Sermons

Though God tells the people of Israel that he loves them and calls them to return, they answer him back no fewer than six times: when has he loved them, and how are they to return? In Judah, after the death of King Josiah, the wicked persecuted the righteous and still no judgment came, so the people mocked God’s silence and counted repentance as futile.

God is silent not because he is unaware of their sin but because he is waiting for the time of judgment. When wrongdoing goes unpunished at once, people lose their fear, like those whose conscience has been seared, and grow ever bolder in sin; yet the moment he lifts his hand, there is no further chance. Even in this silence God kept putting questions to them, bearing with them patiently to the very end.

A faith that merely repeats its forms, without good character and genuine repentance, finds no forgiveness. The righteous must live by faith alone, even in suffering, and fix their eyes not on the prosperity of this world but on the eternal Kingdom. Remembering the day when they will stand before the judgment seat, they need to take hold of the last chance God gives and turn back.

The church has reached its twenty-second anniversary. The message set two things side by side: the scene in which Jesus gave his disciples a new commandment, telling them to love one another and to love as he had loved them, and a vision of being lifted by grace to the summit of the mountain of sin while those around were falling as they tried to climb it.

The new commandment is not a demand to wear oneself out in service and giving; it is a life of self-sacrifice, lived for the sake of others. Many attend church while their spirits remain parched, and to know of that thirst and pass by, the sermon said, is to break the commandment to love one another. The vision carried a further word: the mountain of sin cannot be scaled by human strength, and can be ascended only by a hand reaching down from heaven.

A day will come, it was said, when every worldly rank and outward show is stripped away before Christ and the soul alone stands before him. Even the most impressive devotion may be burned up in the fire, but a life of quiet love and prayer in a lowly place will remain like pure gold. The sermon closed with the assurance that those who love one another as the new commandment teaches can become a holy people, blessed by God.

When the priests let the world and its idols capture their hearts, they lost their fear of God, and the people withheld their tithes. The Levites were driven back to their fields simply to survive, while the people divorced, married foreign wives, turned to divination, and wronged the widow, the fatherless, and the stranger.

What God sought was not money but true faith and a life set on living by his Word. If tithes are brought while justice, mercy, and faithfulness are neglected, the gift is no more than a means of prospering in the world, and not a righteous offering that God will accept.

God told his people to bring the whole tithe and then put him to the test. To those who obey, he promised to open the windows of heaven and pour out blessing until there is no room to hold it, and to guard them from the locust and from failed harvests. A life of honest giving, which helps the poor and enables the church to do its work, is itself the holy and living sacrifice God desires.

The animal sacrifices the priests brought could never wash away sin, so Jesus came in person, taking on a body, and offered himself as the atoning sacrifice. When Abram returned from rescuing his nephew Lot, Melchizedek king of Salem came out with bread and wine and blessed him, and Abram gave him a tenth of the spoils.

The bread and wine Melchizedek brought point to the body and precious blood of the Lord. Abram gave a tithe of his own accord, before there was any Law, because he already believed that all he owned, and his very life, had come from God. Jesus became an eternal high priest after the order of Melchizedek, and by conquering death and rising again he forgave the sins of his people once for all.

God’s people are forgiven not through any human being but through the blood Jesus shed, so their offerings and their service are nothing more than a confession that acknowledges this grace. Because God does not change, those who hold fast to his covenant will not be shaken. They must become people who fear God, with upright faith and godly lives.

A man and a woman make their vows before God and become one flesh. Yet the men of Israel abandoned the wives they had married in their youth, who had shared their hardships, and took foreign women in marriage. It was in this way that Solomon set the idols of foreign women beside the temple, and for that sin the kingdom came under judgment and was torn in two.

To put away a wife is not simply a matter of parting; it is a betrayal of the God who joined husband and wife together. That is why God would not accept the sacrifices and offerings they brought. Even so, they could not see what they had done wrong, and demanded to know why the God of justice did not judge.

When God does not punish sin at once, it does not mean he has forgiven it; he is waiting patiently and giving room to turn back. No one should presume on that patience; it must be met with repentance. When those entrusted with a household are faithful in their responsibilities to one another, God keeps that household safe.

A priest works at the altar of burnt offering and the altar of incense to make atonement for the people, and at the root of that office is the covenant of life and peace made with Levi. God said that the priest’s lips should keep knowledge and that the people should seek the law at his mouth. But the corrupt priests took bribes, offered sick sacrifices, and did not teach the people the truth.

Because the priest is the messenger of Yahweh, the word he delivers determines whether a soul goes to heaven or to hell. This is because the people do not meet God directly but learn the word through the priest. So God said he would spread the dung of the feast sacrifices on the priests’ faces and cast them away, as if thrown outside the tabernacle.

