Good to be with you through this weekend and get to share some time together. I’m glad that those who gather with us love the Lord, know Him, and are assured of their salvation. You’re standing on a Rock that cannot be moved, and He will complete His salvation in us.
The book of Malachi is not for people who are unsure of their salvation. It would be quite unsettling to hear these words if you were unsure, because you might feel tentative about things. But we know that we’re saved. As we walk with the Lord, the book of Malachi is written to those who have known Him for a period of time. Those who have known the Lord for a while know that the more He loves you, the more He deals with you.
These are honest dialogues between a God who is merciful and loves His children, and children who have been a little way down the road. So it is no longer time to play footsies, to play shallow games of assurances and stroking. It is time to deal with the things that need to be dealt with, especially in our hearts.
And so we have this precious word before us. I’d like for us to turn again to Malachi, chapter 2. We’re going to begin reading in verse 10.
Here we get to the very center. I do not want to go into it, but it would be interesting to note that there is a correspondence between the seven different sections in Malachi. The first and last correspond; the second and sixth correspond; the third and fifth correspond. Now we come to the central part in the middle. This is the fourth section, as far as the controversies God brings before His people. This is a central matter that is really upon God’s heart.
Do we not all have one Father?
Has not one God created us?
Why do we deal treacherously each against his brother,
So as to profane the covenant of our fathers?Judah has dealt treacherously,
And an abomination has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem;
For Judah has profaned the sanctuary of the Lord, which He loves,
And has married the daughter of a foreign god.As for the man who does this, may the Lord cut off from the tents of Jacob everyone who awakes and answers, or who presents an offering to the Lord of hosts.
This is another thing you do:
You cover the altar of the Lord with tears, with weeping and with groaning,
Because He no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand.
Yet you say, “For what reason?”Because the Lord has been a witness between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt treacherously, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant.
I am not even going to read verse 15 in the New American Standard. It is so far off in the translation. We will deal with it later.
“For I hate divorce,” says the Lord, the God of Israel, “and him who covers his garment with wrong,” says the Lord of hosts. “So take heed to your spirit, that you do not deal treacherously.”
Then we go on to Malachi 3. Let us take verse 6, because it is so important.
“For I, the Lord, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed.
“From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from My statutes and have not kept them. Return to Me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord of hosts. “But you say, ‘How shall we return?’
“Will a man rob God? Yet you are robbing Me!” But you say, “How have we robbed You?”
“In tithes and offerings. You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing Me, the whole nation of you.
“Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house, and test Me now in this,” says the Lord of hosts, “if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows.
“Then I will rebuke the devourer for you, so that it will not destroy the fruits of the ground; nor will your vine in the field cast its grapes,” says the Lord of hosts. “All the nations will call you blessed, for you shall be a delightful land,” says the Lord of hosts.
We want to thank You, Lord, for speaking to us directly in Your mercy, even in these last days—speaking to us with Your voice. We ask that Your Spirit would again speak to Your church, and that those who have ears to hear would hear.
Lord, we want to be perfected before You. We thank You for the work that You have begun in us. We thank You for our salvation. We need not fear; now we only fear that we might not please You.
We come and ask You to discern our hearts for us. Our hearts are quite deceitful. The further we go, the more we recognize how far our fallen nature has undone things in us. Recover us. Restore us. Send the light to us, that we might be healed.
Oh, send the Sun of righteousness unto His people, that we might be healed and stand as a testimony for You in these days. We thank You, Lord, for Your deliverance in the past. We pray that You will do it again this night. For Jesus’ sake we pray. Amen.
Let us turn to Revelation 3 and read the word to the church of Laodicea—what the Lord Jesus directly says to the church. Here again, no longer through messengers such as apostles and prophets, the Lord Jesus comes Himself and speaks to the church: a church that has fallen into deception and darkness and does not realize where it is anymore. Nor does it realize where the Lord is, standing outside. They do not have a clue.
“To the angel of the church in Laodicea write:
“The Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God, says this:
“I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot.
“So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth.
“Because you say, ‘I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,’ and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked,
“I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire, so that you may become rich; and white garments, so that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see.
“Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent.
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.
“He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.
“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”
We are astounded by the mercy of God—that He would offer His throne to these Laodiceans. If they will hear what the Spirit is saying, if they will be zealous and repent, then their destiny enthroned with the Lord Himself is assured.
Overcoming certainly involves something as deep as the hearing of the heart and the response to God—not the blindness we see on the surface of Laodicea. There must be something more to the church than outward self-sufficiency in this last day.
Indeed, the Lord says, “Please open your eyes. I’m talking to you directly. Who do you believe: your estimate of yourself, or My estimate of you?”
We find a real parallel here with Malachi, where the Lord is again talking to His people Israel in a day of darkness. Four hundred years of darkness were about to come upon Judah. In that darkness, He was looking for some willing to stand and wait for the Sun of righteousness to come with healing in His wings.
Today we are also in a time of darkness. Jesus says that we must work the works of Him who sent us while it is day; the night is coming when no man can work. During the Christian’s lifespan, before the end of the age, there will come a time of increasing difficulty in working the works of God because of a darkness that pervades, chokes out efforts of ministry, and makes things difficult.
The times are becoming more and more oppressive. I hear the dear young people who gather with me in Manhattan and their testimonies concerning the oppressive nature of their work. There is a dear brother among us, an assistant district attorney in the Bronx. You can imagine there are terrible things going on there.
