| Andrew Lim
11 May 2008 - Malachi 1:6-14
The God we believe in is not an abstract force
The creed goes on to say: “I believe in God the Father"
The Bible reveals God to be the Father and Lord of creation
James describes Him as “the Father of the lights”
The Psalmist refers to God as
“Father of the fatherless and protector of widows / 10:14
Hosea writes tells us that the fatherless find mercy in Him / 14:3
King David says / “When my father and my mother forsake me,
then the LORD will take me up” / Psalm 27:10
And as for our Lord / The fatherhood of God is constantly on his lips
From the time He was twelve when He said
He had to be about his Father’s business / Luke 2:49
Until the very end of his earthly life
when He was on the Cross and dying
He commended his spirit into his Father’s hands / Luke 23:34, 46
Between those two incidences
our Lord affirmed God as His Father / many times over
When Jesus revealed God to us / He revealed God as Father
Jesus speaks of God as Father some 160 times
When Jesus taught us to pray
He taught us to address God as our Father
He warned us / “Call no man your father upon the earth
for one is your Father / who is in heaven” / Matt. 23:9
He called God by using an extremely intimate term “Abba”
In John's gospel alone he called God “Abba” about a hundred times
“Abba” / it was an Aramaic word
When a baby starts to stammer
one of the first words she will probably say is “Dada”
and the Aramaic equivalent of Dada / is “Abba”
The Jews / you would have heard / would never speak the name of God
they may spell out the letters for you / they may write it out
but they would resolutely not speak the name of God
- far too holy to be spoken / far too sacred
God's name should not fall from the same lips that speak evil
So when Jesus started using this word to refer to the Father
he scandalized the people / he offended them
that / for the Jews / was a blasphemy
And yet repeatedly / he spoke of God as his “Abba”
Jesus is right here teaching us something very precious
God is our Father / in every true sense of the word “Father”
He has been raising sons and daughters for thousands of years!
He knows our weaknesses / our needs / our sorrow
He keeps our tears in a bottle
He has in His book the date / when you will be taken home to glory
He is compassionate / He makes no mistakes
No matter to which race you have been born
into which nation / which particular set of parents
which family order / which economic status
you can be assured He has your welfare foremost in His heart
But does God’s Fatherhood make everyone on the world His children?
Is God the Father of every person on earth?
Of course we all belong to the same human family
And people who have not come to Christ
are also given to enjoy the benefits of the Father’s love
God gives what is called “common grace” / freely to all people
The Word says / “He make His rain fall on the just and the unjust”
He gives all people everywhere air to breathe / water to drink
fish from the sea / and crops from the land
He is father of all in the sense that we are all dependent upon him
He chose that date of our birth
He has chosen the date of our death
But it stops there
Only in that narrow sense are all people brothers and sisters
Some people think that because the Bible talks
about God as Father of us all / then as one big happy family
we’re all going to heaven together
They begin with God the father / and end up with universalism
But Jesus is insistent that not everyone is a child of God
Remember the day the Jews came to Jesus / John 8
They said to Jesus:
“We are descendants of Abraham / Abraham is our father”
They thought they could appeal to their common ancestry in Abraham
Jesus turned to them and said to them / “If you were Abraham’s children
you would do the things Abraham did
But as it is / you are determined to kill me
a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God”
“But we are not illegitimate children” they protested
“The only Father we have is God himself”
Jesus said to them / “If God were your Father / you would love me
No / You belong to your father / the devil
and you want to carry out your father’s desire
He was a murderer from the beginning / not holding to the truth
for there is no truth in him
When he lies / he speaks his native language
for he is a liar and the father of lies”
Right here / once and for all / Jesus put an end /to any sweet sentimental idea
that God is the Father of all human people
The Bible does not define sonship in biological terms
Not all children are God’s children
There are children of light and there are children of darkness
We are not born children of God / No one is born a child of God
We are children of God through faith / not genetics
Through genetics / we are children of wrath / Eph 2:3
And children of God and children of darkness
do not share the same destiny
This is partly the reason
why when God prohibits Christians from marrying non-Christians
he says / “What has light in common with darkness”
