I’d like us to turn to Malachi. Malachi should be pretty easy for most of us to find, even though we may not be so familiar with it. It is the last book of the Old Testament, the concluding book of the Old Testament.
I’d like to read a number of verses from Malachi that may help us gain an overall understanding of the burden of the prophet, beginning in Malachi 1:1.
The burden of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi.
I have loved you, saith the Lord.
But ye say, Wherein hast Thou loved us?
Was not Esau Jacob’s brother, saith the Lord: and I loved Jacob;
but Esau I hated.
Malachi 1:6:
A son honoreth his father, and a servant his master.
If then I be a father, where is Mine honor?
And if I be a master, where is My fear?
Saith the Lord of hosts unto you, O priests, that despise My name.
Malachi 1:7:
Ye offer polluted bread upon Mine altar.
And ye say, Wherein have we polluted Thee?
In that ye say, The table of the Lord is contemptible.
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 judgment?
Malachi 3:6:
For I, the Lord, change not;
therefore ye, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed.
From the days of your fathers ye have turned aside from Mine ordinances, and have not kept them.
Return unto Me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of hosts.
But ye say, Wherein shall we return?
Malachi 3:8:
Will a man rob God?
Yet ye rob Me.
But ye say, Wherein have we robbed Thee?
In tithes and offerings.
Ye are cursed with the curse; for ye rob Me, even this whole nation.
Bring ye the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in My house, and prove Me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.
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?
Finally, Malachi 3:16:
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.
Lord, we just commit to You the reading of Your Word. Once again, we know Your words are spirit and life. We are not here to hear man’s words, so we pray that the Holy Spirit will enable us to hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
We say, like Peter, “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.” We call upon You today to make this book—maybe not well known to many of us—alive, and to speak to our hearts from this end of the Old Testament concerning what You have for us in this hour in which we live.
For we ask this together in the mighty name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Well, the last two times I have had the responsibility to share, we have been considering the word of the Lord at the end of the age from the Old Testament. Some of you may remember, and some of you may not, but we have been sharing on the last three prophets of the Old Testament.
Today is the third. We shared on Haggai, and we shared on Zechariah, and today we will conclude with the last prophet in the last book of the Old Testament.
Some Bible scholars refer to these men, among other prophets of God, as minor prophets. Now, I think that is a distinction you probably would not want if someone called you a minor brother. Nevertheless, it is a distinction that has stuck down through the church age.
I do not believe it has anything to do with the value of their work. It seems more to do with the volume of their work. In other words, if you were an Isaiah or a Jeremiah and had more to say, you found that label resting on you forever: you were a major prophet. If you were one of these unluckier ones who spoke less, or little, you were placed in the category of a minor prophet.
Now, I am jesting, because sometimes we do not understand the great value of the work of God through these men—what He did and what He spoke. What has impressed me, brothers and sisters, is how, at the culmination of the age of the Old Testament, God used these three minor prophets in a great way to recover His purpose, restore His testimony, and revive His people.
Without these minor prophets and their ministry and work, we would not have been prepared for the coming of the Lord. So that has been our burden: we have been considering the word of the Lord at the end of the age.
Today we will look at God’s concluding word in the Old Testament. I have been impressed for several reasons about Malachi. This is a prophet God used at the very end of the age. It was God’s final speaking, and for that reason, I think we ought to pay a great deal of attention to it.
These three men were used by God, and this was His concluding word to His people. I believe they are not relics of a past word, but they are relevant for the day in which we live. These words ought to be alive to us. The words of these prophets, so greatly used to recover His testimony, ought to be words that we meditate on and consider.
I think of 1 Corinthians 10:11, where Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, was speaking of the Old Testament acts and lessons:
Now these things happened unto them by way of example;
and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come.
Notice the emphasis. It happened to them in the Old Testament as types, and it has been written for our admonition—upon whom the end of the ages has come. So, in a very real way, I think these words are even more relevant to the day in which we live. What these prophets had to say are living words for us in this hour.
