Good morning, brothers.
Who knows the possibilities of union with the Lord today? It is exciting to think about it.
We are so thankful that all of you have come, in a special way. We want to welcome the young people who are here. We are so thankful, because you cannot seek Him too early, and God can save a life as well as a soul.
You young guys, you have the advantage over us. We have to grow backward to where you are, to receive from the Lord. So we are glad you are here. Follow hard to know the Lord.
As we come to the study of God’s Word, there is a principle of Bible study that you are well aware of, and I must say it just for my own heart, just to relieve myself: that is total reliance upon God’s Holy Spirit.
Only God can reveal God. Only the Lord can show Himself. If we could only get a sense of how much He desires—how He longs—to reveal Himself. And He wants to show Himself this morning.
Now let me share one little Bible verse that has meant a lot to me. Then we will pray together, and we will look in the Word.
John 1:41 contains a great truth. It is a verse that illustrates God’s heart when He first met a man on the level of earth—when He first met him.
Thou art Simon: thou shalt be called Cephas.
I love that: thou art; thou shalt be. God ever wants to take us from the place where we are and turn us into that which He wants to make us. Thou art; thou shalt be. And only God knows all that we shall be.
So, with that comforting truth, let us bow before the Lord and ask Him to meet us where we are and take us where He would have us.
Our Father, we thank You again for Your precious Holy Spirit, the One who lives in us and indwells us; the One who searches the depths of God, the life of God, whose delight it is to unveil the Lord Jesus to our hearts.
I just pray this morning, Lord, that You might meet us, each one, and corporately that You might meet us; that You would sit us down and speak to us and search our hearts. O God, dig deeply, and then take us to the perfect answer.
We thank You in advance that You will over-answer this prayer. We pray that Your burden, which You have expressed so wonderfully in the book of Malachi, may be laid hold of by simple faith. We ask in the matchless name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Last night after the session, Brother Dave Struve made a comment to me. It sort of tickled me. He said, “All these perfect answers for these problems—I know it is going to be Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. I am just anxious to see how you get there.”
Well, he found the Rosetta Stone. It is always that. Forgive me, brothers, if I do not make Him clear, because that is what it is all about. Certainly, that is the end.
So now I am going to ask you to turn again, if you would, to the book of Malachi. For those who were not here last night, that is the last book in the Old Testament.
It is a book addressed, you remember, just by way of review, to the remnant. Do not get sidetracked by verse 1 and think it is only addressed to Israel. The way the word Israel is used in this book—and you can see it in Malachi 2 and 3—it includes Jacob. It is the remnant.
God is addressing those who had returned out of captivity voluntarily, had embraced that good news, that decree that set them free, and had gone back to the land of peace—the land at that time which was very much outside the camp.
They had tasted the deep things of the Lord. These are those who were the most blessed, the most privileged, who had drunk most deeply of the Lord, were most visited by Him, and were open to fellowship with Him outside the camp. No strangers to the Lord were those addressed in Malachi.
They had seen His grace and experienced His mercy. At that time, they were not facing the problems of turning to Baal or some false god. They were not being accused of making unholy alliances with foreign nations. There was no imminent threat or impending danger of some kind of attack from another nation.
This is the cream of the crop: back in the land, worshiping in the temple, with a restored priesthood.
But, as I pointed out last night, that was a long time ago. It had been a long time since God had spoken with His people. They had heard from Him, and they knew Him. They had experienced Him and tasted His deliverance. You could sit down with them, and they could recall the goodness and blessings of the Lord.
But the burden that God had is that these people had not had a vital visitation from the Lord in a long time. They were not strangers, but because it had been so long, they began in their hearts to grow cold.
Their life began to grow formal, and things started to become mechanical. They still gathered. They still sang the songs. They still brought the offerings. But the offerings were not what they used to be.
The shields had now been turned from gold to brass. There was a heaviness. There was a deadness. There was a cloud settling over this very special, blessed remnant of God’s people.
And one of the great tragedies—probably the biggest of all—was that they did not know it. They did not know it was happening. They did not recognize it. It was so gradual, so subtle, so insidious, so internal.
If you pointed it out to them, they would have denied it. In fact, in the book of Malachi, that is what happened.
