Choose Life! Honour Almighty God

Brothers & Sisters in our Lord Jesus Christ,
What is God like?
“I the LORD do not change. So you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.
The creator God is a God of grace, mercy and has compassion on all he has made.
His desire is that none should perish. His love is unfailing. Yet for those who hate and despise Him, He is giving them exactly what they want – in as much as they want total separation between them and God. He is not going to force anyone into His Divine presence. The result of this desire? Eternal separation from the source of life, love and hope.

This week I celebrated my 66th birthday.
I was 19 years old when the Lord convicted me with the question, ‘Ron what are you going to do to make your life count for eternity?’
From that day my heart has been set on a pilgrimage.
The Lord has walked before me, along side me and gone before me.
I confess that often I have gone my own way and have not kept all of the Lord’s commands. Yet at the end of the day, by God’s grace and the leading of the Holy Spirit, my desire has been and is still today, to love the one true living God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit with all my heart, love His Word, love His people, and love the lost. There have been ups and downs (some days when my soul has been in great anguish, some have called it ‘the dark night of the soul’ when anxiety and fear threatened to overwhelm me.
Yet one thing I know and the word of God to Timothy has enabled me continue to put my trust in Almighty God, “Here is a trustworthy saying:

If we died with him, we will also live with him;
if we endure, we will also reign with him,
if we disown him, he will also disown us;
if we are faithless, he remains faithful,
for he cannot disown himself.” 2 Timothy 2:11-13
There are only 2 camps, only one of 2 eternal destinies.
Those who have faith and honour God are honoured.
This is God’s delight and good pleasure.
Those who dishonour God will experience his eternal punishment and separation.
My friends, life is short.
Let us fix our eyes on Jesus our Saviour everyday.
Let us pray the prayer he taught his disciples to pray to our Father in heaven and ask the Holy Spirit to enable us, strengthen us and give us faith to live our lives moment by moment and day by day trusting in his unfailing love.
God’s desire is that we are reconciled to him.
God has provided for our salvation in and through Christ.
Let us be seeking him with all our heart.
The book of Malachi is a dialogue between God and his people.
We hear God speak and his people answer.
God loves his people and speaks lovingly, graciously and truthfully.
Over the last weeks we have heard how Malachi described what is going on in the lives of his people?
They are grumbling to one another, speaking arrogantly, saying harsh things against the LORD.
‘It is futile to serve God!’
“What a waste of time…”
What do we gain?
What did we gain by carrying out his requirements and going about like mourners before the LORD? What use is it going about with long faces, mourning, dressed in black & sad? Hard, strong, arrogant & offensive is their language.
So many in Malachi’s day had lost the plot.
But not all dishonoured Almighty God.
Malachi says, “Then those who feared the Lord talked
with each other, and the Lord listened and heard.
A scroll of remembrance was written in his presence
concerning those who who feared the Lord and honoured
his name.
“On the day when I act”, says the Lord Almighty,”They
will be my treasured possession.”
Almighty God has not abandoned the work of his hands. Not all people will perish nor will the God who knows peoples’ hearts and minds repay as their sins deserve.
All of us are deserving of God’s eternal wrath and punishment, yet God has acted in the past and continues to act, redeeming sinners in grace and mercy and making
them his ‘treasured possession.’
History is salvation history!
The Word of God has been given so that we might know the one true living God and honour Him. Remember how the Lord saved Noah and his family from the deluge that destroyed the world. We see God’s covenant of grace each time we see a rainbow. Remember how God chose Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Graciously Almighty God established a covenant with them, declaring, “I am your God, your are my people, walk with me by faith, honour me, serve me and I will
bless you! Through your seed all the nations will be blessed.“

