Those who trust God will never be put to shame.
My challenge is to help you trust God more and more. Those who trust in God will never be put to shame. In fact, there are a lot of benefits when you are trusting God in your day to day life.
The first benefit of trusting God is that you get blessed.
The premise of Malachi is that there is such a thing as divine favor. There are distinct blessings and curses laid out in scripture.
Romans 8:28 (NIV) says,
"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." This is speaking of divine favor. It explains how something that would otherwise be tragic becomes a blessing in disguise, something with a silver lining.
But
Malachi 1:4 (NIV) describes something altogether different.
"Edom may say, 'Though we have been crushed, we will rebuild the ruins.' But this is what the LORD Almighty says, 'They may build, but I will demolish. They will be called the Wicked Land, a people always under the wrath of the LORD.' "
In
Malachi 2:2 (NIV) God warns the priests,
"I will send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings. Yes, I have already cursed them, because you have not set your heart to honor me." Malachi 2:2 is describing what happens when something occurs that looks like it is going to be really good; a new relationship, transfer, or opportunity. But the good never materializes. In fact, something that looked so good ends up being a curse in disguise.
What's at issue? God works for the good of those who love him. God says something like, "I have already cursed you. But why? Because you haven't set your heart to honor me. In
Malachi 3:7 (NIV) God says,
"Return to me, and I will return to you." In
Malachi 3:10 (NIV) he says,
" 'Test me in this', says the Lord Almighty, 'and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.' "
God wants your heart to be engaged in this thing. There is a general blessing that falls on all people. God causes his rain to fall on the righteous and on the unrighteous. But there is a specific outpouring of blessing that you can only receive as you return to God, set your heart to honor him, and love him.
The second benefit of trusting God is that others get blessed.
In scripture, both blessings and curses fall to our descendants. God says as much in
Malachi 2:3 (NIV).
"Because of you (priests)
I will rebuke your descendants." Big surprise. In
Malachi 2 the men were forsaking their marital vows. As a consequence, a whole generation of godless children emerged. Domestic violence became epidemic. Financial hardship befell the whole nation. Their worship became ritualistic and void of power.
As a people, for better or worse, we are in this thing together. You may not think that your neighbor's sins are any concern of yours, but I assure you they are. You have a stake in how things go in this culture. This is why we ought to be praying for and seeking the common good, the very best, that elevates your fellow man. We shouldn't want any evil to befall our neighbors. We should be praying for godly marriages and for fiscal discipline at all levels of society. We should be praying against debt, dependency, gambling, wars, and the mass slaughter of innocents. We should be praying against abortion, against laborers being defrauded of wages, against the oppression of widows and orphans, foreigners, the weak and infirm, and against environmental destruction. We should be praying for liars, perjurers, adulterers, and corrupt men to be made accountable. These aren't political issues, these are spiritual issues-- for which we have a stake.
Our sins don't just stain us. Our sins stain everything around us, starting with our children, and extending to our children's children. When your neighbor stumbles and falls, you pay. But here is the silver lining. When we're blessed, it overflows to others. Blessing begets blessing, life begets life, and light begets light.
Trust in God maximizes the blessing for ourselves and for others.
The third benefit in trusting God is that God gets blessed.
What does God want from us? Here is a sampling.
Malachi 1:5 (NIV) tells us that God wants for the world to say,
"Great is the LORD-- even beyond the borders of Israel!" In
Malachi 1:6 (NIV) God asks,
"If I am a father, where is the honor due me? If I am a master, where is the respect due me?" In
Malachi 1:14 (NIV) God says,
" 'For I am a great king,' says the LORD Almighty, 'and my name is to be feared among the nations.' " In
Malachi 3:12 (NIV) God promises,
" 'Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land,' says the Lord Almighty." In
Malachi 3:18 (NIV) God tells us,
"And you will again see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not."
When we trust God, God becomes bigger and greater and more relevant than ever in the eyes of the world. But if God is becoming smaller and less relevant, it's because we've not trusted God-- at least not in a way that matters, or that is personally costly.
The less we trust God, the less we see God, and feel God, and know God, and taste his goodness. And the less we trust God, the less other people see God, and the less they are blessed, and the darker our world becomes.
Even though my job is to help you trust God more and more, the sad reality is that many Christians, perhaps most, are trusting God less and less. So using
Malachi let me briefly highlight four areas of our lives where we can demonstrate greater trust.
We can set the example of doing the right thing.
God accuses the Israelites of causing many to stumble. They're not following his ways. They are showing partiality in matters of the law. They are committing violence against one another and are not walking in peace and uprightness. They are oppressing the widows and the fatherless and they are not advocating justice for the weak and defenseless. They are speaking falsehood and are committing perjury. They are defrauding the working poor of proper wages.
It takes courage to stand for God and to do the hard things. More specifically, it takes trust to know that God has our back. He has our back as we speak the truth and confront lies, as we hold out the words of life, and as we take our stand against evildoers.
In the New Testament, it says that light drives out darkness. Light is infinitely more powerful than darkness. The truth sets you free. Christ promises the gates of hell shall never prevail over his Church. He who is within you is greater than he who is in the world. But as Christians, we're not exactly known for our boldness. When it comes to doing the right things, we're having an identity crisis. We're timid and weak, fearful. We're looking for the world to give us a makeover at the precise moment the world most needs to see the glory of God in the face of Christ.
