Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us? Why then are we faithless to one another, profaning the covenant of our fathers? 11 Judah has been faithless, and abomination has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem. For Judah has profaned the sanctuary of the LORD, which he loves, and has married the daughter of a foreign god.
In the 1932 film, Island of Lost Souls, a rhetorical question is asked that requires no answer. “Are we not men?” Of course they were, but the implication was that they were acting like beasts. Malachi, at the end of the Old Testament period, used a similar literary device to show that Israel and Judah had forgotten God. Of course there is one true God who is our Father. Yet you would not know it by looking at his sons and daughters. They sinned and followed other gods, which begged the question of whether they knew there was one God who loved them as his children.
If Malachi were writing in 2024, he would ask the same rhetorical question of the church and then ask why they celebrate sin and profane the church with adultery and abuse. It seems a daily occurrence that a famous pastor falls because he forgot that he is a son of the King and should act like it instead of preying on children and destroying the flock. The shepherds and their sheep need to turn back to the Good Shepherd to avoid annihilation from the wolvish world that would devour them. Like the Prodigal Son eventually did, remember the Father.
Dear Lord, thank you that Jesus asked, “Is it not written?” Thank you that it is written and help us to look to it to remember you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Pastor Brad Boyer
Cape Community Church