To those who say ‘It is futile to serve God’

Speaking arrogantly against God. What might that look like?

‘You have spoken arrogantly against me,’ says the Lord.

‘Yet you ask, “What have we said against you?”

‘You have said, “It is futile to serve God. What do we gain by carrying out his requirements and going about like mourners before the Lord Almighty? But now we call the arrogant blessed. Certainly evildoers prosper, and even when they put God to the test, they get away with it.”’  Malachi 3:13-15

So that’s what it looks like. This is what it sounds like.

I don’t see the point in following God. What do I get out of it? I have to follow all these rules that stop me doing what I want to do and for what? God wants to take away all my fun and I don’t seem to benefit from it at all. Look at all those people who take no notice of God and have the time of their lives….and they seem to have it all! They’re getting away with doing whatever they want. Why would I not follow their example?

And when so many people around us are thinking this and living this way, it’s hard not to get sucked in and start questioning in this way ourselves, isn’t it?

But that kind of thinking starts in the wrong place. It starts with us and what we think we deserve, what we can get out of whatever decision we make, whatever effort we make. For me, the thinking has to start with God: with who God is and what God has done. Then the gratitude flows and the natural desire to trust and obey wells up inside the soul.

God sees. God knows. And God will remember all those who trust Him and obey Him and serve Him in this way.

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 honoured his name.  Malachi 3:16

The day is coming when we will see the difference between those who serve God and those who do not. God has promised this and so it will happen.

So stop comparing your life with anyone else’s. Stop focusing on the success of others. Just walk your path and trust God to do the rest.

Just picture this.

But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays. And you will go out and frolic like well-fed calves. Malachi 4:2

I can’t wait to frolic like a well-fed calf!

And this is how the book of Malachi ends. This is how the Old Testament ends.

See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction. Malachi 4:5-6

A day is coming. A new dawn.

A day of restoration and reconciliation for some and a day of judgement for others.

The whole of the Old Testament has been a journey. God has clearly shown His people a new way of living, a new relationship with the divine. He sent His law on tablets of stone. He set leaders anointed by Him to lead His people. He sent prophets, His messengers with warnings for the people.

And sometimes His people have chosen to walk in His way, His truth, His life. And other times, not so much.

And now God’s people stand poised on the edge of a new revelation. They are relying on God’s promise of a new deliverer, a new Prince of Peace.

Four hundred years pass between the end of the book of Malachi and the book of Matthew: four hundred years! That’s about sixteen generations…..the stories and laws and traditions and promises will be passed on from generation to generation to generation to generation….

Waiting….waiting…..waiting….waiting…..waiting for what is to come.