Praise God, brothers and sisters. So good to gather together and break bread together, and then to share the Word together too.
We want to turn again to the book of Malachi, which we are looking through this weekend. We have to remember that the spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus, and that even the book of Malachi, believe it or not, is primarily—although it seems to focus on our shortcomings and whatever—primarily a revelation of the mercy of our God, as we have tried to share this weekend.
We want to begin now and look at a second phase. We spoke yesterday afternoon about this matter where the Lord says, “I have loved you,” and the reply was, “How have You loved me?” Now we want to go immediately after that to Malachi 1:6, and we are going to read quite an extended section to get one basic thought, beginning in Malachi 1:6 and running into Malachi 2:9.
A son honoreth his father, and a servant his master.
If then I am a father, where is mine honor?
And if I am a master, where is my fear?
saith the Lord of hosts unto you, O priests, that despise My name.
And ye say, Wherein have we despised Thy name?Ye offer polluted bread upon Mine altar.
And ye say, Wherein have we polluted Thee?
In that ye say, The table of the Lord is contemptible.And if ye offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil?
And if ye offer the lame and sick, is it not evil?
Offer it now unto thy governor; will he be pleased with thee, or accept thy person?
saith the Lord of hosts.And now, I pray you, entreat the favor of God, that He may be gracious unto us: this hath been by your means; will He accept any of your persons?
saith the Lord of hosts.Oh that there were one among you that would shut the doors, that ye might not kindle fire on Mine altar in vain!
I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord of hosts, neither will I accept an offering at your hand.For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same My name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered unto My name, and a pure offering: for My name shall be great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of hosts.
But ye profane it, in that ye say, The table of the Lord is polluted; and the fruit thereof, even His meat, is contemptible.
Ye said also, Behold, what a weariness is it!
And ye have snuffed at it, saith the Lord of hosts; and ye have brought that which was taken by violence, and the lame, and the sick; thus ye brought an offering: should I accept this of your hand?
saith the Lord.But cursed be the deceiver, which hath in his flock a male, and voweth, and sacrificeth unto the Lord a blemished thing: for I am a great King, saith the Lord of hosts, and My name is terrible among the Gentiles.
And now, O ye priests, this commandment is for you.
If ye will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart, to give glory unto My name, saith the Lord of hosts, I will even send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings: yea, I have cursed them already, because ye do not lay it to heart.Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces, even the dung of your solemn feasts; and one shall take you away with it.
And ye shall know that I have sent this commandment unto you, that My covenant may be with Levi, saith the Lord of hosts.My covenant was with him of life and peace; and I gave them to him that he might fear; and he feared Me, and stood in awe of My name.
The law of truth was in his mouth, and iniquity was not found in his lips: he walked with Me in peace and uprightness, and did turn many away from iniquity.
For the priest’s lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth: for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts.But ye are departed out of the way; ye have caused many to stumble in the law; ye have corrupted the covenant of Levi, saith the Lord of hosts.
Therefore have I also made you contemptible and base before all the people, according as ye have not kept My ways, but have been partial in the law.
And Malachi 3:1:
Behold, I will send My messenger, and he shall prepare the way before Me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye 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 fullers’ 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 then, just over in Malachi 3:16, where we began yesterday:
Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another: and the Lord hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before Him for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon His name.
And they shall be Mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up My jewels; and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him.
Our Father, we come before You, and we know in the Word there are these great judgments, these great revelations and exposings, which You have in Your wisdom deemed necessary, that we might be properly prepared—as a bride, as Your children, as the body—in service of You.
Now, Lord, we invoke, in the name of Jesus, that the mercy of God may be revealed among us as You do Your work, even Your refining work; that we might be able to stand in Your presence as those of whom You say, “This is My possession.” Oh, may this be the case in our lives. Do whatever You have to do to work in the reality of Your life in our life.
We ask for the Holy Spirit’s help, first of all, to take away from us wrong understanding of Your Word and to reveal the clear understanding of Your Word. We depend upon Your Spirit as our Teacher, even as we are gathered in this hour. In Jesus’ precious name we pray. Amen.
We have spoken yesterday by way of introduction of the book of Malachi. Of course, as we know, it is the last prophet both in time and in the Old Testament dispensation. We paralleled and saw that in the book of Malachi there is much that parallels Revelation 2 and 3, because both of these things are written and spoken directly by the Lord to His children in a time where darkness was enveloping all the environments.
We know, contextually, most likely that Malachi was written after Nehemiah’s second visit to Jerusalem, where he beheld the priesthood defiling the offerings, marrying unbelievers, using the temple in despicable ways, and working on the Sabbath. You find these same burdens and messages here in the book of Malachi.
But more importantly, the book of Malachi is, as it were, the last appeal to a people before the darkness came. After this, for some four hundred years, there was a spiritual darkness that fell upon the children of Israel.
Now, it is not like they were not alive and worshipping and doing all the things they did in the past. But, you see, they were doing all those things in a kind of darkness that brought on a sort of self-deception: “We are okay, and what we are doing is okay.”
Except for a remnant within that remnant, who took God’s Word seriously, gathered together—as we see there in Malachi 3:16—and, when they heard these words of rebuke from the prophet, gathered together to talk about it and pray about it. They feared the Lord. They wanted to do what was right.
They spoke together in the Spirit, even as our sister prayed at the end of our breaking of bread: “Oh Lord, we do not want to be that way. Please shine Your light on us before You come into Your temple as a Sun of righteousness and brightly beam, exposing all. And who can stand in the presence of such kind of light? Oh God, work Your light into us now in the midst of this darkness.”
In the Old Testament economy, they were going into a darkness, and there was no light except for those who really sought that light.
In that kind of time, we see a parallel with the book of Revelation, even the church of Laodicea. There are actually two groups, we might say, within this remnant. There is this little huddle that has gotten together: they fear the Lord, they are praying, and the Lord is writing them in the book of remembrance. “Now these people are serious about Me.”
But then there is the rest, who somehow have found some kind of self-justification in the way they are going about their religion. They do not feel at all convicted, even by the words of God, when He comes to them and says, “I have loved you.” “Of course.”
These people have fallen into a kind of darkness, a deception, and they think their way is okay. We find the same thing in Laodicea, do we not?
The Lord says, “You do not even know that you are wretched, poor, blind, and naked. You think you are fine. I think you are lukewarm. You think you are fine.”
