Always a privilege for me to have the opportunity to share the Lord Jesus, especially with hearts that I know are hungry and desire to see Him.
As we come to the study of God’s Word, there is a principle of Bible study that is absolutely indispensable—a principle we cannot take for granted, a principle we cannot live without. And that is total reliance upon God’s Holy Spirit.
This is His book. This is His Word. He revealed it, and now He must illuminate it. He must give us eyes to see it. If He does not, we do not miss it by a little bit.
Isaiah 55:8 says:
As high as the heavens are above the earth,
So high are My thoughts above your thoughts,
My ways above your ways.
We might get the idea, when we read God’s Word, that if we are not enlightened by God, well, we are close to the truth. We are not close. As high as the heavens are above the earth, that is how much we miss it without the light of God. It is not just a little bit. We are altogether out of it.
And so He has promised, if we would come as little children, that He would minister unto us and show us Himself.
I think you know that we are going to look this weekend at the wonderful book of Malachi. Every book in the Bible gives a revelation of the Lord Jesus that no other book gives in the same way. We are asking the Lord to give us that revelation of the Lord from this book.
I am going to ask you, brothers, to join with me, please, as we commit this time to Him. This is an introduction lesson, and we are sort of all over the place, just to get the spirit of the book. We actually begin the book in the morning, but we need to feel it. We need to sense God’s heart in this book.
So I am going to ask you to join me and ask for the Lord’s grace as we begin. Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, we do thank You so much that You have not left us on our own when we come to study Your Word. But You have given us Your life, the Holy Spirit in our hearts, whose precious ministry it is at all times to put the spotlight on the Lord Jesus, to unveil Him, to reveal Him to us in a living way, that we might be changed from one degree of glory to another.
And so we wait this evening, and we ask by Your mercy that You would do that. Open our hearts. We pray that You would do what You did for Eutychus and, by a miracle of resurrection, keep us alive to hear the end of the message.
We thank You, Lord, for Your goodness and Your grace, and we just look to You now. In Jesus’ matchless name. Amen.
Brothers, I want to open with you some of the things the Lord has begun to make real in my heart from that wonderful book of Malachi.
Some of you that have not heard me speak might wonder why my Bible sits there, and say, “He never even opens it. How come he does not open it?” I have opened it. My eyes are not what they used to be. The older Lillian gets, the worse my eyesight gets.
And so what I have done is enlarged the print and pasted it on my paper. So you will hear the Bible. I really have opened that Book; that is just my way of explanation.
And for those of you that see this stack of notes and say, “Oh no, we will be here forever,” I do not put much on a page. I just do it so I can glance, and it is for your protection that I have these notes, so that I do not go astray. Happily, there is the last page, so you will be out of here sometime.
I am going to ask you to turn, please, to the book of Malachi. I have heard some folks refer to it as the “Malachi Papers.” Whatever you call it, it is the last book in your Old Testament. And I am afraid that is about the only thing some folks know about it: that it is the last book in the Old Testament.
And it is last in several ways. It is the last of the Minor Prophets, and so you can expect God, in some way, to clinch the message of the Minor Prophets.
It sort of sits between two four-hundreds. The Minor Prophets cover approximately four hundred years, and there were four hundred years then to the Lord Jesus. This is central, and so it will clinch the Minor Prophets.
It is also the last book of the post-exilic prophets. And so you can expect God to wrap up the remnant truth concerning the exile. It is also the last book of the Old Testament, and so you can expect God to wrap up His entire heart as He comes to the close of that revelation.
This is sort of an ending and an introduction, because He closes and summarizes His heart for the past three thousand five hundred years, and He anticipates all that is going to be coming in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Do not answer this out loud. If you were God, and you were writing the last book of the Old Testament, what would you say in four words? And if you had the Hebrew Bible in three chapters, what would you say as you close, to wrap it all up and to get us ready for the coming of the Lord Jesus?
