Questions

In my last post I talked about my kids; how it bothers me when they aren’t grateful.  Truth be told, I, like Bill Cosby believe all kids are brain damaged.  It’s true!  How else can you explain a child who is caught red handed in the act of committing some offense and then when the punishment is handed down, they act shocked…dismayed…dumbfounded?  Me?  What did I do?  My daughter will even sometimes get angry and blame ME for being mean!  I particularly like that strategy because it shows creativity.  She’s brain damaged but creative.  So I can kind of understand how God must feel in Malachi 1 when he begins to excoriate his children.  He begins with some questions of His own:

Mal 1:6  "A son honors his father, and a slave his master. If I am a father, where is the honor due me? If I am a master, where is the respect due me?" says the LORD Almighty. "

Many of us like to call God our father, and He certainly is.  But God would like to know, if he IS your father when are you going to start loving and honoring Him in a way befitting a father?  For a smaller number of us it is easier to think of God as Master.  But if God is your Master, when are you going to start obeying Him?  In reality God is both our Father and our Master and we cannot have a right view of Him until we see Him from both perspectives simultaneously.

I think sometimes I like to toy with the idea of obedience.  Obedience is like recycling.  It seems like a good idea until I have to walk all the way to the garage to throw away the soda can, and then it just seems like a lot of work!   Obedience is a nice concept but when the rubber hits the road, sometimes I’m just not interested.  When I read Malachi, I’m caught red handed, and my bluff is called because God is calling me out.  The folks in Malachi, just like my kids, just like me, are incredulous.  How have we shown contempt for your name?  How have we defiled you?

God says that He is defiled because the people are promising to give the best of their flocks for sacrifice, but when the time for the sacrifice comes, they bring the diseased and sick from the flock to sacrifice instead.  They persist in this as if God wouldn't be aware of what they are up to.

I see a direct correlation here between the Israelites and us.  Like them we promise to give God our best, we promise to obey Him, we promise to give him the first part of our day, the first part of our income, the first part of us.  But often as I mentioned before, obedience is just a nice sentiment, it’s something we sing about in worship songs and talk about in small group.  Obedience is a slogan we mindlessly repeat without comprehending the meaning.  Reading the bible and spending time with God in prayer is important, I’m sure we all agree, but often God gets our leftovers or maybe nothing at all.  It’s almost like we thought he wasn’t really standing there seeing all of it right?

Apparently brain damaged kids grow up to be brain damaged adults.

I Have Loved You

The book of Malachi begins with these words from God speaking to you.  Four thousand years of biblical history have occurred at this point.  So many events: the creation of the world, the fall of man the flood, the exile the Exodus, the Kings, the prophets, countless wars, thousands of years of history.  We have reached the culmination of the time before the coming of the Messiah and Israel is about to be plunged into hundreds of years of silence from God.  God’s message is … “I have loved you.”

Why would God make this statement at this point in history?  It’s almost as if he is saying after all we’ve been through together, you and I; after all of it, I just need you to know that I have loved you.

I love that the statement is in the past tense.  I have loved you.  It’s not because he has stopped loving us.  It’s because we as children question our father, and not in a good way.  When things happen, life, circumstances, we tend to say, why God?  Why are you doing this to me?  Why are you allowing this to happen?

When we do that, we have forgotten the first thing, the biggest thing, and we need to be reminded.  God has loved us.  I talk about election a lot, and it’s because election is all through the bible.  Election is here as well.  Before the beginning of the world God loved you, and chose you. 

Think about adoption.  I know a lot of people who have adopted children.  When was the last time someone walked into an orphanage and the child said, you look like a fine person, I chose you to be my father or mother.  Silly right?  No, it’s the other way around.  The father walks into this world and out of all the chaos says, I chose this one to display my glory through.  Not because he’s in any way special, or deserving of this blessing but simply because.

Now this situation ought to make me the most grateful person in the world, knowing I deserved nothing but hell and yet was given everything.  But throughout history the response has not usually been one of thanksgiving and devotion.  It’s been one of cluelessness and complaint.  God, why did you do this to me?

As a parent there’s nothing that annoys me more than when my kids are ungrateful and / or bratty.  The reason is because I know how lucky they are to live the way they do.  To have the luxury of their biggest worry being how long they get to play the video game every day.  So when they are ungrateful it really bothers me.  I feel like I need to make them see differently.  I find that hard to do.

Imagine what it must be like to be God and to have to listen to his chosen ones complain…about everything…all the time. Imagine the frustration to be God and to have provided EVERYTHING, and to listen to the object of your grace berate you for their circumstances.  I don’t want to belittle people’s troubles.  Some people have real problems and the bible says we can come to God with these but how we come is important don’t you think?

One person in my small group challenged us all to abstain from complaining for a period of time.  I’m unexcited about this as complaint is like breathing for me.  It’s cathartic.  It’s part of me.  It’s wrong.  So this is me not complaining on day 1.  I’m skeptical.

I wonder how this verse, Malachi 1:2 might apply to you?

God I can’t hear you?     “I have loved you”

God why did this happen?           “I have loved you”

Why are things so hard?               “I have loved you”

God has loved you.  God loves you.  God will love you.  Today I will try to love Him back just enough to not complain.