We don't become more relevant to the world by endorsing evil, or worse, by participating in evil. We become more relevant by doing the right things, the hard things.
We demonstrate Christ by being faithful to our families.
God accuses the Israelite men of breaking faith with their wives, and not fulfilling their responsibilities to their wives. In the book of
Malachi you have the example of actual widows, whose husbands had died, and left their widows in need. But you also have practical widows, whose husbands for all practical purposes were dead. These were husbands who had forsaken their marriage vows and who had left their children emotionally and physically fatherless.
This General Petraeus thing has become a real debacle. He was supposedly the greatest man of our time, the cream of the crop, and the best of the best. Where have all the good men gone? Why is giving into sexual sin a given, instead of the lone exception, as in years past?
I find it interesting how Malachi ends. In
Malachi 4:5-6 (NIV) God says,
"See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with the curse."
It takes courage to stay in a marriage. It takes courage to stay engaged as a father, as a mother, as a husband, or as a wife. When we stop trusting God, we start looking for shortcuts and start making really stupid choices.
Divorce isn't a single choice. It's the culmination of hundreds, even thousands, of stupid choices. Choices to break peace, not make peace. Choices to withhold forgiveness and escalate violence and hate, instead of loving. Choosing to be served, to make demands, to insist on one's rights and needs, and to control instead of serving. Choices to covet, and lust, and flirt with danger instead of discovering joy and contentment.
We demonstrate trust in God by unleashing God's generosity on others.
In
Malachi 3:8-9 (NIV) God says,
" 'Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me. But you ask, 'How do we rob you?' 'In tithes and offerings. You are under a curse-- the whole nation of you-- because you are robbing me.' "
Burglary or theft is stealing from someone who is absent or away. Robbery is much more brazen, and is done in full view of the victim, in their very presence.
We rob God when we stand in the presence of God and keep for ourselves what belongs to God, not acknowledging that he is the owner of all things.
We rob God when we keep for ourselves the very resources he's intended for the needs of others, for the furtherance of his gospel, or for the expansion of his kingdom.
We rob God when our sacrifices stop being costly, when our sacrifices don't take faith, when we give what is easy, comfortable, crippled, diseased, blind, or lame. It takes courage to trust God in our finances. But what does it look like to trust God? And how does God respond when we trust him?
We demonstrate trust in God when we are serving God, even when it's costly.
Malachi 3:13-15 (NIV) says,
" 'You have said harsh things against me,' says the LORD. 'Yet you ask, 'What have we said against you?' 'You have said, 'It is futile to serve God. What did we gain by carrying out his requirements and going about like mourners before the LORD Almighty? But now we call the arrogant blessed. Certainly the evildoers prosper, and even those who challenge God escape.' "
Here again, it takes courage to trust God with our service. A lot of times we want instant gratification. But what God desires most is faithfulness, perseverance, and steadfastness. He wants us to keep our hand to the plow even in the hardest of soils, when the going gets tough, and when it seems we've exhausted every ounce of energy. God's faithfulness isn't the problem. Trusting God less and less is the problem. Trusting God more and more in doing the right things, in staying faithful to our wives and families, in living generous lives, in serving God-- trusting God more and more is the solution!
The end of the matter.
Listen to what God says in
Malachi 3:16-18 (NIV).
"Then those who feared the LORD talked with each other, and the LORD listened and heard. A scroll of remembrance was written in his presence concerning those who feared the LORD and honored his name. 'They will be mine,' says the LORD Almighty, 'in the day when I make up my treasured possession. I will spare them, just as in compassion a man spares his son who serves him. And you will again see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not.' "
Don't you love the sound of these verses? Do you like this idea of people seeing a clear distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not? And why don't we see this kind of distinction between the Church and the world? The reason we don't see this kind of distinction between the Church and the world is because not everyone in the Church trusts God.
An atheist is someone who denies God's existence. But there are different kinds of atheists. Intellectual atheists deny God in their thoughts. They think God is a delusion. But there are practical atheists too. And practical atheists far outnumber intellectual atheists, especially in the Church. For all practical purposes, practical atheists have denied God by the example of the way they live their lives. Instead of trusting God more and more, they trust God less and less. They have form of godliness, but deny its power. They don't trust in doing good in their families, their finances, or in their service.
The practical atheist complains, "It's a burden to make sacrifices. It's futile to serve God, to stay in this marriage, and to stay engaged with my family. It's the evildoers who have all the fun and get all the breaks."
I defy you to distinguish between a died-in-the-wool atheist and the Christian, who for all practical purposes, doesn't trust God in these practical areas of life. Both of them live equally unblessed lives. They make God appear irrelevant.
But there is a clear distinction between those who fully trust God, and demonstrate that trust in their actions, their marriage, their families, their giving, and their service from those who just pay lip service to God. Night and day's difference!
Ultimately, it's up to you to trust God. For this past month, we've been challenging this church to trust God in the area of finances. We believe that God has set a big mission before us of blessing the nations. But the mission starts with faith, as we trust God in the common things.