Look, if you would, at Malachi 1:1:
The oracle of the word of the Lord to Israel through Malachi.
Most translations do not say “oracle”; they use the word “burden”: “The burden of the Lord.” The Word of the Lord—the burden—and that in the original carries the idea of heaviness. That is a weight. That is a pressure. The burden of the Lord.
And I have an idea, and I think we will be able to see it. As God comes to the end, He has a burden. He has a pressure. He has something on His heart, something heavy, that He wants to communicate.
Parting words are serious words. They are sober words. They are somber words. And as God prepares to leave the Old Testament, He has some sobering things to say—things that are pressing on His heart.
Now, you will notice in verse 1, even though Malachi 1:1 says, “To Israel,” you need to understand how Malachi is using the word Israel.
For example, in Malachi 2:11, it says, “Judah has dealt treacherously.” And in Malachi 3:4, “The offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord,” and so on.
As you know from your Old Testament Bible history, in its early history the nation was split, north and south. There were ten tribes in the north called Israel, and two tribes in the south called Judah.
Every now and then God would call His prophets. Some of the prophets would address the northern kingdom, Israel—for example, Amos and Hosea. Some of His prophets would address the south—Micah, Habakkuk, Joel—and they would talk only to the south. Some prophets would talk to both halves, like Isaiah and Ezekiel. They talked to the north and they talked to the south.
I call attention to that because Malachi 1:1 says, “To Israel,” but later he is talking to Judah. When God comes to the end, He does not recognize the split anymore. The remnant is who He is addressing—the remnant from Israel, the remnant from Judah, those that had gone back out of captivity.
He does not see north. He does not see south. He does not see His people split. This book is addressed to the remnant, the united part of the body, the hearts that were seeking the Lord and had returned out of captivity. All those old distinctions are not in the book of Malachi. He addresses and unburdens His heart to the remnant.
Notice in verse 2: it says, “To Israel.” The book of Jonah begins, “Speak this word against Nineveh.” The way some commentators look at Malachi, it is as if he spoke against Israel.
This book is not against Israel. This book is not against the remnant. It is a book that is addressed to the remnant. He has a burden, and He wants to talk to His people.
I read one commentator who said, “The whole book of Malachi is nothing but one long rebuke.” They did not see God’s heart in that. That is not what this book is. It is not against His people; it is the Lord speaking to His people.
There is no question, as you go through the book, that there is some strong language in this book. But it is a severe tenderness. It is necessary. There is strong language, but if you miss God’s heart in this book, then all you are going to see is rebuke—and it is not that.
And so we come to Malachi, God’s final word—in seed form, because that is Old Testament. You know it is not His final word. His final word has a first name. What is His final word? Exactly right: Christ.
He is going to speak again. And after Malachi, He gives His final Word. Christ is God’s all-inclusive, final Word. This is God’s final word too—it is Christ, but in seed form.
What I want to do, brothers, this evening, God assisting—as I said, it is an introduction lesson—is not go chapter 1, verse 1, and verse 2. I want us to get a sense, to get the spirit of God’s heart. What is Malachi about? What is the message about? How does God communicate? What is His burden?
Then, if God would dawn that on us tonight and prepare our hearts, I feel like God can begin to minister and give us that full revelation of Christ.
In order to get this before your hearts, I am going to ask you to bear with me. We are going to do a little bit of donkey work. Let me make a couple of observations that have helped me in understanding God’s heart in this book.
One of the first things we need—I am not going to go throwing a lot of dates at you: this happened at a certain date, and that happened at a certain date. You can read the reference books and get that yourself. I want the principle. I want to see what is behind all of these facts.
But I think it is important, if you are going to understand not only Malachi but any book, that you get the historical background. You need to get the setting.
The remnant addressed in the book of Malachi had a history—a spiritual history of life with the Lord. They were not strangers to the Lord. They were not strangers to His revelation.
