Give Him A Gift He Will Love (Malachi 3:1-4)

 

Advent 2, Sunday, December 8, 2024

Malachi 3:1-4

Give Him A Gift He Will Love

Christmas is coming – have you done your Christmas shopping yet? I always find it difficult thinking of presents to buy for people. But I heard a good piece of advice recently: what you should do is walk around and pay attention to what is in the shops. When you notice something that makes you think about the person you love, get that for them. “I found this and it made me think of you” – the perfect reason for a Christmas present.

Sometimes your loved ones will be helpful, and give you a wish list. I remember when we were kids, we would hoard the toy catalogues that would come in the mail, and go at them with a pen, circling which toys we liked the look of and writing our names next to them.

All this gift-giving makes me wonder – what if the Lord has a wish list? Are we trying to give him something he doesn’t want? What if he wants us to say “look at what I found, Lord. It made me think of you”? And if so, how are we meant to figure this all out about him?

This short passage from Malachi talks about giving the Lord a gift he will love. It is the last book in the Old Testament. We have already had kings David and Solomon, and then a whole number of kings after them – some good, mostly bad. The Assyrians have come and taken away the northern kingdom. The Babylonians have come and taken the rest. What was left got swept away into exile, and then the Persians let them come back home. Now, Solomon’s temple has been rebuilt, and the walls have been repaired. But the people’s hearts do not seem to be in it – they are offering animals for sacrifice that are no good. The waste, things that they would have gotten rid of anyway, is what is being offered to the Lord. And so Malachi is calling them back, to take their relationship with God seriously again, to “offer him sacrifices in righteousness”, to remember their first love “as in the days of old, and the former years”.

Do you remember first falling in love with someone? That first rush of affection when you can’t stop thinking about them. You stay up too late at night on the phone with them. You can’t wait to get out the door to see them again the next day. You want to know everything about them – and you want to give them gifts, to show them how much you love them. Some people call this the “honeymoon” phase of a relationship, suggesting that it is supposed to go away after awhile.

But maybe it isn’t meant to go away. Maybe this is something we should be asking about ourselves – why do we allow our love to fade? Because when it comes to the Lord, what about our love for him makes us let it fade away? Why do we need to be reminded to return to him, over and over again, just like Malachi did with the people of ancient Jerusalem?

When I first became interested in the woman who would become my wife, my life suddenly became intensely richer. I would have done anything for this woman – I would have given her anything.

When we first discovered our love for Jesus, were you excited? Maybe you had that moment of thrill, of discovering the boundless, infinite love that your Creator has for you. In that moment, I would have done anything for him, would have given him anything he asked.

But for whatever reason, we so often allow our love to fade. We get distracted by other things, or (and worse yet) we decide that the Jesus we first fell in love with isn’t quite right. And so we might have changed who Jesus is in our minds.

We all like to talk about Jesus – but how often do we actually talk to Jesus? Are we falling into the trap of becoming a den of gossipers, always talking about him, but never talking to him? If the prophet is calling us to return to the Lord that we first loved, then why don’t we do just that – return to him, spend time with him, listen to what he has to say to us – and not let our own selfish desires get in the way. This way we will know what his likes and dislikes are, and we will have a much better chance of giving him a gift he will actually like.

So many times I have seen something I would have loved to have given to my wife. But then I had to check myself – would she really like this? Does my wife really want the new Playstation, or is that really just a present for myself? When we worship the Lord, are we doing what we want to do, or are we doing what he wants us to do?

We might be quite happy staying in our little box, looking for pretty little trinkets to offer to the Lord. But that is not good enough for him; he wants us to be able to offer him gifts worthy of his glory. What wondrous love that the Lord shows us, that he would come to us as a man, offer himself on the cross and die for us, so that we may be refined into such precious beauty that the Lord of hosts himself is happy to receive us? Who can endure such a day as that one he hung on the cross, when the Lord of glory was crucified for us? Who can stand when we see him resurrected, ascending into glory, standing up for us in all adversity, so that we may be higher even than the angels? No wonder the prophet cries out: “who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?”

To give the Lord a gift he will love, we have to know who he is and what he is like. This is who he is, and this is what he is like: he loves us so much that not even his own life was too much to give. On his wish list he has written your name. Give yourself to the Lord Jesus in everything you think, say and do. The love the Lord has for you is so great that he gave himself entirely to you. The only gift worth giving him is ourselves, entirely, to him. Live the kind of life that makes you always say “Lord, I found this and it made me think of you.” Then we will have given the Lord a gift he will love.