Morning, brothers and sisters. Let’s have another word of prayer.
Lord, we are so thankful that we can stand and testify, “I am the Lord’s.” We who were so far off, we who were in that darkness—yet God, in His great love and mercy, has intervened.
Lord, we are thankful today that our testimony is, “I am the Lord’s.” As we continue in Your presence, and as we look to You through the anointing and enabling of Your Spirit, we want not only the words of our lips to testify that we are the Lord’s, but we want our very lives to be lived out as a testimony unto You.
Lord, use Your Word to work within us. Use Your Word to do that conforming, to do that transforming, that our lives would truly reflect the beauty and glory of Your life. In Jesus’ name, amen.
This morning, if we could turn again to 2 Corinthians 11. The last few months, we have been looking at Paul’s prayer—in one sense, his cry—to these dear ones in Corinth. As he comes to some parting words in this letter, getting towards the end of the letter, he shares with them that he has a jealousy for them.
We have been looking at this not only to see how Paul was speaking and crying out to those in Corinth, but how it applies to us today. So, we will read these verses again. It is in 2 Corinthians 11, and we will start in verse 2.
For I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy:
for I espoused you to one husband, that I might present you as a pure virgin to Christ.
But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve in his craftiness,
your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity and the purity that is toward Christ.
Just as Paul had this burden for these dear ones at Corinth, that they would not be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ, so we find ourselves living in days of great mixture, great compromise, and great confusion. The Lord is saying to us, too, in a similar way: He has this desire that we not be led astray from that simplicity and purity of devotion to Him.
As we see the many things going on, we are reminded of the words that the Lord spoke with Mary and Martha: there is one thing necessary. There is one thing necessary in these end days, brothers and sisters, and it is that we keep our eyes upon our Lord and do not allow the spirit of this age, and the spirit that even so infects Christendom, to draw us away from the simplicity and purity of our devotion to Him.
We have been betrothed unto Him, and He desires that we would keep ourselves pure. In that desire, we could be those who are hastening His return.
To help us look at this, what we have been doing is looking at the people in the Old Testament after the time of captivity. Because of sin and unfaithfulness, the nation of Israel was taken away into captivity in Babylon.
As we know, Babylon, by its very nature—the word itself—means confusion. These were ones who were brought out of confusion, back to the Lord’s place where the Lord had chosen to place His name. They were brought back to Jerusalem.
They were brought back with one single purpose, a simple purpose: to be a testimony unto Him. They returned to build a house of God. They returned there to be the people of God, to be that testimony of God in their day and time.
Brothers and sisters, in a similar way, the Lord is calling us out of confusion to return and be the testimony unto Him. As we have looked at these prophets, we know that the spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus.
Each of these prophets—whether we are speaking of Haggai, Zechariah, or Malachi—is calling us back to be the people of God, to be that testimony of Jesus in the day that we are living in. Not a testimony to anything else of this world, but a simple, pure testimony unto Him. We are so thankful that our God is still speaking to us and calling us in this hour.
We have already looked, last time, at Malachi more as an introduction and overview. I would like to read a few verses just to introduce the book to us again. If we look at Malachi 1:1-2:
The burden of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi.
I have loved you, saith the Lord.
Yet ye say, Wherein hast Thou loved us?
We have the oracle, or the burden, of the Word of the Lord. It is so precious how this is not just the Word of the Lord, but there is a burden that the prophet has. There is a burden that God has. This is the burden of the Word of the Lord—not just anybody’s burden—but He has such a cry from His heart: the burden of the Word of the Lord to Israel through Malachi.
“I have loved you,” says the Lord; but you say, “How hast Thou loved us?” This is really the overall theme of this book. The Lord has this wonderful testimony: “I have loved you.” We see the Lord, in His great love, speaking to His people and trying to draw them back, because in their condition they have left their first love.
In the condition they are in, they do not even recognize the love of God. When the Lord says, “I have loved you,” they say, “How have You loved us?” If we sit there and pause for a minute to look back at God’s great love to the nation of Israel, we wonder how they could say that.
How could they say that? He brought them out of Egypt. He brought them into that promised land. They had experienced all the riches of the Lord. He had brought them out of Babylon and brought them back there into Jerusalem. Yet they said, “How have You loved us?”