Offensive? / to be sure / But isn’t that what Jesus does all the time
He delineates / He draws lines
He separate what is not His / from what is His
But it isn’t only God Who sets Himself and His own apart
People themselves / set themselves apart
I think of two groups of people / who aren’t at all excited
about the of God being our Father
First there are some radical feminists / who believe
that we should get rid of this idea of God the Father
And there are radical Christian feminists / as well
I think of Virginia Mollencott and Rosemary Reuther
Reuther wrote books like Women Church and Sexism and God Talk
She is aggressively opposed to patriachalism in religion
she’s opposed to the idea of God as Father
She says it is one of the causes of all the abuse in our world
And she believes things can only change
when the idea of God the Father is put on the shelf
She prefers to refer to God as Father and Mother
But she does not understand that when the Bible speaks of God as “He”
the pronoun is primarily personal and generic
not necessarily masculine and specific
When the Bible talks of God as “He”
it is not saying that God is masculine as opposed to feminine
It is saying that God is personal as opposed to impersonal
The God of the Bible is a sexless God
Not because sexual differentiation isn’t important to God
But God / because He is not human / He isn’t confined
to any single sexual gender
And calling God Father has nothing to do
with petty issues about masculinity / femininity / and sexism
Having said that it is vital to note that Jesus said
He who has seen the Christ has seen the Father / not the Mother
C. S. Lewis: says if a reformer came to us
and said that we might just as well pray
“Our Mother Who art in Heaven’
and if he suggested that we speak of the Trinity
in terms of / Mother / Daughter / and Holy Spirit
If we did that / says Lewis
we will no longer have the Christian faith but a very different faith
Lewis goes on to say
that other religions have their goddesses and their priestesses
But that’s not Christianity
Christians believe that God Himself has taught us
how to speak of Him / and we can’t say “It does not matter”
Lewis says the masculine imagery is inspired of God
They are not of human origin / It is not arbitrary and unessential
(Lewis, God in the Dock, 236-237).
There is a second group of people
for whom the comparison of God as father is largely unhelpful
These are people who’ve had negative memories of their own fathers
- their fathers may have been violently abusive and tyrannical
- they may have abandoned them and their mothers at an early age
Franz Kafka the playwright / had an overbearing father
- in his own home / he felt petrified
- he never felt safe / when his dad was around
And his diary carried this very painful line
“I was a mere nothing to you
- in front of you / I lose all my self-confidence”
In his novel The Castle / Kafka describes this fatherlessness
as the intense experience of having an absentee landlord
- never visible / never trusted / but always demanding
And George Bernard Shaw
the well-known playwright / had much the same background
He had a most irresponsible father / he described him as a “stuck man”
He was a gardener / but often he would skip work
and run off to play cricket
His mother was a distressed and overworked little woman
And as the years dragged on / and the pain of poverty grew more acute
she realized / more and more
that God the Father on whom she had relied upon and counted on
was also playing at his sort of cricket
in some remote quarter of the starry universe
And what B. Shaw saw / inoculate him from seeing God as Father
And the day came when Bernard Shaw decided
once for all to have nothing to do with God
In the same way that he rejected his father / he rejected God
For these people / the image of a father / does not express someone
who is compassionate / loving / caring
Rather it works to convey the very opposite idea
It gives them a picture of someone
who is negligent / uncaring / unpredictable / violent and unfaithful
Maybe some of us / imagine God to be a distant God
- indifferent but always demanding spiteful / grumpy and grouchy
Maybe some of us / imagine God to be a stern / austere Judge
- standing overbearingly above us / in an attitude of disdain
- holding in his hands / a gigantic set of weighing scales
- unscrupulously weighing our bad deeds
against what little good deeds we may have done
Dr Bruce Narramore / Associate Professor of Psychology
at the Rosemead Graduate School of Psychology in California
tells us that in one counseling session
he asked a woman to describe her father:
She replied: “He is loving / kind / just / and a fine gentleman
but I feel he is so distant”
Some weeks passed / And in their next counseling session
Dr Narramore asked this same woman
to tell him about she thought about God
This was what she said:
“He is loving / kind / just and omnipotent but He seems so distant”
Now isn’t that significant!!
