The key-word of the Christian life is ’sacrifice’—­surrender, and that to God.  That is to be stamped on the inmost selves, and by the act of the will, on the body as well.  ’Yield yourselves to God, and your members as instruments of righteousness to Him.’  It is to be written on possessions.  Malachi necessarily keeps within the limits of the sacrificial system, but his impetuous eloquence hits us no less.  It is still possible to ‘rob God.’  We do so when we keep anything as our own, and use it at our own will, for our own purposes.  Only when we recognise His ownership of ourselves, and consequently of all that we call ‘ours,’ do we give Him His due.  All the slave’s chattels belong to the owner to whom he belongs.  Such thorough-going surrender is the secret of thorough possession.  The true way to enjoy worldly goods is to give them to God.

The lattices of heaven are opened, not to pour down, as of old, fiery destruction, but to make way for the gentle descent of God’s blessing, which will more than fill every vessel set to receive it.  This is the universal law, not always fulfilled in increase of outward goods, but in the better riches of communion and of larger possession in God Himself.  He suffers no man to be His creditor, but more than returns our gifts, as legends tell of some peasant who brought his king a poor tribute of fruits of his fields, and went away from the presence-chamber with a jewel in his hand.

THE UNCHANGING LORD

     ’I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not
     consumed.’  MALACHI iii. 6.

The scriptural revelations of the divine Name are always the basis of intensely practical admonition.  The Bible does not think it worth while to proclaim the Name of God without building on the proclamation promises or commandments.  There is no ‘mere theology’ in Scripture; and it does not speak of ‘attributes,’ nor give dry abstractions of infinitude, eternity, omniscience, unchangeableness, but lays stress on the personality of God, which is so apt to escape us in these abstract conceptions, and thus teaches us to think of this personal God our Father, as infinite, eternal, knowing all things, and never changing.  There is all the difference in our attitude towards the very same truth if we think of the unchangeableness of God, or if we think that our Father God is unchangeable.  In our text the thought of Him as unchanging comes into view as the foundation of the continuance of the unfaithful sons of Jacob in their privileges and in their very lives.  ’I am the Lord,’ Jehovah, the Self-existent, the Eternal whose being is not under the limitations of succession and time.  ’Because I am Jehovah, I change not’; and because Jehovah changes not, therefore our finite and mortal selves abide, and our infinite and sinful selves are still the objects of His steadfast love.

Let us consider, first, the unchangeable God, and second, the unchanging God as the foundation of our changeful lives.