It is good to remember, as we look through this book of Malachi, that these were probably words the people never uttered with their mouths. This was what they were uttering from their hearts. This is what their hearts were speaking.
As we go through this book, we see the Lord further challenge and call out to His people. One has said that the book of Malachi is the call of a wounded lover, that wail of a wounded lover crying back to His beloved, “Return to Me.” How the Lord is crying to us in this hour.
We also spent some time last time setting the scene to realize who these people are, because it is so important for us to understand who the Lord is speaking to. These were not just, we could say, fly-by-night people who had a casual relationship with the Lord.
No, as you look through Nehemiah, you see these were people who had experience with the Lord. They had seen His mighty hand. These were people who had built the wall together. They had relationships with one another. They were working together. They were caring for one another.
These are ones who had experience in spiritual warfare. As the enemy tried to stop the work, they stood in the Lord and allowed the Lord to defend them. These are ones who experienced the Lord’s sanctifying work as He cleansed them from within, putting out from their midst some of the sin that had come in among them.
These were the ones to whom the Word of God went forth. They were brought to a place of repentance and rededication of their lives. So, these were not just what we might call worldly Christians. These were not ones who were careless about their relationship.
No, these were ones who had made a choice. The ones who did not really care about the Lord, who were living for themselves, were back in Babylon. They had not even made the choice to come out of Babylon.
But these were ones who had made a choice. They lived there in Jerusalem. They were free at any time to go back to Babylon. If it got too tough for them, they could just pack their bags and go back. It was all under one domain.
These ones had been through battles, through difficult times, and they had seen the faithfulness of the Lord. They had chosen, in spite of all that they had been through, to stay there and serve God and His purpose.
We see how this applies to us today. The Lord is calling to us. He is speaking to those who have come out unto Him. This is who He is speaking to in this book: those who have really come unto the Lord and have rededicated themselves, saying, “Lord, we want to be about Your purpose.”
This is not, in many ways, just for all the worldly ones who do not care about the Lord. It is for those who have made that choice to come and follow and serve Him. The Lord is awakening them. He is awakening us in this hour.
As we look through Malachi, we see that the Lord challenges them on this matter of first love. Following that challenge, we see many consequences and symptoms—the traps that we fall into once we leave first love.
We have to remember that it is His great love, His kindness, that is reaching out to His people. It is the kindness of God that leads to repentance. In His great kindness and mercy, even though these dear ones in Malachi had, in many ways, turned their backs on Him and were serving themselves, He reaches out to them and calls them back to Himself.
Isn’t that the kindness of God? This is not somebody beating up on them. With the cry of His heart, He cries out to them.
Besides this first call, we could say that there were six other calls of the Lord. We can call these calls a debate between what God says and what the people say. It is a dialogue. But actually, if you read the book of Malachi itself, it is really a monologue, because only God is speaking.
God says, “I have this charge against you, but you say this.” They are not saying this with their mouths. He is exposing what their hearts are saying and challenging them.
The first call is the call to first love in Malachi 1:2. Then, in Malachi 1:6, the Lord says:
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?
Then He goes on to the next challenge in Malachi 1:7:
Ye offer polluted bread upon Mine altar.
And ye say, Wherein have we polluted Thee?
Then, in Malachi 2:17, we see the fourth challenge:
Ye have wearied the Lord with your words.
Yet ye say, Wherein have we wearied Him?
In that 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 justice?
Then we continue to the fifth call in Malachi 3:7:
Return unto Me, and I will return unto you,
saith the Lord of hosts.
But ye say, Wherein shall we return?
Then the sixth challenge, in Malachi 3:8:
Will a man rob God?
yet ye rob Me.
But ye say, Wherein have we robbed Thee?
Finally, in Malachi 3:13:
Your words have been stout against Me, saith the Lord.
Yet ye say, What have we spoken against Thee?
As we consider this matter in Malachi, these ones who had left their first love, we have all found ourselves in situations—whether family relationships or whatever—where, even though we might not have uttered the words, we have had this attitude.
When someone says, “I love you,” and you come back and say, “How have you loved me?” Probably every teenager has said that to their parents sometime growing up. Then, once you get a little past midlife, you start to realize and see your parents’ great love in different ways.