She used almost the same identical words
in describing God / as she did in describing her own father
It is not uncommon for people who do not have great fathers
to have difficulties relating to God as Father
And a father who is consistently detached from his child
creates in his child a feeling of being abandoned
And it becomes harder for such a child to believe
that God loves and cares for him
But God’s grace has been sufficient for many such people
and there are people / who though / having had less than loving fathers
have found wholeness and healing
There are a good number of people
who have come from fatherless homes
but have experience healing / fullness and wholeness
Many of these people later in life take special care
to make sure their own sons and daughters
are brought up in family
where the father’s influence is warm and caring
But for now / back to the Creed / “I believe in God / the Father”
And the question we want to explore is this:
How do we respond / knowing God is our Father?
How would God want us to respond?
How would we respond? How should we respond?
Think about God as Father
He comes to us as Someone strong / loving / wise / and caring
He is the very source of our existence
He holds our life in His hands / pumps air into our lungs
He feeds us from His hands / He pulls you out of dangers unknown
When we think of God providing for us / and protecting us
having our welfare in His heart / keeping us secure
having a plan / purpose and destiny for us
of course we respond in carefree trust
we can throw ourselves on Him / knowing He cares
And such a response brings delight to God
for it is an indication of our trust of Him / our belief in Him
But is there a much deeper response God is looking for
Let me put the question this way
How does God want children to respond to their father and mother?
When I put that way / you know what I am looking for
Surely the most well-known relationship / between a child and his father
is that so clearly demanded of in the 5th commandment
“Honor your father and your mother” / Exodus 20:12
In the same way that God wants us to honour our father and mother
He wants us to honour Him
To honour means “to price”/ “to cherish” / “to value” / “to treasure”
- you could place an honour on someone
like you place a price on something
It means to place a high value upon / to hold in high opinion
The ancient word for honour / was a word
that described something that carried a heavy weight
The person you honour exerts a great deal of weight in your life
he exerts an influence over your life
And this / was what God as Father / looked for among His people in Israel
And this / is what God as Father / is looking for today from you and I
Honour!
If there is one consistent sad story in the Bible it is this
God looked for honour from His people / but mostly He found none
Again and again / people rebuffed God / spurned His Fatherhood
when they ought to have honored Him
His people went about professing God to be their Father
In Malachi 1 / God says:
“A son honours his father / and a servant his master
If I am a father / where is the honour due me?
If I am a master / where is the respect due me? / Mal 1:6
Listen to some of these very touching words from the lips of God:
“Sons and daughters have I reared / and brought up
but they have rebelled against me
The ox knows his master / the donkey his owner’s manger
but Israel does not know / my people do not understand” / Is 1:3
Many Christmas cards depict the ox and ass
having their place by the infant Jesus / as part of the Nativity scene
But where do they actually come from?
The Christmas narratives of the New Testament do not mention them
The ox and ass are not simply products of the pious imagination
The Fathers of the Church / like Francis of Assisi
saw in those words of Isaiah a sign /pointing to a new people of God
who unlike Israel / will receive Him as Father
If people have been blinded before as to Who God was
this child in the crib will open their eyes
to recognize the voice of their Master
But largely / the story of God is often the story of love spurned!
Hosea 11:1-4
When Israel was a child I loved him / and out of Egypt I called my son.
But the more I called them / the further they went from me
They sacrificed to the Baals / and they burned incense to images
It was I who taught Ephraim to walk / taking them by the arms
but they did not realize / it was I who healed them
I led them with cords of human kindness / with ties of love
I lifted the yoke from their neck / and bent down to feed them
But my people are bent on turning away from me
They call me the Most High / but they don’t truly honor me
My heart recoils within me
My compassion grows warm and tender”
You cannot not be moved by those passionate imageries
I loved him as a child / I called out to him
I taught him to walk / I took him by the arms
and many other such imageries
Malachi the prophet recorded these words from the lips of God
You called me Father / “If I am your Father where is my honor?”
