God Deserves Respect
Malachi 1v6a
30th October 2020
The book of Malachi contains a number of dialogues between God and His people. We've seen that in the first five verses, God accused His people of doubting that He loved them. Next, He accuses them of refusing to show Him the honour that is His due.
Malachi 1:6a
"A son honours his father, and a slave his master. If I am a father, where is the honour due
to me? If I am a master, where is the respect due to me?" says the Lord Almighty.
We all know that some fathers are not very good at being fathers. Some fathers are not very good people, but the fact remains that God has made them fathers. And if God has made someone a father, it's right and proper for his children to respect him as father. It might not be possible to respect him as a nice man, because he might not be one, but he's still a father. The fifth commandment says:
Exodus 20:12
Honour your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God
is giving you.
If we want God's blessing on our lives, we must honour our fathers and our mothers. We haven't got to be dishonest about their failures, but we must acknowledge them as our parents and give thanks to God because without them we would never have been born.
In the same way, we must honour the government. Typically the government of the UK is elected by about 40% of the people who bother to vote, so an awful lot of people didn't vote for them. But they're still the government, and we must respect them. The queen wasn't elected by anybody except, of course, God but we must respect her as our monarch. We must respect our parents in the same way. They were appointed by God to be our parents, and even if they're rubbish at it, they're still our parents.
And then, more problematically for us, God says that a slave honours his master.
After the year we've had, with Black Lives Matter protests, and a focus on the darker parts of American history, it's very unfashionable to say that a slave should honour his master. But again, God has so ordered the universe that I am in the role I'm in and he's in the rule he's in. I might not like it. I might not like master. He may be an absolutely horrible human being, but God has ordained that he would be my master, and I must respect him.
This isn't just Old Covenant teaching:
Ephesians 6:5
Slaves obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, just as you would obey Christ.
In our culture, that just feels wrong. Nevertheless, it's the word of God and therefore, even though it feels wrong, it's right. The Bible is true. If culture disagrees with the Bible, guess who's wrong.
I'm no advocate of slavery, but I am an advocate of this: in whatever life you've been put by God Himself, honour those in authority over you, whether they deserve it or not. I've had bosses who were significantly less aware of the project I was working on than I was. I must respect them as my boss, as my project manager, or as the owner of my company, whether I agree with them or not.
In any organisation, somebody has to call the shots, and even if I would be better at it than he would, he's the one who's been given the role, and I'm not. And even if I'm working for a master and he beats me when I misbehave, or even when I don't, he's still my master.
Christian ethics are so different from worldly ethics that we struggle to believe that they're good, but they are.
But leaving all that aside, despite all the imperfect fathers, mothers and bosses, and I've had a few, God is the perfect father. God is the perfect master. And if even a human father and a human master deserve respect, because of their positions, then God the perfect Father deserves perfect respect, all respect. God the perfect master deserves all obedience.
I'm eternally grateful to be God's son and God's slave. I could wish for no other destiny than to serve Him for all eternity.
I know that in the American south and in the West Indies, most slave masters were absolutely dreadful, but God is the perfect master.
In Greek, the word "Doulos" is usually translated by the NIV as "servant" but it doesn't actually mean "servant"; it means "slave". I think the NIV and other English translations think we couldn't cope with what the Bible says.
Paul, Peter, John and James all describe themselves as God's "Doulos", God's slave. We can have no greater destiny because, although being the slave of a bad slave master must be the worst thing in the world, being the slave of God is the best thing in the universe.
God is our master. He owns us. Remember:
1 Corinthians 6:19ab-20a
You are not your own; you were bought at a price.
So what God says goes, doesn't it?
I will preach this stuff even though it's completely uncomfortable.
My friend John Griffith once said "In God's house the furniture is exactly the way He wants it to be". We are God's household, His children, His slaves. Whatever He wants, He gets. Sometimes that involves God sending us to places we don't want to go, do things we don't want to do, and forgive people we don't want to forgive.
What God says goes. He is our Lord, He is our master, He is our Father. Thank God He is! But do we honour God as our Father? Do we honour God as our master?