God says to His dear children, Christians in the church in Laodicea, in that age where darkness envelops even today, “I think you need to buy some eye salve, because you are blind to what you are doing. My standard is not being met by what you are doing, although you think you are doing fine.”
To me, it is an encouragement, because I always want to know, “Lord, how do You feel about us and what we are doing?” We want to walk in the light and be in the light. After all, that Sun of righteousness came in Jesus Christ to disband all that deception that was brewing in Judaism.
Judaism was an aberration of that life of faith that was known among Abraham and his seed. It had become some kind of religious form that was more and more engrossed in energies done in darkness: a zeal for righteousness, but without knowledge; just blundering in the darkness, striving for things and obsessed with things that do not really matter and do not please the Lord.
So I think it is worth our time. I know when we get together, you would rather hear a time of grace, grace, wonderful grace: “Everything is cool, and you are fine. Jesus loves you. Let us go home.” For some, that would be a temporary relief.
But in the long run, if the Lord cannot get to the real issues, then there cannot be healing. That Sun of righteousness comes—with healing in His wings. If we can get the light right and respond to the light properly, we really are healed, not just patched over with some stuff.
I told you yesterday that my bone to pick with most commentaries on Malachi is that they make it all about changing your attitude, which is such a shallow interpretation. As if you can just change your attitude: “Oh yeah, Lord, I am sorry. I had a bad attitude about loving You. I am going to change, because I know You should be loved.”
Do you not know that the children of Israel back then knew that He should be loved? That does not change what was going on inside them.
Now, the uniqueness of the book of Malachi is this: How does God approach a blinded people living in a kind of darkness and some kind of falsehood? Does He say, “I demand justice. I demand love. I demand reverence”? Well, He could do that, but that is not what God does, because God is self-sacrificing love.
What He does is humble Himself and come down and say, “Let Me talk to you. Okay, you do not respect Me? Okay, I will just talk to you like an equal.”
So He says, “You despise Me.” And they say, “How do we despise You?” “Okay, let Me explain.” Rather than saying, “Hey, I am your Father. I said you despise Me. That should be enough for you to repent.”
But you do not have enough respect for Me as your Father really to understand what I am saying, nor do it. If I am the Master and you are the servant, you are supposed to fear Me, but you show no fear. You are actually bold and say, “How have we done that?”
It would be wrong to look at this remnant of people as rebellious or testy. Malachi is speaking to the remnant—to those people who had left Babylon and returned to Jerusalem because they loved the Lord with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength. That is who He is talking to.
But darkness affects us all. The problem is that these people are in a heart-denial of the truth.
Why is God dialoguing with them like this? Let us look at the dialogue once again so you can get the tenor of the whole thing. In Malachi 1:2, God says, “I have loved you,” and you say, “How have You loved me?”
In Malachi 1:6, God says, “O priests who despise My name.” But you say, “How have we despised Your name?” God says, “You are presenting defiled food on My altar.” But you say, “How have we defiled You?”
Even the questioning is evidence that there is darkness among the saints. God is not playing games or entering into some kind of knowledge dialogue.
In Malachi 2:13, He says, “This is another thing you do: you cover the altar with tears and weeping and groaning because He no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor.” Yet you say, “For what reason? What reason are we crying and praying? You are not answering our prayers. We do not understand.”
In Malachi 2:17, “You have wearied the Lord with your words.” And you say, “How have we wearied Him?”
In Malachi 3:7, “Return to Me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord of hosts. And you say, “How shall we return?” By the way, that word return is the word shuv, the word “repent.” “I say repent, and I will turn to you.” We say, “How do we repent?”
In Malachi 3:8, “Will a man rob God? Yet you have robbed Me.” But you say, “How have we robbed You?” In Malachi 3:13, “Your words have been arrogant against Me.” But you say, “How have we spoken arrogantly against You?”
This is not actually a dialogue, of course. The reason it is not a dialogue is because the people cannot be honest. The Lord is conducting a rhetorical dialogue. He is saying, “I have loved you, but you say”—He is telling them what they say, which is something they would never say verbally.
There is not one of those statements that anybody would say verbally, except somebody who is just plain stupid. Do you think the Jews would go around saying, “How is He loving me?” Do you think they would say, “What do You mean we despise You? How have we done this? How do we return? How do we fear You? What do You mean we speak harshly about You?”
Not the remnant. These people came back because they feared God. They would never say something like that. But God is saying, “Your heart is shouting that to Me. You are in denial about what your heart says.”
Here is what your heart is really saying: When I say, “I have loved you,” you say, “I do not think You have loved me. You put me through a tough time, man. You put me through the mill. I am going through a tough time. I am beginning to wonder if it is even worth it.”
That is what your heart is really saying. Admit it. Admit it. But they say, “What do You mean I would say something like that?” That is how out of touch we are with our hearts in this kind of self-deception of darkness.
We are not honest, and so God has to be honest. He says, “No, I am being honest with you. I expect respect. You do not give Me respect.” “How do we not respect You?”
The Lord has to answer. The Lord has to ask the questions that our hearts refuse to ask because our hearts are in denial. The Lord wants to bring our hearts into the light in order that our hearts may be healed.
So God humbles Himself in this process. I mean, He is actually humiliating Himself by being willing to engage in a dialogue with people who are so unworthy of dialogue.
But, of course, I told you the key is Malachi 3:6, where He says, “I, the Lord, change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.” He cannot consume you. He just cannot.
“I would rather get down on My knees and talk to you. Even as I am talking to you, you say, ‘No, no, You are wrong, God. You are wrong. I know what I am thinking.’” And God says, “Well then, let Me talk to you some more. I will try to convince you what you are thinking, because you do not believe the truth.”
This is what happens when God’s children, who love the Lord, experience a long period as a remnant. We have to be careful here. First of all, we have some young people, and I just love to see a younger generation here. Maybe many of them still have first love for the Lord. They burn in first love, and they just do not understand any of this stuff.
But these things have to be spoken anyway. Put it in your memory bank. There are young people, perhaps even here, who have learned hypocrisy down to a science. They know how to say the words, how to go through the motions, and how to act in such a way, yet their hearts are far from the Lord.
Oh my goodness, if their hearts were ever exposed, they would be so embarrassed. But they have learned from us how to put on the show. So even they need to hear this as well, do they not?