One of the greatest ways of expressing love to someone is saying no. Yet the recipient does not often see the word no as love. We see it as bondage, control, and every other thing. Later on, we can see the love in it.
In many ways, we have to step back and ask, “What does it mean? What does it look like to be out of love?” Through Malachi, the Lord is saying, “Let us step back and look at some of the conditions. Once you leave your first love, these are some of the consequences. These are some of the symptoms. This is what it looks like.”
As Tom said, most of us are visual people. You talk about love, and it can get so esoteric at times. But what does it look like? The Lord says, “Let us look. What does it mean that I have loved you, and you say, ‘Where is that love?’ What does it mean to leave first love?”
This is really where He begins in Malachi 1:6-7. He says, “Where is My honor? Where is My respect? You have despised My name.”
Their initial response is, “How can we have done this? We have not despised Your name. When we come together, when we come to Your altar, we say all the right words. When we make our prayers, we are using Your name in the right way. We are remembering the Scriptures.”
But He says, “What are your lives?” We have to remember that, through Malachi, the issue is not the lips; the issue is the heart. The issue is the people’s heart. Brothers and sisters, the issue is our hearts today.
“If I am your Father, if I am your Master”—so often we love to call Him Father. Do our lives reflect our obedience to our Father? We call Him Master and Lord. Again, do our lives reflect, do our hearts reflect, that spirit of obedience unto Him? Or is it something we just love to sing in our beautiful little choruses?
The Lord describes this challenge in more detail through the rest of Malachi 1 and Malachi 2. He says, “This is what it looks like. This is what I am talking about.”
In Malachi 1:8, He says:
And when ye offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil?
and when ye offer the lame and sick, is it not evil?
present it now unto thy governor;
will he be pleased with thee, or accept thy person?
saith the Lord of hosts.
As they were coming to make offerings, they were supposed to be offering the best. They were supposed to be offering unblemished lambs, unblemished oxen, and all the various offerings without blemish. But He says, “You are bringing in all the imperfect. You are bringing in the blind and the lame and the three-legged cows and the chicken without a wing. You are bringing these in and offering them to Me. You are saving the best for yourself.”
So often, we can find ourselves in situations like this. With their mouths, they were saying they loved the Lord. We say we love the Lord, but are our lives really reflecting that? Do we come to the Lord to offer Him our best?
I was trying to bring this down in a way that would help us—help me—understand what this looks like to us. The Lord says, “If I am your Master.” He says, “You would not even offer this to your governor.” Well, I have never given anything to the governor, so I do not know what that means. People say, “If I went to see the president or the governor,” but I have never done that, so I do not know how I would act.
But I have had a job. I know what a master is. So I was relating it to the master level. The Lord, in His humbleness, humbles Himself down to this level so that we can relate to it.
One of the things about our job is that we have to be at work on time. Are we always on time? If I have a job, I have to be there on time. If I have a job, I am responsible to do it. I cannot just get to work one day and say, “Well, I am not going to worry about it. Somebody else will do it.” I have a job to do, and that is what I am supposed to do.
If I get to work one day and know I have a meeting at ten o’clock, and I show up to the meeting and they say, “Mac, do you have your part?” and I say, “Well, I did not have time to prepare,” that is not acceptable.
We go to meetings prepared. There is preparation work. When we go to work, we actually take a little time because we care how we look. We want to be a testimony of who we are, so we care about how we look.
If somebody says, “Mac, I would like for you to go out with me this afternoon. Let’s go do so-and-so,” I say, “I cannot. I have to work. I cannot leave. I have to work.”
Oftentimes, when I am at work, if one of the coworkers is not there, I ask about them. I say, “Where is so-and-so? Are they okay today?” There are some practicalities that go on when the Lord relates this.
If we are in that place of first love, there are choices we make, because first love determines those choices.
It is interesting. If somebody came to me and said, “Mac, I would like for you to go out this afternoon,” I would say, “No, I have to work.” But oftentimes, if we have a gathering of the saints and somebody says, “Hey, let’s go do this,” I will say, “Oh yeah, that is a good idea. I will go do that.”
