Morling Tuesday Chapel: The day is coming

Speaker: Darrell Jackson

Scripture: Malachi 3:16-4:6

Trivia: The German Bible only has 3 chapters of Malachi!

V1: Various interpretations: “Ah look! Surely! The day is coming!” All interpretations emphatic, leaves no one unsure! The best and worst of times! A season of light and darkness! “Destruction”: a cliff-hanger. Fire can be good or bad. 2013 the fire accidentally started by ADF destroyed many homes. 2015 with snow in the Blue Mountains, people cuddled together in the bonfire for comfort. The day of fire is both threat and comfort.

V4-5: “Remember Moses, expect Elijah.” They have forgotten the story that were given to them by Moses! In 2005, missiologist Alan Hirsch made a sermon that talked about the trend towards the death of the institutional church by 2025.

http://www.missionstudies.org.au/page/conference-report/

Institutional centres of worship still dominate the landscape. Be cautious before writing off the institutional church. 400 years after Malachi’s prophecy, the temple was still there. The body of Christ does not need to be constrained by the institution though. Faithful story keeper and storytellers keep alive the stories that anticipate Elijah. The reward for the faithful remnant: “He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents.” There is hope.

For you, will it be a warning sign, or a consuming fire?

Morling Tuesday Chapel: A Consecrated life

Speaker: Beth Jackson, Sole Pastor of St. Ives Baptist Church

Scripture: Malachi 3:6-18

First half of Malachi 3: The people of God were weary and worn-down and half-hearted. These worn-down people’s worship wasn’t pleasing God.

Malachi was there to call them back, to their original intent as the people of God.

Most people use today’s verses in reference to tithing.

People keep progressing then falling back. Eg. Joshua leading the people into the Promised Land.

The role of a minister in a faith community is to continually draw God’s people back to the centre. It is an ongoing work.

The people asks for concrete examples: “How do we return to you?”

Let’s begin with the tithes. The people were giving blemished tithes. The people were just covering their bases, but their hearts were not in it.

They were still reserving the best for themselves, “just in case”. “We’ve given up everything for you, Lord. But just what if you don’t come through?”

There was a time in the UK where Beth was paid so little in her ministry work that she was having financial struggles bringing up her children.

“Tithing is biblical, but not Christian. Tithing is simply not radical enough for the kingdom of God.” God wants the best of us, all of it. Justice, mercy and faithfulness.

“Return to me and I will return to you.”

Many people do not stay in ministry for long. Tragic when once faithful servants of God turn away from God when they become disillusioned and the cost just seems to high.

“Great is the reward”: closing in hope. “In the fullness of time, those who have remained faithful, they will be mine.” A Consecrated life.  

Morling Tuesday Chapel: “Where is the God of justice?”

Speaker: Rev Dr David Starling

Scripture: Malachi 2:17-3:5

2:17: “Where is the God of justice?”: Do we really want that question answered?

3:2: “Who can endure the day of his coming?” The silver furnaces were not nice places to be. God as a refiner’s furnace is an uncomfortable confronting image! The process is not a sweet and beautiful thing, but the product is lovely. Launderer of the ancient world were out of town. The process stinks: putrefied urine you soak the clothes before you wash, or strong caustic paints, etc. Seriously traumatic images! Who’s going to come out of this intact?

3:5: The image of a court-room. God is coming to bring justice comprehensively, not selective justice! “I will be quick to testify”: It is you who God will be putting on trial.

3:3-4: There is a different between purifying silver and burning rubbish. The “silver” serves in integrity and uprightness. Some people only talk about the bible as forgiveness of sins. It is the creation of a people who worship God rightly.

God not only redeems, but also reconstitutes us. Some people describes forgiveness as “gift”, and the consecration (worship and service) as “payback”. That is not right. Both are privileges, not “payback” for what Christ did on the cross. God in his kindness, forgives our sins, redeemed us out of trouble, and gives us the great privilege to offer our lives up in worship.

First page of the Gospel of Mark quotes from both Isaiah and Malachi. Isaiah is a promise spoken to Israel in the situation of exile (salvation, homecoming, deliverance). Malachi is a promise given to people on the other side of the return from exile (people becoming weary, cynical, so this involves confrontation). Both promise points us to Jesus. The Messiah comes without warning!

We, even Christians, can feel the temptation to live as if God didn’t see and didn’t care. The temptation to the quiet half-hearted insincerity that goes through the motions of what you do, as if there is no presence of God in our lives.