But the first point—please bear with me while I tell you—is that this book is written to God’s best. That is who the remnant is. They are standing in for God’s best, and God loves the remnant.
You know why? There is some kind of vested interest He has in a remnant that is very important to Him and for His Son, more than we understand. He needs some people to be faithful, even in this hour. He really does, for the sake of His Son.
It is not for His bragging rights. It is not for His honor and glory. It is for the love of His Son. He needs some people standing in the truth and in the light in a dark day.
There is a contrast in Malachi between people who are in heart-denial and those few people who huddled together, trying to come to the truth and listening to God’s Word: “Could You run that tape back by one more time? Let us pray about that. Let us get out in the open about this, because we do not want to be deceitful and full of hypocrisy.”
There is that remnant within a remnant who really care. There we have that wonderful parallel between Laodicea and Philadelphia. Philadelphia is that little group huddled together, wanting the truth, standing there, sensing their weakness but holding to the Word, waiting for the Sun of righteousness—or, in the New Testament, the Morning Star—to shine.
During that waiting time, they are trying to be faithful. But what is Laodicea? Laodicea is Philadelphia gone sour: no longer waiting, no longer holding fast to the Word, now in some kind of self-deception. It is not pleasing to the Lord.
If you think this is just Old Testament, I tell you, church history is full of the Lord recovering a remnant that He raised up, who loved Him and stood as light in the testimony of Jesus in the midst of a dark church life.
I am even now finishing up a narration on a video about the Moravian revival that is being done by some other people. They asked me to narrate it. Reading the history again about the United Brethren in Czechoslovakia, all they went through standing up as a testimony, and the Moravians and all they did to stand up—the cost they paid, the lives they sacrificed—it is a wonderful story.
Through church history, God has always had a faithful remnant willing to stand up and stand in the light. But the church around them was full of darkness. The Catholic church in Czechoslovakia was like rabid dogs chasing brethren who simply wanted to live by the Word of God. They could not stand it until they killed John Hus and those other people.
Is it not amazing that, in the midst of darkness, those little United Brethren—that little company of believers there in Czechoslovakia—were like a thousand-watt bulb in a dark church? They had to be snuffed out, chased for three hundred years through mountains and valleys and hidden, isolated places, in order just to exist.
They did all of that just because they wanted to be the testimony, to stand true to the Lord. They were just weak people willing to pay the price.
But eventually issues came up in that recovery that brought them down. So the recovery goes on. Whether you want to talk about the Waldensians, the Lollards, the Moravians, the Wesleyans, the Calvinists, the Quakers, the Pentecostals, the Brethren, or whatever, we see tremendous recovery with people standing in the light.
Then we see this anti-recovery, and issues come up that bring blindness instead of life. What a tragedy to go among some of the worst of the Brethren groups even today. They are full of blindness, full of obsession, full of knowledge that is dividing the body and destroying the body, and cares nothing for the hearts of people.
It is a terrible disease among people who used to be recovered. God did that recovery work in China—Brother Nee and all those people. Wonderful recovery. Then came the terrible tearing when people began to be obsessed with a leader. They followed this guy wherever, plunged into darkness, and those people who used to know light became an anti-testimony. Shame to the Lord.
So it goes. Even today, the Lord is looking for a testimony.
We shared yesterday on this matter of love. Today, I want to share on this matter of ministry, because here we have before us in the verses we read rebukes specifically given to the Levites and, more especially, to the priests.
You saw these rebukes of the Lord. In Malachi 1:6:
A son honoreth his father, and a servant his master.
If then I be a father, where is mine honor?
And if I be a master, where is my fear?
saith the Lord of hosts unto you, O priests, that despise My name.
Now we see what is involved: “O priests, who despise My name.” But they say, “How have we despised Your name?” Please, do not say these remnant people were rebellious or testy. They were as sincere as they knew how to be in the darkness. They could not imagine how they could possibly despise His name.
It was at this very point in history that the Jews were deciding that, in respect for the holy name of God, no man was worthy of speaking that name from his lips. As you know, the Jews came to the tradition where they would not say the name Yahweh, out of respect for the holiness of God.
“What do You mean we despise Your name? Why, we do not even speak Your name. We think You are so high. Whenever we come to Your name in the Bible, we go—” That is how much we respect Your name. How can You say we despise Your name?
It sounds like Christians who say, “Oh, we do everything in the name of Jesus. How can You say we despise the name of Jesus? Why, we love the name of Jesus. Just start out a chorus right now and put the name Jesus in it. We love the name of Jesus.”
Ah, but do you not know? The name is just a name. But what is the character and the reality behind the life that speaks the name? Oh, that is where we despise the name.
I do not need to list all the things being done in Jesus’ name these days that are absolutely despicable and come not just from human flesh and resource, but even from evil, satanic inspiration—in the name of Jesus.
It is easy to talk about how we respect the name, but these people were despising the name. “How can You say we are despising Your name? Why, we honor Your name especially.”
He says, “Oh yeah? Well, I will tell you how you despise My name. It is because you despise My table.”
Now, what does that mean? We immediately think of the Lord’s Table and how you may be taking it wrongly. Of course, that is not what is being mentioned here. They did not have the Lord’s Table; they did not take communion in that sense.
What does this mean: “You despise the table of the Lord”? The table of the Lord is a picture known to the children of Israel because it is a very real picture. We are servants, and we bring God a wonderful feast. We present Him the food—the ox, whatever it might be—and we are supposed to bring Him the best.
If you love Him, if you are a good servant and a good cook, you certainly do not go out and find a chicken with one wing and no leg, cook it up for the Lord, and have Him say, “Hey, where is the other drumstick?” “Well, he did not have one.”
It is certainly disrespectful to bring something blind, something lame, and say, “Ah, this is good enough for the Lord.” It is especially bad when you would never do that for the mayor of the town.
When somebody comes over to your house, you fix them up the best. But when it comes to the Lord, “Well, we have some leftovers. Hey, what is that ox out there limping around without a fourth leg? Bring him in here. We will sacrifice him.”
“The Lord does not know. He cannot tell a three-legged ox from a four-legged ox. Come on. He will just smell the meat. He will be fooled.” Honestly, people think they are always fooling God.
Some kind of lame sacrifice. God says, “Oh boy, you want to talk about despising Me? What is this whole business of leftover ministry?”
