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Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father. From our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the text for this morning comes from the Old Testament reading, the prophet Malachi’s proclamation. You may be seated.
To set the stage for the sermon and to give meaning to the concept that occurs in the Gospel reading, turn with me in the front part of your hymnal to Psalm 71. Psalm 71. We will read this responsibly, whole verse by whole verse. As we read it, you will see very clearly that this psalm is talking directly about Jesus Christ. Obviously, it has application for your life and mine. And there are a couple of verses that we’ll refer to as we begin the sermon.
“In you, O Lord, do I take refuge. In you, O Lord, do I take refuge. Let me never be put to shame. Be to me a rock of refuge to which I may continually come. You have given the command to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress. For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O Lord, from my youth. I have been as a portent to many, but you are my strong refuge. Do not cast me off in the time of old age. Forsake me not when my strength is spent. O God, be not far from me. O my God, make haste to help me. But I will hope continually and will praise you yet more and more. With the mighty deeds of the Lord, I will come. I will remind them of your righteousness, yours alone. So even to old age and gray hairs, O God, do not forsake me until I proclaim your might to another generation, your power to all those to come. You have made me. See, many troubles and calamities will revive me again. From the depths of the earth, you will bring me up again. I will also praise you with the harp for your faithfulness, O my God. I will sing praises to you with the lyre, O Holy One of Israel. And my tongue will talk of your righteous help all the day long. For they have been put to shame and disappointed who sought to do me hurt.”
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now and will be forever.
Pretty interesting, isn’t it? Especially these two verses. “Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of the unjust and cruel men.” It was his prayer as men gathered around him. And then again, David wrote of Christ, “For my enemies speak concerning me. Those who watch my life consult together and say, God has forsaken him.” But it really is this verse as the transition: “You, O God, who have made me see many troubles and calamities will revive me again. For from the depths of the earth you will bring me up again.” That’s the resurrection, dear brothers and sisters. Very, very clear. “From the depths of the earth you will bring me up again.”
But in the Gospel reading, it sure doesn’t look like he is the king. Instead, it looks like the cursed one. The people of Israel that Malachi preached to were not the people that went to Babylon for 70 years. The people that Malachi preached to were the children and grandchildren who were born in Babylon and had now come back to Jerusalem after the 70 years. And what did they find? They found Jerusalem in ruins. This is when Nehemiah was building the temple again and the walls around Jerusalem. This is when the marauding armies around Israel and Jerusalem would continually come and try to disrupt this building, which is why Nehemiah said, “In one hand I shall carry a spear and in the other hand a trowel, to work and to protect, both at the same time.”
After a few days, even a few weeks, the people of Israel, when they were sitting there in the midst of that rubble, you don’t think they thought to themselves, “Wow, we left a pretty stable life in a pretty booming economy back in Babylon so that we can have freedom here where there isn’t much of an economy and where we’re scratching to get by. Is God against us? Are we still being punished? Is God against Him? Is that what that’s supposed to be? God’s anger and wrath?” Then you better believe it. Because if it’s on Him, it’s not on… See, we judge things by what we see. We judge things by what we think is the right way or the wrong way. And when God doesn’t allow things to come to pass to reward the righteous and to punish the wicked, we cry foul, unfair, not just.
Now given the fact that we’re all self-centered, selfish people, we cry to ourselves and mourn among ourselves, and that’s called murmuring against God. We’ve all murmured against God. We may not have called it murmuring. We may have called it complaining. Or I’m sure you can come up with a synonym in your own mind that fits it even more graphically than just complaining or murmuring. And we’re basically saying, “God, you aren’t treating me fairly. You’re not showing any distinction between me who is one of your children and the rest of the world who does not believe in you. In fact, Lord, you seem to reward the unrighteous and punish the righteous. You seem to give good fortune to the ungodly and misfortune to the godly.”
The Gospel reading says very clearly, righteous and unrighteous are all three hung on the cross. You and I know by faith alone, mind you, not by our sight or experience, by faith alone we know the sinner one is righteous, but from all apparent sight, every one of the soldiers, every one of the bystanders, other than the believers, to a man would say, “He is as cursed as the two thieves.” Yes. In fact, what was He crucified for? Blasphemy. How ridiculous. The Creator of the universe, the One who knit you in your mother’s womb, is the One who is looked upon as a murderer, a thief, He who is righteous.
So if God is saying very clearly in this crucifixion scene, good days come to godly people and ungodly people. Bad days come to godly people and ungodly people. There is no distinction. Jesus said it another way. God causes the rain to fall on the righteous and the unrighteous. Solomon said it this way: “It’s the same for all. Since the same event happens to the righteous and to the wicked, to the good and to the evil, to the clean and to the unclean.” And yet God remains the one in whom we hope continually.
Whereas it was said in that psalm that we read together, “You, you who have made me see many troubles and calamities.” So David is acknowledging all of those troubles and calamities from God’s hands. Yet you who have made me see these troubles and calamities will revive me again. In fact, from the depths of the earth you will bring me up again. That had to have been one of the verses that Jesus said to Himself over and over again as He hung upon the tree for you.
But again, let’s be honest. It is not fun to watch your and my righteousness be treated as trash by the world. And it is not enjoyable to watch the wicked prosper, the ungodly get ahead, the evil go unpunished. That’s hard for you and me. And yet we murmur, don’t we? That’s what the prophet Malachi said. You have said it’s vain to serve God. What’s the profit of our keeping His charge? You and I have those moments when we ask, “What is it? What is it that’s good for following Jesus? How is this a blessing to me in my life?” Because you know there are people who say, “Oh, if you love Jesus, everything’s going to be a blessing to you. You just need to love Jesus more. You need to pray more. You need to trust more. Then things will go well for you.”
