Where Is the God of Justice? | Malachi 2:17-3:5

Scripture

• Malachi 2:17

About this sermon

Introduction: The postexilic community of God’s people at the time of Malachi, was in large measure, a disobedient community. They had spiritually wandered. They were spiritually compromised. And they were spiritually blind. Their mouths and hearts were full of complaints, as though God had been unfaithful to them, even though their lives were full of offenses toward God. It was they, not God, who had proven unfaithful. And yet, they think and speak as if they’ve been mistreated. They have denied God’s love to them. They have shown tremendous irreverence by polluting the altar with unfit sacrifices. They have dishonored God and denied their brotherhood by the way that they have treated each other. They have proven to be covenant breakers, clearly demonstrating this through the matter of divorce, and by marrying foreign wives. And now, in a shocking lack of self-awareness, they tempt the patience of God by claiming that God isn’t concerned about justice. WHERE IS THE GOD OF JUSTICE? It is a shocking thing when a sin saturated culture claims to want justice and accuses God of not delivering. It is a shocking thing when people cry out for God to deliver what they will, in fact, hate, and what will, in truth, destroy them. What we see in this section of the book of Malachi, has enormous importance for our own day. We live in a nation that is saturated with sin. The world has always been sinful. But even the Scriptures recognize and acknowledge that there are certain times in a city’s history, or a nation’s history, or the world’s history, when things are especially difficult. There are times when societies are especially debauched. When God, in His perfectly righteous judgment, takes the spiritual brakes off, and a culture runs into the darkness of its own depravity. We might want to argue that all times are alike, but the Bible doesn’t make that argument. And when we look at our own nation’s history, we see that we are in a time of severe debauchery. Homosexuality has never been accepted as normal behavior by so many as it is at the current time. Gender confusion has now been allowed to infect our culture’s thinking about everything from athletic competition, to how one will parent his or children. There are many who are working to expose our children at the youngest ages to the insane world of gender confusion. Arguments for abortion have in recent times attempted to defend infanticide when abortions don’t succeed, and the people making those arguments are in public service and remain in public service. All these sins that once were out of public sight due to shame, are now paraded proudly through the mediums of entertainment and in the platforms of political parties. And yet, in such a time — a time that surely invites the wrath of God —we hear more talk about justice than at any time in my life. Everyone, it seems, wants justice, but in claiming to want justice they expose their ignorance of justice. Do they really know what justice would look like? And do they really know what justice would mean for them? Tonight, we listen as God addresses a people who have no true understanding of the justice that they claim to want, and as He gives them His answer for what they claim to want.

Topics

• Justice & Mercy