Get out of the darkness and see: this is despising My name. Not only is it not worthy of Me that you present some defiled sacrifice, but it is also unworthy of the others sitting at the table. Many of those sacrifices, after the priest offered them, went back and they all had a meal together.
You are also despising the other saints who are getting the chicken without the other drumstick, as if they were not that important.
He says, “When it comes to this matter of ministry”—because that is really the deeper spiritual interpretation of all this—“we sniff. We are wearily administering.”
“Oh no, that was blowhard Congdon, huh? The guy speaks so long, I just want to go outside.” Or, those who minister say, “Oh God, I have got to minister to these people. They cannot even remember what I said yesterday afternoon.” Sniff, sniff—the disdainful sniffing.
I wish I knew more what that meant. You see there in Malachi 1:13: “Behold, what a weariness is it!” and “Ye have snuffed at it.” Maybe I do not see the picture of why a priest would sniff at the sacrifice, but I can say this: I suppose the work gets old after a while.
Can you imagine cutting up things all day long, every day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year? All the time: same old oxen, same old doves, same old stuff. After a while, you hate the smell of it. You have to pull out all the innards and all the offal, I think they call it.
After a while, I get the sniffing at this thing. You know, our little gathering in Manhattan, mostly young people, actually has three top-notch cooks from three of the finest restaurants in New York City. One is a fish cook and one is a baker.
The baker guy can hardly stand the smell of good bakery stuff—the yeast, the sweetness, the sugar. You and I say, “Oh, it draws me for blocks.” If somebody brought something out of the oven, I would turn around, make a U-turn, and go around the corner to see what that great smell is.
Can you imagine smelling that twelve hours a day, seven days a week? After a while, I suppose we can get filled with anything. Evidently, these priests were pretty full of this whole matter of sacrificing and offering things. Maybe it was quicker to offer a three-legged animal. Or who cares?
As He goes on in Malachi 1:13-14, you see two things. He says, “You bring offerings by robbery.” Here we bring a sacrifice that did not cost us anything: a sacrifice that costs nothing.
“And what is lame or sick, you bring that offering. You think I should receive this from your hand?” Then it is even worse: “Cursed is the swindler who actually has a good animal in the flock, but brings in a bad one to Me.”
What is he doing? He is saving the best one for himself.
You are not going to believe this, but centuries ago, before they had electricity, I was actually a Baptist pastor. My pastorate was way out in the country somewhere in Indiana, and there were all farmers out there.
I will tell you something: there are some perks to being a farmer. The number one perk is this: they pick out the absolute best pig, the absolute best cow, and they keep it behind for themselves. They send the other piggies to market.
But when you go over to their house to have a steak—hmm, you have not had a steak until you have had a farmer’s steak, because they saved the best for themselves.
Sometimes this becomes the attitude: “All right, here we go. We have got to give God an offering. Well, let us see. I am saving up for that car. Here is ten bucks. Oh yeah, ten bucks. That is it.”
Now, this has to do with ministry in many ways, which we are going to have to talk about a little bit. But before I do, let us make the point that we are all a priesthood of believers, and so in some way this touches all of us.
This is talking about ministering the Word in a defiled way. This is talking about worshipping in a defiled way. This is talking about prayer in a way that despises His name.
It means that, despite the darkness that surrounds us and lets us get away with some stuff that should never be gotten away with, the Lord is not satisfied with a defiled ministry—including worship, prayer, and ministry of the Word. This would be our spiritual interpretation, because obviously we do not have animals that we are offering.
He says, “I wish there would be somebody who just closed the gates.” Here we begin to get a little insight into what the Levites were supposed to do.
The Levites had a very high calling as a remnant among the children of Israel. One of those callings—could I put it this way?—was that they were called to keep the standard high, not to accept blemished offerings.
The Levites, as far as the tribes go, were the gatekeepers of the temple. So He says in Malachi 1:10, “Oh, that there were some among you who would shut the gates,” that they would stop offering this stuff that is wrong.
Where are the Levites in the body of Christ who actually set standards for what is acceptable in terms of ministry?
Now let us look at the positive side, because the Levites are that wonderful remnant of people. The Levites did not basically come back with Zerubbabel. They had other things to do. They were making money in Babylon. “Let us go back to Jerusalem, where we have no land?” But in spirit, listen to the Levites in Malachi 2.
This is the calling of the Levites, and this is the calling of all of us really as priests, thank God. Malachi 2:4 says that His covenant might continue with Levi. This is what the Lord wants. He wants the Levites to live by His covenant that He made with them.
“My covenant with him was one of life and peace.” Now that is what a Levite should bring, whether it is ministry of the Word, leading the worship time, or a time of prayer.
“And I gave them to him as an object of reverence.” The Levite also is one who holds that standard of reverence, because they reverence and fear the Lord in the right kind of way.
“So he revered Me and stood in awe of My name.” Oh, wonderful Levites that really fear the Lord and hold the name of the Lord up with respect.
“True instruction was in his mouth, and unrighteousness was not found on his lips.” Wonderful. When they got to the Promised Land and eventually built the temple, in one sense the Levites did not have any job anymore. They used to carry the furniture through the wilderness.
But now that they had the temple set up and the priests going, the Levites did not have their former task. Yet God gave them a new job: to be instructors and teachers.
Even as Ezra, when he came back to Jerusalem, brought a revival to the people by teaching them the Word of sanctification that beautified the people. They saw the love, the beauty, and the holiness that Ezra showed for God. As he taught the Word, they were sanctified by the washing of water by the Word.
What a wonderful thing this was. Ezra was the true Levite who followed and obeyed this covenant. True instruction was in his mouth, and unrighteousness was not found. He walked with God in peace and uprightness, and he turned many back from iniquity.
“For the lips of a priest should preserve knowledge, and men should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts.” This is what a Levite is supposed to be.
Let us apply that to the men who minister the Word of God here just for a moment. Oh, how despicable it is when somebody offers a defiled message.
Now let us examine that for a moment. It is not that we are setting up a standard and saying that when somebody speaks, they have to be absolutely correct in their doctrine or their message is defiled. That is not the spirit and tenor of this at all.
I am going to be so bold as to say there are some people who might stand up here and not quite have the thing fully formed. They may hem and haw a little bit and share some things, maybe even something a little incorrect when you know the Bible in a more perfect way—but their spirit is absolutely right.
