Wesley Menke

05 December 2021

Sermon ~ Advent 2

Malachai’s Unacceptable Offerings

You might have an offering to give to the Lord, but what if you are in no condition to give it? 

Malachai dice que el Señor se alegrará al recibir ofrendas igual como en otros tiempos. 

Malachai says that the Lord will gladly accept offerings like in times past. So, why does God regard some offerings and not others? God regarded Abel’s offering of a lamb, but not Cain’s which was cereal. Micah also said that God detested some offerings, and detested solemn assemblies, but wanted justice in the land. The true offering God wants is justice. But what if God isn’t even interested in our offerings of justice? The problem is when we think of our offerings as a valorization of our suffering. We falsely try to take the place of Christ by thinking that we can earn God’s salvation. Instead, a true offering is acceptable only when we are purified from our evil desire of works-righteousness. When we accept God’s grace in faith then our offerings are acceptable to God.

La mentira es que la salvación es obtenida por buenas obras. Pero no. La salvación de Dios es dada por la gracia de Jesucristo. We are saved by grace and not by work.

Before we have faith in God’s grace we are like an unpurified metal that is full of imperfections. These imperfections are the parts of us that want to earn salvation, they are our sins of which we are guilty. Imperfections within us are also like bruises. The injuries and traumas we have experienced also are impurities within us. When we receive the Holy Spirit, it is like a king entering the temple. Our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit purifies us and heals us giving us peace and new life! I remember a time in my life when I repented and was purified.

Engineering Purification

I remember when I was a freshman in college. I started out as an engineering major. In the spring semester I took an introduction to engineering class with all of the other engineering students of all types in the whole university. It was a massive classroom full of nerds, geeks, and some dorks. I was just a nerd. There were four group projects that determined the bulk of our grade. We were free to choose our groups. The first project was to build a bridge out of paper. I feel into a group of enthusiastic students of which I knew only one or two. I remember spending hours and hours in the Student Union trying to build a bridge out of paper. It was so frustrating. But the thing that was most frustrating of all was the people. Everybody in our group thought they were smart, or the smartest, and so nobody worked together at all. Our bridge was not good at all. It was a relief to find out that many of the bridges were not good. Really there was just a couple of groups that had good bridges. One was called the “log” and it was a husky sized tube of rolled paper. The last group to present was three people who joined the class late. They called their bridge the twig. It was like the log but much much smaller. They said that they were trying to minimize “P,” and P was a numerical value based on price vs. strength. They aced the proj