He says sometimes he must walk out of the office because, while they are all sitting together, they curse and say vile, filthy things. He cannot take the language; it vexes his soul. This is a twenty-six-year-old man who has heard all those words before, but he is a Christian. He cannot stand the nastiness, the sexuality, the flirtation, the cursing, and the abuse of God’s name.
Who would have believed that it was Lot whose soul was vexed in Sodom? Lot, that great compromiser—even he ended up having his nose rubbed in all the darkness of this world.
Jesus, in His estimate of the world He experienced in His day, said, “O wicked and unbelieving generation.” Is that not our case today? I am not trying to say that we are right at the end of time. Only God knows the times appointed for the return of the Son of God.
But go somewhere like Russia, or go where Jack and Lee have gone in Africa, and see people who are not living in the midst of an unbelieving people. You see miracles happening and wonder why. Then you come back here, and people cannot even get healed from headaches without some remedy. Yet where people are not infested with wickedness and unbelief, amazing things can still happen in this world.
If you get far enough out in the boondocks and say, “God can heal you,” somebody believes it, and it happens. It is not the power of will; it is the power of faith. But we are so saturated with unbelief that, as soon as we feel the least illness, the first thing we do is grab one of those things. We take an Airborne immediately, then check with our doctor. We never ask the Lord, “Lord, is this something You are going to take care of?”
That is how saturated we are in unbelief. We hear that somebody has cancer, and we say, “Oh, that’s the end of them.” We do not know faith at all—and that is the saints we are talking about.
We have no idea. Maybe during the millennium Jesus will show us the videotape of what was really going on behind the scenes: all the enemy’s static, all the unbelief, all the unbelief in the church. We will realize, “That is why it was so hard to communicate. That is why it was so hard to fellowship. That is why it was so hard to make progress.” Powers of darkness and things unseen make it difficult to press forward.
But despite everything, there have always been faithful saints huddled together, praying and waiting for the Sun of righteousness to reveal Himself.
After those four hundred years of darkness following Malachi, we come to the time of Jesus. Jesus is born and comes into the temple, and there are still people waiting for the consolation of Israel: old Simeon, Anna, and others in the temple. There were others who really loved the Lord, still waiting all that time, faithful.
My goodness, how God in His mercy sustains people’s hearts through the greatest difficulties. It is amazing.
The Lord wants, and will always have, some kind of faithful remnant of saints—not many noble, not many mighty, not many wise, but weary and pursuing. That is what Gideon’s three hundred men were: weary, yet pursuing. After they routed the Midianites, they kept chasing, crossing rivers and chasing again. After a while they were weary, but still pursuing. Praise God. The Lord will have such a people.
In Malachi we see a people who gave themselves completely to the Lord in leaving Babylon. They left everything, including their families. They left whatever inheritance, whatever little candy shop they had going in Babylon. They shut it down and went back to Jerusalem, where there was nothing but jackals running around on the ruins and stones of the city.
They went back and gave their hearts and all to the Lord. They sacrificed their animals, energies, and strength, and they built the temple—the house of God. Through ups and downs, faintings and revivings, they came to build the city, Jerusalem, the testimony of God.
Somehow, by the mercy of God, they all shouted, “Grace, grace,” when they saw what the Lord was able to do despite all their weakness. The testimony was built up.
Yet now we see them one hundred years after the return. This remnant is still in the generation of those who came back, and, to be honest with you, their hearts are beginning to ask when the good times are going to come. “We have sacrificed everything. What is it all about, Alfie? Is that all there is?”
It is amazing how Christians love songs that say the whole thing is in vain. Christians say, “Amen.” No, no—that is not true. The Lord is faithful.
The remnant has heart problems and heart questions, but their mouths are still confessing the official line: “Oh, yes, we still believe. Praise God. He can do anything. Amen. Praise God. We’re faithful, going on. Press on. We’ll meet next Saturday.”
All the while, their hearts are saying, “Wow, man, I’m so weary. I don’t know if I can take it anymore.” So they find themselves in a kind of hypocrisy. It is a hypocrisy that is trying to be honest and trying to be faithful. But what is really needed is for the Lord to come with light and shine in the heart so that the heart can be healed.
You know how that is in your experience, and I know it in mine. Whenever the Lord shows up and reveals something of Himself, He immediately takes care of all the little problems you had. You may have four festering problems. The Lord shows up and shows you Himself, and it takes care of the four problems—even though it does not always answer the four problems.
What we really needed was the Lord all the time, not an answer to our problems.
The Lord wants to come in His mercy, shine His light, and heal our hearts so that our hearts can agree with our mouths and there will not be this disjoint. The way the Lord comes in mercy in Malachi is a revelation of God’s mercy. He comes directly to us and says, “I’m going to tell you what the problem is, and I’m going to tell you what your heart is saying, even though you will not believe it because your heart is in denial.”
My father-in-law had a stroke last week. My wife is trying to decide what to do because we are up in New York and he lives in North Carolina. We have talked to him on the phone, and my wife went down right after it happened. The biggest problem is that he is in denial. He says he will be all right.
The fact is, it does not look that way. It is hard to get him to do the things he needs to do. The doctor gave him about six medications; he has only taken two and refuses the others because he says he does not need them. When we are in denial, it is awfully hard to deal with somebody.
So God shows up and says, “Okay, now look. Let’s deal with love first. That’s the first issue. I have loved you, Jacob.”
