Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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Introduction
Have you ever had to explain something to someone who should have, or could have known the answer.
This happens in movies a lot.
You want to show someone this awesome movie, and two seconds into the movie they’re like who is that?
What are they doing?
Where are they?
What is going to happen?
What is the major plot twist?
And you’re like, just watch and you’ll figure it out!!
The Israelites ask God a bunch of questions that they should have known.
They’d seen the movie, but they didn’t get it.
4 questions from Malachi:
4 questions from Malachi:
Do you really love me, God?
1:2-3.
Kind of weird.
But it’s like when your dog sees you petting another dog and gets sad and jealous and you are trying to explain to him how much you love him and you say, I love you so much that dog means nothing to me I hate him.
This is the point God is making: He chose Israel.
You could have chosen any dog, but you chose your dog.
God could have chosen any nation, even the nation of Edom, but he didn’t.
He chose Israel.
But - when God chose Israel, he made a deal with them, called a covenant.
And they broke the covenant.
Does it really matter how I live?
1:6, 12-13
God commanded them to live a certain way, but they chose to do otherwise.
They thought God’s commands didn’t matter, or that they were too hard.
It was unreasonable.
A lot of it revolved around their worship: They were offering the wrong kind of sacrifices.
Why does that matter?
Because, ultimately, it showed that they really didn’t care what God thought.
It matters how you live because you were created by God and his character demands our complete devotion: no halfway Christians.
Can you think of a time your parents asked you to do something that you wanted to do? Like, hey you need to eat something, go get a burger.
If I obey that command, then it could be that I love them and recognize their authority, but it also might just be that I wanted a burger.
But there was one time that my parents told me to eat some broccoli, and I refused to do it.
They said I couldn’t leave the table until I ate it, so I stayed up until like midnight not eating my broccoli.
Which proved that I didn’t recognize their authority.
And if they didn’t care about the Creator, then they def wouldn’t care about his creation.
v. 10
The way we live matters because it affects other people.
The way they thought about God affected the way they thought about others.
If we’re all children of God, if we’re all created in his image, then we wouldn’t treat each other the way we do.
Why isn’t God listening to me?
2:14, 17
The marriage thing is an example of how they don’t keep their promises and hurt people in the process.
It is the same with God.
They pretend like they want justice, but they have everything exactly backwards.
It’s so easy to assume we’re always right.
The danger only grows as you get older: You learn more stuff and you think, man I know a lot of stuff.
These other newbs don’t know anything.
Instead of asking, “where is the God of justice?” what if we asked, “Am I following the God of justice?” (fight with parents, trash talk during sports).
Do I really need to change?
3:7, 13-14
God commands them to repent and they’re like wait a minute, why do I need to repent?
For people who have grown up in church, who have “always been” Christians, this is a massive temptation—to assume that you’re good and you don’t need to change.
If you follow Jesus, you need to be constantly returning to God.
In reality, the Christian life is not a straight line toward Jesus.
It’s more like a series of returnings.
Mostly, we don’t change because we don’t believe God has our best interest at heart.
We think that we won’t gain anything by serving him.
And the truth is, it shouldn’t matter—we follow God because he’s God, not because he gives us stuff.
But ultimately (not necessarily now) following God is the best way to live life.
Judgment and Mercy: the Good News of the Cross.
At the end of chapter 3 and the beginning of chapter 4, Malachi talks about God’s mercy and his judgment, both concerning the day of the Lord.
The day of the Lord is this idea that comes up in the prophets a lot - that one day God is coming, and when he comes, it means the destruction of all evil in the world and the salvation of his people.
In the New Testament, the Day of the Lord is interpreted in light of Jesus.
Jesus brings the Day of the Lord, but not in the way everyone thought.
On the great and terrible day of the lord, God himself came to earth, he poured out his wrath on all evil, and he saved his people, protecting them in his mercy, but he did all of those things AT THE CROSS.
The cross is the perfect intersection of God’s justice and his mercy.
The fundamental problem for the Israelites Malachi is speaking to is a problem of belief.
That’s why they ask so many questions.
They don’t believe God loves them.
They don’t believe God is to be trusted.
They don’t believe God cares about how they live.
They don’t believe God’s standards apply to them.
And they don’t believe God is going to do anything about it.
I want you to believe - believe that God loves you, that Jesus died for you, and that knowing him means radically changing your life to match his.
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