#01 If I am a father, where is my honour?

[AI translation] A week ago today, God's message to us through the prophet Malachi was that the Lord God Almighty loves his people, loves them with an incomprehensible, unspeakable love! Even if in a different way than the way we would like Him to love, the way we imagine or practice love: He loves, He loves with a redeeming love, He loves His people with a love that saves them from death to life! So the words we have just continued to read from the prophet's writing, however bitter, however harsh, are the words of a loving God who, even if He speaks harshly, does so only because He does not want people to perish, but to repent and live! This is immediately clear from this reproachful question: 'if I am a father, where is my honour? And if I am Lord, where is my fear?"Let's stick to this question. How many times do we say, "Our Father!" Step by step we say in our prayer, "Lord, Lord! But, do we know that it is not only a great privilege to address the mighty God in this way, but also a sacred responsibility, a total commitment to Him?! Only he who takes it deadly seriously that "A son honours his father, and a servant his lord," dare call God Father and Lord. (verse 6a) We cannot take this most holy name recklessly and lightly upon our lips! The moment I utter the word "Father" or "Lord", the moment I take this holy name to account, "Where is my integrity..., where is my fear?"
God has declared and proved Himself countless times, even here among us, as unconditional love. Now he asks: what is man's answer to this question of love? He is Father, no doubt about that - but where are the children? Where is the reverence of the Father, where is the sign of loving obedience, where is the praise, glory, honour, and thanksgiving that is due to Him? It is for the fatherly glory of God that the prophet Malachi argues in this passage. I have often wondered, why is God so insistent that people acknowledge and serve His glory? Does God need this in order to have children on earth who glorify and love Him? Would it damage His glory if we men here on earth profaned His name, mocking it, as in the days of Malachi in Jerusalem? The temporal rulers are indeed instructed to defend themselves by law against insolence. They have always something to worry about for their throne, their glory, the security of their rule. But the throne of God is not so weak! What loss would it be to him if his majesty and glory were violated by men? Can the light of the full moon be diminished by being barked at by a puppy on the ground? And does God need our worship at all? Will it be noticed in heaven if every psalm and prayer on earth, the smallest spot in the universe, is once silent? Why then does God urge us to praise him, why does he then ask almost jealously, 'If I am a father, where is my honour? And if I am Lord, where is my fear? saith the Lord of hosts unto you, ye priests that hate my name... (Mal 1,6b)
Then I realized that it is not God who needs the glory-giving, but us. When God jealously seeks His glory, He does not do it for Himself, but for us. When one does not give God glory, he does not harm Him, but himself. When somewhere it comes to the point where God has to ask, "If I am a father, where is my glory?", it will not be long before every father of a family will have to ask: Where is my honour? And when God has to ask, "If I am lord, where is my fear?", then not long after, there will be ample reason for all lords great and small to ask the same question. When a nation has come to the point, as in Jerusalem in the days of Malachi, where the priests - that is, the leaders of the people, the rulers - refuse to pay homage to the eternal Father: then all true homage on earth is over, then comes the age of terrible irreverence! Do you understand how much not for himself, how much for us, the Lord asks, "If I am a Father, where is my honour?" Do you feel how much tender, caring, saving love there is in this question? He urges His glory because He does not want our destruction. God means it when He tells us through His messenger, "I love you!
The priests are the first to be rebuked by the Lord for not being vigilant and strict enough in guarding the holiness and purity of the Lord's table. In the Mosaic Laws it is precisely outlined and laid down what kind of animal may be sacrificed, how the presentation of the sin offering is to be made. The Lord did not accept just any animal, only such as He ordained for sin. But the priests did not take such a strict view, turning a blind eye if someone brought a blind sheep instead of the prescribed unblemished, sound lamb, or a lame or crippled one. They considered their own profit more important, more important than the glory of God, and therefore accepted as a sacrifice what they should not have accepted. They rejoiced when someone brought something to the altar of the Lord, even if it was defective, and they did not dare to say that such a sacrifice was not pleasing to the Lord! They were afraid that they would scare people away, and they would not get as much of the meat of the sacrifice as they did! For the whole nation was so impoverished! The country has not yet recovered from the greatest national disaster, the misery of the Babylonian captivity. Life has scarcely begun, the holy city has yet to be rebuilt from the ruins, and the oppressive hand of the foreigner is still upon the people: should we not then rejoice that under such circumstances there is still something, if not the Lord's prescribed sacrifice, for the glory of the Lord?
