“Even from the days of our fathers, you are gone away from my ordinances, and have no kept them. Return unto me and I willreturn unto you, saith the Lord of hosts….”
“Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. 8. Draw near to God He will draw near to you….” Malachi is the last book in the Old Testament, and he was the last prophet until John the Baptist. He wrote to the Israelites who were in the process of rebuilding Jerusalem and the temple, and who were making a mess of it, as you can see from the text. James was writing to dispersed Jewish Christians, and obviously they were not doing well either. What was the problem? They had moved away from God. Like us, they probably thought God had moved away from them, but that is not so and it will never be so. Some of you have probably heard the story that I tell of the man and woman driving down the highway. The man did all of the driving since the woman could not drive. The woman was sitting up against the door on the passenger’s side of the car. Woebegone, she said to her husband, “Honey, I don’t know what has happened to us. There was a time when as we rode together people couldn’t tell if there was one person or two in the car.” To which the husband, who could not take his eyes off the road, replied to her, “I didn’t move.” It is that way with God/Jesus. We bemoan the fact that He seems far away from us as we struggle with the hard times of our lives. But God is where He has always been. He does not change and He does not move. If God seems far away, it is because we have moved. We have neglected our prayer lives, neglected reading the Bible and probably neglected attending church, and wonder why God seems far away. If you think that God has forsaken you, you need to look inside of your own heart. Don’t blame God, for He has not moved. Return to Him and you will discover that He is right there where He has always been. Let’s look at the remedy that God gave the Israelites in Malachi. (Look out now, for I have “gone to meddling" again.) Look at Malachi 7b-8: “But you said, Wherein shall we return? 8. Will a man rob God? Yet you have robbed me. But you say, Wherein have we robbed you? In tithes and offerings.” Get this straight: when we cease to seek God through all of the means of worship, we also fall down on our stewardship. Israel was neglecting God to the point that they were withholding their tithes and offerings from God. I think that this was a symptom of the total problem. When we rob God of our time, we also rob Him of the goods that He has so graciously given us. Get right with God and He will not seem so far away. The remedy that James gave to the people to whom he wrote is this: “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” If we want to know that God is near us, we will submit ourselves to Him. We will give Him our time, our talents and our devotion. At the same time, we will resist the devil in the power of the Lord Jesus Christ. He will flee from Jesus, just as he did in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ encounters with him. If you don’t feel close to God, you have to realize that the devil is at the root of it. He will draw your heart and mind away from the Lord, and make it seem that God has forsaken you. In reality, it is you that have forsaken God. Submit your heart and mind to God today. Worship Him on a daily basis. Join with others who worship Him. Pray and read your Bible. Let Jesus be Lord of your life. God has not forsaken you; therefore it is up to you to draw near to Him. Do it! Bro. Joe
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AuthorDr. Joe Beauchamp is the author of this blog and website. Categories
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