It is like somebody says to me, “Well, Mac, you do not have a choice. You have to work.” No, I have a choice. When we have a job, every decision we make at work is a choice. I have a choice about whether I am going to be on time or not. That is my own choice.
I have a choice about whether I am going to be prepared for meetings. I have a choice about whether I am just going to take off in the afternoon and miss work. We know, you say, “No, you cannot. You are not allowed to. You cannot take off from work. You have to be on time.” No, you have a choice.
But with work, in the tangible world we live in, we know the consequences. You have a choice. You can show up for work, or you can be late and get fired. It is a simple choice. You can work the eight hours you are asked to, or if you only work six hours, then you are fired.
So we cannot say we do not have a choice. There are choices we make in life, and we are aware of the consequences.
Sometimes within this Christian life—and I want to be careful how I say this—we have made the grace of God and the love of God so disproportionate and out of balance that it has taken away from our own personal responsibility, personal walk, and response that we have to Him.
The grace of God and the love of God call us to respond to Him, to be more responsible, and to desire to be with Him more and more. But just because we do not see any immediate consequences, sometimes we make various choices.
These are the ones who were saying, “He is my Father. I love the Lord,” and yet they were making choices to go do other things. When the saints were gathering together, they were making choices to go other places. We are talking about those who say they love the Lord so greatly, “I will give You my all,” and, “I am the Lord’s.”
Yet we show up late. We show up unprepared. We show up with empty hands.
Now, I trust everyone knows that I recognize the fact that there are always exceptions. Sometimes you are at work and you have to leave because there is an emergency. We are talking about the norm here. We are not dealing with the exceptions. Do not pull the loophole route on me here. We are talking about the norm.
The Lord, in His great love, is drawing us so that our lives would be a reflection: “Wow, look at those ones. How they love to be together.” Was not that the testimony of those in the book of Acts?
The testimony of the book of Acts was how they loved to be together. Even when they were not preaching the gospel verbatim, they were preaching it with their lives. The testimony of how they loved to be together overflowed, and others came in. The testimony of their love for the Lord caused others to grow up and be strengthened in the Lord.
Oh, brothers and sisters, would we allow that Holy Spirit to work within us? Are we honoring His name? Are we respecting Him? When we speak here of our offerings, of what we are bringing to the Lord, are we bringing Him the best or the least? Are we bringing Him that which satisfies His heart?
We know that is the Lord Himself. He even accuses them, down in Malachi 1:13, saying that they had taken by robbery. This was not even their own. They did not own it, and yet they had kind of stolen it from somebody else and then came in and wanted to offer it: “Lord, look at this beautiful thing I have got. Here it is.”
The Lord knows. He knows. May the Lord, may the Spirit, search us.
Another description in the way that He challenges them is in Malachi 1:13:
Ye say 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 bring the offering:
should I accept this of your hand? saith the Lord.
“How tiresome it is.” So often, as we go through, it can become so tiresome to us, and it is an indication that we have left our first love.
In the commentary on Revelation that Brother Newell wrote, he has a story in there. I have told it before, but it is worth repeating. It is a story of two young ladies who were growing up together and working together in a factory.
One gets married and moves away to another town. Then she comes back to visit her family in that town, sees her friend, and her friend asks, “How are things going?” She says, “Oh, it is wonderful. I am in love, and I am married.”
“It is so great because every day I get to get up and fix my husband’s breakfast. Every day I get to clean the house. I have been to the store and bought all the ingredients to make dinner. Then, when he comes home, I get to do his laundry. Marriage is wonderful. I just love it.”
Then, about two years go by, and this sister comes back in town and sees her again. She says, “How are you doing?” The woman says, “Oh, I am married. Every morning I have to get up and fix breakfast. Every morning I have to go shopping for the things for dinner. Every evening I have to do laundry and all of this.”
She is doing the exact same things outwardly, but she has left her first love. It has become tiresome to her.
Brothers and sisters, if we have been in the house of God and have been serving for a while, does it not become tiresome to us? If we are honest with ourselves, we all come to that place. We are tired.
But then the Lord says, “Remember how much I have loved you.” How is first love renewed? Is first love regenerated within us by our desire? First love comes with that fresh glimpse of Him.
