To a People who Walk in Darkness

Malachi 3: “Your words have been harsh against Me,”
Says the Lord,
“Yet you say,
‘What have we spoken against You?’
You have said,
‘It is useless to serve God;
What profit is it that we have kept His ordinance,
And that we have walked as mourners
Before the Lord of hosts?
So now we call the proud blessed,
For those who do wickedness are raised up;
They even tempt God and go free.’ ”

It’s been said that history never repeats itself, but it does rhyme. I feel a strong connection between these verses, between where the Jews were when Malachi preached this message and where America is now. We as a nation, have determined that following God is a waste of time. I would like to exempt myself from this judgment, I want to say that isn’t true of me, ‘I’m separate. I’ve drawn a line between myself and my people’s sin. Although I’m in this world, I haven’t been of this world.’ But it isn’t true. We are Americans. We have often been proudly Americans. I don’t think that that was all a mistake, our love for our home and our patriotism. I may not be proud of her right now, but I’d like to be again. Sometimes things seem so dark that I think it wouldn’t be a tragedy for us to be separated from our homeland, but it would. It would be a tragedy. So, where America goes I go. Her sin is my sin. I don’t always like my mother but I’d rather suffer and be together with her than be separated from her and be happy. If my homeland is under the wrath of God for her sins, then I guess pour me some too. So, ‘we’ call the proud blessed, we hold up the billionaire scam artist as a model for our children. We raise up those who do wickedness. We rearrange our whole society for the benefit of Men in Skirts and Perverts who abuse Children. Those who tempt God go free, who openly admit to being in a war for the soul of this nation, and just as openly admit that they are on the side of the Molech who eats children, on the side of Nazi’s who make war on Christian people, and then blasphemously call themselves Christians, those who do this remain in their office, conitnue to use that office to silence and intimidate and yes imprison those who protest on behalf of the children and imprison those who protest against our endlessly making war and exporting our sin to the whole world, these people remain free, remain in their high office and suffer no punishment.

Then those who feared the Lord spoke to one another,
And the Lord listened and heard them;
So a book of remembrance was written before Him
For those who fear the Lord
And who meditate on His name.

“They shall be Mine,” says the Lord of hosts,
“On the day that I make them My jewels.
And I will spare them
As a man spares his own son who serves him.”
Then you shall again discern
Between the righteous and the wicked,
Between one who serves God
And one who does not serve Him.

“For behold, the day is coming,
Burning like an oven,
And all the proud, yes, all who do wickedly will be stubble.
And the day which is coming shall burn them up,”
Says the Lord of hosts,
“That will leave them neither root nor branch.
But to you who fear My name
The Sun of Righteousness shall arise
With healing in His wings;
And you shall go out
And grow fat like stall-fed calves.
You shall trample the wicked,
For they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet
On the day that I do this,”
Says the Lord of hosts.

“Remember the Law of Moses, My servant,
Which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel,
With the statutes and judgments.
Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet
Before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.
And he will turn
The hearts of the fathers to the children,
And the hearts of the children to their fathers,
Lest I come and strike the earth with a curse.”

The old, old promise, that things won’t always be this way. The old, old promise that the Lord will again speak to us, that our nation will again hear His voice. It’s been a long time since America has heard someone stand up and say, ‘Thus, says the Lord.’ We have had good men stand up and try and clean up this mess, but their efforts have been largely in vain. They have been turned back by those who use our country to loot the world. Those who have tried to make America great again have been tricked, have been outmaneuvered. We have not remembered the Law of Our God, have not kept His statutes and judgments. And our hearts have not turned back to one another, we have not repented, and let’s all be honest, at this point we kinda despair that we ever will. Let’s turn back to Scripture and look at what comes next.

Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

It’s a big blank spot. And I don’t want to rush past that blank spot, because that is where we are today. We are in the silence of God. Our country is suffering from the Absence of the Presence of God. Even many of the unbelievers can feel it, that the Spirit that once animated our country has left us and we are cold and lifeless. Will the last one to give up on America please turn the lights off on your way out. Israel, like America, could clearly see where she was. They had the Word of God, they knew what needed to be done, but they had no strength to do it. They lacked the Spirit and the Fire in their Souls to get the job done. And that is why I feel so much connection between them and us.

What happens to a people, when they know what God requires of them to save their home and they won’t do it? What happens when God’s patience with them runs out? We have been in this blank spot, waiting and praying and working and hoping for America to repent for a pretty good while, most or maybe all of my 40 years. The Jews were here for a long time. What happens, when the people won’t turn back to God, what happens when the Lord gets tired of waiting on them? The Jews were sitting there staring at this blank spot for a period that scholars estimate at about 430 years, and God got tired of waiting on them. You may now turn the page.

Photo by Bernard Hermant on Unsplash

Photo by Tim Wildsmith on Unsplash

The Gospel…according to Matthew. The Gospel. When God gets tired of waiting for a people to prefer Him to their sins, a funny thing happens. He stops waiting on them. I guess it isn’t so strange that somebody tired of waiting would stop waiting would get up and take action Himself. But what is funny, at least to me, is the action that He does take. He gets tired of our sins, of our unrepentant hearts, and decides to take action Himself, but the action is not condemnation, is not fire and wrath, He takes the initiative to Salvation out of our hands.

Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: After His mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Spirit. Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not wanting to make her a public example, was minded to put her away secretly. But while he thought about these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” Matthew 1

The first action recorded in the New Testament is this: that which is by all reasonable interpretation a very merciful interpretation of Justice, is thrown out in favor of an absurd faith in a God who does the Unthinkable, and a Grace shown against every thing the mind of man can imagine. A man finds his betrothed virgin pregnant and ‘somehow’ believes that she hasn’t been with another man. Stop. Don’t go past it. Joseph’s plan was to be much more loving and merciful than the Law said to be. The Law, the Law of Moses, God’s Law would have stoned Mary and murdered the Messiah in Matthew 1 instead of waiting for Matthew 27 to kill Him. The whole story of His life is really a story of the Law, first God’s Law, then Herod’s Law, then the Pharisees and Sadducees, then another Herod’s Law, then Roman Law, trying to destroy the Messiah. He had already confronted all the powers of this world before He was two. The best that human mercy, a very generous, self-sacrificing mercy could come up with was kicking a pregnant woman and her child to the curb. Don’t go too fast, don’t get ahead. Believing that your girlfriend is pregnant but hasn’t been with a man is ludicrous. What kind of man could even consider believing it? Cheyenne used to watch a lot of those Paternity Court shows, where the mom is like, ‘I ain’t never been with nobody but you baby.’ and then the test says, ‘You are not the father.’ and it’s always, ‘Well, yeah you were out of town and Billy called me up…’, those women stand up there and tell bold-faced lies, sometimes even in the face of evidence, but not one of them has ever stood up and claimed to be a virgin. The Virgin Birth really is the beginning of the Gospel. Mary, in every sense of the words, didn’t do anything. She made no contribution to the conception of the Saviour, in that sense she is a perfect representative of the church, of us. She really didn’t provide Him with anything. She was just going about her business traveling when her water broke. There wasn’t even a plan made for her and Joseph much less for the baby. They could have at least reserved a hotel room or something. But we did and do nothing. All of the initiative is with Him.

And the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned. For the judgment which came from one offense resulted in condemnation, but the free gift which came from many offenses resulted in justification. Romans 5

I named my son Josiah, after a great king who turned the heart of Israel back to the Lord. More to the point, his name means ‘The Lord Heals’. The Lord still heals. And this story is about a baby, but not that baby. God gave us His Law and as Jeremiah likes to put it He ‘got up early and sent us the prophets’. Israel, and America, have every reason to turn back to God and no excuse not to. But our world has become a long blank spot waiting on men to turn back to God. He’s gonna get tired of waiting, soon I hope, because I am already tired of waiting. I am already tired of waiting on us to get it right. I am tired of hoping that some politician is gonna lead us into righteousness. I am tired of trying to get it right, tired of never having enough skill, enough strength, enough discipline to get the job done. I am tired of struggling against the same sins that have trapped me since I was a boy. I am tired of fighting and losing.

“Comfort, yes, comfort My people!”
Says your God.
“Speak comfort to Jerusalem, and cry out to her,
That her warfare is ended,
That her iniquity is pardoned;
For she has received from the Lord’s hand
Double for all her sins.” Isaiah 40

To those who are tired of fighting and losing, to Israel and to America, the message is ‘You’re done’. It is the message of a Father who let His child try and try and try again to fix their mess but eventually ran out of patience and did the job for her. That is the message, that God is our Father, and when a Father runs out of patience with His little girl He sets her mistakes right. He takes the toy we have been working on and making a huge mess of, and He sets it right, and He doesn’t go away, He stays and plays with us and we get to play with toys that actually work right and get to play with Dad.

Brethren, I speak in the manner of men: Though it is only a man’s covenant, yet if it is confirmed, no one annuls or adds to it. Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say, “And to seeds,” as of many, but as of one, “And to your Seed,” who is Christ. And this I say, that the law, which was four hundred and thirty years later, cannot annul the covenant that was confirmed before by God in Christ, that it should make the promise of no effect. For if the inheritance is of the law, it is no longer of promise; but God gave it to Abraham by promise. Galatians 3

What purpose does the long, miserable silence serve? Our struggles, our works, our miserable righteousness, has to be separated from the Free Gift. This is a true and legitimate quarantine, no ‘two weeks to flatten the curve’ that stretches on for two years. But 430 years to separate something that is really and truly infectious, really and truly deadly, our works, our righteousness, our attempts to fix our selves and our families and our country and our world, 430 years to separate all of our righteousness from the only thing that truly can bring light to the people who walk in darkness, the Free Gift of the Lord Jesus Christ.

But the Scripture has confined all under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.

This is no season of getting things right. It is a season of little boys trying to put their Legos together and not following the directions. We are people unable to get it right and too stubborn to give up. God knows us. Knows those things about us and accepts us anyway. He has lost patience with us, has accepted the fact that we are never going to get it right. Our Father sees that the harder we try, the worse of a mess we make. We can admit it. We aren’t fooling anybody. And He patiently takes our mess out of our hands and fixes it. We can’t understand how much it costs Him to fix our messes, to set our sin right. But it costs us nothing. It is freely given, nothing we can add, nothing we can take away, no way for us to screw it up. This is a season of Fathers taking those Legos out of the boy’s hands and putting them like they ought to be.