Criticising God

Malachi 3v13-15

1^st October 2021

Malachi 3v13-15
"You have said harsh things against me," says the Lord.
"Yet you ask, "What have we said against you?"
"You have said, 'It is futile to serve God. What did we gain by carrying out his requirements and going about like mourners before the Lord Almighty? But now we call the arrogant blessed. Certainly evildoers prosper, and even those who challenge God escape.'"

Once again in the book of Malachi, God brings a charge against his people. This time, the charge is that we say harsh things about God or, in the new NIV, we speak arrogantly against God.

I expect we'd all deny this, just as His ancient people did when they asked, "What have we said against you?". We don't criticise God out loud in a worship meeting, but how do we speak about Him to ourselves, in our thoughts? Do we complain to him in our private prayers? There is a line between telling God how difficult our lives are and speaking harshly against Him. Do we cross that line?

I know that God's big enough to handle it when we speak against Him, but we really shouldn't do it. He's perfect. He never lets us down. He never makes a mistake. He never fails to do what's right. He never fails to notice what's happening. He always has a plan. If we accuse God of failing to love us completely, faithfully and wisely, then we're not speaking the truth.

God's indictment of us is also that we say "It is futile to serve God". Perhaps we ask ourselves, "What did we gain by carrying out his requirements?" Again, we probably don't say these things out loud, but perhaps we do say them in our hearts. Do we really think serving God is futile?

When we serve the Lord, we do so for His sake, not for our own sake. We don't serve God to get brownie points, I hope. We serve God because we love Him, because we're eternally grateful for what He's done for us. Serving God with everything we have and everything we are would be worthwhile even it was only an expression of our gratitude and love.

When we gather to worship God, when we sing His praises and pray to Him, and study the Bible together, I hope we will get some benefit from doing it. But that's not why we do it. We worship God because God deserves worship, because it would be quite absurd if created beings didn't worship their Creator, if saved people didn't worship their Saviour.

We also serve God for other people. When we support missionaries abroad, we do so in the hope that the people they serve will find Jesus. When we try to tell our neighbours about Jesus, we're being missionaries here. We preach the Gospel, or cook the food, or prepare the literature, or play the guitar, or deliver invitations, in the hope that somebody will respond to the Gospel and be born again as a child of God, that he will inherit eternal life and know the love, joy and peace of God, as we do. That's worth doing for our neighbour's sake, and for God's sake, not for any rewards we might for doing it.

But the truth is, God does reward every good thing we do. That may not seem true straight away. We're not laboratory rats who get a piece of cheese every time we find our way through the maze. We're children of God, and He's the perfect Father. God is good, and He loves to reward His people, but He does so when He knows is best, and how He knows is best.

Perhaps we don't think of ourselves as going about like mourners before the Lord Almighty. We don't use that kind of language. But I think there is an idea around that Christians live boring lives, and we don't have the kind of fun that our neighbours have. But speaking personally, I have much more fun than I did before I knew Jesus.

The kind of fun a Christian has, which used to be called "good clean fun" is enormously more fun than I ever experienced before I was born again. I have fun with my brothers and sisters in Christ. I enjoy good company. I can trust my friends. We share jokes that don't leave me feeling dirty, and I wake up without a hangover. The simple pleasures, such as walking with friends and enjoying creation in the woods or at the beach, or sharing a meal, are the best pleasures.

And things that we can't quite classify as fun, things like worship, prayer and Bible study, are enormously more enjoyable than getting drunk or sleeping around.

The people who think of themselves as going about like mourners before the Lord Almighty are the sort of people who go to church because they're supposed to, or because they think it'll impress God, who think they'll earn His forgiveness with all their religious rituals. They slightly resent having to be in church on Sunday, but they think they need to be there to appease God: confess your sins, take the bread and wine, hear the man at the front absolving you of your sins, get a clean slate, carry on as before on Monday morning. That kind of religion is worthless.

Church attendance will never earn us forgiveness, that's not why we go. True Christians know they're forgiven as a free gift from God. We love being in church, because we're with our brothers and sisters, worshipping our wonderful heavenly Father and our glorious Saviour, Jesus Christ. And anyway, we don't go to church; we are the church.

Let me say this again:

Real Christians don't worship God to appease Him or impress Him or get some sort of favour from Him; we worship God because He's God.
It's not a sacrifice for a real Christian to worship God; it's a blessing and a joy.
For a real Christian, living God's way isn't a duty; it's fulfilling, pure and good.
Real Christians don't tell people about Jesus because it's some sort of religious duty; we tell them because they need to know the Gospel, and find Jesus for themselves.

I have to qualify that just a little. There are days when serving and worshipping God is a sacrifice. There are times when just turning up takes a lot of self-discipline. That will have to be the subject of another article, but there's joy even in the sacrifice. I'm so very, very grateful to God that I'm a Christian. I know that without God's mercy, without Jesus's atoning sacrifice, without the Holy Spirit opening my eyes to see the truth, without the faithful witness of the church, I would still be lost in my sins. I delight to worship God, and take part in the work of the Gospel. And I hope you do. And on the days when it is a sacrifice, it's still worth it.

Perhaps we call the arrogant blessed. Perhaps when we read about some money-hungry, arrogant, nasty little businessman, and his second, third or fourth home in the Caribbean or Monaco, and his trophy wife, and his superyacht, and his private jet, we can feel a tinge of envy. But I'd rather have my life, humbly serving God in a village in Hampshire, with my wonderful Christian friends, with the comfort of the Holy Spirit, with peace in my heart and a sure and certain hope for the future, than all the Ferraris, champagne and superyachts in the world.

Those people aren't blessed. We're blessed. Jesus loves us and died for us. He chose us to spend eternity with Him. God adopted us as His children and put His Holy Spirit in us.

We may fall into the mistake of thinking that even those who challenge God escape, but they really don't.

Robert Maxwell was an enormous figure in British national life. He owned Mirror Group Newspapers, the New York Daily News, Macmillan book publishers and many other companies. He even owned Oxford United and Derby County football clubs. He was a Labour MP. He owned private jets, helicopters and Rolls-Royces. He stole £460m from his employees' pension funds while living in opulent luxury. Newsweek magazine called him "The Crook of the Century". On 5 November 1991, his naked corpse was found floating in the Atlantic Ocean. He'd fallen off his superyacht and drowned. He's paying for his crimes now.

Another, very different kind of sinner was John Lennon. He made millions as a singer with the Beatles, and lived an extravagant life. He had a taste for white Rolls Royces. Liverpool named an airport after him. He once claimed that the Beatles were more popular than God. But his greatest sin was that he sought to persuade his millions of fans that God didn't exist. He wrote a very successful song called "Imagine", urging his listeners to imagine that's no heaven and no hell. On 8th December 1980, one of his fans shot him on a street in New York. He was dead by the time they got him to hospital. He's not imagining there's no hell now.

Evil men like Mao Zedong, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot, who massacred millions and millions of people prospered for a while. But they're dead now. Hitler shot himself. The others lived to old age and died a natural death. They escaped for a while, but nobody escapes God's judgement in the end.