Studies in the Book of Malachi #6

Transcription of the sixth episode of the series Studies in the Book of Malachi brought to you by Pastor Rusty Tardo.

You can listen to it here.

"Malachi chapter 2.

The last book in the Old Testament, Malachi. A series I'm calling the modern message of Malachi, because you know, it's just not outdated. It's as relevant today as it was when Malachi addressed his generation.

Speaks to us right where we are.

It's just what we need to hear.

I want to begin tonight with verse 17 in chapter 2, and we're going to read to verse 5 of chapter 3.

That's what we're going to deal with tonight.

Father, bless the Word as it comes forth.

Help me to speak with clarity and by Your Spirit, by Your anointing. I ask that in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.

Verse 17, You have wearied the Lord with Your words.

Yet You say, Wherein have we wearied Him?

When You say, Everyone that doeth evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and He delighteth in them, or where is the God of judgment?

Behold, I will send my messenger, and He shall prepare the way before me.

And the Lord whom You seek shall suddenly come to His temple, even the messenger of the covenant whom You delight in. Behold, He shall come, saith the Lord of Hosts.

But who may abide the day of His coming, and who shall stand when He appeareth?

For He is like a refiner's fire, and like a fuller's soap, and He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and He shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness. Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto the Lord, as in the days of old and as in former years. And I will come near to you to judgment, and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the harling in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the Lord of Hosts.

Titled the message tonight, Where is the God of Justice?

Where is the God of Justice?

Because that seems to be the theme for these verses that Malachi writes in this section. Let me just by way of quick review, give you a reminder of what brought this situation about that Malachi faced.

Thank you, brother.

I keep forgetting to do that.

You know, Malachi ministered in one of the most difficult periods of Israel's history. First of all, it was a time of religious disappointment.

You want to keep in mind that this was a time where all of their hopes had been deferred.

You know, the prophets before Malachi had prophesied some glorious things for the nation of Israel.

They had prophesied, you know, that if you would rebuild the temple, God would come back in glory and inhabit his house and so on.

In fact, there's a passage over in Ezekiel where Ezekiel prophesied in a restored temple.

He prophesied in Ezekiel 43.

Listen to this in verse 3.

He said, He saw the glory of the Lord that came into the house.

And now the house, of course, was the temple.

He saw the glory of the Lord that came into the house. Haggai mentioned the same thing about the glory coming into the house, into the temple.

Now, you want to remember, this would be a second temple that they were thinking of, that actually Ezekiel's prophecy extended into the millennial kingdom, but they didn't know that at the time.

But the first house that they had built, Solomon's temple, remember how the glory of God filled that house when the priest ministered to the Lord, when they dedicated this place to God?

It was a glorious place.

The glory of God filled the house. The Shekinah glory of God fell in that place. And the Bible says they couldn't even stand up.

The people were flat on their faces.

The priest couldn't go in.

The glory of God just filled the place. The glory of God filled his house. And that was his manifest presence in Israel.

He was showing them, He is, I am your God.

I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to bless you. And if you'll serve me, I'm going to work everything out.

Well, then the temple was destroyed.

And Israel went off into captivity.

And the prophets had come after that, and they said, look, if you'll go home and rebuild the temple, rebuild the house of God, the glory of God is going to fill the house. Well, look, the people came back.

They came back to Israel.

They rebuilt the house.

But as of yet, the glory of God had not returned to that second house. There had been no Shekinah glory falling in that second house like it was with the first one.

And so, you know, it had been over 50 years since, in fact, since the house had been rebuilt.

And still, no Shekinah glory of God filling the place. So it was a time of delay.

There was such expectancy.

Now, you know what happens when you have this sense of expectation and still nothing happens. And the expectancy is there and nothing happens.

And you know what happens?

Your hopes begin to dim. And that edge that you had, that you lived on that edge of expectation, and that begins to diminish. And after a while, you just kind of settle into a place of kind of like disappointment and then disillusionment.

And that's what had happened at the time of Malachi.

The temple was rebuilt, but no glory had returned to the house. In fact, other prophets had prophesied blessing, the blessings upon Israel, prosperity upon Israel, that things were going to change.

Haggai chapter 2 speaks about those things.

Zechariah spoke about it.

But now what folks didn't understand, and I don't want us to misunderstand, is what they prophesied and what they saw was not God filling the second house, or God's glory in the second house, not the prosperity of Israel at that time, but in a future time.

Actually, what they were prophesying was a millennial restoration.

They just didn't know it.

And so their hopes were diminished. The prosperity and blessings that the other prophets had predicted, that hadn't come to pass. In fact, many of the Jews, as we mentioned in some of the earlier studies when we began this series, some of them were living in abject poverty.

In fact, Nehemiah, who lived at the same time as Malachi, they were contemporaries, Nehemiah says things were so bad for many of the Jews, they actually had to sell their children as slaves just to try and survive. Read Nehemiah chapter 5. It was a terrible time for Israel.

So their hopes were dashed.

The prosperity that they hoped for hadn't come to pass.

Other prophets had prophesied that Israel was going to triumph over their enemies, that they would triumph over their foes, but up till now, it was their foes that were doing all the triumphing. And even though they were released from Babylonian captivity, the Persians ruled over them with an iron fist, just as much as the Babylonians did.

And in fact, the Persians would rule over them for another 125 years after this. So they were still in bondage, they were still oppressed.

