Covenanter Witness Vol. 54 - Rparchives.org

nant."
messenger"
way"
ples"
comforter"
old"
righteouness"
have nothing to do with little Billiken,
and all his tribe.
Trying to Serve Two Masters
Rehoboam tried to please God and
play with idols at the same time. As a
result, he paid tribute to Shishak. Shi
shak left his story of this victory carved
in relief on the walls of Karnak. He
claimed to have put under tribute one
hundred and fifty-six cities and villages,
many of their names are found in the
Old Testament. Solomon's advice to his
son, written as we believe in his old
age, seems to carry an undertone of la
ment. He could see too late that Reho
boam was following the evil part of his
father's life. He was gathering heathen
wives and playing around with their
idolatrous idols. And Solomon had
named him Rehoboam, Liberator. The
name for which he was not trained did
not help him. After a reign of seventeen
years of trying to serve two masters, he
left to his son Abijah part of a divided
kingdom, and that was under heavy trib
ute to a foreign king. His story ends
with this unflattering comment (12:14) :
"He did evil, because he prepared not his
heart to seek the Lord."
After the opening chapter of Ecclesi
astes, read 12 :1, "Remember now thy
youth,"
Creator in the days of thy and
then in the 11th chapter, "Rejoice, O
youth,"
young man, in thy and see if you
do not see in all of that book and in
Proverbs, an undertone of regret for his
failure in his own life and in his influ
ence on the life of his son.
PRAYER MEETING TOPIC
for April 20, 1955
THE PUNISHMENT FOR SPURNING
Psalms :
GOD'S LOVE
Rev. Roy Blackwood
(Mai. 2:17 through 3:6)
19:1-5, page 40 Call to Study
37:1-5, page 91 Prosperity of Wicked
145 :9-13, page 351 Either return God's
love or spurn it
Thus far in the book of Malachi, "My
Messenger"
has proven three things:
First, God's love for Israel ; second, Their
failure to return that love by fulfilling
their duty to God; and third, Their failure
to return that love by fulfilling their
duty to their fellow Israelites. When
God's chosen people began neglecting
their duty to God by refusing to follow
His directions for His own Worship
Service (the touch-point of religion and
fountain of all service to God), it led
them to neglect and refuse their duty to
their fellow man
even their wives
and now their self-centered minds begin
to see God as they
evil.
themselves are
Their actions and thoughts cul
March 30, 1955
minate in words, blasphemous words,
and Malachi said, they "weary" God
(2:17a; cf. Is. 1:14; 43:24; Eph. 4:30).
But again they deny God's charges with
an insolent, "Wherein have we wearied
Him"
Prove it! And Malachi obligingly
gives them three specific instances (2:7).
(1) They had said that the man who
does evil isn't too bad in God's sight;
in fact (2) God likes such a man, prob
ably because He "loves all mankind,"
and finally (3) they began to say God
was only a God of love not a God of
judgment. This last idea (3) developed
into a bold question; "Where is the God
of judgment", that pointed to the
source of their problem. The Israelites,
with God's particular revelation in their
hearts had returned from bondage and
sacrificed and saved and worked hard
to rebuild their city. But instead of pros
perity, came poverty; instead of peace,
came war; because God was more in
terested in
rebuilding character than
city. Then the Cadillacs and vacations
and prosperity and ease of their Godless
neighbors began getting into their eyes
and filling their hearts, and finally com
ing out in their mouths in the form of
these three complaints against God; (1)
God must like these wicked men or they
wouldn't prosper. (2) He probably loves
all men enough to tolerate sin. (3) There
isn't any such thing as absolute justice,
and never will be!
As a lesson to us when we're tempt
ed to think any of these things, God ac
cepts their challenge. He was wearied of
having His precious love
kicked and
abused and refused. He had given man
one marvelous proof of His love after
another: The wedding gift of Eden; the
choice and "marriage" of Abraham; the
away"
"going gift as they left Egypt and
their trousseau for the desert trip; a
new home in "the promised land." He'd
given them children and He sent them
one special messenger after another to
tell them verbally
of His law and love
and promise to send His Own Son to
be a child of their race. Malachi stood
before them at that moment. His whole
message and his very name proved God's
love "My
surely no one
could refuse him. But they were doing
it, so God proceeds to speak plainly of
the punishment for spurning His love.
He promises that after sending a Mal
achi to "prepare the
(3:1), He'll
come himself, and there's a note of irony
in the promise that the Lord of judg
ment whom they "questioned" (2:17 last
question), would appear: first as the
Lord of their Temple, and second as the
long expected "messenger of their cove
God promises a strict and dis
criminating justice by using the words
"refine," "purify," and
"purge."
("full
ers soap" may have been borax v. 2).
The preachers or "sons of Levi" as first
to offend (1:6-2:9) would be dealt with
first (3:3 cf. I Pet. 4:17) and the con
gregation second (3:5).
The PURPOSE of this punishment
was God's purpose in sending Malachi
to us
repentance. He did not come to
make us suffer, but to make us re
pent. (Lu. 9:56) They had been wor
shiping and serving God in other ways,
because they had to, not because they
wanted to return His love. It had led
them to give God their worst instead of
their best (1:13,18; cf. Lv. 1:6; Is.
29:13). God didn't want any ritual of
law performed without thought, He
wanted "an offering in
(3:3); a humble heart, willing hands, a
hearty spirit that would make their of
ferings "pleasant unto the Lord as in
the days of
(3:4). He was weary of
their going to sleep mentally and phys
ically the minute they sat down in the
pew; He wanted an alert mind to reason
with.
In His conclusion (3:5,6) God again
assures them that their bold request
to see "the God of judgment" (2:17)
would be answered by a "swift" (liter
ally a sudden) witness who would also be
a just judge. (Christ is both witness
and juge!! Ps. 50:6,7).
God puts His
finger on the source of all their sins
and stupidity, their insolence and ignor
ance, their unwillingness to accomplish
their duty to God or theii; duty to man,
with the words; "They fear not me,
saith the Lord of hosts" (3:5).
John 16:7-11 could be used as the
N. T. text for this O. T. sermon. All
the law givers and prophets including
Malachi and John Baptizer, revealed our
sins to us (Rom. 3:20) and told us facts
about God, but those were only "sam
compared to what Christ told us
about our sins and showed us about
God. HE was the perfect example of life
without sin and the perfect manifesta
tion of God's love and righteousness; the
perfect lawgiver and perfect prophet.
But Christ, in turn, pointed to "the
who would "bring all things
remembrance"
to (our)
by convicting us
(1) of sin, (2) of the righteousness of
Christ, and (3) of judgment.
If Moses was the great lawgiver,
whose purpose was to tell us what was
and was not sin in God's eyes; and the
earlier prophets were the great describers
of Christ's righteousness, then Malachi's
work, the last in the O.T., more
nearly resembles the work of the Com
forter than does any other. He vividly
and bluntly describes our sins as God
sees them. He describes God's love
of choice and of justice, ii the right
eous actions and decisions of a Christ
who is yet to come. He tells us plainly
of the coming
judgment when sin and
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