Morling Tuesday Chapel: the man who hates, and divorces his wife

Speaker: Rev Dr Anthony Petterson

Scripture: Malachi 2:10-16

Unfaithfulness in marriage can have devastating consequences. Recently, a Pastor have resigned due to unfaithfulness in marriage, and this was announced a week before a church plant. It was in the same week as when Barnaby Joyce denied his affair.

God’s ways are the best. The people in Malachi’s days have forgotten this. The book is a series of disputes that the people have with God, and God have with the people. The relationship has broken down. It began with a failure to see God as loving them. They were offering second rate sacrifices and treating the Lord with contempt. The priests’ hypocritical lives were making people stumble.

V10: “Do we not all have one father? Did not one God create us?”

V11-12: “Judah has been unfaithful… marrying the daughter of a foreign god.” People were marrying outside the covenant: women who worship foreign gods. Original Hebrew: These men “bowed” themselves to the daughter of a foreign god. In this way, they profaned the national covenant at Sinai. Against this intermarrying because the nations will turn your children away to serve foreign gods. 1Kings 11: “King Solomon loved many foreign women… these women turned him astray… Solomon did evil in the eyes of the Lord…” This is a religious issue rather than a racial one. After all, there are many incidences of the OT celebrating the marriages of Israelites to foreign women, who even form part of the family line of the Messiah. It’s not a problem to marry foreign women who are Yahweh worshippers. The Israelites described in Malachi were putting their desires above the Lord’s requirement. They desecrate the holiness.

Christians are to marry those who are Christians. Do missions, but not missionary dating. Sometimes we may end up married with an unbeliever anyways (eg. someone who you thought was Christian but didn’t keep his/her faith). We won’t be made unholy by this, and have the potential to bring faith to them.

V13: “You weep and wail because you are no longer with favour”. Sin always hinders our worship. The people in Malachi doesn’t get it and just asks “why the Lord doesn’t look at us with favour”. Marriage is a covenantal relationship, witnessed by God.

V14: The Hebrew for “partner” here suggests a permanent relationship/bond. To be one in marriage, to produce godly offspring. There’s no strict rule that single parents won’t bring up godly offspring, or godly couples will produce godly offspring however.

V16: The Hebrew is tricky to translate. God hates divorce? Or “the man who hates, and divorces his wife.” There was divorce in the OT. However, in Malachi, the men were divorcing their wives without grounds, which was a violent act towards their wives.

Morling Tuesday Chapel: Technically correct but wrong effect

Speaker: Dr Edwina Murphy

Scripture: Malachi 2:1-11

Edwina has a love hate relationship with iPhone map apps. Great for taking you where you want to go, and you follow the voice. However, you will encounter trouble if it asks you to turn right on a road without traffic light at peak hours. Or you arrive at a virtual location but the location is not there. Directions are important, as to where to go and how to get there. That’s what this passage is doing.

1Peter 2:5. Whatever we are doing, God calls us, in our own situation, to be faithful witnesses.

Malachi 2 starts with a warning: God warns us to protect us. God’s judgments are in line with what we’ve done. It’s like the warning lights we got on our cars. God gives us warnings because he wants to give us life. The priests have dishonoured God, and God will dishonour them. When mothers scold children, eg. “I will leave you alone in the… if you don’t…” If the mother carries it out, it can be child abuse. The mother is more likely just threatening them. But if she keeps doing that the children will stop taking it seriously. God’s warning is not like this. God’s warning is very serious.

The priests are teaching what’s right but doing what’s wrong. The real danger for Morling graduates is probably not teaching the Scriptures wrong, ie. heresy. The danger is to be technically correct, but not be helpful at all: being theologically correct but with the wrong effect. If we are speaking about God’s amazing grace but leaving people with a generalised feeling of guilt and oppression, or a message on joy but leaving people depressed, then we’re getting it wrong. If our preaching and our lives do not lead to building people up in the Fruits of the Spirit, then there’s something wrong. We may have a conviction of sin, but then we confess the sin, and feel the freedom associated with that. Let us not just be people who speak about grace, but be people who are gracious. Sometimes we may take the good news of the gospel but give bad news to people.

How can we know, when we listen to teaching, that it’s leading us right or wrong? We should hone our instincts by being familiar with the scriptures first. Understand God’s word and let the Spirit guide us. Let us be people who live those things out.

Personal thoughts and reflections:

The message of “living what you preach” is a very common topic which I have heard many times. However, in this chapel, I truly sensed a warning for myself when I heard the part on “being theologically correct but with the wrong effect” and this prompted me to think about real life situations.

