"Ye have wearied the Lord with your words. Yet ye say, Wherein have we wearied him? When ye say, Every one that doeth evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and he delighteth in them; or, Where is the God of judgment?"
Malachi 2:17
In this chapter and the chapter before it, God is explaining some of the things that are not right within his kingdom. People are sacrificing the worst of their flocks rather than the best (Malachi 1:13), people are getting rid of their wives (Malachi 2:14) both literally and figuratively in the sense that God is the "wife of youth" and people are leaving him for idols, and the priests have allowed and even encouraged keeping commandments in a really lazy or corrupt way... you could even say with "slothfulness" (D&C 58:29).
What it comes down to is that when we make covenants and agreements with God (or with anyone else for that matter), we are supposed to be doing our best to keep the letter AND the spirit of those agreements. If we are looking for the loopholes in our agreements with God, I think that we will find that that we'll fall out of the agreement through our own loopholes... and the agreement was there to keep *us* safe, and to help us find happiness, so it is seriously crazy for us to default on something that is benefiting us.
Plus, honestly, when we try to cheat an agreement, what does that say about us, and about how we feel about the person the agreement is with, or about how far we ourselves can be trusted to make any agreement? Do we really want to send that message to God, or to anyone? And then, as noted in these verses, we look at our world and we say ignorant things like "people that do evil prosper" or "God needs to do better" or whatever it is... when we are not seeing the whole picture, and we *definitely* aren't doing a great job of setting an example or teaching others to be better as we put the blame on God.
Today, let's take a good, hard look at ourselves and how we are keeping our covenants with God. I definitely need to think about this as well... I'm not here to compare or condemn. Let's think about our priorities--are we putting God dead last in our lives and treating our worship as an afterthought, or are we putting him first and honoring him? Are we looking for loopholes in the commandments, or are we working to understand how they improve our lives? Are we focusing on how we can improve, or are we looking to cast blame? Let's work hard and do better, especially in how we talk about God, who deserves nothing but deep thankfulness and respect from us.
Malachi 2:17
In this chapter and the chapter before it, God is explaining some of the things that are not right within his kingdom. People are sacrificing the worst of their flocks rather than the best (Malachi 1:13), people are getting rid of their wives (Malachi 2:14) both literally and figuratively in the sense that God is the "wife of youth" and people are leaving him for idols, and the priests have allowed and even encouraged keeping commandments in a really lazy or corrupt way... you could even say with "slothfulness" (D&C 58:29).
What it comes down to is that when we make covenants and agreements with God (or with anyone else for that matter), we are supposed to be doing our best to keep the letter AND the spirit of those agreements. If we are looking for the loopholes in our agreements with God, I think that we will find that that we'll fall out of the agreement through our own loopholes... and the agreement was there to keep *us* safe, and to help us find happiness, so it is seriously crazy for us to default on something that is benefiting us.
Plus, honestly, when we try to cheat an agreement, what does that say about us, and about how we feel about the person the agreement is with, or about how far we ourselves can be trusted to make any agreement? Do we really want to send that message to God, or to anyone? And then, as noted in these verses, we look at our world and we say ignorant things like "people that do evil prosper" or "God needs to do better" or whatever it is... when we are not seeing the whole picture, and we *definitely* aren't doing a great job of setting an example or teaching others to be better as we put the blame on God.
Today, let's take a good, hard look at ourselves and how we are keeping our covenants with God. I definitely need to think about this as well... I'm not here to compare or condemn. Let's think about our priorities--are we putting God dead last in our lives and treating our worship as an afterthought, or are we putting him first and honoring him? Are we looking for loopholes in the commandments, or are we working to understand how they improve our lives? Are we focusing on how we can improve, or are we looking to cast blame? Let's work hard and do better, especially in how we talk about God, who deserves nothing but deep thankfulness and respect from us.
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