And you say, “How have You loved me? Oh, no, no, I never said that. Don’t say I ever said that.”
The Lord says, “Oh, yes, you are saying that every day. It is in your heart, in your expressions, in your attitudes, in everything you are doing. You are saying, ‘How have You loved me?’”
Then the Lord says, “Please remember, I chose you, I love you, and I bore with you an awful lot when you were a real scoundrel, Jacob. If you want to look, look over at Esau. There is a man who is careless and cares nothing for the things of God.”
Even then, in his pride, Esau wanted to rebuild Edom. After the children of Israel came back to Jerusalem, the Edomites came back to Edom after their captivity, but everything they tried to do fell and was destroyed again and again. God says, “I have no interest in recovering Esau, but My interest is in recovering you. I love you, Jacob. You may not realize it now, but I love you, and I have never changed My mind about it.”
Hopefully that light touched their hearts. But then they had other issues, as we saw this afternoon—issues having to do with their ministry. At the beginning of ministry, when you are a young Turk and somebody who loves the Lord has really been touched by Him, your heart is on fire.
I remember when I first started preaching. I had no idea what I was doing. I had been a Christian only one year and was already preaching. I was still a student at the university, but they had an office that sent student preachers to tiny Baptist churches in South Carolina.
I would drive two hours to a little church way out in the country. I would arrive half an hour early, go out in the woods, get down on my knees, and pray, “God, oh God, I can’t preach unless You come through. Please fill me with the Holy Spirit. God, send Your light upon here. I cannot say a thing. I’m dumb as Balaam’s ass unless You open my mouth. I’ve got nothing to say.”
Tonight happens to be message number twenty thousand. I have to admit, I did not go out in the woods tonight and get all worked up. That does not mean my heart has changed, but I remember the early days—how you can really get worked up, and your heart is all afire.
After a while, you can get to the place where you say, “How can I waste the saints’ time? They are not going to listen to me anyway, but maybe I have something to say. Let me see if I can come up with something. Lord, what’s for tonight? Oh, yes—saints, I’d like to share with you tonight from Isaiah.”
Or you read a good Spurgeon sermon and say, “You know what? I think I’ll just reheat that one and shuffle it out on the saints. They will not know that the offering has a broken leg. They cannot tell the difference anyway. These folks cannot discern good from evil anyway. What am I doing wasting my time?”
Even tonight, while we are assembled here, I might be missing the beginning of some show—Dexter or something. “Come on, if I could finish early, we could all go see it.” That is the way you can get when you have been ministering for a while. You say, “What is it all about, Alfie? They never listen to me anyway. This is the most stubborn bunch of people I have ever seen. What is the purpose?”
I remember years ago, when I first met Brother Stephen Kaung. He came to speak in Raleigh. I did not know much about him, but he got up and shared a message, and I cried through the whole message. It was so heartrending.
After he finished, another brother stood up and said, “Okay, now we’re going to have marshmallows by the campfire, and we’re going to have a good old time. Everybody, hug each other now.” It broke the whole spirit of the meeting. I was devastated by the shallowness of the people. They did not even care to respond for a moment in prayer. They went right into carnality.
I was tore up, as they say down in Raleigh. I said to Brother Stephen, “Brother, I’m sorry. It is as if they did not even hear the message. They just wanted to go get their s’mores.”
Do you know what Brother Stephen did? He laughed. He said, “If the Spirit does not speak to people’s hearts, then all is in vain anyway.”
He had seen that so many times. You realize when you are speaking to an audience that eighty percent of the people will forget it completely. Twenty percent remember because they took notes, and they will go over it one time. There may be about four people whose lives are changed.
The Lord says, “The whole thing was for those four people.” Most of the time, you do not even know who they are. Just go on. Sometimes you find out twenty years later. Somebody says, “My whole life turned around at that youth conference back in 1981.”
I once met a Chinese girl who had pursued classical music after college in Seattle. She remembered getting saved at a youth conference in Seattle twenty years earlier. I had no idea who she was, but the Lord knew.
Once you become a veteran in this thing, you can get lazy. You can get leftover about ministry. Or we can come together and worship and just give the Lord the leftovers.
We have a whole new group of young people in Manhattan, and I am as mean as a snake. After we break bread on Sunday, I say, “Okay, it’s time to take up the offering.” They all look startled because we never do that kind of thing.
I say, “No, no, no—we’re not taking up money. No more of this generic worship shibboleth. I want something creative and unique as an offering to God tonight. Who’s got it?”
So far we have had poems, a rap, a collage, somebody drawing a picture, somebody writing a poem. It has been absolutely beautiful, because somebody spent time preparing something to please the Lord.
Not generic worship, you know—the usual thing: “Thank You, Lord,” and then fill in the generic words. That is fine in a time of worship, because how can we say with words what we cannot say with words anyway? But how about something original, something somebody spent half an hour or an hour preparing?
That would lift our worship time. But who has time for the Lord? “It’s not quite ten yet. I’m going to listen to the news for a few more minutes before I get out of my car and go to the meeting.” The news is really important. They are having a debate about whether it is Hillary or Obama. Oh, I have to hear it. This is desperately important.
Never crack the Bible. Never spend a moment thinking about what you would like to give the Lord. Yet we know by experience how much the Lord enjoys specificity in worship.
That is why it is such a blessing when somebody newly saved comes among us. They do not know how to be anything but specific. They say, “Lord, thanks this morning. I did not want to come, but I fell out of bed. I hit myself hard, and I had to get up. You got me here, and that was a blessing because I have been so blessed.”
