Current Sermon: Malachi
Malachi 3:13-18 They Will Be Mine
This section begins with what has by now become a familiar theme in Malachi: the disillusionment of Israel with God and his apparent failure to send the Messiah in response to the rebuilding of the Temple. It shows us once again her spiritual cynicism and jadedness, as she concludes that worshipping God is just not worth the trouble. Just look around you! The wicked are not punished, and in fact seem to be better off than the righteous. But this section concludes with a real turning point in the book: It is the first mention of a remnant faithful to the God of their fathers, and it has a message for them not of judgment, but of hope.
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Malachi 4:1-6 The Day Is Coming
Part of putting the world right is making it forever pointless to ask the question whether it matters that you are righteous or wicked, that you serve the Lord or do not. The fact that people feel seriously the need to ask it now is an index of how messed up our fallen world is. But there is coming a time when the answer to it will be made plain. And in the life of the faithful, in the life of the church even here and now, foretastes of that day may be seen. We see them in the difference that faith makes, in the love and joy and purpose and peace it brings to those who are in Christ. We have seen Malachi longing for that day and being granted the foresight to prophesy about it; we have seen the faithful remnant of his day speaking to one another and anticipating it. Should we who have known the One they only longed for have any less faith than they? May it never be so! Trust God’s Messiah, our Lord Jesus. Love him. Be faithful to him. For faith is what finally determines the effect that the rising of the Sun will have on you. May we be those who are granted to find the healing in its wings.
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Reviews
C.S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion
Surely one of the most controversial books in the history of Lewis studies was the first edition of John Beversluis's C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion, originally published by Eerdmans in 1985. Billing itself as the only book-length critical study of Lewis's rational apologetic for Christian faith, it concluded that none of his arguments succeeded. Reviewing the first edition in Mythlore 43 (Autumn 1985), Nancy-Lou Patterson called it "as waspish a work" as it had ever been her "disagreeable task to review," concluding that the faith, "including its reasoned elements" would survive the book (42). Patterson was right: the first edition sometimes gave the impression that Beversluis thought accusing Lewis of a fallacy was equivalent to demonstrating that he had committed it. Few readers who had appreciated Lewis's apologetic works were convinced by Beversluis's arguments.
Now we have a new revised, updated, and expanded edition. It has already caused much exultation on atheist websites and much dismissive eye-rolling among Lewis fans. Neither reaction is justified.
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Comment
As I look at the current scene, I see a church in desperate need of three great movements of God:
Renaissance:
A recovery of the life of the mind. An increasingly illiterate generation is harder to reach with a faith founded on the message of a Book; an increasingly illiterate church is incapable of experiencing full-orbed Christianity based on the whole counsel of God;
Reformation:
A recovery of sound doctrine. Otherwise, we gorge ourselves on spiritual junk food while the great truths of the faith slip through our fingers;
Revival:
A recovery of vital spirituality. The great error of our generation is to believe that this recovery is possible apart from the first two. Biblically and historically it is not. Without Renaissance and Reformation, all our zeal for Revival is vanity and striving after wind.
On February 2, 2002, I delivered 5 Theses on Ministry at University Church in Athens, GA. This sermon is a revision of my "Final Tirade and Last Diatribe at Trinity Fellowship of Toccoa." It is available here as a Microsoft Word document: 5 Theses on Ministry.