Their hopes were dashed.

And not only that, but they were being oppressed by some of their very own people. Because some Jews were very, very wealthy, and the poorer Jews were borrowing from the rich ones, and the rich ones were charging them usurious rates. I mean, outrageous rates of interest.

But the people had no choice but to borrow from the rich Jews. They were impoverished, so they were borrowing from the rich, and the rich were oppressing the poor, severe oppression by their own brothers and so forth.

So this is the setting.

This is what's going on in Israel at the time that Malachi comes on the scene, and he begins prophesying.

What's more, it had become a time of a great deal of religious indifference, religious doubt, religious skepticism.

Years of disappointment, years of poverty, years of oppression had dulled their faith.

It had dulled their expectation.

They grew tired.

They grew disillusioned.

They grew doubtful.

Then they grew just plain old skeptical and unbelieving. Many of the people no longer even believed in a God of goodness or a God of justice.

Some of them had become religiously apathetic.

Some had become agnostic.

Some had given up all faith altogether.

When we studied the earlier chapters in Malachi, we saw what their attitudes had become.

They had no fear of God, no reverence towards God.

Remember what their attitudes were towards sacrifice?

I mean, they would bring any old kind of animal to be sacrificed.

Blind, halt, lame.

I mean, these people weren't expecting anything from the Lord.

It didn't appear like.

These were tough times, difficult times.

This is the time Malachi comes on the scene and starts addressing the people.

He says this in verse 17.

And this is really.

It had to be, you know, like Malachi had to be saying, I can't believe my ears.

You know, I can't believe what I'm hearing.

Verse 17, he says, You have wearied the Lord with your words.

Yet you say, wherein have we wearied Him? I mean, this is their answer to everything.

Yeah.

How do you blame us for that?

Well, what did we do?

Isn't that typical? That's what you hear today when you talk to somebody about the Lord.

What did I do?

Talk to your child, talk to your son about this or that.

What did I do?

I'm innocent.

You know, a little halo around my head. I didn't do anything. Yet you say, wherein have we wearied Him?

When you say, everyone that does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and he delighteth in them, or where is the God of judgment, or actually the God of justice, where is the God of justice? He must have had trouble believing his ears when he heard these people, his fellow Israelites, complaining and saying that God was showing favoritism to evildoers.

Actually, that's what they're saying here in verse 17.

When you say, everyone that does evil is good in the sight of the Lord.

In other words, God favors the evildoers. This is what the people are beginning to say. Look, the people who do wrong, the evildoers, the wicked, they're prospering, and the righteous people, us righteous people, we're getting a bad deal.

And they're thinking of themselves as the righteous people.

In other words, they're saying, God is not treating us right.

God's not giving us a fair deal.

They were accusing God of showing favoritism to the wicked.

They were accusing God of blessing the wicked. 

But they consider that God's doing us wrong.

He's just not doing us right.

He's neglecting us.

We are not getting justice from God.

That seems to be their complaint.

Look, where is the God of justice? Where is this God?

He's an absentee God.

We're not getting a fair deal.

They're calling into question here God's goodness, God's holiness, God's justice.

Malachi says, You have wearied the Lord with your words.

You have wearied the Lord.

Now, the Lord there is the Hebrew tetragrammaton, Yahweh.

It's the proper name of God.

He said, You have wearied Yahweh with your words.

Now, this is pretty strong stuff.

In fact, he's saying, you're complaining, you're murmuring, you're grumbling, your criticism is wearying the Lord.

Now, you got to think about this for a minute, because this is pretty profound.

The word weary in the Hebrew there means to make tired.

You ever heard the expression, you get sick and tired of?

Well, that's what this expression virtually is. God is sick and tired of hearing your words. Did you know, think about this, did you know that you could weary the Lord?

That he could actually grow sick of hearing the junk that comes out of people's mouths? Now listen, this is pretty profound, but that's what, that's exactly what Malachi is saying here.

Now, think about this.

The Bible says elsewhere, Isaiah 40 in verse 28, for instance, has thou not known, hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not neither, is weary?

Why, God doesn't grow weary.

We sing about it.

He is never weary.

Well, you want to think about this.

In and of himself, of course, God never grows weary. He's not like you and me.

He's God.

He's perfect.

It's not that he grows tired in that sense, but you know what? The Bible does tell us that we can weary him by our sin, by our iniquity.

In other words, our sins and so forth can weary the Lord.

Listen to this verse, Isaiah 43 and verse 24.

God says, Isaiah 43, 24, You have burdened me with your sins. You have wearied me with your iniquities.

Pretty strong, huh?

In other words, God can get sick and tired of people's foolishness, sick and tired of people's sins, sick and tired of, look, there's things that can be done that will weary the Lord. Obviously, Malachi says it can be done. In fact, Malachi says, here's what weary him.

Your words, your words weary him.

You know, when I was going over some of these things, I'm always just kind of astounded at what the Bible says.

But this passage just jumped out at me in a whole new light in preparing this lesson.

The Jews must have had a terrible fault here.

They must have thought, like many Americans do, that we're entitled to free speech, that we can say just whatever we want to, and it's all right.

You know, I mean, look, I'm an American.

I'm guaranteed the constitutional right of free speech.

I can say whatever I want.

If I want to criticize somebody, I can do it.