We see that He first loved us. We are drawn back to that place of first love when our hearts turn back to Him. We cannot generate first love. It will fail. But as we see Him, He captures us in a fresh way.
To me, that is one of the precious gifts the Lord has given us as we take of the table. Every week, there is that fresh reminder of His great love, of His love that draws us back. This table is actually a vehicle that the Lord uses within our lives to maintain first love, to maintain that freshness.
Has service within the house, or service to one another, become tiresome? The wonderful thing is that we hear those words within our heart. May the Holy Spirit say, “Oh, that is a red flag. That is an indication. Mac, you are falling out of first love. Turn your eyes back to Him.”
Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in His wonderful face. Allow Him to rekindle that and draw us unto Himself. He is always there for us. He shows us our weaknesses. He shows us our shortcomings because of His great love, drawing us back. Would we respond to that?
We are so thankful that the Lord, in His love, speaks to us. Again, He continues in Malachi 2. Really, if you read Malachi, this is one of the books of the Bible where I wish they had not put chapters in it, because it is really one thought.
Malachi is one thought, and it would be fine without chapters—okay, perhaps verse numbers. But we have this tendency, when the chapters break, to think it is another thought. The whole book is one thought.
As we come to Malachi 2, He again challenges us as priests, and we all know that we are priests. In Malachi 2:2, He points out again that this is a heart issue:
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.
Again, it is not so much the outward, but the inward—the heart attitude of these priests who were defiling His table and despising His name.
If we read on in Malachi 2, beginning in verse 5, we begin to see what a true priest is to be:
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 unrighteousness was not found in his lips:
he walked with Me in peace and uprightness,
and turned 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.
What a precious testimony of what a true priest is. Ones would come and seek out this one because he has the truth. He is the messenger of the Lord. They would come and seek what he has to say because there is instruction to set them free from the things that have been keeping them in bondage.
We find how we, as the people of God, have ended up getting away. This whole matter of the priesthood means that each one of us is called to be a priest.
There is a call for us to be, in our lives, the messengers of God. That is what we are to be: God’s messengers, carrying forth His Word. That is one reason I am so happy that we are excited about studying Genesis, because it gets the Word of God within us so that we can have that Word within us and be those messengers of God, knowing the truth and being able to distinguish what is of Him and what is not.
Thank the Lord. He is a God of purpose, drawing us to Himself.
As we continue on and look at Malachi, the fourth challenge that the Lord has—the fourth debate—is in Malachi 2:17:
Ye have wearied the Lord with your words.
Yet ye say, Wherein have we wearied Him?
In that 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 justice?
You have wearied the Lord with your words, saying evil is good.
It is critical here that we remember whom the Lord is speaking to. He is not speaking to the world. Sometimes we can say, “Oh, this is the day we are living in, where people say abortion is right,” calling evil good. But this is not dealing with the world.
This is dealing with the people of God who have separated themselves, entered into covenant relationship with Him, made a choice to leave Babylon and come back to live in Jerusalem, and come back to serve the purpose of God and be about His business.
These are ones who have really come into what the Lord’s heart is after, and He is saying to them, “You are calling evil good.” It is not those ones back in Babylon.
I was drawn to think in the New Testament of Saul of Tarsus. Saul of Tarsus was one who was sold out to God. He thought he was living for God. But in his life, what he was doing was evil, and he was calling it good.
He thought that by persecuting believers, by doing all of this evil and harm, he was doing good. He was so deceived from what God really intended that he was allowing himself to be led astray until God, in His great mercy, opened his eyes.
As it relates to us, I was drawn to look upon much of Christendom today. We have to ask a question: Do we believe that the God of the Bible is relevant today? Do we believe that the God revealed in Scripture is relevant today?
Or do we say, “Lord, You need a little help. This Book was written thousands of years ago. Now we as mankind have progressed, and we are a lot more sophisticated. We are going to help You communicate Your message to the people of God.”
We are saying, “You have become outdated, God. So we are going to create God in our image. We are going to create the church in our image to help You communicate in this day and time.”
What we do is what is called today the re-imaging of God to accommodate man. We create God in our image and then present him to mankind. We recreate what the church is and present it to man so it can be acceptable and people will be drawn into it.