On the other hand, you can find somebody who is glib and knows all of the Word and rightly divides it—knowledge upon knowledge—and it is just letters that kill, while his spirit is completely wrong. We are not just talking about outward things here.
It is not that the Lord is saying, “I want absolute perfection in ministry, or do not open your yap.” No. What the Lord says is, “I want fear in your heart. Then what you share, share in the fear of the Lord.”
If there is correction, it gets corrected. It is okay. It is the attitude that is wrong.
Again, I say about the Brethren only because I have been around some recently: their knowledge is so right; their hearts are so wrong. They exclude everybody.
I was talking to some young person a few weeks ago. He and his wife were out in Pennsylvania and wanted to go to church, so they went to a Brethren meeting. They were excluded from the table and made to sit in the back room, kind of thing.
The guy came back to me all mystified: “I thought we were all Christians. What is going on here?” I did not want to go into it. Why is all that divisiveness among those who claim the church is one? Funny. Funny—our doctrines are so opposite to the Spirit of the Lord.
But, you see, this deception. If there are to be Levites, there have to be some people who fear the Lord, and what they say, they are careful about. This is a calling. This is important.
Not only that, but also in our worship around the Lord’s Table and in our prayer meetings, there has to be this basic reverence for the Lord.
The Lord says, “I will tell you why you despise My name. I will tell you why: because you do not respect Me. This has all become so glib, so easy, so smooth. You are able to talk and talk and talk, and you do not really fear Me anymore.”
Something broke loose here. You do not even sense when you are getting off. Oh, it is a terrible thing.
Is it not a tragedy to listen to Harold Camping these days? He was a faithful Bible teacher for years, and he is so totally off the mark with an obsessively dark interpretation of Scripture. If he did not own the station, they would take him immediately off the air.
Now he is on television and radio, and the stuff he is putting out is so full of garbage as well as truth. Oh, I just wish he would go home to the Lord. He was faithful for so long. They should have sent him out to pasture long ago.
There is now this whole subculture of Christians who believe the church is no more. They do not even go to church. “The church is dead. The church is obsolete. The church is no more. The church is in darkness.” This is what he preaches.
“Now it is just the kingdom. Go out and get people saved. That is all. Forget church. Do not even go to church. Stay home, read your Bible, or listen to me every afternoon at three o’clock.”
When you see somebody released like that—bold, bragging, with no fear of the Lord and no sense of balance—oh, all it needs is balance.
Listen, J. N. Darby came to that same conclusion: in this darkness at the end of the age, the church is in desolation. But he never gave up on the church.
It is one thing to have the kingdom in the church, but then to throw out one—what are you doing? How can that be in the fear of God?
But the ministry has to be pure. Why does the offering have to be pure? What, God cannot take a three-legged animal? He created them. But what is the problem with offering God an imperfect, blemished, or sick offering?
Is it that it is not worthy of Him? Indeed it is a show of lack of respect and despising. But it is even more than that. You and I know what it is. They did not know, because they were in darkness waiting for the Sun of righteousness in the first coming of the Lord. Now we are waiting for the second coming, and we know better.
What is it about the sacrifice that had to be pure? Every sacrifice offered to God was a picture of His Son, Jesus Christ. So do not give an imperfect offering of Jesus Christ. Do not represent Him as crippled, second-hand, or a throw-off.
It is despicable to the Father if we do not present the Son when we minister.
We know from Paul in 2 Corinthians 3 that we are now ministers of a new covenant. Nobody is adequate for this, but we are to present Christ—not a faulty Christ, not a one-sided Christ, not a one-legged Christ, not a Christ in caricature, but the true Christ.
Just as they were to offer an unblemished offering, so we are to offer Christ. There was no perfect animal, but an unblemished one; it spoke of Christ. That is why God only wanted that kind of offering.
When we minister the Word of God, dear brothers, I tell you: the more I minister, the more I fear. It is so easy to say things and offer our opinions, just worldly opinions and our own knowledge.
Knowledge is so cheap today. With the internet, you can learn anything you want. You can find out two completely opposite things about a person. Just go to Wikipedia, and you will see that this person was evil or this person was good, depending on what chapter you are reading. Who knows what truth is anymore? The internet is fouling it up a little bit, actually.
But beside all that, I do not want to get off on the internet. What I want to say is this: when we minister, we need to minister Christ in the fear of God.
Again, I am not insisting on perfection, because I want young people to rise up and begin to exercise their gift, and be corrected by Aquila and Priscilla in the more perfect way if they need that. But share in the fear of God.
You can always tell somebody who really fears God when they share, as opposed to those who are sharing because they think they have something pretty cool to say. The marketplace is full of guys preaching cool things. Unfortunately, it is not cool to the Lord.
The interesting thing to notice is this: it was at this moment in history, in the time of Malachi, that the scribes and Pharisees were beginning to hit their stride.
The scribes and Pharisees came out of the Levites. Scribes, as you can imagine from the word scribble, were writers. Their original job was to take a copy of the book of Isaiah and rewrite it. They did not have copy machines. The scribes were the copy machines.
Now, I am writing this thing, so I am studying the thing. I am studying to know more about the thing. Ezra was the perfect scribe.
Let us look at Ezra for just a moment. Ezra 7:10:
For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments.
He wanted to learn it and practice it, not just learn it and speak it. Ezra was a tremendous scribe.
When he came back to the people in recovery in Jerusalem, many of the people did not know the language of Zion. They had lost touch with Hebrew. When they stood up in the great square and spoke out of the Bible in Hebrew, the scribes could read Hebrew and understand it, but many of the people had lost Hebrew as their language.
So they needed interpreters. The scribes stood up, the Levites stood up, and they interpreted the words. “Oh, that is what it means.” Something had been removed from them because it was only in Hebrew. When they heard it in their own native tongue, they began to repent and weep because they heard the Word of God again. It was a wonderful moment.
Now let us shift forty years later, and here we are in Malachi. The scribes had moved away from being people who pursued the Lord.
This is the way ministry enters into obsession. Obsession is a self-deception where you think what you are doing is right, but it is wrong. The whole book of Malachi is about people who are in denial about what their hearts are really saying. These are people in deception or obsession.