That works very well to fertilize your lawn. It doesn’t do well to give a balm to your heart. It doesn’t give you comfort and peace, salt in the wound. And Satan laughs. It is the question that we’re asking, and this is the question: Should not our life be different or better than the rest of the world if we’re God’s children? Really what we’re asking is this: I want to see the distinction between the righteous and the unrighteous now. I want to see the distinction between the wicked and the good now. I don’t want to wait.
And there before you on that Calvary’s cross, two thieves. Both being punished for their deeds. Unrighteous, wicked are they. And in the middle is the righteous one for whom He is dying, these two thieves. All three, there is no distinction. Both bleed, both suffer, both cry out. All three die. Where’s the distinction? For you and me who have faith, we know by faith there is the distinction. For everyone there and for this world, they see no distinction. They see what’s the point of the church. It’s full of hypocrites. Good. God loves good hypocrites who are sinners. He died between two. He loved them so much.
Now one of the thieves, before he ever says something, and this is important, before the thieves begin to talk, Jesus says one important sentence to them, which is the same sentence He says to you, for all of your and my murmurings: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” That’s what He says. That’s what Jesus said from the cross before the thieves ever began to discuss anything about Him. Those words had to have some impact upon one of the two thieves, and you know which one I’m talking about.
Then the thieves begin to have a discussion. They begin to have a discussion. The one who ends up in hell says, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us.” In essence, the thief was saying, “Prove it to me. Give me what I want. If you’re loving, you’re going to give me what I want.” Sounds like your son or daughter and my son or daughter at the grocery store: “Daddy, if you love me, you’ll give me a candy bar. You really love me.”
Well, no. Jesus doesn’t come down off that cross. That would be the most hateful thing he could do, couldn’t it? It’s the other thief who rebukes his fellow sinner who was justly dying the same death as the innocent one. He says, “Do you not fear God? You are under the same sentence of condemnation as he.” Because he goes on, “And we indeed justly, we are receiving the due reward for our deeds. But this man, this man has done nothing wrong.” You can’t see the difference or the distinction between us and him.
And yet the one thief is making it very clear to the other thief. He’s preaching to him. He’s evangelizing him without even realizing. And he’s saying, “This one is the innocent one. Can’t you see? We’re here because we deserve to be here. He’s here because he doesn’t deserve to be here.” And then that thief makes a great statement of faith when he says, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
And then Jesus makes a distinction clearly to this man. And Jesus makes a distinction clearly to you. To everybody else, he’s just another religious zealot who dies for his beliefs. But to you and to me, and to that thief on the cross, Jesus said, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” He makes a distinction. The one thief is going to hell. This thief is going to heaven. And Jesus makes a clear distinction to believers. Everybody else thinks this is some religious zealot who’s speaking pious words from a cross in his dying moment. That’s not what that thief thought. The other thief, yes. But not the one who asked him to remember him and his kingdom.
Jesus makes a clear distinction. So back to the Old Testament reading, the people of Israel who are gathered around in Jerusalem trying to make ends meet, scratching out their meager living, looking like a wreck to all the other cultures in which they were surrounded. And they murmured to one another. And it’s in verse 16 that something is said very important. Then those who feared the Lord spoke with one another. No, it is not “misery loves company” and we come together and gripe and complain to one another and cry out “woe is me did I not get the wrong shaft. I should have got the better cut.” That’s not what they did together.
In this text when they came together, it was an opportunity to share frustration and anger, just like David in that psalm proclaimed frustration and anger, and yet at the same time, in that psalm, he proclaims faith in God taking care of it. “You who have made me see troubles and sorrows shall revive me again.” That’s what they comforted one another with. That’s why your presence here upholds one another. Your life isn’t any better than mine, and your life isn’t any worse than mine. We are sinners living in a sinful world, and by your presence here, you uphold and strengthen me, and I know that they uphold and strengthen you, and it is a beautiful mutualistic reciprocity that occurs here.
They came and spoke with one another, and the Lord paid attention and heard them. And God’s not going to listen to anything from an unbeliever’s lips. He will only listen to a believer. He listens to them, and a book of remembrance was written before Him of those who feared the Lord. The book of remembrance, John calls the book of life. In the book of Revelation, he’s saying the distinction’s already been made. God is saying to them, “I’ve made the distinction. You’re on my list. You made the cut because of this one who was cut for you. You made the cut. You’re mine.”
And in fact, he even goes on further and says, “They shall be mine,” says the Lord of hosts. “I will make up my treasured possession, and I will spare them as a father spares his son who serves him.” What father would not spare his son who served him? Even when the son is a prodigal son, the father still spares him. Do you think God had a little something in mind when he said that? “I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him.”
Then, the text says, “Then once more, then once more you will see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between the one who serves God and the one who doesn’t serve him.” It’s not in vain to serve the Lord. It may look like it. The world may convince you that it is. You may feel like it. That’s all normal. But that is not the reality in which you’ve been baptized. The reality in which you’ve been baptized has been expressed here where the distinction will be made as it was made on Calvary’s cross. One thief went to hell and he looked just the same and he died the same as the other thief.
But that thief that believed did not die the same death as the one who did not believe. And in Jesus’ words, there was a distinction made as he died. I promise you, if I’m at your bedside and you’re dying, I will remind you, you are God’s child because God baptized you. The distinction’s been made. You’re set apart. You are His. Let nothing cause you to fret or sorrow. Be comforted. But that isn’t what you’re going to hear from your own mind even, and from Satan. Amen. But your loved ones will tell you the same. The distinction’s been made. Your name is written in the book of life when you were baptized. Rejoice in the name of Jesus. Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.