These are the saints of God who responded to the Lord and came out of captivity. When that message of grace, when the beautiful feet of Cyrus, announced that they could go back, this is the group that went back. And how they rejoiced.
Listen to this verse from Psalm 126:
When the Lord brought back the captive ones out of Zion,
We were like those who dream.
Our mouth was filled with laughter,
Our tongue with joyful shouting.
Then they said among the nations,
“The Lord has done great things for them.”
The Lord has done great things for us;
We are glad.
See, that was the joy that they had. And when they went back, even though this might not have been literal, in their hearts they were singing Isaiah 51:11:
Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return,
And go with singing.
That is where they were going. They were coming out of captivity, and they were going back to Zion. They had a spiritual history.
But that was a long time ago. You are not going to understand Malachi unless you realize that was a long time ago.
When you read the book of Malachi, you see that the temple has already been rebuilt, and so it is later than Ezra. The priests have already been reestablished. They have had worship in the temple for a long time. In fact, when you see the book, it is starting to go in the other direction.
As I said, I am not just going to throw a bunch of dates at you. When did this happen? When did that happen? When did the other thing happen? Get hold of the spiritual reality.
This was a people that had much to praise the Lord for, but it was a long time ago.
They had at least two revivals since they had come out of captivity. Of course, the first one Ezra speaks of in his book: under Zerubbabel, Haggai, and Zechariah, the temple had been reestablished.
Even though there was a period in there where it was delayed for about fifteen years, it finally was completed. And how they rejoiced at that time. They had a great dedication, offered all of these sacrifices, and reestablished Passover. It was a glorious time.
But that was a long time ago.
They had a second revival of sorts when Nehemiah came back and led them in the rebuilding of the wall. The walls were reconstructed, and they celebrated afterward and set up the Feast of Booths, rejoicing and praising the Lord.
We do not have time to go into it, but that whole coming back out of captivity—the temple represented the spiritual life of God’s people. When they built the temple, they wanted to build the wall first. They said, “It makes more sense. Otherwise it will fall down. People will come and attack it. Let us build a wall, get some security, and then build a town.”
God’s prophets said, “No. The Lord is a wall of fire round about. You get right with Him first.” Then that wall, which represented the knowledge of God that had broken down in so many places—the Lord said, “I want a people who are right with Me and surrounded with the knowledge of God.”
That is what the remnant is all about. Study how God brought them to the place where they were right with Him and finally surrounded with the knowledge of God. God got His name back and His testimony back.
These people had a lot to praise the Lord for. They had a spiritual history. But that was a long time ago.
It was about a hundred years ago that they had been led out of captivity. It had been about eighty years or so since they had the temple rebuilt. It had been twenty years since they were finally settled in the city.
They were a people who had a history with the Lord, but they had not heard from Him in a long time.
Something happens in the heart where people have a history with the Lord—who have tasted His deliverance, known His goodness and sung His songs, experienced a right relationship with Him, and were surrounded with the knowledge of God—and God has not spoken in a long, long time.
If you are going to understand Malachi, you need to understand that that was the situation.
We know that Malachi was probably written sometime around Nehemiah; they were probably contemporaries. Some folks say, “Well, the same sins mentioned there are in Nehemiah 13, and so when Nehemiah was gone, that is when this was written.”
I do not incline to that myself. I think Malachi is a little later. I see evidence that there was a repentance, and so that would put it a little bit later. I will show you that when we come to it.
I get tickled at some of the commentators. They say, “You know, it is not possible to date this book, but it was followed by four hundred silent years.” Well, cannot you go backwards? It seems like you can date the book if four hundred years later Jesus came. But I will leave that with them.
Anyway, the point I am making is this: if you are going to understand the book, now it comes home to our hearts. They were a people who loved the Lord, who had a history with the Lord, who had tasted deliverance, had tasted the good Word of God, and had come a long, long way.
But what happened when that was a long time ago? When it has been a long time since I heard from Him?
Very instructive. Closely connected with that is the way Malachi differs from some of the other prophets.