If I want to talk about people, I can do it.

If I want to criticize the government, the president, the preacher, my neighbor, if I want to gossip, slander, backbite, I can do it.

It's the right of every American.

I've got the right of free speech.

Well, the Constitution gives you rights that God doesn't, because God says you can weary him with your words.

In fact, you know, you can do a lot of things that the Constitution gives you the right to do that God doesn't give you the right to do.

The Constitution says you can have an abortion.

The Bible says if you do it, you're going to go to hell.

Now, there's repentance for those who've done it.

You can be forgiven.

God will forgive you. But don't think that you can do what the Constitution says and think you're all right with God. The Constitution will let you get drunk.

The Constitution will let you divorce your wife.

But all of those things will send you to a Christless eternity. Also, what's really important for us to see, and this is really, to me, a startling fact, that God can be wearied by men's words or women's words.

He can be weary by our speech.

God can get sick and tired of the vomit that comes out of our mouth. You know, just the verbiage, our confessions of unbelief, our continual criticism, murmuring, complaining, unthankfulness. You know, we can weary God with the garbage that comes out of our mouth.

That's a pretty sober thought.

It really is. He can get sick of hearing us complain about this one or that one or our leaders, especially when he tells us, don't do that.

Pray for those who are in authority.

Honor them.

Fear God. Honor the king.

And here we go on and on and on, always complaining, always murmuring.

God's not going to put up with that forever.

In fact, he tells, through Malachi, you have wearied Yahweh with your words.

With your words.

Pretty sober.

I believe that God gets fed up today just as well as he got fed up in Old Testament times, because as we're going to see later on in chapter three, I don't change, God says.

I am the Lord.

I change not.

I'm immutable.

He doesn't change. So, if he got fed up then, he can get fed up now. I'll tell you something else that I think is an eternal principle.

It's found in Proverbs 6 and verse 2.

Vow or snare by the words of your mouth.

We can say things.

I mean, we can let ourselves say things that becomes a snare to our soul.

We can use our tongue, and it can trap us. Just by our verbiage, by the junk we allow ourselves to say.

Can I give you a good for instance?

Because God can take the words that we use.

He can get so sick of the junk coming out of our mouth, and you'll say, okay, that's the way you want it? Then that's what you get.

Just what you say.

Look with me to Numbers, the Book of...

Let's keep our finger right here, but I want you to look with me back to the Book of Numbers.

This is a passage that I think most of you will be familiar with, but it's a good example of exactly what we're referring to here, that we can weary God with our words.

In Numbers chapter 13, remember they sent out the 12 spies to spy out the Promised Land?

Well, the spies checked out the land.

They were there for 40 days.

They come back.

In verse 25 of Numbers 13, the spies returned from searching out the land after 40 days, and they came to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the Children of Israel.

They came and they brought back word to them and all the congregation, showed them the fruit of the land. Remember, they came back with rich bounty from the land.

It was the land of milk and honey, just like God had promised.

They come back with this report, verse 27.

We came into the land, whether thou sentest us, and surely it flowed with milk and honey. Here's the fruit of it. They had huge bundles of grapes and melons and everything else.

Nevertheless, here's their report, verse 28. The people be strong that dwell in the land.

The cities are walled and very gray.

Moreover, we saw the children of Anak there, and the Amelikites dwell in the land of the south.

Hittites, Jebusites, Amorites in the mountains, Canaanites dwell by the sea and by the seacoast.

So they're giving a report.

Look, the land is bountiful, but the land is also heavily populated with our enemies.

And Caleb, you know, the people just go into a little uproar, then, oh, no, man, what are we going to do?

Caleb still the people before Moses and said, let us go up at once and possess it, for we are well able to overcome it.

Oh, Caleb, man of faith that he was.

But the men that went up with him said, we'd be not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we.

Now, is that a positive confession or what?

We can't do it. We're not strong enough.

And look, verse 32, They brought up an evil report of the land which they had searched unto the children of Israel, saying, the land through which we have gone up to search it is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof.

And all the people that we saw in it are men of a great statue. There we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants.

And in our own sight, we were like grasshoppers. And that's the way it was in their sight too.

These are big men, strong men, men of war.

There's too many of them. They have big cities, walled cities.

So here you got these spies who checked out the land.

They're giving their report. Look at chapter 14.

How did it affect Israel?

Chapter 14, verse 1, And all the congregation lifted up their voice and cried, and the people wept that night. And all the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron. The whole congregation set on to them.

Now they got this evil report saying, you can't take the land.

Here's what they say.

Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt, or would God that we had died in this wilderness?

You know what they're saying? I wish we would have just died in Egypt. I wish we could have just died in the wilderness rather than come here, and now we're facing this impossible situation with the giants, with the inhabitants of the land.

We'd rather have died in the wilderness than that.

And why did the Lord do this to us?

Verse 3, He brought us into this land to fall by the sword that our wives and our children should be a prey? Wouldn't it have been better for us to go back to Egypt?

Well, verse 4, they say to one another, let's elect the captain and let's go back to Egypt.

Verse 5, Moses and Aaron fell on their faces, and they begin to pray and intercede concerning the situation.

Joshua gets up, verse 6, and Caleb, they rent their clothes, they spake unto the congregation, and they said, look, this is a good land.

And verse 8, if the Lord delights in us, He'll bring us into this land.

