Treasured Possession

DEVOTION

MALACHI

TREASURED POSSESSION

Mal 3:13-18

13 "You have said harsh things against me," says the LORD. "Yet you ask, 'What have we said against you?' 14 "You have said, 'It is futile to serve God. What did we gain by carrying out his requirements and going about like mourners before the LORD Almighty? 15 But now we call the arrogant blessed. Certainly the evildoers prosper, and even those who challenge God escape.'" 16 Then those who feared the LORD talked with each other, and the LORD listened and heard. A scroll of remembrance was written in his presence concerning those who feared the LORD and honored his name. 17 "They will be mine," says the LORD Almighty, "in the day when I make up my treasured possession. I will spare them, just as in compassion a man spares his son who serves him. 18 And you will again see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not.

NIV

There is a danger in watching the wicked prosper and wanting that same sort of experience. Not that it would be right to envy the wicked, for we know their final end, however, at the present time it seems they have so much while we live a more meager life. But they are arrogant to the point of saying they do not need God, for that matter have no concern about God, even to the point of saying there is no God, that he is an invention of man. When the arrogant say they do not need God, those are the harsh words Malachi is saying the Lord is speaking about. They say it is futile to serve God. There is nothing to gain by living by his standards, his commands. The arrogant look to themselves, their abilities, their education, their knowledge, and supposed wisdom to generate the resources to fulfill their desires. How foolish and short-sighted this type of person is. They make their plans for their future, storing up wealth for themselves, so they can sit back, live a good life, and relax, much like that foolish rich man who built those bigger barns. That old slogan of a brewery that says; “you only go around once in life, so grab all the gusto you can”, said it all about the philosophy of the world of the arrogant, the evildoers, those who think it futile to serve the Lord. What they do not know is their future is the lake of burning sulfur. We have to make sure we do not live in that short-sighted way, or envy those evildoers who prosper in material ways, striving for that fame and fortune and attaining both. They will not escape God. We have to understand that we are already living out our eternal life, for death holds no grip on us. Sure our bodies have an expiration date, if fact, one determined by our Lord. Our soul or Spirit, on the other hand, has no expiration date, it is eternal, and we will live forever in the presence of our Lord. Then as we have already begun this eternal life, we are already living it out in his presence. Because we fear the Lord, which does not mean we are afraid, but revere Him, and we honor his name, the Lord says we are his, in fact, He calls us his treasured possession, or as one writer puts it we are his peculiar people. We are God’s treasured possession, that is so awesome to consider when we think how majestic, how all-powerful, all-knowing, almighty He is. No one can stand against God, but because we revere and honor him, we will stand before him in all his glory for we are his treasured possession.