You see, the other prophets always—I do not know of an exception—addressed a crisis. Usually there would be a political crisis, and God would raise up a prophet.
So many of the prophets begin that way: “The word of the Lord came to Isaiah in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah.” Then you have to study the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, and then you will understand the message.
There were big crises. Assyria was a big crisis, and a cluster of prophets were raised up to talk about that crisis. Babylon was a great crisis, and a cluster of prophets were raised up to talk about that crisis.
Cyrus and the return was a great crisis. By the way, that is A-B-C: Assyria, Babylon, Cyrus. It just helps you remember. There were crises, and prophets clustered around these crises.
But when you come to Malachi, there is no crisis—at least, not out there.
The people in that day were not being tempted to turn to Baal. That was not the issue. Babylon had cured them of idolatry. They were not turning to idolatry.
There was no great apostasy. There was no great persecution at that time. There was no threatened invasion. The Philistines were not going to come in. The Moabites were not going to come in. Babylon, Persia, Greece—it was all over. They were not coming in. No threatened invasions.
They were not making any unholy alliances with heathen nations.
You see, brothers, when a person or a group has a history with the Lord, but that was a long time ago, and there is no crisis going on—no problem, no issues—something happens.
That is what Malachi is about: a people who loved the Lord and had a history with the Lord, but it had been a long time since the Lord spoke to them.
Meanwhile, things were relatively at ease. Things were going okay. There was no problem. There were no big issues. There were no threatened invasions. There were no overt attacks of the enemy.
And because they were a people who had not heard from God, and because everything was sort of sailing okay, we have the issue, the crisis. It is just not out there. It is in here.
It was a personal crisis. And if you are going to understand the message of Malachi, we need to understand that crisis. It is addressed to a people who have not had a vital encounter with the Lord for a long time.
Basically, what follows that is the coming of the Lord Jesus. When a people have not heard from the Lord, all they have to do is wait for Jesus—and everything is going okay.
Listen as I read this warning from Deuteronomy 8:
When you have eaten and are satisfied,
You shall bless the Lord your God for the good land that He has given you.
Beware that you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping His commandments and His ordinances and His statutes, which I am commanding you this day.
Otherwise, when you have eaten and are satisfied, when you have built good houses and lived in them, when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and your gold multiplies, and all that you have multiplies,
Your heart will become proud,
And you will forget the Lord your God that brought you out of slavery.
That is the background of Malachi. May God help us not to just read this, “La, la, la.”
That is the first observation that I hope will help us get the sense of this book. The second observation not only has to do with the historical setting, but, brothers, I want you to note the peculiar form of the message of this book.
It is unlike any other book in your Bible. It is different. When you study it, you need to see this difference. The way it is given is different.
With most of the prophets, you have preachers. These prophets stand up and they address the will: “Turn or burn.” They just go right after you. They go after the will.
When Amos the prophet stands up, his first words are, “The Lord roars from Zion.” He does not roar in Malachi. He speaks, but He does not roar.
There is strong language, but once you see God’s heart, it comes out more as sobs than as a roaring lion. He is not preaching.
When you go through the prophets, usually you are familiar with expressions like this: “And the word of the Lord came to the prophet, saying,” and then he stands up and says, “Thus says the Lord.” You have the Lord speaking through the prophet.
Very little—I saw one, maybe two places—do you have something like that in Malachi. But that is not how Malachi does it.
Malachi 1:1-2:
The oracle of the word of the Lord to Israel through Malachi.
“I have loved you,” says the Lord.
Look at Malachi 1:6:
A son honors his father, and a servant his master. Then if I am a father, where is My honor? And if I am a master, where is My respect?
Who is talking there? Amazing. It is almost like the prophet is not there. It is God talking to His people directly.
“I have loved you.” “A son honors his father. A servant honors his master. You do not honor Me.” It is Me. It is God talking to His people directly—a personal interview.
