Returning to God

These verses are the backbone of Malachi’s message, and Israel’s predicament. God declares His consistent, unfailing covenant love for His people. This love has sustained them through their time of Exile, and continues to sustain them in their present struggles.

The central issue that Malachi is addressing is the questioning of God’s abiding love and presence.

The people to whom Malachi is speaking are living in functional atheism. While they go to the Temple and go through the religious routines, they no longer believe that God is present with them, that He is concerned for them, or that He will act on their behalf. They have the form of religion, but have lost the relationship.

When all we are doing is religious routine, worship becomes a duty. We expect God to provide for us based on what we give Him - we want a “return-on-investment,” and when God doesn’t come through as we expect, we move our investments elsewhere - whether it’s our finances, our time, or our energy and our hearts.

This is why Malachi’s audience was bringing less than perfect sacrifices, less than full offerings, less than thankful hearts to their worship gatherings. They were experiencing tough times, and they blamed God for not coming through on His promises.

What expectations did you come with today? What expectations do you have of God’s blessing and provision? Have you ever felt that God has let you down, not come through, or questioned if your giving of your time and money to the church was really worth it?

Malachi 3:7–12 ESV

From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. But you say, ‘How shall we return?’ Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say, ‘How have we robbed you?’ In your tithes and contributions. You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you. Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need. I will rebuke the devourer for you, so that it will not destroy the fruits of your soil, and your vine in the field shall not fail to bear, says the Lord of hosts. Then all nations will call you blessed, for you will be a land of delight, says the Lord of hosts.

It’s not about giving...

The temptation for me in preaching this passage today is to make it all about how much money you should be putting the offering plate. That is part of the issue at hand, but the issue of giving is secondary - it is a symptom of a deeper problem that needs to be addressed.

Malachi is pointing to the fact that the people are out of fellowship with God, and they need to return. This is a passage about turning our lives back to God.

Before we discuss giving to God, we must settle the issue of turning to God.

Malachi 3:7 (ESV)

From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. But you say, ‘How shall we return?’

The accusation that God levels against the people is that they are taken a different direction, they have left the path, they have wandered away. The Hebrew word there means to turn aside, defect, rebel.

Exodus 32:8 (ESV)

They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them. They have made for themselves a golden calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’ ”

Malachi is here reminding the people that their behaviour and their experience are nothing new…this has been the pattern.

But remember, God says, “I have and continue to love you....and I, YHWH, I do not change; therefore, you, sons of Jacob, you are not consumed.” Though the people of God are habitually unfaithful, God remains faithful.

2 Timothy 2:13 ESV

if we are faithless, he remains faithful— for he cannot deny himself.

It’s about turning to God

The solution to the problem isn’t increasing your giving, putting more in the offering plate.

The solution to the problem is to “return to me.”

The Hebrew word “return” occurs 1050 times in the OT. It is the twelfth most used verb in the Old Testament.

Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament 2340 שׁוּב

To be sure, there is no systematic spelling out of the doctrine of repentance in the OT. It is illustrated (Ps 51) more than anything else. Yet the fact that people are called “to turn” either “to” or “away from” implies that sin is not an ineradicable stain, but by turning, a God-given power, a sinner can redirect his destiny. There are two sides in understanding conversion, the free sovereign act of God’s mercy and man’s going beyond contrition and sorrow to a conscious decision of turning to God. The latter includes repudiation of all sin and affirmation of God’s total will for one’s life.

Again, the audience questions the need. “How shall we return?” (3:7b). LIT: “In what shall we return?” As we saw last week, and throughout Malachi, these are not questions of honest seeking, but of incredulity. In the context of the ongoing questioning and doubting of God’s love and justice and presence, the question conveys the sense of “Really, we’re here in Jerusalem, we have RETURNED from Exile. God, you brought us here… So what are you getting at? We think we’ve done enough considering our circumstances and your obvious lack of blessing.”