There is a difference between lying and obsession. A liar knows he is lying inside, but outwardly he pretends something untrue. Somebody obsessed is somebody who is not only lying on the outside, but actually believes it on the inside. They have lied so long that they actually believe the lie. That is obsession. That is darkness.
The Pharisees, as you know from the time of Jesus, were the kings of obsession. Here is how it starts, so watch out. There is danger in this.
If you pursue the Lord, there is always the danger that at some point in pursuing the Lord, you get distracted from pursuing the Lord and begin pursuing a way, a doctrine, an emphasis, or something that is a side stream of pursuing the Lord.
How do you pursue the Lord? By studying the Word of God. Praise God, you start pursuing the Lord and studying the Word, but somewhere along the way you are pursuing the Word and no longer pursuing the Lord.
You get into obsession with a certain doctrine. You know you are right, and that is an emphasis. Next thing you know, you are in an obsession with something that is not true. Pursue the Lord.
That is why in the book of Revelation He says, “I have this against you, church of Pergamum: you are holding to a doctrine.” Whoever told the saints to hold to a doctrine? Hold fast to the Lord. He is the only way in life.
What is our best example of an obsessed man in the Bible? Saul of Tarsus: a Pharisee, absolutely obsessed.
So obsessed that he thought imprisoning and torturing Christians was doing God a service. Now, is there something dark about that? How did he come to that? By his desire to pursue righteousness, to be blameless before the law.
He read the law until he could read it upside down. He read the law until he lived it upside down. The next thing you know, truth was error and error was truth; right was wrong and wrong was right.
The next thing again, he is pursuing God—to persecute Him—only he thinks he is doing right. That is the nature of obsession.
Let me take an example. I am pursuing the Lord, so I am pursuing the Word. Then I get to prophecies of the end time, and I say, “Oh, prophecy of the end time, I have got to study that.” Next thing you know, I buy all those books on prophecy at the end of time.
Next thing you know, I am not pursuing the Lord; I am pursuing end-time prophecies. Then I am getting obsessed about when this is going to happen and when that is going to happen. If you do not believe it is going to happen when I say it will happen, I cut fellowship with you because you do not know what you are talking about.
What happened to me? I was pursuing the Lord. I wanted to be ready for His second coming, and suddenly I am into some kind of doctrines, and all I do is talk about the doctrines.
Sometimes you can go to a prophetic conference and not even hear about the Lord all weekend. You just hear, “This is going to happen, then the man of sin is going to look like this, and he is going to come from Tunisia,” or whatever doctrine somebody is carrying on. But you got turned aside.
Here is the kicker: when you get off the track, there is a certain bunch of people who love off-the-track stuff.
If you just pursue the Lord, a lot of people say, “Oh yeah, pursue the Lord. I have been doing that a long time.” But then somebody has something novel, an interesting experience, and he is pushing and pursuing it.
“You have got to be baptized in the Spirit. Here is the way it comes. It only comes at midnight. You have to seek the Lord and fast for two days. Wadda-boom, He hits you this way and you say, ‘Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo.’ Just watch Cinderella, and you will know what to say.”
Then you get this gift, and you do that, and they are absolutely obsessed with the Spirit-filled life—nothing about the fruit of the Spirit. Forget that. These people become released, and in the power of the Spirit they do all kinds of things so against the Spirit of Christ that it is unimaginable Christ would ever act that way.
But obsessed with their newfound liberty, they boldly go where no man would, where angels would fear to go, and where Star Trek never went.
Man, obsession is a tricky thing. You can get obsessed by a doctrine. You can get obsessed by a way—a way of doing things. “Oh no, no, no, that is the only way we do it.” Well, I am sorry.
Or we get obsessed with a leader.
In Russia, I told you the sad story last night. I sat in one eight-hour session with senior pastors. These were senior pastors—guys who had been Christians more than ten years, with churches of over three hundred people.
A good half of them supported the pastor and said, “So what if he commits adultery, has a girlfriend on the side, and is ending his marriage with his wife? He has a ministry, and we stand with him and support him.”
Holy smoke, when I heard that, I went ballistic. I said, “Do you mean you do not stand by the Word of God anymore? You stand behind a guy? You are obsessed.”
You never stand behind a guy. You take the guy to the cross. He is just a sinner like you and I. When he does something wrong, you set him down and correct him, and hope he can be recovered. But you do not stand behind a guy right or wrong, do or die. What are you, crazy?
These guys were dumbfounded by my tirades. But I had to appeal with them as a strong older brother. And I was older—I can say that much.
Oh, obsession. What a strange thing. It possesses the whole body of Christ. There are people letting people minister even today, even though they know their lives are completely displeasing to the Lord. Why? Because he has a gift.
“Oh, that is all the Lord wants, just a gift.” It is a matter of defiled offerings. As long as a person has a gift, you see—because once the big machine gets going in the church, you let somebody roll.
God forbid you set the brother down. The whole thing depends on him—his book ministry, his television ministry, his speaking ministry. What happens if you set the guy down and say, “Until you get your family life together, we are not letting you speak in the name of Jesus”?
To be a holy sacrifice, we demand character go along with the name.
What do you think would happen? His whole ministry probably would totter. Usually they send up his son to take his place, and his son has a voice like this and does not know the Bible, has no gift, but pretends he does.
In two years, the thing falls apart like a house of cards because the whole church was built around a guy, a personality, an obsession with a person.
Let us look at three passages on obsession. Malachi 2:9 says:
Therefore have I also made you contemptible and base before all the people, according as ye have not kept My ways, but have been partial in the law.
A guy who is offering defiled ministry will eventually have people despise the ministry. You are offering defiled stuff, obsessed stuff, stuff off the track, out of the darkness of the regions of your inner mind. In the end, people despise it.
One version says, “You are showing the law with respect of persons.” Using the law to approve some and criticize others; using the Bible to hit people.
I remember when I talked to Dr. Stephen Olford, a famous Baptist preacher. I was only two years old as a Christian. I said, “Well, I feel God is calling me into the ministry. What advice would you give me?”
He gave me a lot of advice, but one of the things he said was, “You have got to decide whether you are going to feed the sheep or club the goats.”
You can beat on people with your Bible, criticize people, show partiality, and cause division in the church by saying, “These are good; these are bad.” That is what you will have. But feed the sheep.
If there are goats in the congregation, they might butt you once in a while. You just feed the sheep.