As you go through the book of Malachi, it is almost as if God took His people into His private office and said, “I want you to sit down. We need to talk.” You do not even see the prophet in the book. It is amazing. He is there, but he is not there. It is the Lord talking to His people.
Who is this prophet Malachi? Ask me who Hosea is, and I will tell you who Hosea is. I can tell you about Joel. I can tell you about Jonah. I can tell you about many of the prophets. Ask me about Daniel. Ask me about Ezekiel. I will tell you about Ezekiel. I can tell you about Isaiah.
Who is Malachi? Like Melchizedek, who is this fellow? He just shows up. Where did he come from? Where did he live? Where was he born?
Commentators are not even sure Malachi is his name. You are familiar with the fact that the word Malachi means “messenger of the Lord.” Some think that is just his official title; it is not his name.
Messenger of the Lord, like John the Baptist, a voice crying in the wilderness. Go through the whole record of your Bible. Look in all of those genealogical records. Is there anybody else in the history of the Bible named Malachi? Nobody.
Now, Haggai is called the messenger of the Lord, but that is not his name; that is his title. Some say, “We do not even know who wrote this book.”
I do not think it proves anything that that name has never been used, because Amos has never been used and Jonah has never been used. There are a lot of names that are mentioned only one time.
I was amazed as I went through the commentators. You know, you say, “The Bible sheds a lot of light on the commentary.” And it does, indeed it does.
One commentator said, “We have evidence that this was Zerubbabel.” Another says, “We know for sure this was Ezra.” Another says it was Nehemiah. Another says, “This is Mordecai.” Another says, “This is just some unnamed Levite from Zebulun.”
Who is it? Is that his name? Is that his title? Some commentators said he was not human. “Messenger of the Lord”—that is the angel of the Lord. This is a message from the angel, from heaven. It is not even a human being.
Glance at these verses, please. All through the book there is a play on his name. In Malachi 1:1, of course, it is the author of the book.
Look at Malachi 2:7:
The lips of a priest should preserve knowledge, and men should seek instruction from his mouth; for he is a messenger of the Lord of hosts.
The same word: Malachi. So a priest is the Malachi of the Lord.
Then Malachi 3:1, the forerunner:
Behold, I am going to send My messenger, and he will clear the way before Me. And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple.
Even Messiah is called Malachi in this book. Malachi 3:1: “The messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight, behold, He is coming.” Is that His name? That is His office.
Does it matter? I think the point is this, brothers: God seems, as He does in Hebrews, to deliberately hide the human messenger so that we can get the idea that, in this book in a special way, it is God’s burden to deal personally with a remnant that has not heard from Him for a long time, who had nothing to do but wait for Jesus, in days when things were going relatively all right.
God wants to speak privately to His children. As I sought the Lord, brothers, for this weekend, I am convinced in my heart that the Lord wants to deal personally, as if there were no human messenger. He wants to minister unto our hearts.
And I do not know, but maybe it has been a long time. You have a history with the Lord. You know the Lord. You have been delivered. You have sung His song. But maybe that was a long time ago.
What does God have to say to a people like that? See, that is what Malachi is about. God wants to deal personally with His people, with His sons.
Let me give one other observation, and I hope it will help us unveil the book. Not only does God speak to a people who are blessed indeed but who have not heard for a long time, and not only does God hide the human instrument so that He can deal personally, but here is another observation to catch the burden of the Lord.
I want you to notice the response God gets when He speaks to His people in this book.
As I said, there is not another book like this in all the Word of God. This is the great indication, I think, that something was terribly wrong.
Every time God speaks to His people in this book, His people speak back to Him. It is an amazing thing. Every time God opens His mouth, they open their mouths.
Sixteen times in this book, God says, “I say to you, but you say.” “I say; what you say.”
A glance, if you would, at that handout sheet I gave you. We will not read all of these, but you will get the idea—the “but you say” side.