We do not want it to be too offensive. It has to be acceptable. What we are saying is that the way God, the church, and His purpose are presented in Scripture does not come across today. It is not marketable in today’s society. It needs a little help. So we are going to re-image You, God.
Man takes hold of that, and when man creates it, it is actually evil, and we call it good. The tragic thing is that there are so many books and resources out there today that are re-imaging God and putting Him in man’s image.
We just saw a book on the re-imaging of the church, and it was all about how everything could come in today and just be so acceptable. We see the re-imaging of God in popular books like The Shack and everything. It is man creating God in his image.
It is like the God of the Bible is not presentable and not acceptable. “Oh, He is too tough. We have to create God in our image so He can be marketable.” We see how, in this day and time, we are calling that which is evil good, and this is acceptable among believers.
Oh, would the Holy Spirit be working within us, that we could really see and know all of the reality of what God is after in this day and time and be drawn back to that simplicity and purity of our devotion to Him.
As the people in Malachi are going through this instruction and debate, it is like the Lord has to break forth. He cannot even wait until the end of the book. He breaks forth at the beginning of Malachi 3:
Behold, I send My messenger, and he shall prepare the way before Me:
and the Lord, whom ye seek, will suddenly come to His temple;
and the messenger of the covenant, whom ye desire, behold, He cometh,
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 will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver,
and He will purify the sons of Levi,
and refine them as gold and silver;
and they shall offer unto the Lord offerings in righteousness.
Praise God. This is speaking not only of John the Baptist coming, but of our Lord coming. He is saying, “Here is the answer. Turn your eyes upon Jesus in the midst of all that we are going through.”
“I am sending My messenger.” There is a forerunner here, but then there is My Messenger, the Lord Jesus. This is the spirit of prophecy. Within this book, you see the testimony of Jesus as the answer to every one of the situations that these dear ones were in.
This is the answer to us. We see how God, throughout this book, says, “I am going to do this.” We do not have time to look at all the verses, but throughout Malachi He says, “All the nations will know that I am God. You will be this testimony. I will shine forth from Jerusalem. I will show forth Who I am.”
After He has declared this, He says, “But it is for you.” This is the fifth dialogue. He says, “Return to Me, and I will return to you,” in Malachi 3:7. Again, they say, “How shall we return?” They are not even aware that they have departed.
Brothers and sisters, when someone gives a message on repentance or uses that word repentance within a message, how do we receive it?
Quite honestly, I know within my own self that when someone says, “Mac, you need to repent,” my first reaction is defensive. I defend myself. I say, “What do you mean? Not me.”
Then, fortunately, the Holy Spirit can work within us and bring about that response. Or we can have this deflective shield when the word repentance goes out. We say, “Oh, that is a good word. That word is for brother so-and-so. Sister so-and-so really needs to hear that.”
Oh, but He is speaking into our hearts. One thing I am encouraged about is that our brother is sharing on spiritual exercise, that our spirits and our conscience would be exercised. When the Holy Spirit speaks to us—“You need to work on this area in your life. You need to turn around in this area. You need to repent here”—we would be those who respond and allow the Lord to truly build within us.
In the next verse, He has several challenges right here together. In the sixth challenge, He says, “You are robbing Me.” But they say, “How have we robbed You?” Then He says, “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse.”
Is the Lord concerned here about money? Remember, what is the focus of this book? The focus is our hearts. “You are robbing Me of your heart. You are robbing Me of your life.”
Brothers and sisters, do we tithe our hearts to the Lord? Do we give the Lord a tenth of our heart? Do we give the Lord a tenth of our time and keep ninety percent for ourselves? What is the tithe, if we can use that in a broad way? How much do we give in the New Testament? It is one hundred percent.
We give our hearts. We give our lives to Him.
This summer, we looked a little bit at C. T. Studd. There is a testimony in C. T. Studd’s life. C. T. Studd was a missionary through Africa and China. He came from England, and he was the number-one cricketer in England.
Now, to us, that does not mean anything. But to us, that means he was the Tiger Woods, the LeBron James, or the Tom Brady—whatever sport you have. He was the top of his field. Plus, his father was a millionaire, and this was a couple of hundred years ago, so that makes him a billionaire now.