Remember how God preserved his people in the days of Joseph.
Remember how God heard the cry of his people in Egypt as they suffered in slavery.
With a mighty hand and an outstretched arm he delivered them out of the land of slavery that his people might know that Almighty God is able to save his people.
Even in exile God delivered Daniel from the lions and Shadrack, Meshach and Abednego from the fiery furnace.
Remember how God brought his people from their exile in Babylon.
And in these last days God has acted in history sending his one and only son – the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
Jesus has entered into the world he created in order to redeem his people and make them the ‘treasured possession’ of the eternal creator God ‘Father, Son and
Holy Spirit.’
Malachi tells us plainly that the day is coming when all will see the ‘distinction between the righteous and the wicked, those who serve God and those who do not.’
Listen to the Word of the Lord, “I have loved you.”
Israel says, “How have you loved us?”
God says, ‘You have dishonoured me, showing contempt for my name.’
The priests said of the sacrifices God required,
‘The Lord’s table is contemptible, its food is contemptible, ‘what a burden!’
The Lord Almighty says, ‘My name is to be feared among the nations.’
Israel said, ‘All who do evil are good in the eyes of the Lord, and he is pleased with them.’
The Lord says, ‘Return to me and I will return to you!’
The people ask, ‘How are we robbing you?’
The Lord says, ‘In tithes and offerings … Test me in this and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven.’
The Lord always has and still today calls his people to live by faith and honour him even when it seems that God is not fair or just and it would seem that the wicked get away with murder. We can think of the way wicked queen Jezebel treated Naboth when her husband king Ahab coveted his vineyard.
She had him stoned to death.
Was it fair that our Lord was crucified by sinful people?
Was it fair that Paul had to endure that ‘messenger from Satan’, the thorn in the flesh?
Indeed, Jesus promise to his disciples is,
“In the world you will have trouble. But take heart!
I have overcome the world.” John 16:33
Jesus command is this, “Love the Lord your God with all
your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all
your strength and love your neighbour as we love
ourselves.” Matthew 22:37-39
The New Testament instruction for what we are called to offer to the Lord is this: ‘In view of God’s mercy, offer your body as a living sacrifice to God.’
The day is coming when Almighty God says,
“I will spare them, just as a father has compassion and spares his son who serves him. And you will again see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not.”
Jesus spoke of that day when the sheep are separated from the goats, and the wheat from the tares (tares are weeds that look like wheat, but are of no value.)
God want us to be faithful stewards of His gifts giving freely and cheerfully for the work of His Kingdom. The Lord has blessed us so that we might be a blessing.
We are all priests called to serve the Lord. We are stewards who will have to give an account of all God has lent.
‘For you who revere my name, (Messiah) the sun of
righteousness will rise with healing in its wings.
“Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and Your healing will quickly appear;
then Your righteousness will go before you,
And the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.
“Isa 58:8

God’s free gift to those who fear Him & honour Him is eternal life.
For those who are looking for, longing for His salvation – He comes with healing in His wings – not as of birds wings but within the wings or folds of his robe.
And you will go out and leap like calves released from the stall. In pure JOY.
Then you will trample down the wicked; they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when I do these things,” says the LORD Almighty.
The reward is spiritual riches rather than material riches.

No-one can take away the joy experienced by those who give themselves fully to the Lords’ service.

Physical health does not necessarily accompany faithful obedience to the Lord – remember Paul’s thorn in the flesh.
But God uses our weakness to accomplish His perfect plan – the saving of many sinners.
“Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace.
All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and
that day that is coming will set them on fire,”
God does care about what people do.
The day is coming when Jesus will judge the living and the dead.
His Gospel call on our lives is that we are to be seeking first His kingdom and righteousness. Remember Jesus’ teaching in the sermon of the Mount.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ Matthew 5-7
Let us never forget God’s grace and mercy.
We must not think that salvation is dependent on our own keeping of the law.
The perfect covenant keeper is the Lord Jesus Christ.
Through faith in Him, God’s people receive the gift of his righteousness and are thus enabled to please God. The offering that the redeemed bring to the Lord is a
living sacrifice, a life lived honouring the Lord, serving him with reverence and awe.
So let us examine our lives in the light of the Gospel.
Let us work out our salvation knowing that the Lord does care about every aspect of our lives. You may recall how the Lord convicted me as a 19 year old.
At 18 I was studying commerce at University whilst boarding at the Reformed Theological College.

On one occasion a visiting professor passed me in the corridor and chatted.
I do not remember his name or much about the chat except that he said I would study for the ministry. Nothing was further from my mind – no way would I study Hebrew and Greek and give up my dream to be rich and have a shiny new car.
But God had different plans for Ron Van Leerdam.
By the grace of God, I am what I am.
Jesus said, “No-one can serve two masters.
Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you
will be devoted to the one and despise the other.
You cannot serve both God and money.” Matt. 6:24
To live for the Living God and to serve Him is the reason we have been given life and breath. God wants Lordship over every area of our lives.
Jesus said, “Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
What good is to gain the whole world and yet forfeit your soul?
With the Psalmist we pray, “Search me, O God, and
know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in
the way everlasting.” Ps. 139: 23-24

Amen.