“I have loved you,” says the Lord. “But you say, ‘How have You loved us?’”
“A son honors his father, and a servant his master. Then if I am a Father, where is My honor? If I am a Master, where is My respect?” says the Lord of hosts to you, O priests who despise My name. “But you say, ‘How have we despised Your name?’”
“You are presenting defiled food on My altar. But you say, ‘How have we defiled You?’” Over and over again.
When I was a student at Columbia Bible College, from 1964 to 1967, we had a visitor come to speak to our anthropology class. He was an aborigine from the jungles in Australia.
You talk about a testimony. He kept you right on the edge of your chair. This man, Paul, was an uncivilized man, and they lifted him up and brought him into civilization. He had just about gotten off the plane, saw a domestic cat, grabbed it, ripped it apart, and began eating it raw. That was this man.
He was spellbinding to listen to. He got on the subject of family and family mores. Even in uncivilized societies, they have rules in their family.
He told us about one thing that was not tolerated in his tribe: back chat. He called it “back chat.”
He said if a child dared to back chat his parents, they would reach down to the ground, take a handful of gravel, put it in his mouth, and make sure he did not open his mouth to spit it out until he swallowed the ground. That is back chat. That is the penalty for back chat.
When you read Malachi, you do not have some uncivilized native back chatting to his parents. You have the people of God back chatting to the God of heaven.
Do not read this, “La, la, la.” These are God’s people. This is one of the symptoms of the heart problem in the book. Would you tolerate it with your kids? With your grandchildren?
I do not think, as I studied this book of Malachi, that this remnant were brats—that they were always ready with some smart-aleck remark, coming back on the Lord. The Lord said something, and they made a wisecrack. I do not think it is that.
I think the back chatting had to do with rationalization. There is a good possibility God keeps saying, “What you say, what you say, what you say,” but I have an idea that if you read the book, the “what you say” you would never say with your mouth.
You would never say it with your lips. You would never say it with your tongue. As you go through the book, it is amazing to see: it is deeper than that.
I have no doubt that on occasion it is possible that God’s children might say some harsh things to the Lord and talk back to God. When they are going through some great experience, they might talk back to the Lord. Jeremiah did.
Jeremiah told the Lord, “You deceived me.” I like the New English Bible on that—Jeremiah 20:7: “You have duped me, and I am Your dupe.” Job said some harsh things to God. So did Habakkuk. But this is different.
God looks at a man and says, “This is true. That is what you are saying.” And his heart says, “When? I would never say that.”
Would you tell God with your lips, “I despise Your name”? Would you ever say that with your lips? Would you ever say with your lips, “Your table is defiled; Your ministry, Your work, Your service is burdensome, tiresome”?
See, we would not say that with our mouths, but maybe we would say it with our hearts. That is what this book is about.
God is hearing this, and as He gets ready to close the Old Testament, He is hearing these whisperings of the heart—things they are saying in their hearts. They are not saying them out loud.
Sotto voce—under the breath. They are saying these things under their breath. It is latent. It is dormant inside.
I would like to look at the things we are going to see in this book as the whispers of the heart. In our hearts, sometimes those things are expressed by our actions, by our behavior, by our attitudes, and by our disposition.
We do not say it out loud. We would not pray it. We would not share it with a friend. But God hears it. Sometimes it just smolders down there.
And so, brothers, we are going to look at Malachi. If I understand God’s heart, this is about the deep, deep whisperings of the heart. God hears those well-guarded secrets—things we would never verbalize.
Listen to Psalm 139:11-12:
Surely the darkness will overwhelm me,
And the light around me will be night.
Even the darkness is not dark to You,
And the night is as bright as the day.
Darkness and light are both alike to You.
I want you to pray with me, brothers, as we go through this weekend, that this would not just be one of those weekends—“La, la, la.”
This book is the burden of the Lord. He is burdened about those who have had a history and have not heard for a long time. Something has gone on in those hidden things, things that are way down deep that only the Lord hears.
