“The Lord's Displeasure” – FBC Morning Light (10/1/2024)

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Good Tuesday morning to you, and welcome to October. I hope our last quarter of the year is a good one, and that we remain productive and fruitful for the

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Lord. This is harvest month, right? October, time for harvesting, and I trust that it'll be a fruitful month of harvest, spiritually, as well as materially,

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I suppose. Today we're reading the last book of the Old Testament, Malachi chapters 1 -4.

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We're still going to have some Bible readings in the Old Testament, because there are some books of events that happened after the time that Malachi wrote.

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But Malachi, though it is an Old Testament book and the prophecy of Malachi was directed toward Israel, the

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Old Testament people of God, it's a timeless book. Some of the things that God speaks about in this book that he's not happy with are very contemporary, and I just want to point out three of those things in this book.

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The first, in chapter 1, the Lord makes it clear he's not happy at all with perfunctory, let's just get it done, worship.

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I'm confident that there are people who go to church, and they go just because it's the thing to do.

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They feel like they need to do it. They go, and they sit through the service.

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They may or may not participate, but when the service is over, they're out of there, they've done their duty for a week, and now they can go watch the football games or do whatever they want to do for the rest of the day, don't have to worry about it until at least next

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Sunday, maybe not even then. They just have that kind of a take -it -or -leave -it attitude.

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That's exactly the problem that the Lord addresses in Malachi chapter 1. The people had such a disdain for the worship of God, and yet they went through it.

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They went through the processes of offering the sacrifices, they offered blemished sacrifices, they did what they had to do because God said they had to do it kind of a thing.

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Their heart really wasn't in it. God isn't interested and pleased with that kind of half -hearted worship.

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He makes that clear in chapter 1. In chapter 2, the second thing that is very contemporary that God says he's not pleased with is those who profess to be his people and yet frivolously divorce their spouses.

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You see this in chapter 2 when the Lord says, this is the second thing you do, you cover the altar of the

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Lord with your tears, with weeping and crying. So he does not regard the offering anymore, nor receive it with goodwill from your hands.

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I'm not going to accept your offerings, the Lord says, even though you're all emotional in your offering of your sacrifices.

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And they say, why not? Why not? The Lord says, I'll tell you why. Because the Lord's been witness between you and the wife of your youth with whom you have dealt treacherously, that she is your companion and your wife by covenant.

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In that covenant relationship, verse 15 says, did not he make them one, having a remnant of the

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Spirit? The Lord is bringing out there the reality that the marriage vows create, and the covenant creates, a oneness, a union.

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The two become one flesh, and yet, they dealt treacherously with their wife and put them away.

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Verse 16, the Lord God of Israel says that he hates divorce.

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He hates divorce. Yet, here we are living in a day and age where divorce is an easy thing.

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You can just write up a paper, and if everybody agrees to it, you're done. Marriage is over.

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Some, of course, are far more protracted in the process, but it's a travesty when this disease, this social disease of divorce has so affected, infected,

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I should say, the church. I'm not talking about where there are potentially legitimate concerns and occasions for infidelity that is unrepentant of, and so on and so forth.

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I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the guy says, well, I found another woman. I don't want you anymore, and casts her aside.

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Or the wife says, I'm tired of putting up with you. I don't want to be your wife anymore.

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I'm divorcing you. They claim to be Christians. They claim to be Christians. God says he hates that.

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The third thing the Lord doesn't delight in, in the book of Malachi, we find in chapter 3, and that has to do with the giving of tithes and offerings.

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The Lord asks, will you rob me? Will you rob God? They say, how have we robbed you?

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The Lord says in your tithes and your offerings, you have kept for yourself, and you've spent upon yourself, you've consumed upon yourself your stuff, and you have neglected me.

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You have robbed me. The Lord says, you are therefore cursed with a curse. He challenges you, bring all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house, and try me now in this, if I will not open for you the windows of heaven.

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It's true that the Mosaic law requirements regarding tithes, and especially the sacrificial offerings, are not repeated in the

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New Testament. There's no tithe mandate for the New Testament believer.

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There are some who respond to that reality with an attitude that says, well, if I give to the church,

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I give to the church. If I don't, it's not a big deal. There's still plenty of precedent in the New Testament for giving, and giving sacrificially for the sake of Christ's work and the cause of the kingdom, but how many people faithfully give?

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That's the question. The Lord makes it clear that our selfish attitude that's expressed in the way we worship, our selfish attitude in our marriages, if we take them so lightly and frivolously, and our selfish attitude related to our giving.

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He's not delighting in that. He's not pleased with that. If we're guilty of those things,

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I suppose we better make some corrections and repent of it.

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We want to please the Lord. Lord, I pray that we shall. Speak to us through this little book of Malachi, we pray in Jesus' name.