It was into this situation that God came, because it was breaking His heart. He saw His people—not rebellious, not turning away in some kind of an attitude—but just drifting, getting colder and colder, further and further away, because there was moss on the revelation of God. It had been so long since they had heard from Him.
So they entered into this gradual parching of the heart, and way down inside, a dry rot. Something was happening to God’s people. Outwardly, it was peace. It was prosperity. It looked okay on the outside.
To this situation, God comes through His messenger, Malachi, to address these people, these hearts, this situation.
As I pointed out in our introductory study, this book is unique—unlike any book in the Bible. Malachi is a prophet like no other prophet. He is a prophet, but he does not look like a prophet. He does not act like a prophet. He does not speak like a prophet.
This is not a book of sermons. This is not a book of warnings. This is not a book of visions. That is what you see in the other prophets.
Malachi was not around for fifty or sixty years like Hosea was. It is a different kind of prophet. Malachi does not blast a ram’s horn and call for a great convocation of God’s people to hear the Word of the Lord, like Joel does. That is a prophet.
Joel announces, “Behold, the Lord roars from Zion,” and then he stands up and roars. That is not Malachi. Amos was a different kind of prophet. He prophesied in days of prosperity, in the days of Uzziah the king, and so on. But his book is full of visions. You do not see that in Malachi.
Malachi is unique. He is not like Micah, setting out a whole catalogue of sins against God’s people and foreign nations, and so on. The prophet is there, but it is like he is not there. God is speaking, and God is speaking directly.
As I said yesterday, it is as if God were a counselor, took His people aside into a room, and said, “Sit down. We need to talk.”
You have to remember that Malachi is the last book of the Old Testament. There are things heavy on God’s heart, and He says:
I will not let you out of this testament until you are clear about My love, clear about My work, clear about My people, clear about My ways, clear about My faithfulness, and clear about My glory.
We have to talk, because I hear—not from your lips, because you would not dare say these things with your mouth—God says, “I have been listening to your heart. I have been listening to the whisperings of your heart.”
God goes down and brings it up, and they say, “No, no, no. We would never say that.” God says, “Let Me show you.” That is what the book of Malachi is about: God Himself coming.
Malachi 1:2: God speaking.
I have loved you, saith the Lord.
Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us?
All through the book, God is speaking and His people talk back: “But ye say,” sixteen times over. God says, “A son honoureth his father, and a servant his master: if then I be a father, where is Mine honour? And if I be a master, where is My fear?”
If you are going to understand the book of Malachi—the prophecy of Malachi—you have to get this in your heart: it is God talking to His people directly. The prophet is there, but he is not there. It is God communicating. Something is going on down deep, and God wants to meet it. God wants to deal with it.
The book of Malachi is a personal interview between the Lord and His people about those things that are most precious to His heart.
I will be honest with you: God has done a number on my own heart as I have studied this book under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. I almost feel like a peeping Tom when I study this book. I have only felt that way one other time, and that was when I studied the book of Habakkuk, because God also put a peephole in His prayer closet and allowed me to look in. Precious book, that, as well.
But as you look into this interview, you are allowed into a room. God is counseling His people, and He has invited you to come in. Pretty soon, you are not a spectator; you are in the chair. That is what God did as I studied this book.
Let me get the method of the book before your heart once more, and then we will pick up where we left off yesterday. Here is how the book unfolds: God sets His people down, and then God begins to dig.
He begins to get beyond the symptoms to the problem, because we always deal with the symptoms and forget the problem. God never deals with the inference; He deals with the problem.
We will go away happily singing with a Band-Aid on a headache and think something has been done. But God loves us too much to allow us just to deal with the symptoms. So He digs, and He digs, and He digs, because those things cannot lie undealt with. They must be dealt with. They must come to the surface.
God touches things so deep and so fundamental that, as you go through the book, these people are shocked when God reveals it. They are shocked. They deny it. “That cannot be. I would never say those things.”
When you see some of the strong language in the book, you know that with your lips, with your tongue, you would never say, “I despise Your name. I hate Your work. Your ministry is tedious. The animal sacrifices are defiled. The table is defiled.” You would never say that—not here.
But God says, “I have been watching your life—your attitude, your disposition. It is speaking to Me. I hear your life.”