As He closes the Old Testament, He takes His remnant into the Oval Office, sits them down, and says, “No. We need to talk. We need to talk.”
Malachi 2:17: “You have wearied Me with your words.” This is God, who cannot grow weary. This is the God who cannot fatigue. This is the God who cannot faint. And He says, “I have been hearing what your heart has been saying.”
“And I am weary. I am worried.” God closes the Old Testament. Malachi 3:13: “Your words have been arrogant against Me,” says the Lord.
I am going to ask you to glance at that handout sheet one more time, and I will wrap this up. The suggested outline I want to follow lists six things, and I am calling them the inward thoughts of the heart.
Not everyone breaks up Malachi the same way. There is no special magic in one outline over another outline. Charles Feinberg, from Talbot, breaks up Malachi into eight controversies.
Our own dear Stephen Kaung found seven. Actually, he calls them seven debates—seven debates—and he calls them rounds: round one, round two, round three. It is like they are in a ring together.
But for our purposes this weekend, I have combined some that overlap. I have listed these six big issues, great things over which God is burdened.
Do you understand how this is a summary? How God, as He closes three thousand five hundred years of revelation, would say:
That is what this book is. God says, “I cannot leave the Old Testament until I unveil those whisperings in your heart.”
I will tell you, brothers, if you are messed up on the love of God, if you dare harbor a suspicion somehow that He does not love you, you are done. You are done.
God sits His people down, and they say, “No, no, no. Well, it cannot be.” Here is the method God uses. It is the method we will follow.
He does two things, and He does it in each case. God help us as we go through this.
First, He takes His child aside. He says, “We need to talk.” And He begins to dig. That is why I love that: “Search me, O God, and know my heart.” That is why I have chosen that as our prayer.
The Hebrew there has to do with delving inside, probing, and digging. I just translate it, “Dig deep, O God, and know my heart.”
He digs deep. The Lord takes them aside, digs down, and pulls up something that they would deny is there. They do deny it. They say they would never think that. God pulls it up and proves it.
And then, after He proves it—and this is the part we need to see; I have never seen anything like this anywhere else in the Bible—He digs up the issue, and He gives them the perfect answer for that issue.
The perfect answer. There is no other answer. It is the only answer. In each case, it is a different answer for each of these six things.
God helping us, what I want to do is follow in the book of Malachi as God sits us down and digs this up: “You had a problem, an issue with My love. Here is My answer for that. You had a problem with My work.”
These are the common whisperings of the heart of God’s people who have a history with God and have not heard for a long time. These things begin to smolder, and they begin to come. God says, “I want to give you My answer for this.”
“My answer for the people of God is an all-inclusive answer. There is no other answer.”
God, in the book of Malachi, says, “This is My answer for the work of God, and this is My answer for the people of God. This is My answer for the ways of God. This is My answer for the faithfulness of God. And this is My answer for the glory of God.”
And so we come to this last book. It is a precious book.
God, I admit, brothers, the Lord has done a number on my heart because I have studied this book. I have walked with that remnant, and I have denied and rationalized. I said, “There is no way I thought that.” And He pulled it up, and He showed me, and then He gave me that answer.
It is a great book.
Can we trust the Lord together? Can we pray that God would dig deep, O God, and know my heart, and see if there be any wicked way in me?
I believe with all my heart, apart from any human messenger, the Lord wants to take His sons aside. He wants to dig deep, and He wants to give His answer on all these issues.
Father, thank You for this book of Malachi—not what we think it might mean, but everything You have inspired it to mean. Will You teach us, and will You work that in our hearts?
We do pray: dig deep, O God. Know our hearts. Lord, we do not want to be messed up on these great issues.
Such a burden on Your heart: that we know Your love, that we know Your work and Your people and Your ways and Your faithfulness and Your glory.
Will You speak to us this weekend? Thank You, in the matchless name of our Lord Jesus. Amen. Amen.