priest but uh uh it wasn’t just about priests it’s about everyone uh as well uh and and but so but and there’s going to be more mention of that later but for now I want to go with what God before he calls them out before he gets into all the wrongs and all the ways that they are just being deceitful and all the ways that they’ve failed before he’s listing these all out before them and even arguing with them right there’re they’re going to argue back uh this is what we’re told in verse two I have loved you says the Lord I have loved you that’s where it starts spiritual Revival spiritual Reawakening it starts there I have loved you says the Lord you know before we can receive correction before we can uh get real helpful feedback from people don’t you need to know that they love
you or at least respect you right or at least they care about you in some way if you received it if you reive feedback from people that are coming at it in a in a way that is just angry and they uh have they don’t really have your best interest at heart at all they’re just uh they’re just coming down on you that’s hard that that’s hard to receive we push push that away but when when you truly know that someone who’s who’s giving you this feedback who who’s giving you the this honest correction that they really love you and they’re doing it because they love you that you can receive that you can you you can it opens up our own Hearts to be able to hear and understand it and that’s what God’s beginning with he’s showing us this here he’s telling them before I go into all this stuff all these ways that that you have failed and you have grown cold and that you have become spiritually dead and therefore deceitful and and the ways that you have been uh that you have been trashing my name to the Nations by the way you’re behaving and the way that you’re treating me just going through all the Motions with no real heartfelt Devotion to me he goes what I need you to to remember is I love you I love you and out of this we can pull there’s four characteristics to uh to God’s love and I’m not I don’t have a whole lot of time to go into lots of depth but they’re they’re they’re so rich and so deep for us and the first thing we learned about this is that God’s love is Sovereign his love is Sovereign which means that God is King right God is King the scriptures declare it the heavens declare it nature itself declares it that God is the King which means he’s in control of all he’s in control of everything as Lord of all there is no necessity laid on him whatsoever nothing he’s King he’s Sovereign over all which tells us this that he loves because he is love that’s the only reason there’s no other reason there’s nothing compelling him there’s nothing forcing him nothing can force him he is under no obligation he loves because he is love there is in fact no definition of love we have no concept of Love apart from God and who he is that’s why in first John 4:10 that beautiful passage and this is love not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation to be the atonement for our sins he is love it’s his Sovereign right he chooses to do it he wants to love he is love the second thing we have to know about God’s uh God’s love is this that it is unconditional it’s unconditional Deuteronomy 7 verses 7 to8 Moses uh had this incredible observation he goes it was it was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you for you were the fewest of all people but it is because the lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery from the hand of pharaoh king of Egypt it’s not because you are many in number not because you were Mighty what this tells us is that the motivation for God’s Li God’s love lies entirely on his side God’s motivation for love is entirely on his own side uh for his own sake it’s not because of the people it’s not because of the people it’s not because of their good it’s not because of their their beauty it’s not because of their desirability it’s not because of uh how Mighty they were that God was choosing the front runner right right I mean how many people became are are Chiefs fans now right were you Chiefs fans 10 years ago no you weren’t uh now they’re exciting so I’m not bemoaning you but we like Front Runners right we we like to pick those who uh who show real promise and ability and they’re gonna you know but but that’s not God at all that’s not why he loves that’s not why he chooses to love it’s not because he saw possibility in them about what they could possibly become no he just loved them God loves where there’s nothing to love that’s who he is where there’s nothing that’s worthy of Love at least not worthy of his love which and it sounds bad but his is a wholly disinterested love in a good way disinterested in the fact that he loves us he loves his people because he wants to not because of our worthiness not because of our goodness not because of our desirability he loves simply because he would love because he is love you know i’ I’ve mentioned it before but I had a professor and uh at Seminary he used to talk about the gospel as God’s one-way love affair with Sinners that’s what the gospel
is the third characteristics is of God’s love is that God’s love is intimately personal I know these things sound basic but we’ve got to go back to the the basic if we’re going to have any honest and authentic assessment of ourselves and where we are because if we don’t get this if we don’t Embrace this if we don’t receive this then we’re just going to keep pretending and we’re going to keep pretending because we have to because a God wouldn’t possibly love us if he really knew who we were that’s what we think but that’s not who the god of the scriptures is that’s not who God has revealed himself to be and this God his love is intimately personal in Deuteronomy 10:14 to15 Mo Moses found it absolutely amazing that God to whom belong the heavens and the heaven of Heavens the Earth and all the that is in it should set his affection personally on Israel and Israel’s
descendants have you ever thought about that for
yourself God’s love is so intimate that Hosea depicted it as a father taking the arm of his son while still an infant to teach him how to walk using that that beautiful imagery of uh that God drawing his people with cords not with ordinary ropes those are the cords of love
love God’s love is incredibly personal for us do you stop to appreciate it has it just grown cold if you just has it become so commonplace and something so accepted that it’s lost its power in your own heart in your own life has God become impersonal has it become far cold has it become far away someone who’s just disinterested in you that’s not the god of the scriptures that’s not the god of the Gospel finally this characteristics God’s love is best uh analogous to the love between a husband and a wife uh willing to forgive the most and yet condone the least to forgive the most and condone the least at least in a a good marriage right um uh most generous and offering us pardon and acceptance while still maintaining his high standard of Holiness and righteousness to which he’s called
us that’s God’s love for us he calls us to the high
standard and yet he continues to love and forgive always that’s who he is that’s his nature that’s the characteristic of of God’s uh love for
us friends as we enter into you know this season together of honest assessment if it’s not just going to be going you can go through lent just with acts and rituals of piety and uh and say that you’ve been doing your part you’ve uh you’ve sacrificed something uh in your life to to uh to to make yourself worthy of of Good Friday and of the Resurrection uh but God doesn’t desire our sacrifices what he desires is a contrite heart a heart that needs him a heart that longs for him and that only begins when we Embrace first and foremost that he loves us and that he sent his one and only son end this world to save us that’s the beginning of of honest authentic relationship with the Living God let’s not take it for granted let us begin there and let us let him search our hearts let us let him uncover those places that we have been hiding from him those places where we’ve been just pretending that we might not be a spiritually dead people but a church and a people that are alive spiritually to God and awaken on fire for his gospel Ministry amen