Way down deep are these whispers. We are going to isolate six of them from the book of Malachi. Watch the Lord go down and say, “This is what you are saying,” and they will say, “No, we are not. We would never say that.” He says, “Here is how I know,” and He shows them.
In each case, brothers, He gives the perfect answer. The perfect answer. You already know—the cat is out of the bag—it is Jesus. It is Jesus.
Before we actually start our new material, I want to say a word about how I am going to divide up these six lessons. This will not help you much for the tape.
As you know, we have another three sessions, counting this one, Lord willing, to do. Since there are six issues, it might seem logical to take two in one session, two in the next session, and the last two at the end. To be honest with you, that was my plan.
But that is not how God has arranged it, and it is also not how God has ministered to my heart. So I ran into a little problem. It would be logical to do two and two, get them in order, but that would mean that some things on which I do not have as much light, I would have to fatten up; others I would have to stretch out; and still others I would have to cut off what I think is God’s burden.
I was in bondage to making a good outline, and the Lord set me free from that. I hope you are free with it.
You are in a Bible school this weekend, and this is a semester. This semester, we are studying the book of Malachi. When the bell rings and the period is over, we will stop, and then we will pick up.
That might mean we will get through one-and-a-half, or one-and-a-quarter. It may mean we will do three. I do not know—well, I do know, because I know what I am going to do. I did not know when I started; I know now.
I am just trying to tell you that if your notes for lesson one end up with one-and-a-half points, we will pick up there the next time. I will try to stop in some logical place and not like Acts 21 stops—with a comma. You know, something is wrong with that.
Anyway, it will not be the neat little package that I enjoy, logical connection; but we are going to break it down a little differently.
I would like to invite you now, then, to this first issue that God deals with and for which He gives a perfect answer. I am going to ask you to follow along, please, in Malachi 1.
The burden of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi.
I have loved you, saith the Lord.
Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us?
Was not Esau Jacob’s brother? saith the Lord: yet I loved Jacob;
And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.
Whereas Edom saith, We are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places;
Thus saith the Lord of hosts, They shall build, but I will throw down;
And they shall call them, The border of wickedness, and, The people against whom the Lord hath indignation for ever.
And your eyes shall see, and ye shall say, The Lord will be magnified from the border of Israel.
How would you like to share on those verses? I tell you, before God dawned Himself on me, I really struggled with these precious verses.
The first heart whisper has to do with the love of God: “I have loved you,” says the Lord. In English, that is four words: I have loved you. In Hebrew, it is only two words.
God gets to the first issue, the first heart whisper, in two words. I will not try to pronounce the Hebrew. “I have loved you,” says the Lord.
I have loved you. I still love you. I will always love you.
Do you not love Jeremiah 31:3?
The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love.
Let me tell you one thing that means, brothers. “I love you with an everlasting love.” It means the Lord has never begun to love you. He has always loved you. He has never started to love you. There was never a time when He said, “I think I will start loving them.”
Forever He has loved you, and forever He will love you.
And yet, Malachi 1:2 says, “Wherein hast Thou loved us?” This is the beginning of the heart problems. This is the first whisper that surfaces in this book. This is a basic issue.
This is the background we need to consider, because perhaps we too have had a history with the Lord like they did. Maybe, for some, it has been a while since God has dawned on us and we have had a visitation from heaven. Maybe things have been going okay in our lives.
These people had known the Lord, walked with Him for years, and served Him faithfully. They had seen His mysteries and His glory. But now something was happening on the inside, and there was an indication of a very serious problem.
Something went on, and they began to hold God’s love in suspicion. This is the early indication of the progressive slide that takes place in the book of Malachi.
I do not know if you are in the habit of having year verses and year books. I love to do that—just another excuse to grab a Scripture or look at a book in a special way. For years, I have done that. It is a book we will study all year long in a special way.
Malachi is my yearbook this year, and I am trusting God to minister. We should have had this conference at the end of the year; I might be able to give you some more light. But this is my yearbook, and my year verse comes from this book: Malachi 3:6.
For I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.
Whatever verse is that? I would expect it to say, “Because I am patient, you are not consumed,” or, “Because I love you, you are not consumed.” But it is because He does not change.