He was wealthy and talented, and he had a great career going. The Lord came in in a marvelous way. He touched his life. He laid not only his career behind, but he laid his money aside, went out, gave his whole life, and served the Lord. He ended up dying in Africa.
There was a point in his life that he came to understand redemption. I am glad that we sang so much of redemption this morning, because this was part of Studd’s testimony. He said:
I had known about Jesus Christ dying for me,
but I had never understood that if He died for me,
then I did not belong to myself.
Redemption means buying back.
So that if I belonged to Him,
either I had to be a thief or a robber and keep what was not mine,
or else I had to give up everything to Him.
When I came to see that Jesus Christ had died for me,
it did not seem to be a hard decision at all.
Convinced that he had kept back for himself, that he had kept himself back from the Lord and had not wholly yielded, Studd went down on his knees and, from the bottom of his heart, cried out the words of Havergal’s hymn:
Take my life, and let it be
Consecrated, Lord, to Thee.
Brothers and sisters, when we speak of robbing God, it is a heart issue. He is looking for our lives. He is looking for us to be constrained by His love.
For Studd, there came a point in his life where he saw the Lord, and in seeing the Lord, he responded. That is why I love this hymn, “I Am the Lord’s.” We respond to Him, that He can draw us unto Himself. We respond to Him in a way that He can really allow the fullness of His life to come in amongst us.
The last challenge is in Malachi 3:13:
Your words have been stout against Me, saith the Lord.
Yet ye say, What have we spoken against Thee?
Ye have said, It is vain to serve God;
and what profit is it that we have kept His charge,
and that we have walked mournfully before the Lord of hosts?
“You are arrogant against Me.” Their bottom-line question is, “What is in it for me? What profit is it for me?”
Who are the ones saying this? These are the ones who had left Babylon. These were the ones who had a heart to return to build the house of God. They were not asking about their own interests. They were not seeking their own desires.
These were ones who had said, “Yes, we will stand in the gap. We will rebuild the wall. We will go through all the battles. We will allow the Lord to build us together.” They had been through much experience. They had been working with the sword in one hand and the trowel in the other. These were not self-centered people.
But when we lose that first love, when first love fades, the focus starts to become, “What is in it for me? What can I get out of it?”
It is tragic. Actually, the way we preach the gospel can end up being a partial gospel. If we preach the gospel as, “What is in it for you?” we miss the fullness of the gospel.
I love that song, “Full Salvation.” There is a fullness of the gospel. Once we are saved, we are brought in such a way that we are the Lord’s, and He draws us to Himself. We are not focused on, “What is in it for me?” but, “What is in it for the Lord?”
How can we satisfy the Lord? How can we allow Him to really bring forth the fullness of all that He desires?
Praise God, as we look in Malachi 3, in the midst of all this decline and declension that had been going on, there were these few small, faithful ones who were still there in that place of first love.
Look at Malachi 3:16-18:
Then they that feared the Lord spake one with another:
and the Lord hearkened, and heard,
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,
even Mine own possession, in the day that I make;
and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him.
Then shall ye return and discern between the righteous and the wicked,
between him that serveth God and him that serveth Him not.
These were ones who stayed in first love despite the circumstances and surroundings, despite others going their own way, others falling out of first love, others living for themselves and seeking what was in it for them.
There were these small, few faithful ones who stayed in this place of first love. They feared His name. They heard His Word. They esteemed His name.
What does that remind you of? In many ways, it reminds us of the church in Philadelphia. If you go to Revelation 2 and Revelation 3, and look at the Lord’s commendation for those in Philadelphia, He says, “You have a little power. You have kept My Word, and have not denied My name.”
I have often thought about those seven churches in Revelation 2 and Revelation 3. From the church in Ephesus, who had left their first love, all the way to Laodicea, who said, “We are rich, and have need of nothing”—if you had asked those seven churches, “Which one of you is strongest? Which one of you has the strongest testimony?”
I am sure Ephesus would have said, “Look at us. We can distinguish this, and we are doing all this activity.” Laodicea would have said, “We have need of nothing.” In my imagination, I think Philadelphia would have said, “Well, I really do not know about us. We are kind of few in number. We do not have a lot of power. We hold fast His name, and we love His Word. It is by His grace.”
“We do not look so great, but this is what we have, and we are holding fast to it.”
