The Faithful Remnant

PRAYER PRACTICE

Prayer Journal 

To begin your daily worship today, grab a pen and paper and write out a prayer to God. Not sure what to write? Try using ACTS to frame your prayer. Begin with adoration for who God is. Then move on to confession – being real about where you have fallen short in the last day or two. Give thanks to God for all that He gives (including forgiveness for the sin you just confessed!). And then finish with supplication – with your prayer requests to God. When you are done, tuck this away somewhere (so you can read it later and see how God has answered your prayers) and then move into hearing from God through His Word.

DAILY READING

Malachi 3:16-18

DEVOTION / REFLECTION

Remembering and Being Remembered

By Pastor Jeff Morlock

In the Hebrew Scriptures, the word “remember” is not always about recalling something that you’ve forgotten. Instead, to remember someone often means to take action on their behalf. By contrast, the theme of Malachi is, “Don’t forget the Lord!” In this context, to forget means to neglect God and fail to act in accord with his will. By and large, Israel had forgotten God’s love, God’s justice, God’s commandments. Only a remnant remembered and gave testimony to those around them by fearing God and honoring his name (v. 16).

Though we sometimes forget God, he never fails to remember us. God remembers, even those who are not seeking his help! In this passage the remnant are simply talking to one another, but the Lord listens and hears and takes action, not just for them, but for the sake of the entire world!

“They will be mine,” God says. At the cross, Jesus would buy us all back from the debt of our sins, paying the price for our iniquity. “With your blood,” the twenty-four elders sing in heaven, “you purchased people from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9). Martin Luther writes concerning the second article of the Apostle’s Creed, “He has redeemed me, a lost and condemned person, purchased and won me from all sins, death, and the power of the devil, not with gold or silver but with his holy, precious blood and with his innocent suffering and death” (Small Catechism).

That’s what Jesus has done for us all. This is how he made you and me his “treasured possession.” Because of Christ, you are holy. Because of Christ, you  belong to the faithful and remembered remnant who are his witnesses to the ends of the earth!

Prayer: Lord God, I praise you that you always remember your remnant people. Let me never forget to fear, love, and honor you, for the sake of your Son Jesus. Amen.

GOD’S REMNANT

Reading: Romans 11:1-6

“REMNANT SALE,” I read aloud in the flyer from the fabric store.

“What’s that?” my friend asked. I hadn’t heard the term in years, but I recalled buying remnants back in the day when I was into making purses from heavy fabric.

I explained, “It’s a small amount of material left on the end of a bolt of fabric, usually less than a yard. It would seem useless to sell because there isn’t enough to make something from a pattern for a dress or a suit or a robe. But these can be great for small one-of-a-kind items like purses, placemats, potholders, etc – or they would be perfect for making a patch-work quilt.”

When I read the verses for today, the word “remnant” caught my eye. Several translations used this term for the small group of Jews whom God “reserved for Himself” during Elijah’s time – Jews who had remained faithful to Him after all the others had walked away in disobedience and followed different gods (see Romans 11: 4; also read the story in I Kings 19: 10-18).

Paul further expanded the term to include Jews of his day who had been chosen by God’s grace (and indeed, extends today to those who are a faithful remnant of Jesus). We believers who are not Jewish by birth are included in the remnant by adoption. “The grounds for the existence of the remnant was not [our] good works but [only by] God’s grace.” (From note on vs 5 in the NIV Study Bible).

We, God’s Remnant, are set apart by His grace and favor for a special purpose, which I am imagining to be that patch-work quilt of believers from “every tribe and tongue” that enjoys, appreciates and shares the unique pattern He has created us to be together!

How grateful I am, Lord, that through your grace and mercy, I am among the quilt remnants that make up the whole Body of Christ. May we individually and together be a display of your beauty to the world around us.  Amen