Can you imagine if He had mood swings like we have? Oh, I am glad He does not change. “I do not think I am in the mood to support you today and give you grace.” Because He does not change, brothers, we are not consumed.
This is the early indication. I sense—though not enough yet; perhaps at the end of the year—that there is a progress between these problems. I do not really enter into problem two unless I have had problem one. It builds. I cannot make that definite, but I think it is there. Some of you brothers can study that.
Malachi 1:2 is basically saying, from their hearts, “I do not see an indication that You love me.”
Let me give you a little key to what was going on. It comes up later in Malachi 3. Look at Malachi 3:11.
And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes,
And he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground;
Neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the Lord of hosts.
God had sent a devourer. Commentators think it might have been a locust invasion. We do not know what the devourer was. God leaves it blank. He wants it blank.
But God needed to shake these people up. God needed to stir these people up from the inside. He needed to jar them. So whatever it was, it does not matter. God sent the devourer, and the devourer started to devour. They began to gobble up the crops.
“I have loved you,” says the Lord.
“Have You loved us? Have You seen this devourer devouring everything?”
Let me try to illustrate it. When you look at this first issue, we need to see that it was not a theological problem that they had.
If you were to go to them, set them aside, and say, “I want to discuss with you the theology of the love of God. Does God love you?” what would they say?
“Yes, of course He loves us. He has loved us with an everlasting love. He has never begun to love us. He loves us now. He will love us forever.” They had good theology. They would not have had a problem with that. They would say, “God is love.”
But then the devourer came. Something like in Job’s life. All of a sudden, the devourer comes, and it touches our kids—our children are gone. Our house is gone. The bank account is gone. The devourer has come.
I still have good theology, but the devourer has come. Then maybe my body is touched, and there is an incurable illness. What did they say Job had—black leprosy and elephantiasis, or whatever Job had?
I think one of the greatest trials of all—not the greatest; the greatest was that he lost the sense of God’s presence—but one of the greatest was that he lost the spiritual support of his life companion. What a trial that is.
How I praise God for my wife and the support that she gives.
What happens if the devourer comes along like that, when the bottom falls out of everything? Every time you try to solve a problem, it gets worse. Every time you try to get out of debt, you go deeper into debt. Every time you try to come up with a solution, adverse circumstances mount.
Then somebody comes up to you and says, “God loves you.”
See, that is what was going on. They knew God loved them, but in their deep, deep heart came this question: “Oh, does God love us? How could this happen? How, under God’s heaven, could this be allowed if God loved me—if He really cared, if He had a heart, if He was paying attention, if He is in control, if He is on the throne?”
Do you see the issue, brothers? It is not theology. They know God loves them. They have a great creed. They are orthodox, fundamental, Bible-believing—they have got it.
But when the devourer came, they began to entertain suspicions in their deep, innermost being: “How does God love us?” That needs to be dealt with. That needs to be dealt with.
The very moment that I begin to question the love of the Lord, I am defeated in that moment. The moment you begin to question that God loves you—that is so basic, so fundamental—you cannot lose that. You have got to know, and know with deep conviction, that God really does love you.
How does God deal with that? What answer does He give? Or may I say, what perfect answer does He give when I begin to entertain these questions, these doubts, because the devourer has been allowed to come into my life?
God gives a perfect answer. In the book of Malachi, through all these precious chapters, God gets the last word. In every issue, with every case, He gets the last word.
But He does not get the latest word. He lets you talk. He lets you question. He lets you ask. He lets you breathe out your sighs. When you are all done, He speaks.
He speaks the word that lays the law of silence on your lip and on your tongue. It is like Job when it was all over: “What can I say? Well, can I put my hand over my mouth?”
Psalm 39:9:
I was dumb, I opened not my mouth;
Because Thou didst it.
Silence.
Look at Malachi 1:5. After He gives His answer—which we have not looked at yet—He says:
And your eyes shall see, and ye shall say, The Lord will be magnified from the border of Israel.
Once you see the answer, you will say, “The Lord be magnified.”
May God give us the answer if there is someone here who has been visited by a devourer. In your deepest heart—but you would never confess it, even to the closest friend—you would not say, “I am starting to doubt that God loves me.” Ah, you are too theological for that. You would not say that.