In our ministries, we need to be careful that we share the Word of God impartially. Do not take potshots at people, hit them below the belt, or use this pulpit to knock somebody down. We should be ashamed of ourselves.
So often, that is what ministry is: nothing more than some kind of horizontal fight, brother against brother. It should never be that way. It is a terrible thing. But that is part of obsession.
Malachi 2:17 gives us another example:
Ye have wearied the Lord with your words.
Yet ye say, Wherein have we wearied Him?
When ye say, Every one that doeth evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and He delighteth in them; or, Where is the God of judgment?
“What? Me?” they say. “How have we wearied Him? With my words? With my good New York accent? With my grasp of the Bible? How could the Lord be wearied with my words? He loves my words. He keeps saying, ‘Dana, speak longer and longer. I love your words.’”
The Lord says, “I am wearied with your words.” “How could You possibly be? Why, I am Your number one guy. Well, maybe number two.” Such deception.
Here is what He says: “You have gotten to this place in your obsession where you say that everybody who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and He delights in them. ‘Where is the God of justice?’”
This guy is calling black white and white black. Basically, I think this is a twofold Sadducean obsession that I see all the time.
I live right around the corner from this nice, fancy, beautiful, expensive, high-class Episcopalian church. Especially on Gay Pride Day, the parade stops there, where they affirm the rights of everybody. “Oh man, God loves everybody.”
“God loves the sinner and God loves the sin, because God loves all, because God is love. Love, love, love, love. That is God’s message: love, love, love. No righteousness, no holiness—just love, love, love, love.”
“As for judgment, God is too sweet to really judge people. All this stuff about judgment is fake. God is not going to judge everybody. He is going to save everybody in the end. He loves everybody.”
“Judgment? Below God. The old-time people thought there was judgment and going to hell, but we in the emergent church downplay hell and judgment. It is okay. You can come to meetings and do pot, get drunk after the meeting, go down to the bar, and try to pick up any girl you want in the meeting. It is okay. God does not judge. Not our God.”
This is obsession preaching. It is just not in the Bible.
Or I will give you one more, as if we need it anymore. Malachi 3:13:
Your words have been stout against Me, saith the Lord.
Yet ye say, What have we spoken so much against Thee?
Ye have said, It is vain to serve God: and what profit is it that we have kept His ordinance, and that we have walked mournfully before the Lord of hosts?
And now we call the proud happy; yea, they that work wickedness are set up; yea, they that tempt God are even delivered.
“Your words have been arrogant against Me.” “How have we spoken against You? God forbid, Lord. Why, we love You with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. We would never say anything against You.”
No one would ever say, “That is right. I often say things against You.” No, these people’s hearts are in denial. They would never admit that. So God has to admit it.
He says, “Because you have said, ‘It is vain to serve God. What profit is there in keeping His charge and walking in mourning before the Lord of hosts?’”
Here is a way we speak harshly against God: “Oh, I am serving God, and He is dealing with me. I am getting to the place where I am starting to despise the way of the cross that God has chosen for me.”
God says, “That is pretty tough on Me, you know. I am trying to help you, because you are basically in obsession, and you are saying that God has given you a tough time for being faithful to Him.”
You are weary of walking and mourning. The Lord promises you, if you want to minister the Word of God and minister to the saints in the body of Christ, you are going to know the way of the cross. Guaranteed.
Let others make profit out of doctrine and teaching. For you, it is the way of the cross. But it is the way to life, the way to light, the way to reality.
People get weary of that. If you do not believe that, you should just go to a pastors’ meeting.
In New York City, once a month, I go to a pastors’ meeting. Pastors in the city. Oh my goodness, it is almost a pity party. Oh, what the Lord is sending these guys through.
There are a couple of happy characters there as well, but it is not because they have embraced the cross well. They have decided to go the way of arrogance. They preach prosperity.
“The first thing you do: give your seed money to me, and you will be happy.” That is pretty arrogant preaching. That is not the way of the cross. It makes a profit. Hey, we all need a good profit, do we not?
I am amazed how motivated people are to preach the Word when they get money for it. I am also amazed at how reticent people are when there is nothing in it.
I have heard pastors or preachers say, “No, I am not going there.” “How come?” “Well, they do not take up much of an offering. I demand fifteen hundred dollars to go somewhere and speak. If they do not come up with it, I do not go. Eight hundred bucks? What, are they kidding? It is barely enough money to get there and back. What are they talking about? Bunch of cheapskates.”
Raise up the amount, and you will see the guys come. There is a profit in this business now.
I do not even want to tell you the profit that is coming in at the megachurch today. My goodness gracious, you would not believe how much money is being made. It is nasty.
Although I have to say, praise God when I hear some of these guys give it all away. Occasionally you get a guy making bajillions over his books and stuff, and he gives it all away to help in Africa. Praise God for that, brother. There is always an exception.
But whoa, there is money to be had in this Christian business. Not only that, in the music industry—woo-ee. We have some rich dudes running around singing about Jesus when their lives are like hell.
We do not care about that anymore, as long as they are arrogant, as long as they come up with a new line, have some mode that is smooth and slick and never been heard before, and make daring statements about God and how to live the Christian life—how free you are to do whatever you want, and so on and so forth.
It is amazing, the obsessions that are filling Christian ministries in these days. Oh my goodness. How can we all have the same Bible and be so divided? Is it not obsession?
At the root of denominationalism is that God recovered something, and as it moves away from the spiritual source of that recovery, it ends up in a doctrine, a way, or a leader that is followed.
In a sense, a denomination is basically when people have become obsessed with a way. Every movement ever has been and ends up that way—unless they come to the Lord and say, “Lord, we would rather have Your purging now than later.”
“We would rather see Your light now than live in falsehood all our days.” Oh, there is a remedy for this. There are those who huddle together and want the truth, and God gives them the truth.
Before He comes to the temple in that great exposure we read about in Malachi 3—“Who can abide the day of His coming?”—already there are people who have been cleansed and made ready: waiting, true to God, a testimony of the cross, a testimony of reverence.
This is what the Lord is looking for.
In times of darkness, people go into obsession. There are people who believe lies you just cannot believe. There are people who believe God is dealing with them when He is not dealing with them; they are dealing with themselves.