I suppose when people have a sense of elitism about their faith, it can sometimes be a pretty dangerous thing. Let’s imagine I am feeling pretty down and hopeless, perhaps even angry at God because of some really bad events in my life. Then a person comes along and starts talking nonstop about himself/herself, about how God has made him/her so joyful and filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, therefore all Christians should be joyful and powerful, or else there’s something seriously wrong with that Christian… As a listener, I’d imagine that instead of feeling “joyful and full of power”, I’d feel even more depressed and powerless. Or, if I am not a Christian, instead of receiving the gospel as “good news”, I’d be thinking, “So this person is telling me that all Christians are full of joy and power? Then I can’t be one because I can’t imagine myself meeting that standard. It’s a religion for the elites and I’m not good enough.” Or “So here is this salesperson telling me how this “product” works so well on him/her. Well, I am not him/her! This person does not even seem to understand my situation and keeps talking about irrelevant stuff. How can he/she assume that this product will also work on me?”

It’s easy to make other people stumble, and most of the time we don’t mean it. In fact, if I had caused someone to stumble, that person wouldn’t exactly come to me and say, “you caused me to stumble”. It’s more likely that the person will just distance himself/herself from me and not say anything (unless he/she is a very close friend). Gotta pray that I don’t become a stumbling block for others, but be more empathetic and compassionate in my approach to people.

Morling Tuesday Chapel: Following God wholeheartedly

(photo taken at the Sea of Galilee where Peter was asked by Jesus 3x "do you love me?" note that in the series of Q&A in John 20, Jesus kept asking in "agape" love, and Peter kept responding in "phileo" love)

Speaker: Rev Dr Marc Rader

Scripture: Malachi 1:1-14

This opening provides the foundation for the book as a whole. This beginning is also the end: It’s the last book of the Minor Prophets. What’s taken place at that time? Hosea opens with speaking about the judgment of the Northern Kingdom. Then the shift of the twelve (minor prophets) goes against Jerusalem. Babylonians came then Persians. By the time of Malachi, most of the drama was in the rear vision mirror. Yet, most haven’t changed at all. This book still opens similarly to Hosea. It is again about misplaced love. Hosea was asked to marry a prostitute who does not love Hosea wholeheartedly. Malachi opens with God saying to Israel, “I have loved you people, but you asked how have you loved us?” This question should not be asked. The people asking this question are like self-centred children who took God’s love for granted and denounced the election.

The Levites were accused of not giving instructions in Chapters 2, but they did give good instructions. Half-hearted sins: they’re not turning away from the Lord, but they lack the ability to whole-heartedly follow the Lord. “They still show up, but they don’t really put the effort in”.

Chapter 3, v13-15: Israel asked “What do we gain by carrying out His requirements?... Now we call the arrogant blessed”.

“I have loved you, but you asked how have you loved us?” God doesn’t even answer the question the people are asking. People are apathic, because of the loss of hope. We forgot God’s great love. God is putting the question into the people’s mouth, to drive them out (similar to when God asks Adam “where are you?”). Malachi is trying to activate the people’s faith again. Faith allows us to persevere. When we have that faith, where we can see what we’re heading at, this drives us to persevere.

Contemporary questions:

We sing about following Jesus, “no turning back”, but have we ever been distracted from Jesus? How are you following Jesus? In a straight-line running? Or?

“I surrender all”. Do we take anything back from Jesus? Do we want to take control again of our life? What are our expectations in ministry? For instance, expecting people would listen to me? Jesus came to serve and not be served.

What kind of effort are we putting in as we prepare for ministry?

What are we praying for? How many people’s prayers are just to get through this week? Just praying for myself? The world is hard, and will just get harder, can we imagine God transforming the world?

We study this all the time, but can we activate our faith? How do we get reminded about why we are following Jesus?

Personal thoughts and reflections:

Been quite frustrated last week. Felt like there’s a big mismatch between visions and reality. I already sensed that huge things are happening in the spiritual realm worldwide. I believe that in the presence of the Holy Spirit, powerful transformations happen, as our God is unlimited. However, in my workplace, in my family, in ministry and even in my own self, it seems as if nothing powerful is happening. It seems as if things like positively influencing people I encounter in the workplace, family members turning to Christ, effectively leading a group in church, and the development of the fruits of the Spirit are not happening. Maybe there is something happening but I cannot see it yet and am acting like the lukewarm Israelites in asking God “what have you done in my life?” Actually, God had done quite a lot already, but I am probably just too impatient and want to see more things happening. Maybe I haven’t been focused on God enough. Today’s chapel serve as a reminder that I need to be wholehearted towards God. Therefore, I pray to God for more faith.