This judgment falls not on the priest alone but on his family and on all the people. Saying that everyone else does the same is no excuse, and because God does not change, sin is still sin. When the covenant is kept with a faith that says, “If I perish, I perish,” God supplies everything that is lacking.

The priests keep the healthy animals for themselves and bring God only the sick ones. God laments that he would rather someone shut the temple doors altogether.

Israel had learned of God’s greatness through the history of their forefathers and had known his protection at first hand. Yet instead of giving thanks, they despised his name and his law, and as his kindness and mercy continued, they went so far as to answer him back. The Gentile nations, by contrast, had suffered God’s judgment themselves and so feared him more than Israel did; and God foretold that this would one day lead to a work of faith in which the Gentiles would receive Christ.

People may be deceived, but God cannot be. Even when hunted by Saul, with his life hanging by a thread, David trusted God as his Father and held fast to a faith that turns back to him. God’s people must put away the folly of brazenly doing before God what they would not dare to do even before an earthly governor, and by faith in Christ choose the narrow way.

The priests bring defiled offerings to God and still answer back, asking how they have defiled him. They kept the healthy cattle and sheep for themselves and picked out only the sick and the blind to lay on the altar.

This shows contempt for God’s name and his glory. To offer God what no one would accept even from another person, and not to see that it is sin, is what a hardened heart looks like. Sin does not go away simply because God does not judge it at once.

When a priest ministers wholeheartedly, it is the same as serving Christ well. A heart that gives its best to the powerful of this world, yet counts the cost and begrudges what belongs to God, needs to be examined. The message ends here: God is to be served wholly, with honest worship and honest giving.

Esau could have inherited his father’s estate and lived at ease, yet he treated his birthright lightly. God warned that he would tear down whatever was built, but Esau did not turn back. Insisting that he could live by his own strength, he set himself against God.

A work carved from stone keeps its shape for many years, while one shaped from sand gives way to a single wave. Faith built firmly on obedience to the Word endures like stone, but a faith that is full only on the outside scatters as easily as sand. Edom boasted of its own strength, yet when God took away the hedge of protection, it collapsed of its own accord and in the end vanished from history.

Those who have received God’s warning must not make excuses but must turn back. The prodigal son was welcomed when he returned to his father, and in the same way, when what has been built keeps falling down, it is a sign that God is knocking, calling his people to draw near to him again. Those who live according to God’s will, without pride and without doubt, will receive the very love and blessing that Jacob received.

Before the prophet Malachi began his ministry, the people of Israel had returned from exile and rebuilt the temple. Yet a hundred years passed without the glory they had hoped for, and they began to doubt God. They held back their tithes and offerings, the priests fell into corruption along with them, and divorce and marriage to foreign women went on.

A God who did not give them plenty was no longer their king, so they mocked him without fear. Yet the judgment that followed was no sudden whim on God’s part. It was the fulfillment of the word he had spoken long before through Jeremiah as a warning. The story of Jacob and Esau is no different. Esau thought so little of grace that he sold his birthright for a bowl of stew, and in doing so he threw away the blessing himself.

God always gives warning before he judges. His warning is given not to rebuke but out of a love that seeks to restore. Those who stop complaining that their present circumstances are not prosperous, who receive even hardship as God’s love, and who repent and give thanks, will find that very place turned into a place of blessing.

Edom was set among rugged mountains, a stronghold from which it could drive back even the mightiest enemy. Yet on the day Babylon invaded the southern kingdom of Judah, Edom did nothing to help its brother nation. Instead, it joined in the plunder and handed over those who tried to escape.

Edom was judged not for any lack of strength, but because it did not love its brother. Ever since the Exodus, God had called Edom a brother and kept them under his protection. Once they prospered, however, they grew proud, sided with whoever held power and abandoned their brother. In the end they suffered exactly what they had done to Judah, betrayed by their allies and by Babylon alike.

Edom vanished without a trace, but God’s covenant with the descendants of Jacob remained unbroken even after hundreds of years. Standing by while a brother suffers is also sin. God repays each person according to what they have done, and that judgment leads on to the judgment that will one day come upon the whole world.

Jesus died on the cross, but by the power of God he opened the tomb and rose again. At that place of resurrection, those who had been held captive by death received great grace, just as the woman suffering from a fever and the widow had received grace.

What collapsed was death, not God’s promise. This was not a threat made by people but a purpose planned long ago, fulfilled just as it was, and those who have met Christ no longer have any reason to fear the world.

There was a disciple who shared bread in the temple and still betrayed Jesus, and there was a disciple who swore to follow him even to death and then denied knowing him three times. But Christ, who knows even that weakness, held on to them to the end, and those who believe in the resurrection come to live with boldness instead of fear.