We say, “Wow, that is worship.” It is very specific. You know exactly what happened. Not these vague things: “O Lord, in the dispensation of eternity, we give You thanks for the…” We say, “Huh?” Well, Lord, take that offering—only You could understand it.
These wonderful saints in Malachi had been worshiping a long time, and now they were deceived into thinking that God would accept just bologna.
The Lord was saying, “I would accept bologna, except Jesus My Son is not bologna. I would accept bologna, except you have a higher calling than that. You are called to be Levites.”
Levites are men who fear Me. Levites are those who stand up when I say, “Who stands on the side of the Lord?” Do you remember when that happened? At the foot of Mount Sinai. Who stood up for the Lord? The Levites stood up.
That is what He is looking for: people with a standard, people with holiness, reverence, and a desire to teach instruction that will sanctify the people. That is why I cannot receive what you are doing.
So let us reason together about these things. The Lord is reasoning with them, hoping that as a result this remnant will understand what is going on, stop denying their heart, and realize, “Here is our story.”
Isn’t this our perpetual story? My spirit is willing; my flesh is so weak. My spirit wants to serve the Lord with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, but my flesh gets into a routine. My flesh has the ability to compromise or offer that which is expedient, that which does not cost me much.
When we recognize this weakness, we gather with other saints who confess that our familiarity with the Lord has bred some contempt, and the Lord is not pleased. We get together and say, “Oh Lord, we are sorry that we offer You such offerings. You know our hearts; we are just so lazy. Oh God, would You heal our hearts and make us those who want to give creative worship again?”
“We remember the days we used to write songs—every week, a new song. Now we just rotate around the old ones. Oh God, give us Your life.”
In Malachi 3, we see people huddling together, fearing God, esteeming His word, and asking that the Lord would revive His people. Meanwhile, up in heaven, unbeknownst to them, the Lord is saying to the angels, “Get out that book and start writing down these names.”
There were only seventy-four Levites who came back with Zerubbabel. “I want every one of their names written down.” You can look in Ezra and see every name of every Levite who returned to Jerusalem—all seventy-four of them.
Where were the other twenty-five thousand? They were running their little camera shop back in Babylon. They had discovered they could make blue jeans and were going to call them Levi’s. Whatever it was they were doing, fine. But I will tell you who was in the book: seventy-four of them, listed by name—faithful and willing to give all for the Lord.
Today we live with much greater light. We are not in darkness as they were, waiting for the Sun of righteousness. He has come. We can live in the light, and, even more wonderfully, if we will really listen and study His word in the fear of God, we can see the morning star begin to rise in our hearts.
We cannot dwell in our obsessions and darkness if we will come before the word and allow the morning star to rise in our hearts. Let us look at a couple of Scriptures so you can see what I am saying.
In 2 Peter 1, Peter talks about seeing Jesus on the mount. He shares that experience, but then says he does not just base things on experience. There is prophecy behind it.
“So we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts.”
Boy, that is what we need: a lamp shining in this dark place. How does it happen? By taking heed to the prophetic word—a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in our hearts. Praise God for the morning star.
Let me give you a little quiz. You know the seven churches in Revelation. Which one was in the darkest place? You might be tempted to say Laodicea because it was last. The fact is, Thyatira depicts what happened when the Catholic Church went into the Dark Ages. It is about the deepest darkness you can get into.
It is interesting that in the very context of the darkest part of Thyatira, the morning star shines. That is why they called John Hus—the proper pronunciation is Hoose—the morning star of the Reformation. He came up in the darkest time of the dark Catholic church, in the dark centuries of the darkest Middle Ages. It was dark.
“He who overcomes, and he who keeps My deeds until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations;
And he shall rule them with a rod of iron, as the vessels of the potter are broken to pieces,
As I also have received authority from My Father;
And I will give him the morning star.”
Praise God. There are overcomers who come out of the church of Thyatira, seeing the light and overcoming. Wonderful.
Tonight, let us go back to Malachi and deal with this central controversy or issue with the remnant: treachery in the house of God, treachery in the family of God.
“Do we not all have one Father?
Has not one God created us?
Why do we deal treacherously each against his brother,
So as to profane the covenant of our fathers?”
This is the deepest and darkest middle issue of the book. It must be taken up. Treachery in the house of God; treachery in the family. We have one Father. We are all from one God, and yet there is treachery going on here.
First, let us explain what treachery means, because it is not a word we usually use. The actual Hebrew word translated “treachery” means a covering over. The implication is underhanded things done on the sly—not out in the open, but over on the side, as if done secretly and as if God did not see.
That is treachery. We do things covered over—cloak and dagger—in the family of God. The Lord brings this complaint: “You have brought treachery into the family of God.”
Of course, the saints immediately said, “I repent.” Oh no, they did not. They said, “What do You mean? Me, treacherous? Me? I tell the truth always. How could You accuse me of such a thing, Lord?”
Again, because of the darkness—and because their treachery brought darkness—they did not even see their treachery. So the Lord had to begin explaining what this was all about.
“You do not think you have done any treachery, huh? Let Me give you two examples in the family of God.”
“Judah has dealt treacherously,
And an abomination has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem;
For Judah has profaned the sanctuary of the Lord, which He loves,
And has married the daughter of a foreign god.“As for the man who does this, may the Lord cut off from the tents of Jacob everyone who awakes and answers, and who presents an offering to the Lord of hosts.”