God the Father loved his people / but they spurned his love
God says “You despise my name / You belittled Me
“You offered polluted food upon the altar” v.7
You’ve been shoddy with your gifts
You’ve not hesitated to give me trash and garbage
We dishonour God / when we give to Him / what is defected”
In Numbers 18 / we read of people who gave God their very best
the first fruit of their harvest
the best oil / the best grain / the best wine / the best fruits
- the cream / the very best / is what we ought to give to God
But as time went on
The people found it hard to go on giving their very best
This was when their heart began to change
They brought polluted food / blind animals
sick animals / lame animals / blemish animals
They found / that giving God the best
became a costly commitment so they began short-changing God’
Here in Malachi’s time / the people mock God by their giving
They gave the leftovers
They gave what had little value in their eyes
And God says / in Malachi 1:8
“When you offer blind animals in sacrifice
when you offer those that are lame or sick / you dishonour Me”
They were / bringing the worst to God
- hobbling creatures / some blinded on one eye
- maybe a scraggy calf / or a weak lamb
- some with an ear torn off and others infected with some sickness
And so the farmer and wife will consult each over at the dinner table
they will say / “That one won’t fetch much in the market”
Let’s give it to the Lord”
And they laid these blemished animals on God’s altar without a scruple
without so much as a second thought
It was not only valueless / it was blasphemous
The prophet Malachi actually said in 1:8
“You know that diseased animal you placed on God’s altar !
Now you try offering this to your Persian governor in your city
Now you do that / and you come back to me / and tell me
if he sees this animal as a beautiful addition to his flock
or whether he considers your gift as an insult?
Surely what is not good enough for a Persian governor
is not good enough for the Lord of hosts
Shouldn’t we be very ashamed to offer to God
what we are ashamed to offer to people
By what they offered to God / dishonoured God
whom they called their Father
Of course when people come to God with a gift / an offering
God examines the giver / before He examines your gift
God looks at your heart / before He looks at your gift
People who are polluted inside / cannot offer pure sacrifices to God
So God examines the giver / before He examines your gift
But after He’s examined the giver / he examines the gift
Do our gifts / honour God?
Or do our gifts speak of our casual disdain of Him
Does He look at our gift with disfavour
Do our gifts show that we esteem Him highly?
Do our gifts speak of our honour of Him?
Do we give to him the leftovers / the residue
the sweeping from the threshing floor
after the wheat-grains have be saved and bagged
One pastor in London
preaching in a Keswick Convention many years back
preaching through the book of Malachi / said
that over the many years that he’d been a pastor
he’s had so many old pianos offered to the church / he said
they could have filled the basement of the Royal Albert Hall
What’s happened is that these people
are buying a new piano for themselves
and it’ll earn them virtually nothing to have the old one sold
so the most convenient way out is: “Let’s give it to the church”
What have we come to?
Why are so many of us giving to God the spare change
the tricklings / the residue / the scraps at the bottom
after we’ve stashed away / the very best for ourselves
Can we still call it a gift?
I believe that some of the gifts we bring to God / is so utterly shameful
when put beside some of the very fine gifts
that we lavish on people we want to please or impress
I pray that this is not true of us here
For it is a symptom of a people / whose love for God has shrivelled
David said: “I will never give to God / that which costs me nothing”
Giving is not sacrificial giving / if it does not hurt you to give
God looks for the kind of giving that costs us something
If a thing means little to you / it will mean little to God
Give of your best to the Master / give Him the cream
Give to Him / what will honor Him
Let us give Him the cream / we settle for the left-over
One morning about some years back
the Lord prompted me to ask this question
And with it / I shall close / It is this:
“Consider the money that you give to God each week
After taking a careful look at it
could you find a nice little box / wrap it up with care
tie a ribbon over it / and hand it into God’s hands?
If you could / then you will bring Him honor
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