But God hears the whispers of the heart, and it breaks His heart. He is burdened. When those things cry, what answer does God give? Let me show you His perfect answer.
I want to read these verses once again.
I have loved you, saith the Lord.
Yet ye say, Wherein hast Thou loved us?
Was not Esau Jacob’s brother? saith the Lord: yet I loved Jacob;
And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.
Whereas Edom saith, We are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places;
Thus saith the Lord of hosts, They shall build, but I will throw down;
And men shall call them, The border of wickedness, and, The people against whom the Lord hath indignation for ever.
Now remember, brothers, I tried to show you that it is not a theological problem. Do we agree on that?
It is not a theological answer. That is so important if you are going to understand this passage. I know people look at these verses—“Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated”—and they jump right into theology.
It becomes a big theological discussion, especially when you tie it into Romans 9:10-13. I do not mean those chapters; I mean Romans 9, verses 10 through 13, where this is brought up and mentioned. Then everybody lines up with his own distinctive view.
“Do you want to hear my view about electing love? Let us talk about predestination. Let us discuss what is meant by the word hate. Is it hate, or is it some kind of lesser love? Let us talk about the predestination of the damned. What does the Bible teach about that, and about God’s sovereignty, God’s justice, and God’s rule?”
Wonderful fodder for theological bull sessions, but it does not do much for the heart that holds in suspicion the love of the Lord.
We cannot miss God’s heart here, brothers. When you have a fractured heart, when deep in your heart you are tempted to doubt that God loves you anymore, the cure for that is not Calvinism. It is not Arminianism. It is not even the discussion of those things.
That might be instructive, and it certainly is interesting to go through that, but that is not the answer here. It is not the book of Malachi. It is not what is going on here.
Before I give you the perfect answer, let me tell you another thing it is not. It is not a theological answer, and it is not some kind of psychological relief that He is giving.
He is not saying, “Look at Esau. Look at Edom. Somebody worse off than you.” That never did much for me.
Sometimes you hear that. I promise you, brothers, if my car dies, it is not going to help me to know two of your cars died. We get this idea, you know, that if somebody else went through that—or something worse—maybe you get some kind of psychological relief out of that.
If I am hungry and someone says, “Oh, they are starving,” it makes you feel bad. You feel guilty; you go on this guilt trip or something. My leg hurts. “Well, they had an amputation.” You know, that is how it is usually put across.
“I cannot get comfortable in this bed.” My wife reminds me, “Some people are trying to sleep on cardboard in the alley.” Well, it helped for a while. It shut me up.
But God is not looking at Esau and Edom and saying, “Now look at somebody worse off than you.” That is not the point here.
Let me share what I think is the perfect answer. Since we are in Old Testament seed form, I would like to show you the perfect answer in the New Testament, in fully developed form. Then we will come back, and you will see that it is so.
You can turn to Romans 8. We are not going to look at it right away. Let me give you the immediate background of Esau and Edom.
Jeremiah had given a dreadful prophecy of Edom in Jeremiah 49:7-22. He described the day that was coming: a judgment day on Edom. Isaiah does it too, in Isaiah 34, describing this awful judgment on Edom.
Jeremiah uses words like devastation, stripped bare, destruction. “They shall become an object of horror,” like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah—desolation.
Isaiah uses phrases like this:
Their streams shall become pitch.
Their dust shall become brimstone.
The smoke of their fire shall ascend for ever.
Pretty strong words against Edom, against Esau.
Now, if you know your Bible history, there at the end—do not worry about pinpointing the dates—but you know, 586 or 587, Babylon came in and took the people of God, Judah, into captivity. You remember that.
They were not just after Judah. That was a world conquest. That is Nebuchadnezzar. That is Babylon. After they got Judah, a couple of years later—they had a long war—a couple of years later they got Edom.
Those terrible things Jeremiah said would happen, happened. Seventy years later, because of the goodness of the Lord, Judah was restored. They recovered. God brought them back. They built up again. They built the temple, the wall, and the city.
But they could look out the window at the mountains where Edom was, and they never came back. You have to understand when that was written and where they were. They were captured at the same time, but Edom was destroyed and never came back.
