Sometimes, we head off in our own direction - and then we discover, at some point, that we’ve strayed so far away from God's plans for our lives. We’ve all done it. You have, I have. And yet the amazing thing is that God always, always provides us with a way back home. Always.

 

Israel’s Dilemma

Over these last few weeks on Christianityworks, we’ve been looking at what it means to take God at His Word. Sometimes it can seem that God’s promises are just too good to be true. An abundant life full of blessing and we think, “Oh, yea – right!” But it also seems that some people who meet Jesus end up living out this abundant life of blessing, and well, others don’t. Why is that? I believe that one of the key factors of living a victorious life through our relationship with Jesus Christ is taking God at His Word. Because when we see all the troubles of life; when we see the struggles of life, sometimes it’s just too good to be true.

Today we are going to look at overcoming adversity, by taking God at His Word and it’s a special kind of adversity – it’s an adversity that we bring on ourselves, because sometimes we go through tough times as a direct consequence of our own actions and choices and behaviours. Bad choices, wrong motives, wrong thoughts, wrong behaviour have consequences. If I spend too much money on my credit card there are going to be financial consequences. If my wife Jacqui and I don’t spend time together, there are going to be consequences in our relationship.

We have to live out those consequences and a number of times through the Bible we see this principal “as we sow, so shall we reap”. It’s a spiritual, emotional and physical principal that free choice has consequences and we have this good and loving Father who lets us bear the consequences of our sin. The sin of gluttony – if we eat too much, we put on weight, we get lethargic, we get disease. What we eat and how we eat has a direct impact on our lives. There’s a cause and effect relationship – as we sow so shall we reap. And sometimes our own choices and decisions bring us to a place of adversity. Now, please, it’s not always like that.

If you read the story of the blind man – the man who was blind from birth, in John’s Gospel, chapter 9. Here was this man who was blind from birth and the disciples said to Jesus, “Well, who sinned - this man, his parents? What sin caused this man to be blind?” And Jesus said, “It’s no one’s fault; there’s no sin. This guy is blind so that I could heal him.”

And as I look back on my life, it’s certainly true. Sometimes I have done things that have brought consequences on my life, and have brought times of adversity. Sometimes it wasn’t my fault at all but today we are going to look at that specific form of adversity that comes when we are living out the consequences of our own sin. And when we are in that place; when we are in that place of adversity, how do we get out of it, how do we deal with that? What is God’s way? What is God’s wisdom for us?

We are going to go to the last book of the Old Testament – the Book of Malachi, chapter 3 and we will be looking at specifically verses 6 through 12, so if you have a Bible, go and grab it, open it up – it’s the last book before Matthew’s Gospel. It’s a short book – only a few pages long, and we are going to see the relevance of how God provides us with the road back.

Now in this particular passage, (you may have heard this passage a lot of times in your church) we are going to read just right now, verses 8 through 12. And it says this:

Will anyone rob God, yet you are robbing me? But you say, “How are we robbing you?

And God answers:

“In your tithes and offerings. You’re accursed with a curse for you are robbing me; the whole nation on you. Bring the full tithe into the storehouse so that there may be food in my house and thus put me to the test,” says the Lord of Hosts. “See if I won’t open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing. I’ll rebuke the locusts for you so that it will not destroy the produce of you’re soil and your vine in the field shall not be barren,” says the Lord of Hosts. “Then all the nations will count you happy for you will be a land of delight.” says the Lord of Hosts.

Now in a lot of churches you hear that particular verse quoted and it says something like this, “If you tithe your income; that is if you give a tenth of your income to church, then God will open the windows of heaven and bless you. Now there is truth in that because there is a spiritual principle that "as we sow, so shall we reap", and if we sow abundantly into God’s Kingdom then God will bless us abundantly. The problem is that we can take this verse on its own out of context, and all of a sudden God becomes like a slot machine. You know, we put a coin in and we pull the handle and the money flows out the bottom, and that’s not what God intended because this passage comes in a particular context; it comes in the context where Israel was supposed to be getting blessed.