It’s not a question of honest seeking, of surrendering to God’s purposes. It’s another question tinged with scepticism.

If at the very heart of the matter we doubt God’s love and loyalty, if we question His justice, if we presume upon His provision, we will always seek to control our lives and define the limits of our surrender to God. It’s not about the amout of money, it’s about the totality of our lives. It’s about recognizing that the direction our lives are heading is dragging us away from God and His purposes, and making a decision to stop and reorient everything in our lives to His ways.

The call to “repentance”, is a call to a life of repentance.

Lexham Survey of Theology Repentance

As Luther famously put it in the first of his Ninety-Five Theses: “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent,” he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.” The reason for this is that, although Christians have already received the benefits of justification through the merits of Christ in terms of their standing in righteousness before the Father, they are still burdened by the “desires of the flesh” prior to glorification. Hence, the Christian life is one of continual striving, in faith, to “put to death the deeds of the body” in order to “live by the Spirit” (Rom 8:13).

AND it’s about giving…(3:8)

A life of growing surrender to God and His ways looks very different. How we relate to one another and how we manange our resources will undergo significant changes as we continuae to grow in our awareness of God’s presence and purposes. As the Gospel changes our hearts, our priorities follow.

When Jesus called the first disciples, He called fisherman to leave the only life they knew and join Him on an adventure they were not looking for.

Mark 1:16–20 ESV

Passing alongside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.” And immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going on a little farther, he saw James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, who were in their boat mending the nets. And immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed him.

Mark 3:13–15 ESV

And he went up on the mountain and called to him those whom he desired, and they came to him. And he appointed twelve (whom he also named apostles) so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons.

Everything about their lives radically changed the moment they left their nets and their family to follow Jesus. Their priorities changed. How they would spend their lives changed. Everything changed when Jesus called them - they “repented” of the life they knew for the life to which Jesus called them.

Mark 8:34–35 ESV

And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.

How are you investing your life right now? Where is your time spent? How do you decide where to invest your finances? How much of a say does Jesus have over your life?

Jesus doesn’t ask us to join a club that meets once a week for an hour, throw some money in a plate, maybe read the Bible for 10 minutes a day, and volunteer for an activity at the church building. He calls us to a life of devotion to himself as Lord and Saviour, where all that we are, all that we do, all that we hope for is centred on His glory. He calls us to be so taken with His presence and love and freedom, that we can’t help but praise Him and orient all of our energy and resources for His Kingdom purposes. He calls us to life by surrendering our life. Have I really trusted Jesus with my life, right here, right now; or am I still the one in control of my stuff?

Are you convinced 100% that God loves you? Do you deeply believe that in the end His justice will correct every wrong of history according to His righteousness? Does your faith rest firmly on the unchanging covenant of love that God relentlessly persues with His people? What are you holding back from God? Why?

The people Malachi addressed showed up to church. They brought offerings, but they weren’t the best - not what God asked. They gave financially, here and there - if they could afford it. Their attitude was that they had done enough for God, but God hadn’t done enough for them. They doubted his love. The disbelieved His justice. The believed He had left them and no longer cared or acted to bless.

But God never changes. His love endures. His justice reigns. And He continually invites us to return to Him, to be more concerned about our relationship with Him than anything else.

RETURN TO ME AND I WILL RETURN TO YOU

This is nothing less than an invitation to relationship with God. To a people who were skeptical and jaded, God invites them to simply, yet profoundly, return to Him - to be reconcilled to Him. He welcomes us back in His grace and mercy and forgiveness.

2 Corinthians 5:14–21 ESV

For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

On the Cross, Jesus satisfied the unchanging justice of God and revealed the unchanging love of God. Reconcilliation with God is freely available to everyone. It’s not about how much you give, or how much you do, or how good you live; it’s about the returning to God.

Closing Song: Doxology - acapella

Benediction

Ephesians 3:20–21 ESV

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

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