Now I am going to ask you to turn to Romans 8, please.
“Oh, have You loved us?” God says, “I hated Esau. I hated Edom. I made his mountains a desolation. I appointed his inheritance for jackals.”
When God said, “Look at Esau,” when God said, “Look at Edom,” He was saying, I believe—and I think I can prove it to you—if you doubt My love, if you are tempted to doubt My love, take a good look at someone God hates.
Look at your brother. Look at your twin. Look at your kin. Look at that one, flesh and blood, on whom the wrath of God was poured without mercy—unmitigated anger.
Romans 8, verse 31:
What shall we then say to these things?
Brothers, does anything there sound like Malachi? “What shall we say to these things?” “But ye say.” But ye say. You know this chapter. You know what Romans 8 is about. It begins with no condemnation, ends with no separation, and you know what is in between. What a chapter.
Then look, if you would please, at Romans 8:35:
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
Does that sound anything like Malachi? It is the same topic: “What shall we say to these things?” The love of Christ. What is in between? “What shall we say?” and “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”
Brothers, look please at Romans 8:32:
He that spared not His own Son,
But delivered Him up for us all,
How shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?
I say it reverently, brothers: if you are doubting in any way that God loves you, take a good look at the one God hates. Take a good look at your brother, who was hated for your sake—hated for my sake.
You will never doubt that He loves you again. That is what Romans 8 is about. “What shall we say to these things?” You say, “What things?”
Romans 8:18 speaks of the sufferings of this present age. Romans 8:28 says all things, including the devourer. “He spared not His own Son,” Romans 8:32.
It is almost as if God said, “I have My Son. I have My elect. I cannot spare them both.”
If I have something in the house and Lillian says one of those things has to go, I am going to keep the one I love the most. I speak as a fool, brothers, but it almost looks as if He loved you more than He loved His Son, because you were spared and He was not spared.
He spared not His own Son. Nothing is going to quiet the whispers of a heart that holds in suspicion the love of God more than looking again at the One on whom God poured His unmitigated wrath.
Look at your brother. Look at your kin. Look at the One who died in your place. Now tell Me: do I love you?
Do you see His point there? “What shall we say to these things?”
Romans 8:38. Paul came to a persuasion at that point. He came to a conviction at that point:
For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come,
Nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature,
Shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Paul came to the conviction that there was nothing in God’s universe that could ever come into his life to indicate, in the slightest way, that God did not love him.
See, that is what that is all about. After what He has done for you on the cross, after what He has done for me on the cross—He spared not His own Son—what will ever indicate in my life, what devourer will ever indicate, that God does not love me?
Will distress? Persecution? Peril? Sword? Famine? Nakedness?
Romans 8:37:
Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.
That is why He said in Malachi, once you see it, you will say, “The Lord be magnified beyond the borders.” Praise God. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. Nothing in the universe can indicate that God does not love me anymore.
It is the perfect answer. The perfect answer. Look at Him whom God hates.
After Paul saw Him, you could take Paul out, beat him, stone him, shipwreck him, put him in all kinds of dangers, throw him in the dungeon, cut his head off—you were not going to shake his confidence. He saw the love.
Brother, sometime we need to take another good look at the cross. If we get past the cross, we have gone too far. We need to come back. We need to look at that One who took our place, who was not spared.
Then we will begin to understand that the devourer has not come to devour anything good. We will praise God for that devourer.
I am not going to develop this, but what light this sheds on Hebrews 12:6:
For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth,
And scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.
You know what that passage teaches? That is what it says. You know what it teaches? It teaches that as sure as you are loved, you will be disciplined. As sure as you are loved, you will be scourged.
The devourer is not an indication that He does not love you. The opposite is true. It is an indication that He does love you.
Oh, may God open our eyes. That is how it started in the book of Malachi. That is how it began. They had suspicion. The devourer came in, was eating things up, was stripping the land, and they said, “He does not care. He does not see. He does not love me.”
He said, “If you only knew why I sent that. It is because I do love you.”
We need to take a good look, if we ever doubt His love, at that One whom He hated—your Brother, my Brother, my Kin, the Lord Jesus.
Habakkuk 2:20:
The Lord is in His holy temple:
Let all the earth keep silence before Him.