He'll give it to us.

But verse 9, he says, but don't rebel against the Lord.

Don't fear the people.

Don't look at the circumstances, they're saying.

These men may be big, but look, the bigger they are, they're just a bigger target.

That's all.

Bigger target.

He says, look, they're going to be bred for us.

Their defense is departed from them.

The Lord is with us, so don't be afraid.

So were the people encouraged?

All the congregation said, let's kill those two guys for saying that. Let's get stones and stone, Caleb and Joshua.

Well, verse 11, the Lord says to Moses, how long will this people provoke me?

And how long is it going to be before they believe me?

Verse 12, he says, I'm going to smite them with the pestilence.

I'm going to disinherit them.

You know, Moses then had to stand in the gap and pray and intercede that God just didn't wipe out the whole group of them.

And he prayed for them.

But I want you to notice down in verse...

Well, we're going to jump down to verse 28.

I want you to notice this.

God says, OK, I'm going to... I'm not going to destroy the whole nation.

Moses interceded.

But here's what God says, verse 28.

He says, say unto them, he's telling Moses, I want you to go tell these people, as truly as I live, saith the Lord, as ye have spoken in mine ears, so will I do to you.

As you have spoken, so will I do to you.

You said you wanted to die in the wilderness.

That's what you're going to get.

He says in verse 29, your carcass will fall in this wilderness.

And every one of that whole number of you, he said, everybody, 20 years old and up, you said we'd rather be dead.

We'd rather die in the wilderness.

God says, you're going to have it.

You get what you say. Listen to this.

Proverbs 6-2, thou art snared by the words of your mouth.

Now, there's an eternal principle.

God gets set up with our words.

Look, he can get to the...

He grows weary of our complaining, of our murmuring, of our backbiting, of our criticism, of our unbelief.

I know that a lot of things have been said about, well, all that positive confession stuff.

I mean, that's all in error, and so on and so forth. Let me tell you something.

God never blesses people who think negatively, speak negatively.

There is no virtue in being negative.

No virtue in being negative. Is there virtue in being positive?

Well, I would say God bless Caleb and Joshua.

What is a positive confession? It's simply saying we can do what God said we can do.

He said we could have this land. He said we could have it.

We can take the land.

That's a positive confession.

It's just agreeing with God.

In fact, you know the word confession.

The Greek word is homologio, which means to say the same thing.

A positive confession just is saying what God has said.

Saying what God said.

What did God say?

God said, I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.

So a positive confession would be looking at the situation you're facing and saying, I can't do it. No, it would be saying, I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.

I'm just agreeing with what God said.

God said I can do it. God calls us to overcome temptation. You can do it.

Oh, but brother Rusty, this particular thing, I've been bound by this thing for years.

I haven't been able to resist it.

But you can do all things through Christ who gives you strength.

He'll give you the strength to break that bondage, to overcome that temptation, to say no to that flesh, to get victory over it.

You can do it through Christ. You can do it.

There is no virtue in being negative.

Malachi says we can weary God with our words. We can weary Him with our words.

And I believe that that's exactly the type of thing he's referring to here.

The constant murmuring, complaining, grumbling, the unthankfulness, the ingratitude.

He says you've weary the Lord with your words in Malachi 3.17, and the Jews make their response.

They said, no way.

What did we do?

How could we have weary God?

I mean, they were so spiritually dull, they had fallen so deep into sin that they didn't even recognize their own sinfulness.

And you know, that's the way it is oftentimes. People become so spiritually dull that they can't understand why things are not working out for them, why they're not being blessed, why their prayers are not being answered, when they're in overt sin in their lives.

And they don't even recognize the fact that they're in sin.

So, they deny their own guilt, and they found fault with God. Now look at this, they leveled three charges against God here in verse 17 of Malachi chapter 2. First of all, their charge is that God can't distinguish between good and evil.

He says, in other words, God lacks discernment.

Everyone that does evil is good in your sight, they say.

It's good in the sight of the Lord.

So they're saying God is spiritually blind.

He can't tell one thing from the other.

Secondly, their charge is God delights in evildoers.

He delighteth in them, they say.

He blesses them, in other words.

He prefers evildoers over the righteous.

So these people are passing judgment on God.

And the third charge, where is the God of justice?

Where is this God of justice?

So they charge him here with being an absentee God, that he's totally unconcerned about administering justice in the world.

He's irresponsible. He doesn't care.

He's indifferent. That's the charge that they're leveling against him. There is no God of justice, in other words, in this world.

These people had a lot of mouth, a lot of mouth.

They spoke a lot of things.

They made a lot of charges, a lot of accusations.

A very dangerous thing to do.

Malachi said, God is just weary with the things that are coming out of your mouth.

Malachi, in effect, goes on to say, in the very next verse, to those of you who have so contemptuously asked, where is the God of justice?

He says in chapter 3 and verse 1, you're about to find out where he is.

And when you find out, you're not going to like it.

Verse 1 of chapter 3, Behold, and whatever a prophet says that, behold, he means, you better wake up and take a look here.

And listen.

Behold.

Notice.

Pay attention.

I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me.

And the Lord whom ye seek, you know, where is the God of justice? The Lord whom you seek.

They're not seeking the Lord.

This is kind of like a little bit of sarcasm, you know.

The Lord whom you seek shall suddenly come to his temple. Even the messenger of the covenant whom you delight in, they didn't delight in the Lord.