I hope the Lord can help us as we consider some of the lessons in Malachi. We looked at Haggai, and I do not want to give a great summary, but Haggai did not speak very long. Haggai was an older prophet who spoke for four months. Think of that ministry—four months and four messages. Well, I have almost given four messages on this series.
Yet he was greatly used of God. We considered how God first confronts His people. You remember the word, “Consider your ways.” They came back to the land to build the house of God, but their own lives became more important than what God was doing. They left off building the house of God and began rebuilding their own ceiled houses.
The prophet was used of God to confront the people of God. But he was also used of God to comfort them, because they were discouraged. Some had seen the former glory of Solomon’s temple, and when that foundation was laid, they despaired. They thought, “Good grief, is this the glorious temple that we are to rebuild?”
But God gave a word of comfort, and it is the supreme word. Twice He said:
I am with you, saith the Lord of hosts.
Brothers and sisters, all the Lord has to say is, “I am with you, saith the Lord of hosts.” What comfort! That discouraged remnant, whose priorities had changed and who had become concerned with their own lives, began again to rebuild the house of God. The work of God was completed in a very short few years. That is glorious.
Then we looked at Zechariah. I am not sure how Zechariah got stuck in the minor prophet category. He has way too many chapters. If they had left it to my scholarship, I think I would have put him among the major prophets.
We looked at one chapter, Zechariah 4. Some people have said it is one of the greatest chapters in the whole Old Testament. I do not know whether you agree, but it is a tremendous chapter.
First of all, Zechariah had a great vision of Christ. Over and over, unlike almost any other prophet in the Old Testament—perhaps except Isaiah—he saw an extraordinary vision of Christ throughout the book of Zechariah. Secondly, he had a vision of God’s house. He saw something of the lampstand, and those two visions went together.
Then we talked about great encouragement. Zechariah ministered in recovery during the most difficult times. It was, as he explained in chapter 4, the day of small things. Yet in that recovery, God greatly encouraged His people.
He said:
Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.
They were not the ones ultimately responsible to build. The plumb line was in the hand of Zerubbabel, and he who started and laid the foundation of the house was the one who would complete its building. That points in type to the Lord Jesus Himself.
Finally, there was a lesson we often overlook. There is a great need and a great calling. We see it in that ending scene in Zechariah 4 of the two sons of oil. Everybody has debated through church history about who they are, and we do not want to take more time on that. But suffice it to say that what the Lord is looking for, and what our great calling is, is to be sons of oil.
As Ephesians 4:16 says, we are to be joints of supply—those who pour the oil out of themselves, the golden oil, into the lampstand. Because they give themselves as sons of oil, the testimony of God becomes brilliant once again.
Now today we are going to look at Malachi. I think we need to pay particularly close attention to Malachi. First of all, the name Malachi means “My messenger.”
It is one thing if a dispatch comes to you from somebody’s messenger whom you do not consider very important. But if God says of this person, even in his name, “He is My messenger,” then I believe we should pay very great attention to this one. The concluding word of the Old Testament comes from God’s messenger.
The second thing that impresses me is that this is God’s final speaking in the Old Testament. I happen to think final words are important. When we leave our children—and all of you who have the luxury, privilege, and cross of being parents know this—you give them some final instructions. You say, “Don’t burn the place down,” or some other sage words of wisdom.
Last words are very important. One of my favorite books is Lockyer’s Last Words of Saints and Sinners. You ought to read it. There are some astounding words that people expressed in their closing thoughts.
Because this book is God’s concluding word of the Old Testament, that is a second reason we ought to pay attention to it. It reminds me of Hebrews 1:1–2:
God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners,
hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in His Son.
God’s final, ultimate, conclusive speaking is in the person of the Lord Jesus. He is His Messenger, and He is the One to whom we ought to pay supreme attention.
This book has a somewhat unusual format. I have read most of the words that make it unusual. It is seven statements by God, with seven replies from the people.
There may be several interpretations. Some people say these are actual statements of God, which I obviously believe, and actual questions from the people. It may be. Others believe that this is the great searchlight of God, who knows the heart of the people and anticipates what they might say. It is the great divine searchlight.
But a third thing that I have really come to embrace is this: I believe it reveals their true spiritual condition. The people of God at that period were in a very low spiritual condition, and they did not have a clue.