Judah, in an underhanded, cloak-and-dagger, treacherous way, had married women who were unbelievers—the daughters of foreign gods. That is treachery.
It becomes even clearer in the next section. First, they divorced their Jewish wives, the wives of their youth, in order to marry worldly wives.
To see the context more clearly, we should go to the end of Nehemiah. The context is approximately the same as the end of Nehemiah. Let us see our dear brother Nehemiah, this cupbearer, suddenly standing with amazing authority because he was amazingly offended by this treachery.
“In those days I also saw that the Jews had married women from Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab.
“As for their children, half spoke in the language of Ashdod, and none of them was able to speak the language of Judah.”
Not only did they not know the vocabulary and language, but the implication is that they did not know the truth. They did not know the God of Israel, because their mothers raised them talking about other gods. Mom is the one who teaches.
Now Nehemiah was a cupbearer. You would think he was a pussycat. Throughout the book of Nehemiah, he is praying all the time, so you know he is a pussycat. But listen to this:
“So I contended with them and cursed them and struck some of them and pulled out their hair, and made them swear by God, ‘You shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor take their daughters for your sons or for yourselves.
“Did not Solomon king of Israel sin regarding these things? Yet among the many nations there was no king like him, and he was loved by his God, and God made him king over all Israel; nevertheless, the foreign women caused even him to sin.
“Do we then hear about you that you have committed all this great evil by acting unfaithfully against our God by marrying foreign women?’”
I could go on in the story and tell you about one of the priests who married one of the ungodly women and what that brought in. Oh my goodness.
I hope you catch the spirit of this and realize what happens when you marry a woman from Ashdod. Ashdod was a city in Philistia, and they worshiped Dagon, that detestable fish god. You could end up with an uncircumcised, non-Jewish child because the Philistines did not believe in circumcision.
How about Ammon? What could be wrong with an Ammonite? They worshiped Molech. You took your oldest child and sacrificed him in the fire to Molech down in the Valley of Hinnom, right outside Jerusalem. They had a furnace, stoked it up, presented their children, and threw them into the fire. That was worship to their god.
That is what God had become to their children. Congratulations for marrying that woman.
Then they married the women of Moab. Now, the women of Moab, from the study of archaeology and such, were apparently the best-looking women in the Middle East. They had olive complexions, dark sparkling eyes, beautiful hair, aromatic perfume, and all the rest.
But those Moabite women brought men down to the house of Ashtoreth, the female goddess of orgies. You remember that the children of Moab caused thousands of the sons of Israel to die while they were still walking through the wilderness because they became involved with those Moabite women.
They were sensual, worldly, orgiastic, and seducers. If you had been with the wife of your youth for a while, and she had become a good plump Jewish matzah ball, then suddenly you saw this dark beauty staring at you and saying, “Come on to my house,” the next thing you know: “I divorce. I divorce. I divorce.”
You know what? That is completely acceptable today. We have no-fault divorce. Just grab whoever appeals to you. If she turns into a moppy Moabite, let her go and find somebody else. That is the way it is in life—or at least, that is what it is in Hollywood.
Meanwhile, your family goes to pot. God says, “What you have forgotten is that we have a covenant here. I have told you to keep the purity here because it is important to My testimony.”
Let us apply this to Christians. We can jump right out of the Jewish context and apply it to ourselves. The Lord wants the purity of Christ among His people. Our great problem is when the world comes into the church.
One thing I love about you guys is that you are so naive, because you have not been through the mill of what is going on in much of the world church.
The second church I took—I was a Baptist preacher. How much more Christian can you be than that? But as a Baptist preacher, we had a local area conference. The debate was about what to do with more than fifty percent of our membership being unregenerate. That means they were not born again, but they were members of the church.
Do you know what it is like to try to lead a church in spiritual matters when half or more are not even born-again Christians? Unfortunately, most of the deacons were part of that unregenerate mass.
If I were squawking about one isolated church situation, then never mind what I say. But I am telling you, that is the majority of churches today. And if they are Christians, a lot of leadership is worldly Christian leadership that has brought the world in.
Now we have the world’s methods, attitudes, vocabulary, music, strategies—everything. Somebody told me today about a church where, every Sunday just before the offering, they flash on a screen a list of things to pray for so that the church can have more money: pray that you can find money, steal money, receive a tax return, and so on.
Then you go into the lobby, and they are selling twenty-five-dollar chances on a car. Listen, this is a born-again Christian church. You have no idea. That is why I say you are naive. I have not seen a good raffle here in years.
That is the way it is done. Where would the Catholic Church be without bingo? Come on. That is just worldliness and worldly methods in the church.
What is the cost? Perhaps some people get saved, you say. Fine. But the church loses its testimony because of impurity. The church becomes that mutant mustard plant that was supposed to be this high but grew enormous, and now birds are nesting in it because all kinds of evil are in this humanly built kingdom called the church.
Where do you see the Lord when you go to church? Well, if you look hard enough under some rock, you may find a precious overcomer, even in some of those places. But how the Lord hates mixture in His church. It is a spiritual principle.
The Lord is merciful. There are many people who got saved after they were married, and now they are in a difficult situation. That is completely different from Christians who willfully go into the world and find themselves a chick.
Many times their whole calling and everything in their personal lives are sacrificed. They never fulfill their calling. They cannot. Have you ever tried to drag a dead body around and serve the Lord? It is tough.
