Mt. Lebanon United Presbyterian Church     
 
Pastor Tim Janiszewski - "Getting through the Tough Times"

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Messages of Grace

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This Sunday
April 3, 2016



Sermon Title:
"What Love's Got to Do with It"



Scripture:
Malachi 1:1-5  
Picture of Pastor Tim
March 30, 2016
 
Dear MLEPC Members and Friends:
 
With our observance of Holy Week, we concluded a sermon series entitled Listening to Jesus through the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew is the first of the twenty-seven books in the New Testament. Beginning on this first Sunday after Easter, we turn to a new sermon series to be based on the book of Malachi--Malachi being the last of the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament. Its working title is Getting through the Tough Times.
 
Most all of us face tough times in life due to any number of factors from health to finances to relationships to work to our sense of personal wellness and so forth. Malachi doesn't address such issues, at least not directly; rather, it concerns the tough times that we have with God in our walk of faith. We sometimes feel that things stand between God and us. We may be puzzled or confused. We may wonder what in the world God is up to. And it puts a strain on our relationship with Him.
 
Yet at such times, we often need to think about the issues from a different perspective, namely, God's perspective. Might it be that God is having a tough time with us, too? Could it be that we are not walking with God according to our claim to be His faithful followers? Yes, we most certainly sometimes feel like we are having a rough go of things with God. But how often and how justifiably can God say that we are giving Him a tough time? When can the Lord rightly say that He is frustrated with us?
 
This is just the sort of situation that we find in the book of Malachi. God and His covenant people Israel are struggling with each other. The prophet Malachi, whose name means my messenger, records the give-and-take between the two parties, revealing to us the divine point of view. I recommend that you take time this week to read through the four short chapters of Malachi in order to grasp the overall flow of the debate. I believe you will find that the Lord is committed to work through the challenges with Israel--to get through the tough time they are having. But He does not do so by avoiding issues or by sugar-coating the problems. No, God takes things head-on with sometimes brutal honesty. He knows that the only way to a better relationship comes through tackling the issues.
 
The prophecy, for instance, begins by addressing a huge relationship matter. God plainly and simply tells Israel, "I have loved you." But Israel responds by asking, "How have you loved us?" (1:2). We most assuredly are facing a tough time in a relationship when one party states that it is demonstrating love, to which the other party responds by questioning how. But perhaps this very circumstance is not foreign to many of us in our relationship with the Lord. Some of us wonder if God really loves us when we don't immediately "feel the love." Some of us question God's love when circumstances turn against us. I've known some to mutter to themselves, "If God loves me, He has a strange way of expressing it sometimes!"
 
So, how has God loved us? And in turn, how have we loved God? How well do we love God? We'll begin to explore these questions and others in coming weeks as we walk with God through the tough times.
 
Pastor Tim
 
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