You know, they started off with the promise of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and Jacob had twelve boys and the whole of that family ended up in Egypt and they grew into a large nation and God took them out of slavery through the Red Sea, through the exodus of forty years in the desert into the Promised Land – the land that He had promised to Abraham. They went through a time where Judges ruled the land and then kings and then Israel split into two nations and because they were unfaithful.

In 586 BC, the Babylonian empire overran Jerusalem, destroyed them, took them into captivity for seventy years and then God brought them back after the seventy years. Now the exiles were turned back and you’d think they’d have it all sorted out by then, but they continued on with their failure to obey God.

There’s several wonderful pictures in the Books of Haggai and Zachariah, that once they come back from their Babylonian captivity that God will bless them - you know, God will pour out His blessing on this land, material prosperity. If you look at Zachariah chapter 8 verses 1 to 8, there’s this sense of the captives streaming back into this land of abundance. Yet, the completion of the temple – they rebuilt that – it hasn’t ushered in all this blessing. They had an expectation of blessing but instead of blessing, there’s Persian domination; there are hostile foreigners, there are plagues, there are droughts, there are locusts – it’s that like our Christian walk? God promises this enormous blessing and sometimes we turn around and say, “But, hang on a minute, this isn’t a blessing at all – this is hell – all these bad things are happening to me. God, why are these bad things happening? What’s going wrong? We are going to have a look at exactly what God tells Israel, next.

 

God’s Perspective

Well, there was Israel; they were back in the Promised Land again. They’d had prophesy after prophesy of blessing and all of a sudden they discover – they turn around and say, “Life is actually awful. Life is not going well at all.” Have a look what Malachi writes in chapter 3 verses 13 to 15:

You have spoken harsh words against me, says the Lord, yet you say, “How have we spoken against you? You’ve said it is vain to serve God, what do we profit by keeping His command or by going about as mourners before the Lord of Hosts? Now we count the arrogant happy; evil doers only prosper but when they put God to the test, they escape.

In other words, things were not going as well for Israel as they expected from the prophesies that they had been given.

Now Malachi is the last of the Minor Prophets, the last book of the Hebrew Canon – the Old Testament and it’s a monologue from God. It’s God’s perspective; God points them to the problem and He gives them the solution. And here’s the problem – let’s just move quickly through the Book of Malachi and have a look what God says. In chapter 1 verse 2, He says this:

“I’ve loved you,” says the Lord, “but you say, “How have you loved us?” “Is not Esau Jacob’s brother,” says the Lord, “Yet I have loved Jacob but I have hated Esau. I have made his hill country desolation and his heritage a desert for jackals.” God says ‘I have preferred you;’ when He says ‘I have loved Jacob,’ He is saying ‘I have loved you.’ God says, “I love you, yet you show contempt for God’s love.”

And then you look further down, in verse 6, and He says:

Look, a son honours his father, and servants their master. If I then am a Father, where is the honour due to me and if I am your master, where is the respect due to me? , says the Lord of Hosts, to you. O priest who despise my name. You say, “How have we despised you name?” By offering polluted food on your alter and you say, “How have we polluted it?" By thinking that the Lord’s Table may be despised. When you offer blind animals in sacrifice, isn’t that wrong? Oh, that someone among you would shut the temple doors so that you would not kindle the fire on my alter in vain.

They weren’t putting God first – they weren’t giving God their best. The whole sacrificial system was set up so that animals would be sacrificed – a blood sacrifice – to atone for sin. Now we don’t go through that any more because Jesus is our blood sacrifice; Jesus died for us. We are forgiven through that sacrifice but that wasn’t the case back then and God had commanded them to give their best – their first fruits, their best animals, their best food in sacrifice. And these people were giving God their second best or their third best a