The Lord has much mercy in this, but going out and bringing the world into the church is the principle I see here. In church history, that is where we see the testimony lost time and time again.
While I was still in seminary—cemetery—I read a book they assigned in one of my classes. It was called Christ and Culture, written by a theologian named Richard Niebuhr, brother of Reinhold Niebuhr, who started the whole social gospel movement in the church.
The book has stayed with me because of its conclusion. He said the church has had four stances toward culture throughout its history.
Recently there were emails going back and forth among the young people in Manhattan because they had read an article saying we should not call ourselves Christians anymore, because that gets in the way. As soon as you say you are a Christian, people do not listen. So call yourself a “Jesuser” or something else, because the culture cannot stand the word Christian anymore.
Then they have the word so screwed around that you must spend half an hour explaining what you mean by Christian before they will accept it. That is the third phase.
After explaining these four positions, Niebuhr admitted that the church has always been strongest and best when it stood against culture. Yet he advocated the “Christ transforming culture” position, when the church has gone so liberal that it has no effect on culture at all. Culture is affecting the church.
He admitted right in the introduction that the church is at its best when it confronts and stands against culture—when people come out of the world and into Christ. Yet the basic book is about how we marry the world if we want to continue as the church. I do not want to go further than that, or I will lose my cool.
That is the number one problem: bringing the world into the church. It breaks the covenant. Indeed, it defiles the sanctuary, the house of God, where the purity of Christ ought to be desired.
We bring in ruffians and carnality, and then where is the testimony? There must be somebody guarding the doors. That does not mean we do not allow people to come into a meeting. But we are talking about stewardship in the church.
At the church where I gather, there are about three hundred and seventy-five people on Sunday. We never write down who is a member. We do not have formal membership. If you are a Christian, you are a member. If you are not a Christian, you are not a member.
Many are confused because they do not know whether they are in or out. Some have been around for years and are not Christians, but they think they are part of the group. Sometimes we must be clearer. If you do not believe in Jesus, do not take the Lord’s Table. They may have been taking it for two years, passing the little chicklets to the kids. We have to be stewards in the church.
Now here is another thing you do:
“You cover the altar of the Lord with tears, with weeping and with groaning, because He no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand. Yet you say, ‘For what reason?’”
They bring their offering and pray, “God, bring rain to the land of drought. Bring healing to diseased bodies. Oh Lord, we pray, we cry, and You are not answering our prayers. What could possibly be wrong?”
Well, you want to know?
“Because the Lord has been a witness between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt treacherously, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant.”
“For I hate divorce,” says the Lord, the God of Israel, “and him who covers his garment with wrong,” says the Lord of hosts. “So take heed to your spirit, that you do not deal treacherously.”
Here we are dealing with the problem of divorce. He hates divorce. There are tears on the altar. Why? Because this person is praying, “God, why are You not answering my prayers?”
God says, “What do you mean, you treacherous person? You did all this covering over, underhandedly disposing of your wife, and now you say, ‘It is cool. It is okay. It is okay with God. I’m okay, You’re okay, right, God?’ Now you are praying, and I am not answering.”
God says, “Oh, is it okay? This treachery has profoundly affected not only your family but the body of Christ, and you just sniff it off. It may be easy for you to get over, but I hate divorce. It violates My covenant.”
That is the way God feels about it. That is the way it is going to be.
Of course, it is twice as bad because these men first divorced their wives and then married worldly wives. The wife of their youth was spent and thrown out. Malachi is speaking to Judah, but also to the priests, because Nehemiah tells us that priests had done this very thing.
I need to explain a few things. Within God’s covenant people is the only place where the reality of marriage can be seen by the world.
Is marriage an important testimony to God? You better believe it. There is nowhere except among God’s covenant children where the testimony of true marriage can be seen.
Marriage is not just two people becoming one flesh. That is the body side of it. Marriage also has a spiritual side, and spirit and body must be maintained in marriage. It is important to God’s covenant.
What is real marriage? Is it just two bodies together? No. It is two bodies and two spirits made one—something God has done. Why? What is the desire? “I want godly seed,” God says. This is the way I do it. This is marriage.
Verse 15 is difficult. The King James does not get it. The New American Standard does not get it. The Message Bible, by Peterson, is pretty good, but I have to tell you, the NIV gets it pretty close.
The New American Standard says:
“But not one has done so who has a remnant of the Spirit. And what did that one do while he was seeking a godly offspring? Take heed then to your spirit, and let not one deal treacherously against the wife of your youth.”
Well, they got the last line right. What is all that other stuff? Listen to the NIV:
“Has not the Lord made them one?
“In flesh and spirit they are His.
“And why one?
“Because He was seeking godly offspring.
“So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith with the wife of your youth.”
God has put something together that is holy and right in a testimony. It brings godly seed from it, and God delights in this. Marriage is not merely two bodies together. That is what the world thinks. The church gets to show the world that true marriage is body and spirit together as one. Do not chop off the spirit.
Do you realize what you are doing? I hear God’s heart in this, because I know some of you have been touched by divorce, and it is a terrible thing. I am not telling you to go back and do things, but I am telling you how serious an issue this is.
We are so glib about this kind of stuff. God has put together body and spirit in some lives for a real purpose, and He hates divorce and the treachery of it.
Here is the treachery: you are a believer, and you know better than to break a spirit that has been united together. You know better. To do it is treachery to God.
Now, that is pretty tough. But I do not want to inveigh on divorce among people, though it is tragic. I want to apply this to the body of Christ, because the same principle applies.