God would make these statements, and, if you notice, every time except the last of the seven, the question comes back: “Wherein have we done that?” It is sort of like when I used to talk to my teenagers. I do not want to offend anybody—maybe it is your teenager—so I should say mine were perfect. But nevertheless, when you talked to them, they would say, “What do you mean?” You could see the shrug of the shoulders: “Wherein?”
They did not seem to have a clue. But, brothers and sisters, I think this is very important. The spiritual condition of the people of God was so very low that they did not seem to have a clue about their spiritual condition.
I believe that is important to us in the age in which we live. I do not think you can argue that the spiritual condition of the church is quite low. Sometimes we do not have a clue. Sometimes we are like Laodicea. We think we are rich, have become rich, and have need of nothing; but we do not know that we are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked.
I believe the heart of this book is God knowing the true spiritual condition of His people and, in His mercy, seeking to recover, restore, and revive His people from that low condition. If He can do that, He can have His testimony.
I remember our brother Stephen, when he spoke in the God Has Spoken series and gave that message on Malachi. I looked it up. He said, “It is a debate between God and Israel. It is abrupt, naked language that is blatant and shocking. God knows us altogether. He lays it all on the table, as we use that expression. He does not hold back.”
As a matter of fact, when I first read Malachi and was praying about what to share, I did not want to share on Malachi. It was a little too abrupt, a little too blatant, a little too naked in its language. It seemed to me to be so full of judgment that I wondered where the hope was.
Nevertheless, He knows our condition, and He never quits seeking to restore His testimony. So let us think about a few lessons in Malachi.
First of all, go to the very beginning of the book again. I think it is essentially important how this book begins. Malachi 1:2 says:
I have loved you, saith the Lord.
But ye say, Wherein hast Thou loved us?
Notice the statement followed by the question: “Wherein hast Thou loved us?” If you can imagine how that must break the heart of God—after God has carried them all the ways He has carried them, after every provision He has made—they can still say, “Wherein hast Thou loved us?”
I think it is an extraordinary statement. But this prophecy, this concluding word of the Old Testament, begins with the matter of divine love. It is the number-one essential thing we must see. It explains everything God does, and it explains everything about who He is: divine love.
That is why we began singing that hymn. Divine love is the beginning of Malachi. In their spiritual condition, what He wanted them first of all to see was how He had loved them with divine love. That is the story of Malachi. That is the beginning. It is the supreme issue that is raised.
Divine love is the explanation of everything God does and all that He is. It is behind the creation of man. In Jeremiah 31:3, He said to the children of Israel:
The Lord appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love;
therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.
That was His whole relationship with Israel: divine love. In John 3:16, which I think all of you probably know—and if you do not, you should—it says:
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son,
that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life.
Listen to the emphasis: “For God so loved the world.” This verse is so important. Luther called it the gospel in miniature, or the little gospel. Malachi has been described as the little Old Testament. It summarizes what is in God’s heart in His concluding thoughts concerning His people and how He wants to restore the glory of His testimony among them.
Brothers and sisters, I do not know whether you get any idea of how great the love of God is, the magnitude of it. It is an immeasurable quantity. I have spent a whole career trying to measure the magnitude of things—how heavy something is, how strong something is, how big it has to be, how great the force is. That is all I do. It is a pretty boring career, if you think about it.
But when it comes to divine love, it is immeasurable. It is measureless. You cannot even begin to quantify the love of God.
You think of Ephesians 3, where Paul prays that the church in Ephesus would be rooted and grounded in love, and that they might know the breadth, the length, the height, and the depth of the love of God. Then he adds this phrase: “which passeth knowledge.”
You cannot measure divine love. That is the reason the Word of God says in John 3:16, “For God so loved.” The emphasis is that the love is so great, so divine, that human minds cannot begin to take it in or comprehend it. It is love without a limit.
That is why hymn 35 seems to me so appropriate:
The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell;
It goes beyond the highest star,
And reaches to the lowest hell.
And then the chorus says:
O love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure—
The saints’ and angels’ song.