Oh, that shuts our mouth.
Jude 21, brothers:
Keep yourselves in the love of God.
Keep yourself in the love of God.
I am going to ask you to go back to Malachi, please. I just want to introduce this; we will pick it up here later. This inward thought of the heart concerns the work of the Lord: Malachi 1:6-2:9.
The secret whisperings of the heart have to do with His work. Since this heart problem is the longest section in the entire book of Malachi, God gives eighteen inspired verses to this one issue, to this murmur of the heart.
We are not going to finish it this morning. I want to begin to introduce it, and we will pick it up here later on.
Malachi’s method is to dig into the heart, discover the problem, prove it, and then give that perfect answer to that problem.
I told you there is a difference between a symptom and a problem. The real problem we are going to deal with here is so intertwined with the perfect answer that I cannot give you the problem without giving you God’s answer, because God has made them one. As He discovered the answer, the problem came to light.
But let me show you the symptom of the problem. That is not the problem, but this is as much as they could see—and even that, they had a hard time seeing.
Let me show you the symptom, and the next time we get together, I will show you the real problem tied into God’s solution. It is a perfect answer. It is always a perfect answer.
It is so important, brothers. I hope God helps you to know in your own heart, in your own life, the difference between symptoms and problems.
I will tell you why. If you treat the symptoms, and the problem is not the problem, then the solution is not the solution. If you deal with problems that are not problems, you come up with answers that are not answers. Then you go in the strength of an answer that is not an answer, and you are more messed up than before you brought the thing to the Lord in the first place.
We need to see the symptoms. You get a pain, and that is just a symptom. Do not deal with the pain. Find out what is causing that pain, and then deal with that.
What pain is to the body, the conscience is to the spirit-controlled conscience. It just tells you something else is wrong. You do not deal with that. You look in the mirror and see a mess—you do not deal with the mirror. You have got to deal with the heart, and that is what the Lord does.
Malachi 1:6:
A son honoureth his father, and a servant his master:
If then I be a father, where is Mine honour?
And if I be a master, where is My fear?
Saith the Lord of hosts unto you, O priests, that despise My name.
Then Malachi 2:7:
For the priest’s lips should keep knowledge,
And they should seek the law at his mouth.
In the context, this problem, this heart problem, is addressed to priests. You would say, “Well, those are those who were in full-time ministry, full-time Christian service.” There must be a special application to elders, missionaries, Sunday school teachers, evangelists, and so on—those who are in full-time Christian service.
I could let you get away with that, except for the full light of revelation which reminds us, in 1 Peter 2:9, that we are all priests.
So, with me under this passage: every Christian is a priest. Every Christian has in his hand some redemptive work of the Lord. When He addresses the priest, He is not limiting it to those who have some kind of vocation. He is talking to every believer—those who handle the truth of God and the things of God.
It may apply to you if you are teaching a Sunday school class, have some kind of jail ministry, are visiting the sick, or have some kind of ministry. There may be a special application. But every priest is vulnerable to this second heart whisper.
Oh, may God help us. Let me give you the symptom. It has to do with priests. It has to do with the work of God. It has to do with service, ministry unto the Lord.
In Malachi 1:6, God begins in His probe to touch the attitudes of the priests: “A son honoureth his father, and a servant his master. Where is My honour? Where is My respect?”
Of course, they deny that. “We have been honoring You. We have been respecting You.”
Then He says, “You despise My name.” Ho, ho, ho—wait. You are going too far. I may not show all the reverence, but I do not despise Your name.
Do not just read this, la, la, la. Understand the shock. When God comes to these priests—these are priests; they are ministering unto the Lord—and He says, “You despise My name,” they are shocked. They are blown over.
God has kicked them in the stomach and knocked the wind out of them. They cannot believe that He is saying it.
Malachi 1:7:
Ye offer polluted bread upon Mine altar.
And ye say, Wherein have we polluted Thee?
They say, “How have we defiled You? I do not remember bringing any moldy bread to the table. I do not remember this. What are You saying to me?”
We just sort of read this, “I say, you say; I say, you say.” But this is an amazing revelation to them, and they deny it. Defiled food. Despising Your name.