Outwardly, perhaps some of those other churches looked in better condition than Philadelphia. But the Lord looked into the heart, and He saw that which answered to Him. He saw His life. He saw ones who were drawn to Him and holding fast His name and His Word.
In many ways, as we look here in Malachi, we can say these few were a remnant within the remnant. They were part of that remnant that had come out of Babylon. Many had left their first love, but even in the midst of that there were these small, insignificant ones who were being faithful.
The Lord took notice of them. He said, “You are My special treasure.” When I return, I take notice of you.
As we see in Malachi 4, He is returning. He will judge the evil, and He will bless the good.
Before He returns, at the end of Malachi 3:18, He says, “You will again distinguish between the righteous and the wicked.” If you look back at Haggai and Zechariah, there is so much of this distinguishing between that which is of Him and that which is not of Him.
This draws me to Paul’s prayer for those in Philippi. In Philippians 1, Paul says:
And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more
in knowledge and all discernment;
so that ye may approve the things that are excellent;
that ye may be sincere and void of offence unto the day of Christ.
Brothers and sisters, in the day we are living in, do we have that spirit of true knowledge and discernment, to be able to really distinguish the things that differ? Outwardly, they can look the same, but can we distinguish those things that differ?
At the beginning of Malachi 4, He says, “Behold, I am coming.” There will be judgment, and there will be blessing. We are thankful for that.
We are thankful that, through this book, we would be those who respond to the call of His heart. We would allow the Holy Spirit to search us, awaken us, and bring us to that place of repentance—that place of returning to first love, that place of simplicity and purity of our devotion to Him—that we could hasten His return.
We are thankful for the testimony of Malachi, because we know that after Malachi the Lord did not speak for four hundred years. We know that He worked, but He did not speak.
As the Gospels open up, again we see that special treasure: the few, the small, the insignificant, who were ready for our Lord’s first coming. There was Anna and Simeon, Elizabeth and Zacharias, Joseph and Mary, whom the Lord used to usher in that first coming.
In many ways, the Lord kept a hidden seed throughout those four hundred years. Really, throughout church history, we can see this repeated over and over again.
I would like to close today with one more reading from church history. This concerns a brother, John Comenius. John Comenius lived in the 1600s. He lived in Moravia and was driven from Moravia because of the persecution of the Catholic Church at that time.
He was there with what was called the United Brethren, and they were driven from that country. His prayer as he left was, “Lord, preserve there a hidden seed. Preserve Your testimony here.”
They were all driven out into exile. About a hundred years later, one brother named Christian David was in that area. He was an exile who returned to that area, and he met Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf.
The two of them prayed together, and we are thankful that the Lord was able to do a marvelous recovery work through the Moravian brethren, which we have heard much about. The hidden seed was preserved for that hundred years.
As Comenius was leaving, he wrote to those who were dear to him. In Latin, it is called Necessarium Unum: one thing necessary. Let me read what he wrote:
Christendom has become a labyrinth.
Today we call that a maze, or confusion away from simplicity.
What can help?
Only one thing is necessary.Return to Christ and walk in His life.
There is only one life, but death comes to us in a thousand forms.
There is only one truth, but error has a thousand forms.
There is only one Christ, but there are a thousand antichrists.So thou knowest what is the one thing needful.
Either thou turnest back to Christ,
or thou goest to destruction like the antichrist.
If thou art wise, and wilt live, follow the Leader of life.
Brothers and sisters, as we see the end days approaching, there is one thing necessary. It is really turning our hearts unto Him and allowing the simplicity and beauty of our Lord Jesus Christ to hold us in this hour and prepare us for His return.
Let us pray.
Lord, we are thankful for Your never-ending call of love unto us. Lord, we thank You that it is the “but God,” in His great mercy, that has saved us; and the “but God,” in His great mercy, continues to call unto us to return unto You.
Lord, we do pray that, as Your Holy Spirit searches us, as Your Holy Spirit works within us, our conscience and our being would be trained and attuned to the Word of life.
We would be separated from all the unnecessary things of this world, the unnecessary things of Christendom, and allow that one thing necessary to draw us and woo us unto Yourself in a fuller and greater measure.
In Your name we pray. Amen.