This is the supreme issue with which Malachi begins: divine love.
I remember something about English, believe it or not. I actually liked literature, believe it or not. Engineers and English do not usually mix. But I remember Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the Victorian poet, 1806 to 1861, for those of you who do not remember, and Sonnet 43.
That famous sonnet says:
How do I love thee?
Let me count the ways.
With human love, you can count the ways. But with divine love, you cannot even begin to comprehend the magnitude—the difference.
The Bible, first of all, is a love story from beginning to end. It begins with man being created that God might have fellowship. What did He need? What did He lack that He would make man in His own image? What a love story.
He could take from the red clay of the earth and create man, and out of man take a rib and make a woman, that He might have fellowship with the finite. That is an expression of the love of God.
Or think of the end of the Bible. The whole Bible is a love story from beginning to end, but at the end there is a marriage. Can you imagine this church of God becoming the bride of Christ? Can you imagine the depth of the love of God, that He wants for eternity to be in union with us and have fellowship with His church?
That is amazing to me. It is something of the magnitude of His love—something I can hardly take in and hardly comprehend.
When John wrote his three epistles, he was caught up in this matter of divine love. All throughout his three epistles, he talks about agape love. But when it came to divine love, in 1 John 4:8 and 1 John 4:16, he made this most succinct and profound statement:
God is love.
Brothers and sisters, that is who He is. It is not only what He does; it is who He is. That is why Malachi opens with this statement.
Now notice the response: “Wherein hast Thou loved us?” Again, can you imagine it? But I think we often say that, perhaps not so much in our words, but in our actions. Sometimes when you find brothers and sisters who are really struggling in the Lord, what they are struggling with above everything else is that they do not believe God really loves them.
It is the issue. They say, “Wherein hast Thou loved us?” Well, God tries to prove it to them. He says:
Was not Esau Jacob’s brother? saith the Lord: and I loved Jacob;
but Esau I hated.
Think about it. Jacob was the most unlovely sort. He was a trickster, a supplanter, a deceiver. He stole the birthright. He stole the blessing. He even deceived his dear old father Isaac. He was not the kind of guy you would want your daughter to marry.
Jacob—the swindler. Yet in the divine love of God, He says, “Jacob have I loved.” I think that is tremendous. You know what it says to me? He loves the most unlovely. He loves the least lovely. He never gives up.
He calls the most unlovely, and He begins to work in the heart of the most unlovely, like Jacob. He begins to deal with Jacob, transform Jacob, and conform Jacob. In the end of Jacob’s life, he is transformed from Jacob to Israel, which means a prince of God.
That is divine love. How great it is.
I graduated high school in 1970. That tells you how old I am. Of course, I was two when I graduated high school. I was a genius. No, such foolishness.
There was a movie then. I was not a believer, but I remember going to see it. It was called Love Story. You may remember that movie. I do not remember too much about it. It had some foolish line about love never meaning having to say you are sorry. Boy, that is false teaching.
But in that love story, there was this man of great means from the best family. He owned everything and had everything he wanted. He was a law student at Harvard, and he took a wife from the most unlikely person—a commoner, if you will, one of low estate.
Yet those two, this man of high estate and this one of low estate, really discovered what love was. Now, it is just a movie. Do not get all bothered and worked up over a movie. Please do not go out and rent it and see it. I am not making that much of a point.
But here is the point. God, who is of the highest degree and the highest estate, lacking in nothing, marries the one who lacks in everything. Do you get the point? This is just a movie, and it ends in a tragedy, but it makes a point. That point is divine love.
We have the most unlikely relationship even imaginable: the God of glory and sinners, united together ultimately as husband and wife. To me, that is what this book is about.
Many people stumble at this statement: “Jacob have I loved; Esau have I hated.” A lot of people get hung up on this matter of Esau: “I have hated.” They ask, “Is that really divine love?”
G. Campbell Morgan helped me a lot with that. He said that statement was not made until the very end of the Old Testament. Every opportunity must have been given to Esau to turn and become the one he could have been.
Then it appears again in Romans 9:13:
Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.