Malachi 1:12:
But ye have profaned it, in that ye say, The table of the Lord is polluted;
And the fruit thereof, even His meat, is contemptible.
Picture those priests when they hear this word from God. They are absolutely flabbergasted. They cannot believe it.
Do not make the mistake of thinking that “the table of the Lord,” in our vocabulary, is breaking bread. That is not the table He is talking about. Actually, it is not even the table of showbread, though there is some possibility it might be that.
He is talking here, in verse 7, about offering defiled food on His altar. The table of the Lord back then was the altar.
Read Leviticus 21. Five times, the sacrifice—the burnt offering—is called the food of God. That is what He eats. That is what He feeds on: the food of God. It gives you a little hint where we are heading when we get the answer.
What is this attitude that they had way down deep? “You despise My name. My table is defiled. The sacrifices are polluted, defiled.”
Then, digging deeper, He says in Malachi 1:13:
Ye said also, Behold, what a weariness is it!
And ye have snuffed at it, saith the Lord of hosts.
Here is the symptom, brothers.
These priests—and you have got to enter in; I hope God helps you get into the shoes of some of these Bible characters when you study—we just sort of read this thing, la, la, la.
These priests had quite a job. They had quite a job. It was fatiguing, and the pay was not that great.
They had to get up at nine in the morning every day and three in the afternoon, slay the sacrifice, inspect the sacrifice, get the fire ready, put it on the altar, take the ashes away, make sure the wood was there, kindle the fire, trim the candles, prepare the table, get the incense, cut it all up, clean up afterwards, and get ready to do it again.
That is all right for a while. But then the next day: “Oh, time to make the doughnuts. Time to get the lamb. Here they come again. You have got to do it again.”
After a while, the work of God became a burden. That is the symptom. That is not the problem.
They started getting tired. They began to sniff at it. They got weary, and they denied it: “Lord, that would never happen to us.”
That is the secret attitude of the heart. They said, “That would never, never happen to us.”
Brothers, let me tell you this: it will always happen apart from the grace of God. It will always happen.
Way down in the heart, they began to murmur and complain about the work of God that had become routine. The work of God had become weariness. It had become a burden, and they got sick and tired of it because it kept on coming—every day, every morning, every night, the next day, again and again and again.
Do not answer; just think. Down in the heart, that is the symptom. Are you getting tired of serving the Lord?
You say, “Oh, no. Sunday already. I have got to prepare that lesson.” The phone rings: “Oh, I hope it is not Brother So-and-so. That guy cannot get things straight. I hope Sister So-and-so does not need another visit. I have to go back over there.”
After a while, you get tired. You get weary.
Something happened to the work of the Lord, and the note of joy is gone. We have not touched the problem. That is just a symptom.
When His yoke is not easy, His burden is not light, and the joy is gone—the thrill is gone from the service of the Lord—what happened?
God said, “I have a burden that might be only a whisper in your heart, but it sounds like a thousand thunders in Mine,” says the Lord. “I am burdened. I am grieved. Something is wrong.”
As He hears these people, He says, “You have been saying—” “I never said that.” “You have been saying it. I know you have been saying it. The indication is that you are so tired of doing My work, it is a weariness to you. You sniff at it.”
You say, “That is not that serious, is it?” It means you despise My name. It means you despise My table. It means you despise what is offered on My table.
They are left there. So, brothers, they need a word. We need a word.
God did not take them to that chair just to fillet them, rip them open, and make them feel bad. Malachi is not a book of bad news. It is a book of glorious news. It is a book of great news.
He does not want you doubting His love, so He says, “Look to Jesus. Look at the One who was hated for your sake, and you will never doubt My love again.”
He does not want you weary of His ministry and His service. I am not telling you now; we will look at it later. But He gives us a perfect answer—a perfect answer.
Then He moves on: “You have a problem with My people. You have a problem with My ways. You have taken My faithfulness for granted. You have let go of My glory.”
All of those whispers—He says, “We have to deal with them.” In each case, He gives a perfect answer.
But I will stop. Let us pray.
Father, thank You so much for this book.
We pray, Lord, that You would search our hearts, that we might have Your heart on all of these issues. Deliver us, we pray, from constantly denying that these things are so.
Teach us to embrace Christ as our answer. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.