A brother back in Russia was so full of self-pity and a sense of martyrdom, believing that all the saints were against him. This was the leader who had to step down, whom I talked about last night.
He said, “These people are for me.” Those were the people who told him he should continue in ministry, even though his life was falling apart, he was dying physically, and he was involved in things that were sin.
“These people are against me, and they are trying to kill me. They are trying to do away with my ministry.” Yet these were the people who loved him so much that they did not want him to die. They wanted him to be recovered. They wanted him to minister in truth.
He had an obsession of martyrdom. He thought he was being dealt with falsely by these people, and he could cry about it. I was in the senior pastors’ meeting, and he cried for half an hour, talking about how he gave his whole life and did everything for the Lord, and this is what it had come to.
Wow. It might sound atrocious to you, but you could do it yourself in a heartbeat. We are so full of self-pity and obsession. We think people are against us. We think God is dealing with us when He is not dealing with us.
He says, “Stand up. Get in the light.” We say, “No, no, He is dealing with me. He is so tough on me.” Even that despises God.
Better be standing up like David and saying, “Oh, the Lord is dealing with me? Then praise God. Let every man be a liar; God is true. I would rather be disciplined by God than anything else.” Say it. Say it. That is the truth.
But when your life shows, “God is putting me through the mill,” then something is broken there. Something is not true.
We go through tough times. Oh, God does deal with us. But I say, you bear up under it if you really love the Lord.
Do not become the great martyr, the one everybody looks at and says, “Oh, there goes Job.” The Lord deals the way of the cross with all of us.
I am going to be so bold as to say your time is no more difficult than anybody else’s time. You are no different than anybody else. Those things that have befallen you are such as are common to man. So cut it out.
Be God’s. Do not despise His name. Do not despise His ministry. Be faithful to Him. That is what He wants.
What is He trying to do? We read it. He is trying to restore the ministry of Levi, not knock it down. He wants to restore Levi.
How we need a restoration of Levi: a standard, an offering precious to the Lord. That is all He is looking for.
You notice when He comes to the temple in Malachi 3, and He comes in—who can stand in the day of His coming? What is He doing there? He is purging the sons of Levi.
Oh, how God wants ministry to be true among His people. He will have it, and He will come.
We have a choice. We do not have to live in darkness. We do not have to live in obsession. We do not have to live in all of this sort of self-focus.
In the end, obsession is when we are obsessed with ourselves. In the end, that is what obsession is.
If you do not know much about obsession, Watchman Nee has a book—I forget the name of it—Spiritual Reality and Obsession, or something like that. You can read it for yourself. The fact of the matter is that saints get obsessed, and it is usually with ourselves.
We need to come into the light. The terrible thing about obsession is that, if we get deep enough into it—do you know Isaiah 50:11?
Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that compass yourselves about with sparks:
walk in the light of your fire, and in the sparks that ye have kindled.
This shall ye have of Mine hand; ye shall lie down in sorrow.
When you are in deception, you build your own fire. You develop your own truths. You live by those truths, and you will end up in destruction.
What is the alternative? “In Thy light shall we see light.” That is the alternative.
We live in the time of Laodicea, where there is so much darkness going on and so much stuff going on in the name of Christianity.
Now, I know I am preaching to the choir. You know what I mean? Sometimes they say to a preacher, “You are preaching to the choir.” It is like when the preacher is yelling at people, “You should be coming to church on Sundays,” and, of course, the choir comes to church on Sundays. Why are you yelling at them about it?
For you guys to come away on a weekend—especially having heard that I am going to be speaking—I know you guys are being dealt with by God. You want to walk in the light. Why would you go on a retreat like this? Not too many perks. The food is great, but you can do better.
So I know I am sort of preaching to the choir. I do not want all of you to think you are full of obsession and everything, but it would be better for you, in the fear of God, to say, “God, in Thy light, I want to see light,” than for you to live in some kind of obsession.
It is always a self-affirming obsession—something that gives you power, something that gives you some kind of sway, something that gives you status. There are perks in obsession. There always are.
Better to get into the light and get healed.
I pray for my dear brother in Russia that he will get healed. That is what he needs right now. He needs healing physically, spiritually, and emotionally. He is a broken guy.
Yet right up to the end, he said God told him to get up and serve. I had to say, “You know something? No, God is not telling you to get up and serve. God is telling you to sit down. Go back to your wife. Work things out. Rest until you get healed.”
With all the doctrines he has, he has not been healed, because God wants something more out of him and will not let him go. Thank God for that. God does not forget you. He knows who you are, and He will not let you go easy.
Come on into the light where there can be healing. Oh, that the church would come into the light in these dark days. The Lord wants Philadelphia, not Laodicea. That is what I believe He is trying to gain right here.
So, Lord, we just pray, knowing that the great remedy is Your light. It is either light now or light later. In Your great coming to the temple, Lord, there will be light, there will be exposure, and who can bear and endure the day of Your coming?
Lord, we would rather come into the light now and allow You to deal with us than exist in some kind of mire of obsession, something that is solely self-centered and of no value to You at all.
Oh, forgive us when we become obsessed with doctrines. Forgive us when we become obsessed with practices. Forgive us when we become obsessed with emphasis.
Oh God, when I mention names like Harold Camping and others, Lord, I want to also bring myself to You. Lord, I want to minister the Word of God impartially, without respect of persons.
I pray that You will recover all of Your tribe of Levites, that we might be a priesthood rendering sacrifices pleasing to Thee because they are rendered in the name of Jesus, in His character, and in fear.
Oh, help us, Lord, in this great restoration to recover the truth of Your church in testimony. Forgive us, Lord, when we have given weary and sickly offerings, just the offcast, just the leftovers.
When we come to the meetings without one thought of what we could bring—not a Scripture, not even a prayer—Lord, is there an offering I could bring? We just come flying in by the seat of our pants, offering sacrifices that cost us nothing.
Oh Lord, we want to revere Your name and declare that You are the awesome God. We want to be the sons of Levi and teach the truth, and even bring people from their errors into reality.
Oh God, forgive us our obsessions. We want to come into Your light that we may see light. You are the God of mercy, and because You are who You are and You never change, we are not consumed. That would be the easy way out.
Rather, You reprove in order to restore the sons of Levi. Oh, do that, Lord, we pray. Do that, Lord, we pray. Do that, Lord, we pray, merciful God. In Jesus’ name. Amen.