August 15, 2025

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction.” (Malachi 4.6)

TODAY’S REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD TO US:

I cannot help but image a cycle of application to what God is doing. God is so good. God is loving. God is true to His Word. Not only that but God who is the same “yesterday, today and forever” is still doing it. However, this cycle of redemption and reconciliation will come to an end. The beginning of the cycle was God’s redemption of Adam and Eve in the Garden. There He took a lamb (or two), sacrificed them Himself and covered their nakedness to restore them to a place of appropriateness before Him. Sadly, life as they knew it would not exist for them again in this world. How many times did God come to those people whom He formed and fashioned to be His servants, His messengers of “faith, hope and love” on earth and redeem them and reconcile them to pursue and engage their meaning, purpose, worth and value. The sacrificial system itself was an image of the cycle of life to remind the people of what God had done in order that “they might have life and have it abundantly.” Of course, they misunderstood the sacrificial system as they did the Decalogue and turned them both into works righteousness. Little wonder why Paul would take such a strong stand against works righteousness within the early Church. Such thinking is the downfall of every community whether they identify it or not as a spiritual truth.

In Malachi we are given another view of that cycle of redemption and reconciliation in the closing verses. God will send Elijah, a new Elijah, into the world to prepare them for the Righteous Judge. The purpose of the Elijah was/is to reconcile families: parents to children and children to parents. Take note: As I suggested yesterday, the modern Church may well be an archetype of that Elijah to the culture and climate of “this” day before “that Day.” Lord knows, as do most of the rest of the world, that such a reconciliation is needed. It also seems that such a reconciliation is required for survival in this age. This would include this Age of the Church which I feel may be coming to a climatic end. This cycle is about to circle back to itself. When it does, we know from Jesus’ teaching and the teaching of the early Church culminating with the Revelation to John that all we know and as it is will cease to exist. A new Heaven, new Earth and new Jerusalem will take its place. The people of that place will be the redeemed, reconciled and restored people of God into one family without distinction apart from being the family of God. I would think that in the midst of the continuing late 19th Century and 20th Century Social Gospel movement and its “woke” offspring of the 21st Century, the Church would focus its energy on the family. The destruction of the family would appear to be the greatest plan Satan could devise in his war against God.

The Church, as the body (one family) of Christ, is the image of Christ to the world. Reading through the gospels, we see the effort of Jesus to reconcile the family of God which had been divided along the lines of wealth, class, physical perfection, culture, ethnicity and worst of all: false religion. Leave it to Jesus’ half-brother, James, to define what the true religion that is acceptable to God was and is: If any person among you seems to be religious, and bridles not their tongue, but deceives their own heart, this person’s religion is vain. Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this- to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep themselves unspotted from the world.” (James 1.26-27) All the miraculous healings Jesus performed allowed the broken person to be restored to their family, their community and their “people.” That restoration/reconciliation was not based on anything the person did but “have faith.” It was not by works but by faith. What do we put our faith in? Are we working to be reconciled to one another? The reconciliation of Peter at the close of John’s gospel is laid on the foundation of the great commandment: love one another. The first application of that commandment was for the immediate family and community. It was not limited to it but prioritized for it. It makes sense, right? The first sin which was against God demonstrated the broken relationship between Adam and Eve and God. The reconciliation was to overcome the shame which caused them to hide from God. The first murder was Cain killing his brother Abel. While Abel could not be restored (does anyone ask why God didn’t heal Abel), Cain was protected from retribution from family and strangers. Cain became a witness to others who lived in “safe cities” that God was no stranger to them, too. Was Cain a “family therapist” of sorts? That is another story altogether. For the moment, the onus is on the Church to be a Church family and to bear witness to the godly understanding of family. We have certainly strayed far from it. The forces of the enemy are sowing weeds of discontent among the wheat of true life. As in the parable of the wheat and the tares, they will all be collected together and then separated. The wheat cultivated into new life and the tares as food for the flame. That is the conclusion of Malachi’s prophecy as well. For those who do not respond to “the Elijah,” the judgment will be total and final. As the circle of life comes round with the Church as “that Elijah” representing Jesus of Nazareth who came to reconcile the family of God with His first coming, we must be aware of His second coming. That is the context of the Gospels and the New Testament to which Malachi points (as had all the Law and the Prophets.) We have been duly and lovingly warned. We have no one to blame but ourselves.

TODAY’S PRAYER IN RESPONSE TO GOD’S WORD:

Father, in these days we are finding the need to believe even more than ever before. We all have known trouble, some in greater ways than others, but You are offering us the assurance that we will not be consumed by it forever. Regardless of the “time” we are in and the “time” we have been given, we ask for Your Holy Spirit which Jesus asked You to share with us, to lead and guide and direct us in the paths we should go. Teach us what we still need to learn. Empower us to put that learning into action. Bless our actions not as a works righteousness but as righteous works of faith, hope and love in Jesus’ name. AMEN.