Today, the question would be: should we not be content that, in such difficult times, people still give anything at all to religion, that in a world of machines and mathematics there are still people who go to church, that there are still people who baptise their children and bless their marriages before God and bury themselves in a religious service? Something, after all, is more than nothing. A blind, lame or paralysed sacrificial animal is more than nothing! If a man takes off his hat - he is half-way to praying! Let us rejoice if the faithful pay their church tax: let us not overburden them with further contributions to the glory of God! Let us rejoice that our faithful take communion, let us not tighten the conditions for coming! Let us rejoice when someone comes to a Bible study, let us not discourage him by asking him: have you already given your heart to the Lord Jesus Christ? In general, let us rejoice when someone mentions the name of God with religious devotion, not always sectarianism with such incomprehensible words: salvation, the blood of Jesus, forgiveness of sins! In such a world, let us rejoice in the religious minimum, because it can backfire to push for the religious maximum.
But God, instead of rejoicing in the minimum given to him, says: "If any of you should shut the door, you would not burn on my altar in vain! I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord of hosts; neither do I pleasure in a meat offering from your hands" (Mal 1:10). They feared for their own bread, and when someone came and brought the defective sacrificial animal, they dared not tell him that it was not good, that the way of worship in general, as practiced by the majority of the faithful, was not good, not according to God. Oh, what a terrible judgment this is on the priests of today, on us, the leaders of the churches! We dare not say that the way of worship as practised by 95% of our Reformed church members is not good. The faith of their souls that they believe is faith in God: not good. That even to these the Lord says, "I have no pleasure in you!" We dare not say all this! We dare not send away from the Lord's table the unrepentant sinner, we dare not deny the sacrament of baptism to the children of unbelieving and indifferent parents, we dare not refuse to accept the sacrifice of unbelief for fear of driving people away from the church, of emptying the churches, of closing the doors. But the Lord says: "If any of you should shut the door, you would not burn on my altar in vain." It is from this Word that I read a few days ago in a letter to priests by an English evangelist, Spurgeon, that I was struck with a real shudder: "How many and how many souls have fallen into ruin because of priests! There are ministers who will be responsible for the spiritual destruction of whole cities. How will you bear it when a whole congregation will cry out to you in hell: 'We have you to thank for this! You dared not point out our sins because you feared for your bread. Damn you! It was not enough that you cast yourself into damnation, why did you have to drag us down with you?"
Well, Brothers and Sisters, I will not take it any longer! Personally, when we meet, I will tell everyone if I see a blind, lame, or paralyzed sacrificial animal brought to the Lord that this is not acceptable to the Lord. And let me also tell everyone from here that without an atoning sacrifice, no one can come before the Lord! And this sacrifice must not be just any sacrifice, but clean, whole, perfect, such as the Lord delights in. So your heart cannot be a sacrifice of atonement, because it is not pleasing to the Lord, because your heart is not pure, not spotless and not whole, but it is dirty, sinful and broken. The one or more deeds that you consider good cannot be an atoning sacrifice, because they are neither clean, nor whole, nor perfect, even if they are good in any other way. Neither can your prayer or your faith be an atoning sacrifice for the same reason - we would look good if we could atone to God for our sins by the perfection of our faith or prayer! We have nothing in us, nor can we produce anything that pleases God.
There is only one in whom God has said that He delights, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I delight" - Jesus Christ (Mt 3:17). He is the only pure, perfect and whole One, who has undertaken to make atonement by the sacrifice of Himself. Jesus Christ crucified is the only atoning sacrifice God accepts for your sins!
This was the Lord's question in our Word, "If I am a Father, where is my righteousness?" Nowhere, nowhere at all - if it is not in Christ, if you will not show it in Him. If it is in Christ, then for His blood's sake you can answer the question this way:
Father, have mercy on me!
Amen
Date: 10 July 1949.