You know, with all their unacceptable sacrifices and offerings and so on.

He says, behold, he shall come, says the Lord of hosts.

You're looking for the God of justice?

Well, get ready. Get ready.

Here he comes.

The God whom you seek, the God whom you delight in, you say, where is he?

Wake up.

Look and see.

Because what's about to happen when he says, behold, it's going to come to pass?

He says, first of all, I'm going to send my messenger.

He says, secondly, he will prepare the way before me.

He says, thirdly, the Lord whom you seek and whom you delight in, he's going to come suddenly.

And that means, you know, unexpectedly.

And he says again, the bottom part of verse 1, he says, behold, he shall come.

In other words, a double emphasis. The messenger is coming.

He shall come.

You can be sure of it. You can be confident of it. He's on his way.

Now, let's look at each one of these statements that Malachi makes here.

In verse 1, I will send my messenger.

Now, this is an interesting passage. He says, I'm going to send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me, says the Lord. I'll send my messenger.

He says something else that refers, I believe, to this same messenger over in chapter 4 and verse 5.

Look with me at this verse.

I believe he's referring here to the same person.

When he says in verse 4, Malachi 4, 5, Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.

It seems to refer to the same messenger that he speaks of here in chapter 3 and verse 1.

Who is this messenger?

Well, there's been a number of opinions and views as to who he was.

Some people claim it's Malachi himself because the word Malachi means messenger.

Some say, no, it's Nehemiah who was God's messenger. Some said it's Elijah himself that's going to come back from heaven.

That's who the messenger is. You know, chapter 4 and verse 5, God says he's going to send Elijah, so it must be Elijah coming back from heaven. But the New Testament, I believe, clearly tells us who this messenger is, that it's John the Baptist according to Jesus' own words in Matthew chapter 11.

In fact, since Matthew's the next book, let's just read a couple of verses over here in Matthew 11, and I want to show you the similarity. In fact, I want to point out a few things here that I think will just shed a little additional light in some of these passages.

Look with me to Matthew 11.

I want to read a couple of verses. Matthew 11, 9. Jesus is speaking about John the Baptist.

He says, But what went you out far to see?

A prophet, yea, and I say unto you, and more than a prophet.

For this is he of whom it is written.

Now listen, this is he of whom it is written.

Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, and he shall prepare thy way before thee. What did Malachi say?

Chapter 3, verse 1.

I send my messenger.

He's going to prepare the way.

Jesus tells us here in verse 9 and 10, This is he of whom it is written.

Behold, I send my messenger.

So he's directly quoting Malachi 3 and saying, This is the one. This is the messenger.

This is the one that's going to prepare the way.

Then, in chapter 17 of Matthew, I want you to look over here with me as well. I believe this is further identification, that John the Baptist is the messenger. Matthew 17 and verse 9.

As they came down from the mountain, Jesus charged them, saying, Tell the vision to no man, till the Son of Man be risen again from the dead. His disciples asked him, saying, Why then say the scribes that Elijah must come first? And Jesus answered and said unto them, You see, some of the scribes are saying, Jesus is not the Messiah, he can't be the Messiah.

Because the Malachi said, Elijah's got to come first.

Malachi 4-5.

Before the Lord comes, Elijah's got to come first. And so his disciples are saying, Lord, why are the scribes saying that Elijah's got to come first? And Jesus said unto them, Elijah shall come first and restore all things.

But I say unto you that Elijah has already come, and they didn't know him.

But they have done unto him whatsoever they listed.

In other words, they cut his head off.

They did whatever they wanted to, the prophet that came first.

And he says, likewise shall also the son of man suffer of them. The son of man is going to be killed too, just like John the Baptist was. Then, verse 13, the disciples understood that he spoke unto them of John the Baptist.

John the Baptist, he said, Elijah has already come. Who was it? It was John the Baptist.

You know, I had a fellow one time point to this passage and say, this proves reincarnation.

He said, Elijah is reincarnated.

John the Baptist is Elijah.

It proves reincarnation. But then you got to think about, oh, wait, how could it be? How could it be Elijah?

Because Elijah didn't die.

You know, reincarnation is a cycle of death, you know, rebirth, life, death, rebirth.

Elijah didn't die.

He got caught up to heaven.

And of course, here, the Lord is not teaching that Elijah would be would come back as John the Baptist, but that John the Baptist came in the spirit of Elijah, in the anointing of Elijah, even though their ministries were quite different in a number of ways, because Elijah was one of the miracle-working prophets, raising the dead and calling fire down from heaven and so on. John the Baptist did no miracle, but John the Baptist was a minister, a messenger of the preparation. And that's the second thing that Malachi says here about this messenger.

He says, I'm going to send my messenger in chapter three, in verse one, and look, and he shall prepare the way before me.

He will prepare the way before me, saith the Lord.

Now, this is an interesting passage, because it speaks of God coming in one sense as a king. It's a reference to the custom in ancient times, whenever a king was going to go out and visit some distant part of his realm.

Let's say the king was going to travel to some distant area in his kingdom and look it over, visit one of his cities over there, whatever.

He would send some trusted servant first, and that trusted servant would make sure that the road that he was going to travel was safe. If there were potholes in the road, then he would rally the people from the various villages and cities and make sure that that road got leveled, because the king was going to be passing through. And nothing could allow any endangerment to the king's life or the king's travel.