The unity of the Spirit that God has granted to all Christians who believe in the Lord is something that should be guarded with all our heart. Division in the body of Christ is a violation of the very covenant of what the church is all about.
I know we talk about denominations, but I am going to tell you some things—my opinion, if you do not mind.
Denominations are historical treachery. But the worst treachery is a spirit of denominationalism in the hearts of people who are sometimes non-denominational.
Usually, a person in a denomination is there because his parents were there or because that is where he goes. That does not mean he is denominational. Some people in denominations do not have a spirit of denominationalism. But some people who are not in denominations have such a spirit of denominationalism that they cause division in everything they say.
But we are all one. Do we not have one Father? Read it. Were we not all born by the same Spirit? Then we are one.
There are preachers who preach so strongly against divorce that anybody who has been divorced creeps out of the room feeling completely condemned. Yet their very spirit in terms of church is divisive. They do not see the irony.
Men who divide the church based on doctrine, based on “we are better than you,” demonstrate a spirit of exclusivism, denominationalism, and pride. God hates it because the body is one. May God have mercy on us that we do not become such divisive people.
God loves all His children. If I am reading my Bible correctly in Revelation, God has an overcomer in every one of those dark churches, including Catholicism. So get over it.
How do we avoid being those who promote divorce in the body of Christ? Realize that the fact that we are one together in Christ is sacred.
If you meet another brother or sister at work and they go to the Podunk Hallelujah Church, the first thing you do is praise God that this is a brother or sister. Embrace them as a brother or sister. Do not be divisive about it.
Do not say to yourself, “Hmm, they just do not know too much, or they would not be in that church.” That is a spirit of divorce.
We need to accept all brothers and sisters and thank God for them. Forget about the denomination they are in. Half the people are there because they have not heard of a better way or do not know better. It does not mean they are denominational.
Embrace them as a brother or sister in Christ and treat them like an overcomer. Encourage them to be an overcomer. Have a Bible study at work. Do not demand that they leave the Baptist church and come over to your group because you are supposedly the best.
If they see more light and want to be free of things they feel are shackles in their denomination, they will get out. But meanwhile, if they are in it, or if they are a pastor, do not say, “Oh, pastor—he is in the system.”
There are pastors laying down their lives who love the Lord and are more faithful than any brother in this place, including myself. We need to watch what we say. There are demagogues around; there are plenty of them. But when you meet a brother or sister, they are a brother or sister. We are part of the family. Why can we not emphasize that first?
Treat them like an overcomer. I want to see who overcame out of the Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church, Pentecostal Church, Evangelical Free Church, and all the rest. There will be many people who have been faithful to the Lord even in darker environments than perhaps we live in, because we have such freedom.
They will overcome. If you encourage them, it will help.
We do not need any more divorce. I do not want to cause more divisions so that we break this assembly in half and have the young people in one group and the old fogies, who are fading anyway, in another. We do not need any more division. We just do not need it.
I am not interested in being exclusive. “Exclusive” smacks to me of a spirit of divorce. I am sorry, that is a wicked word. What are you exclusive from?
You heard about it—I say it is a true story. The Exclusive Brethren somewhere in England had a little group. One of the big problems with any group like that is that they do not want to put a name up, because they are just Christians, you know.
They finally decided that people needed to know where the meeting place was, just a little cottage down the street. So they put up a sign that said, “Jesus Only.” That way people could know where to go.
Of course, a very windy day came, and “JES” fell off the sign. It said, “Us Only.”
That is the way a lot of people are: “We are better than anybody else.” Oh, the wickedness of that—the wickedness of that doctrine.
There are people who go around saying, “We are the church in San Francisco, and everybody else is Babylon.” I would not touch that with a ten-foot pole, nor would I go to an assembly that says such a wicked thing.
Not only are you supposedly the only right church on the right ground doing it the right way, but everybody else is wrong and Babylon—not just some other group. May the Lord help us.
The unity of the Spirit is sacred. We should not judge our brother just because he is not part of our fold. How many folds are there?
Jesus said, “I have other sheep which are not of this fold,” but He says we may all be one flock. Every Christian has the same Shepherd. We are part of one flock, perhaps in different folds.
I think the spirit of divorce speaks to Christians concerning the narrow spirit of exclusivism and pride that ruins the testimony of the Lord given to us by the unity of the Spirit. Maintain that spirit of unity that has been given to us.
We have pretty much run out of time, or I have shot my fodder—I do not know which. But there is one more section. We can read it and make one simple application.
In Malachi 3:7, the Lord says:
“From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from My statutes and have not kept them. Return to Me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord of hosts. “But you say, ‘How shall we return?’”
The context continues. You notice that the answer is not immediately given, but it is given. He says, “Will a man rob God?” You want to return? Okay, here is how we return.
“Will a man rob God? Yet you are robbing Me!” But you say, “How have we robbed You?”
“In tithes and offerings. You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing Me, the whole nation of you.”
I am not going to take up an offering, nor am I going to talk about this merely in terms of tithes and offerings. But you probably know how I stand. I do not believe in tithing. I believe tithes are much too low.
Anybody who gives only tithes is robbing God, because a Christian lives by the spirit of grace. Read 2 Corinthians 8. I do not need to say anything more about it. It is not a matter of giving ten percent; it is much more than that.
We have much greater largesse as Christians than these Jews had, who complied with a law of ten percent. If you are giving ten percent or less, shame on you. You do not understand the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, for your sake He became poor. End of subject.
