Whose Mess is it?
Minor Prophets: Around and Around They Go • Sermon • Submitted
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Opening & Intro
Opening & Intro
Get in there and clean your room!
We have all heard that one. We generally listen until we turn about 9 or 10.
Then we try to bargain or negotiate. We make plans: “Okay, when they tell me to clean my room this time I am going to be smarter than them.”
Then it comes, clean your room. And I say something along the lines of, “My room wouldn’t be messy if you didn’t buy me so much stuff. You should help me clean it because really this is your fault.”
What would any parent do in that situation? I don’t know but I know what I would do.
If my kids ever said ANYTHING like that to me I would grab a garbage bag and give all of their toys away to someone who appreciated them.
My kids will also never tell me that they are bored. The sheer magnitude of things they have to do in and around our house is insane.
What is this all about?
We make decisions that lead us down poor paths and we try to find our way out. What do we do?
Do we try to blame someone else? DO we look for a scape goat? Do we try to find an easy way out? Or do we put in the work and make it right?
Main Point
Main Point
The main point for today is when we find ourselves in a mess do we accept responsibility or look for someone to blame? Whose mess is it?
Why Does it Matter
Why Does it Matter
IF we can’t accept that we have sinned, that we have a mess in our lives that we are accountable for, then how can we fully appreciate God and all that he has done for us?
Even when life stinks and seems impossible, we still live under the promise of God.
Scripture
Scripture
“And now, you priests, this warning is for you. If you do not listen, and if you do not resolve to honor my name,” says the Lord Almighty, “I will send a curse on you, and I will curse your blessings. Yes, I have already cursed them, because you have not resolved to honor me.
“Because of you I will rebuke your descendants; I will smear on your faces the dung from your festival sacrifices, and you will be carried off with it. And you will know that I have sent you this warning so that my covenant with Levi may continue,” says the Lord Almighty. “My covenant was with him, a covenant of life and peace, and I gave them to him; this called for reverence and he revered me and stood in awe of my name. True instruction was in his mouth and nothing false was found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and turned many from sin.
“For the lips of a priest ought to preserve knowledge, because he is the messenger of the Lord Almighty and people seek instruction from his mouth. But you have turned from the way and by your teaching have caused many to stumble; you have violated the covenant with Levi,” says the Lord Almighty. “So I have caused you to be despised and humiliated before all the people, because you have not followed my ways but have shown partiality in matters of the law.”
Do we not all have one Father? Did not one God create us? Why do we profane the covenant of our ancestors by being unfaithful to one another?
Judah has been unfaithful. A detestable thing has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem: Judah has desecrated the sanctuary the Lord loves by marrying women who worship a foreign god. As for the man who does this, whoever he may be, may the Lord remove him from the tents of Jacob—even though he brings an offering to the Lord Almighty.
Another thing you do: You flood the Lord’s altar with tears. You weep and wail because he no longer looks with favor on your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands. You ask, “Why?” It is because the Lord is the witness between you and the wife of your youth. You have been unfaithful to her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant.
Has not the one God made you? You belong to him in body and spirit. And what does the one God seek? Godly offspring. So be on your guard, and do not be unfaithful to the wife of your youth.
“The man who hates and divorces his wife,” says the Lord, the God of Israel, “does violence to the one he should protect,” says the Lord Almighty.
So be on your guard, and do not be unfaithful.
You have wearied the Lord with your words.
“How have we wearied him?” you ask.
By saying, “All who do evil are good in the eyes of the Lord, and he is pleased with them” or “Where is the God of justice?”
1-9:
Here we go again. Same trouble different generation.
God made a promise
because of your poor teaching you are leading people astray.
The choices we make today effect the children of tomorrow.
10 - 16:
You know who God is.
You always disrespect him.
Then try to bribe him with gifts.
God is not stupid.
Why do you always leave the God who loves you?
Trying to blame God for you mess.
Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”
He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
Did you catch that? The woman YOU put here with me…she did it.
You bought me the toys…this mess is really your fault..
This is not new
Application
Application
17:
God is fed up with words that don’t match actions.
From our own mess we demand justice.
So many times in the world we see all of the stuff going on around us and we ask God what he is doing to fix it?
The truth is…He did fix it and if we simply lived like he asks us to it would be relaly great!
But greed, laziness, misplaced ambition, desire to sin causes problems.
Gas prices, food proces. Corporations are making record breaking profits right now on the backs of a lot of struggling people.
Imagine those same places only worked to support everyone around them? Imagine if they they used their wealth to help the world.
On April 12, 1955, Edward R. Murrow asked Jonas Salk who owned the patent to the polio vaccine. “Well, the people, I would say,” Salk responded. “There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”
By the time of his chat with Murrow, which aired on the day the polio vaccine was announced as safe and 90 percent effective, Salk was already more messiah than virologist to the average American. Polio paralyzed between 13,000 and 20,000 children annually in the last pre-vaccine years, and Salk was the face of the inoculation initiative. Appearing on television to present the vaccine as a gift to the American people was a public relations masterstroke.
We need to take control of our lives. Admit our mess and “clean our rooms.”
God is not goingt omake those steps for us. Just like our parents didn’t clean our rooms for us.
We have to take ownership of our lives and make those adjustments.
Closing
Closing
What is in our lives today that we need to clean up that we haev been placing as something else?