The road had to be smooth.

The road had to be level.

So wherever the road was crooked or whatever, they'd have to straighten it out.

Wherever a landslide maybe had covered part of it, they had to dig through.

If there were ruts, they had to be filled in. The road had to be straightened. If there were dangerous streams or rivers, then they had to be properly forged so that the king, when he made his travel, nothing would hinder his journey.

He would have safe travel all the way through.

This was the way it worked.

Nothing was going to be able to be allowed to hinder the king's travel or to pose a danger to his safety. There's a number of passages that refer to preparing the way of the Lord.

And I want to read one to you over in Isaiah chapter 40.

Listen to this.

Isaiah 40.

I want to read verse 3.

Listen to this.

The voice of Him that cryeth in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Now what they're talking about is out there in the wilderness, make straight a highway, prepare the way of the Lord.

They knew they could make a spiritual application of what was being said here. Just like if a king was going to come, the highway would have to be straightened out. All the crooked things straightened up.

All the boulders removed. And in the spiritual sense, in the spiritual sense, what they're saying is, you need to get ready for the coming of the Lord and all the crooked things in your life, you need to straighten out.

And all the valleys in your life.

Look at this, verse four, every valley shall be exalted or lifted up. Wherever there's a ravine or a rut, that has to be filled in. He says, every mountain and hill shall be made low.

All the high peaks, that has to be leveled out so that the access can be clear, so that the king can pass through. He said, the crooked shall be made straight, the rough places made plain, and the glory of the Lord will be revealed.

The idea here is he's making the spiritual application that when the Lord comes, there will be those who come before him to prepare the way and telling people, rallying people to get right, get ready, because the king is coming. It's time to straighten out our lives, remove the boulders, remove the hindrances. Wherever there's a low spot, a spiritually low spot, it's time to fill it in.

Wherever there's a rough peak, it's time to level it out.

You get the picture? That's what John the Baptist was. Prepare ye the way of the Lord.

Make straight his paths.

What do you think he was talking about?

Make straight his paths.

In other words, get your life right. Here comes Jesus.

In Mark 1, let me read this, because this is exactly John the Baptist's message. Mark 1 and verse 2.

Look at this.

As it is written in the prophets...

He's talking about Isaiah 40.

We just read it.

He's talking about Malachi 3.

We just read that.

As it is written in the prophets, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.

Just like the road would have to be leveled so the king could come.

You know, right here in our own city, if the president's coming into town, you know the preparations everybody goes through to get everything ready and so on.

When the pope came to New Orleans, remember what they did? They painted the whole city.

They got rid of the graffiti on the walls.

And I mean, they just did everything they could to make up. They painted the bridges and everything.

It was unbelievable what they did to make ready for the pope.

More preparation than you can imagine.

But the idea here is to get ready.

And look, you know, the forerunner, those who went before the king, they had another job, too, not just making sure the road was straight and level and the ground level and so on.

But they had to prepare the people.

Their job was to make sure when the king came that there would be an adequate welcome, that the people would be ready to receive him.

There would be a fitting reception.

Their job was to get things ready and get the people ready, so that when the king came, the people were ready.

That's John the Baptist's ministry.

He had a message of preparation, getting people ready for the near coming of the Lord, for the soon coming of the Lord.

That was his message.

That was his ministry.

And look, back in Malachi 3, he said, and when the preparation is done, he says, I'm going to send my messenger.

He will prepare the way before me.

And once that's done, then look, the Lord will suddenly come to his temple.

He's going to come.

An obvious reference here to John the Baptist and, of course, Jesus, John the Baptist and Jesus.

He'll suddenly come to his temple.

The messenger of the covenant, that's Jesus, the Messiah, whom you delight in, he shall come, says the Lord of hosts.

Now, obviously, the Jews do not believe that John the Baptist was this messenger who came to prepare the way of the Lord.

They don't believe that. The orthodox Jews don't believe that because they don't believe Jesus was the Messiah. So orthodox Jews are still looking for Elijah.

In fact, in their feasts, what is it, the Passover feast, the Passover meal, they set an empty chair for Elijah. You know, that's the custom to set an empty chair. If Elijah should come, he would be a welcome guest at their table.

It's their custom also, you know, for that time to leave an open door somewhere in their house, so that if Elijah comes, he would not find himself locked out of their house, you know, but that he could come in and he'd be welcome. Because they don't believe Jesus is the Messiah, so obviously they don't believe that John the Baptist was his forerunner. But I believe that just like Jesus said, John the Baptist was obviously his forerunner.

I believe there is some sarcasm there.

You know, they were just saying, where's the god of justice?

Here he comes.

But you're not going to like it.

It kind of reminds me of the people that Amos spoke of back in the Book of Amos, when all the people were saying, man, we just can't wait for the day of the Lord.

We just want the day of the Lord to come.

And Amos says, you people wanting the day of the Lord, you don't know what you're wanting. Because that day of the Lord, His coming is not going to be a day of zip-a-dee-doo-dah. It's going to be a day of judgment.

You remember what he said in Amos?

Listen to this. Let me read something here.

Amos 5.

Listen to this.

Amos 5.

Verse 18, Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord!

To what end is it for you?