But I do not want to talk about that. I want to make a spiritual application. How do we turn back to the Lord? It is very simple to me: we consecrate our lives completely to the Lord.
That is how we have been robbing Him—the whole nation. We have been withholding ourselves. We have been restrained in ministry, in service, and in the body of Christ. We have been holding back, waiting for something better, waiting for this issue or that issue, with excuses about health, lack of time, and everything else.
You have been robbing the body of Christ by not giving yourself, by not consecrating yourself to be a member of the body of Christ.
Romans 12, this whole matter of consecration, is in the context of serving in the body of Christ. It begins with consecrating our lives to the Lord and then giving a sacrificial stewardship of our lives for the sake of the body of Christ.
Oh, how the body would be blessed and revived if saints gave themselves first to the Lord, and then to serving one another in the body of Christ with sacrificial stewardship.
That is what it is all about: not measured stewardship, not partial stewardship, not restrained stewardship.
Do you want to repent? Then stop telling the Lord how you are going to serve Him. Stop designating your offerings. Give yourself completely to the Lord.
Then get up and serve God now. Do not wait until you get somewhere else to serve. Serve God now. The time is now, and the place is here. That is how you serve God: here and now. Stop waiting for the better situation.
Thus we will stop robbing God, and the Lord will start pouring out of heaven.
Oh, we are so cunning, so smart. We have it all figured out: how much we give, whether it is gross salary or net salary, how we can discount the money used to make the Bundt cake in our offerings. We have the whole thing worked out.
The Lord says, “Quit being such a stingy robber. Give Me all of you, and give Me everything you have.”
When you do something like that, look at the early church. Nobody had any lack. Everybody shared in common. It was a wonderful testimony.
I am not trying to trick you into doing something stupid financially, or tell you to give all your money away. But you know that your robbery of God is in your heart. You are restraining yourself with all your excuses—pitiful, pitiful excuses.
You want to return to God? Repent of your pitiful excuses. Give Him everything—one hundred percent. Then offer sacrificial stewardship right here, right now, where you are.
That is a good way back. It is not that far, is it? Right here, right now, everything. No designated offerings anymore. No special envelopes. The whole deal: “God, what do You want?”
If you give sacrificial stewardship, I know what will happen. God is so faithful, He will test you on it. It is amazing.
It is a wonderful thing when I see somebody in the body who has been blessed with good wealth and has done very well, yet is the most faithful of stewards. They are so giving. You do not even know half of what they do. They are such good stewards. It is a blessing to the whole assembly.
There was a wonderful Chinese woman. She was quite wealthy, a widow, and lived in Richmond, Virginia. She was a very upper-class woman, but she determined that she wanted to get to know the saints in Richmond—perhaps one hundred and fifty or two hundred of them.
She invited one family at a time to her house until they had all been there. She cooked a meal for everybody who came over, though she had never cooked before; she had always had cooks. She did a wonderful job, and everybody was so blessed.
They could not believe that this multimillionaire was being so generous and kind, getting to know everybody, bringing in three or four families at a time, having fellowship, and preparing a good meal. She turned out to be a real good cook.
What a blessing she was to the saints in Richmond. They will never forget that dear sister. She has gone home to the Lord now. What a blessing.
There is something so sweet in a sacrificial offering, something so aromatic. It smells like Jesus.
May you be one of those people who quits being a robber and opens up the coffers, especially the coffers of your life. Give the brothers and sisters Christ out of your life and fellowship with others.
Then we will see the heavens open—not a restrained kind of experience, but an open heaven, the blessings of God. How He wants to bless the land.
That is good enough. That is all I have to share. May the Lord help us. Go back and study the book of Malachi and see how the Lord deals with your heart on these things. Let us pray.
Oh Lord, forgive our fallen, deceitful, treacherous ways. Half our lives are covered over, as if we had to keep over half of it that we do not want You to see. It is such a joke; You see it all anyway.
But Lord, forgive us when we violate the very principles of life in our folly, foolishness, and selfishness—self-obsessed, destroying things that God has joined together. Oh God, forgive us.
Help the dear saints who have been victimized by such treachery somehow to repair a life and find that sanctity of life again, so despoiled by our treacherous acts.
Lord, when we look upon the body of Christ today, so wrapped and divided and divisive and sectarian and judgmental, it saddens our hearts. You have married us all together and given us the unity of the Spirit, yet we cannot even respect one another. We do not even treat one another as brothers—maybe distant cousins.
Strip away from us the spirit of divorce. It lies so deep within our smallness and all that makes us feel superior, when in fact we are just miserable, poor, wretched, blind, and naked.
Oh, grant us that kind of love for all brothers and sisters that would build up the body of Christ and somehow produce a bride from all different quarters—those who overcome, prepare themselves, and are ready to walk with Jesus all their lives.
Come, and as the Sun of righteousness, enlighten our way. In these last days, Lord, I think probably denominationalism will not mean much. We will be so happy to meet another brother or sister.
May we come to that place now, before it is forced upon us, to enjoy this blessed privilege we have: being married together by the saving work of Christ. Oh, may we live in the largeness of Your body.
Lord, heal our hearts. They are so out of step with the things that we say, sometimes so deceitful and self-obsessed. Bring us to the place where our lives are true testimonies of Your heart.
If You will heal our hearts so they are like Your heart, we will be happy. Have mercy on us, Lord. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.