The day of the Lord is darkness and not light, as if a man did flee from a lion and a bear met him, or he went to the house and leaned his hand on the wall and the serpent bit him. Shall not the day of the Lord be darkness and not light, even very dark and no brightness in it?

In other words, what Amos is saying, you people who are saying, Lord, we want the day of the Lord, Amos is saying, you're not ready for the day of the Lord.

You are not ready.

It's going to be a day for many of you who are thinking, oh, we can't wait for the Lord to come. It's going to be a day of judgment for you.

I believe something similar is true in our own day. I believe a lot of Christians today are very foolish. They talk a lot about, oh, man, I can't wait for the Lord to come.

I can't wait. They sing about it.

They talk about it.

They laugh and so forth about it.

But I believe that most Christians have a very superficial view of the Lord's coming.

I'm going to tell you something else.

I don't believe most Christians are ready for the Lord to come.

I don't believe they're ready.

I just don't believe we've got oil in our lands like we ought to have.

I believe that it's time, however, for us to get ready because the day of the Lord is coming.

But what we want to remember is it will be a glory day for those who have oil in their lands.

But for those who are still superficial, playing church, hanging around on the fringes of Christianity, it's not going to be the day that you think.

I mean, remember what God told Amos. Remember what Amos told the people.

Remember what Malachi told the people. This messenger, you know, you're looking for the God of justice.

Look, He's going to come.

But when He comes, you're not going to like it.

I believe the same thing is going to be true in our own generation and in our own society. Because look at what he says here.

Back in Malachi 3, he said, this messenger, this messenger of the covenant, the Lord whom you seek, the one you say you delight in, he's going to come.

But look what he says in verse 2.

But who will stand?

Who's going to abide?

Who's going to endure the day of his coming?

That's what he's saying.

Who's going to endure the day of his coming?

Who will stand when he appears?

For he is like a refiner's fire and like a fuller's soap.

Look, when the Lord comes, when that day comes, it's going to be a day of scrutiny, a day of examination, a day of a penetrating test when the Lord comes.

The refiner's fire, the fuller's soap.

Look, this speaks just of the thoroughness of God's judgment.

The burning with fire, the cleansing of the lye.

You know, because they didn't have bars of soap.

The fuller's soap, you know, didn't have soap like today.

But a fuller was somebody who washed laundry, and they did it with this very powerful lye, some extract they made from ashes.

Boy, it got things white.

It ate up the hands in the process, but it got things white. But when they talked about the fuller's soap, one thing for sure, that fuller would make that thing white.

He'd clean it.

That's for sure.

And the refiner's fire, they knew what that was.

They took that metal, that impure metal, they'd put it into that smelter, and that thing would melt and purify, and that fire would burn until all that was left was pure metal.

Pure gold or pure silver, purified.

The fire is what purified it.

I like what one person said, talking about the refiner.

Look, verse 3.

He shall sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver.

Here's the picture.

In biblical days, the smelter, the refiner, they would put that ore.

You know, the ore is virtually worthless.

It's not good for anything until it's put to the fire, and it's purified.

But the ore would go into this furnace, into this pot, the smelter, and the refiner would sit there and watch it be, the fire destroy the ore until all the dross was removed, and the only thing left was the pure metal.

And here's what one person said.

I wrote it down. I thought it was good.

Listen to this.

The beauty of this picture is that the refiner looks into the open furnace or the pot and knows that the process of purifying is complete and the dross is all burned away.

How does he know?

When he can see his image plainly reflected in the molten metal.

I thought that was really good because, you know, the Lord is the refiner.

He says here in verse 3, look, he shall sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver.

In other words, the Lord has his people in the smelter. And he sits there just waiting until he can see his reflection in them. That's the idea.

The Lord's looking to see his reflection in us.

We're to reflect the glory of the Lord.

And notice this in verse 3.

He will purify the sons of Levi.

I want you to remember, judgment always begins at the house of God.

Remember what Ezekiel said?

He said, let the judgment begin at my house, at the house of God.

Remember what Peter said? Just judgment begins at the house of God.

Remember what Jesus did?

First act, public act of his ministry, cleansing the temple.

Last public act of his ministry, cleansing the temple.

God's concern that his house would be clean. He said, he'll purify the sons of Levi.

He'll purge them as gold and silver that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.

And the idea, of course, here, is that when people are right with the Lord, when they're purified and purged, and that's the process we're all in right now.

I want you to know that.

We are right now in the smelter.

We're being purified.

We go through tests and trials.

We go through difficulties and problems.

But all of it is to bring out a Christlikeness in us.

All of it is intended to purge us of unbelief, purge us of doubt, purge us of worldliness, purge us of all the things that hinder the Lord from being manifested in us.

That's the idea right now.

We're in the furnace. We're being purged.

We're being purified.

Because God's going to have a people who will be ready when the Lord returns. He's preparing a people right now.

He's in the process of preparing a people right now who will be ready, so that when the Lord comes, when He comes suddenly to His temple, there's going to be some people who are ready.

I don't believe everybody's going to be ready.

I pray that I'll be among the ready ones.

I pray that we'll all be among the ready ones.

But that's what the Lord is doing right now. These are the days of preparation. These are the days that we live in just before the Lord's coming.

I believe He's coming.

I believe He's coming soon.

I believe He's coming sooner than any of us want to think about really, because I believe we've got a long way to go before we're ready.

But these are the days of preparation.

God's going to have a people who will be right with the Lord, who will be repentant, who will be broken, who will be humble, who will be obedient.

And then He says in verse 4, shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto the Lord, as in the days of old and in the former years.

It's the idea of...

Remember how the people had become spiritually bankrupt, offering up these unworthy sacrifices indifferent to the things of God? Different to the things of God?

When people's hearts are right, then their worship is right. You see, when their hearts are wrong, their worship is unacceptable.

But when their hearts are right, their worship is right.

Their attitude towards God is right.

They're reverent, they're broken, they're humble. They're serving the Lord in obedience and so forth.

But verse 5, the last verse, I will come near to you to judgment.

I will be a swift witness.

And look, he kind of narrows this out to a few categories of people that he's going to be a swift witness against. Five categories of sinners here who will be the special recipients, I believe, of his wrath.

And who are they?

First, the sorcerers.

Any kind of magic, witchcraft, psychic practitioner, fortune teller, diviner, all of that is condemned. God hates it.

He says, I'll be a swift witness against the sorcerer.

He says, secondly, the adulterers.

That would include any kind of sexual immorality, any kind of fornication, sodomite, every kind of sexual perversion.

This is a broad word.

It encompasses many forms of sexual wickednesses and immoralities. God's not going to put up with this.

He's going to deal with it.

It may be acceptable in society.

Homosexuality, lesbianism, it may be called an alternate lifestyle in America, but I want you to know it's an abomination in the sight of God.

Sodomy is an abomination in the sight of God.

Homosexuality, peterasty, bestiality, every kind of sexual wickedness, pornography, and so on and so forth, adultery, fornication of any kind, incest, etc.,

it's all an abomination.

God's not going to put up with it.

He says, thirdly, false swearing.

Those that swear falsely, this has to do with those who give false witness, false testimony, liars, deceivers, those who pervert justice by swearing falsely under oath. Thereby, they rob people of their right to a fair trial and so forth. You know, the ninth commandment in Exodus chapter 20 is, Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

Now, the idea there is that people could say false things about their neighbors and have them condemned for it.

You could bring false accusations.

You could have somebody else who say, Yeah, I saw them do it.

And you could bring, you could get people in trouble.

You could get people disinherited.

You could have, you know, all kinds of terrible things could happen when people bear false witness.

You ruin a person's name.

You ruin their character.

You ruin their reputation by lies, by slander, by gossip, by criticism.

Let me tell you, God's not going to put up with this.

He's going to deal with these things.

It's a wicked thing to blame people, to accuse people, to slander people.

And I want to tell you something.

We Americans are pretty good at doing that very thing.

We're ready to pass judgment on people when we don't know the situation.

We're ready to accuse people when we don't know what the facts really are. We're ready to spread gossip and lies when we don't know the whole truth and when we shouldn't be saying things like that anyway.

You have been a victim of it. I've been a victim of it.

And let's say something else.

We've all been guilty of it as well. Because there's none of us who are guiltless.

But I'll tell you, God's going to deal with these things.

So it's important that we really guard our mouths.

Remember what Malachi said.

God is tired of your words.

He's tired of the garbage that comes out of your mouths.

So when I see things like that, and even though he was talking to Malachi's generation, I want you to know, I take things like that to heart, and I say, look, we better apply this to ourselves, because I don't think God's always pleased what comes out of our mouths either. He talks about, fourthly, those who oppress the unfortunate in verse 5 against those that oppress the highling in his wages, the widow, the fatherless, and they turn aside the stranger from his right. The idea here is that they oppress the unfortunate, the widow, the orphan, the highlings who are sometimes underpaid or sometimes just cheated out of their wages altogether, the foreigner who isn't paid correctly or who is slandered or who is racial prejudiced against him because he's a foreigner, they're discriminated against.

You know, these things are wicked in the sight of God.

And the last things he mentioned, the last thing he mentions, those that fear not me, says the Lord of Hosts, the irreverent, the irreverent, the disobedient, the decadent, the unbelieving, the frivolous. When people do not fear God, then they lose all incentive for right living and for decent conduct.

These are sober passages, very sober passages.

It's too easy to read things like this and they have no effect on us.

But when you walk through them verse by verse, you see how applicable they are to our own generation, our own society, and our own lives.

Malachi's message is needed today.

And you and I and all of Christendom, we need to take it to heart because I believe that these things are more relevant than we probably are mostly aware of.

Well, we'll stop there tonight and pick up next week, next week, with the immutability of God.

Hallelujah.

Well, Father, bless the Word to our hearts tonight.

I pray, Lord, that you would help each of us to apply what we've heard to our own lives.

Lord, I pray that the message would burn in us and would sober us.

And, Father, I pray that it would change us, that it would change the way we think and that it would change the way we talk.

Deliver us, Father, from all our expressions of unbelief, of doubt, of inability, and failure. And, Lord, deliver us from any expression, from heart or mouth, of unthankfulness, or ingratitude, of gossip, and slander, and criticism.

And, Lord, I pray that none of us, not me and not any of us here tonight, that we would be found guilty of rearing our God with our words.

But, Father, may our words be pure.

May they be wholesome.

May they be delightsome.

May they be encouraging to others.

Help us to practice Ephesians 4.29 and speak only what edifies. Father, this is our prayer tonight.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Hallelujah.

Well, amen. Praise God.”