It tells a principle, and that principle is divine election. We are called and selected, not based on what we have done, but based simply on His calling. It is divine election. We do not get what we deserve, and we certainly get what we do not deserve.
Do not get so hung up on “Esau have I hated.” Marvel, rather, at “Jacob have I loved.” This is what is tremendous: the least lovely, and yet we see divine love.
Divine love is the concluding word in the Old Testament, and we do well to pay attention to it. The second thing is that I believe the majority of this book has to do with divine judgment.
A lot of people like to talk about divine love. They say, “I am with you, brother. So far, I am with you.” But when you begin to talk about divine judgment, you start losing people.
But, brothers and sisters, you cannot talk about the book of Malachi without talking about divine judgment. As a matter of fact, the majority of Malachi has to do with divine judgment.
You may think it is an oxymoron, that you cannot have divine love and divine judgment in the same breath. But you can, and you should, because He who loves us judges our low spiritual condition that He might revive us, recover us, restore us, and recover His testimony.
This is why there is so much on divine judgment. He loves us so much that, out of divine love, comes divine judgment. In every way, He judges what is not of Him with the sole intention of recovering us and conforming us to the image of the Lord Jesus.
Do not minimize what this book says about divine judgment. Do not gloss over it and think, “All I want to do is talk about divine love.” His divine judgments are His mercies.
In His divine judgment, He is not giving up on us. He sees our low spiritual condition and deals with us, just as He dealt with Jacob and just as He dealt with Peter. He dealt with Peter again and again until, in the end, He was able to conform Peter to His image.
That is why divine judgment is so very important. I want to break it down and make it easy. Divine judgment in this book deals with two groups of people: first, the priests; and second, the people of God.
The majority of the divine judgments are announced toward the people, but it begins with divine judgment concerning the priests. You may be tempted to think, “What on earth does this have to do with us?” But do you not know that you are a priest?
Some believers never realize that. I remember a sister who still meets among us. She grew up with us for years, from the very beginning, and she grew up in a Catholic orphanage. She told me one day while we were fellowshipping and praying, “Man, I just wanted to be a nun.”
I said, “Do you know that God has made you a priest? You do not have to wear some funny little white collar that looks like a single tooth. God has made you a priest.”
Every believer is a priest. Somehow, we have segregated the people of God into the professional ones who serve and the lay people. I do not believe that was ever in God’s heart.
Look back at Exodus 19:5–6. I want to go to the very beginning and see what was in God’s heart:
Now therefore, if ye will obey My voice indeed, and keep My covenant, then ye shall be Mine own possession from among all peoples: for all the earth is Mine:
and ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation.
This was the instruction to Moses as the children of Israel were delivered from the bondage of Egypt, brought into the wilderness, and came to Mount Sinai. God said, “Speak these words to the people: Ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests.”
I remember our brother Stephen once saying that Martin Luther actually understood the priesthood of all believers, but it was never implemented. They were afraid to implement it. The idea seemed so radical.
But I have been helped by the history of the Brethren movement in the nineteenth century. That was a time when the priesthood of all believers was actually recovered. It was not merely understood; the function of the priesthood of all believers was recovered in the church. You had great and small together, serving as priests unto God.
Brothers and sisters, I believe that in our low spiritual condition, we have lost not only some understanding of the priesthood of all believers, but we have certainly lost its function.
We have been trying, among the brothers meeting on Sunday nights—I do not remember for how many years; maybe Mari will remember, because he will not let us miss a meeting—but our main emphasis has been spiritual responsibility: that we, as the priests of God, would begin to take up our spiritual responsibility and not leave it to others.
Every one of you—every brother and every sister in this room—is a priest. Read 1 Peter 2:5 and 1 Peter 2:9. We are a royal priesthood, a kingly priesthood, a people for God’s own possession.
Read Revelation 1:5–6, where it says:
Unto Him that loveth us, and loosed us from our sins by His blood;
and He made us to be a kingdom, to be priests unto His God and Father.
That is what we are. The issue in Malachi was that the priests were not functioning as they ought to function. I think that applies to us. In many ways, we have left spiritual responsibility to a few, and most of us as believers may not have any idea that we are priests, or we do not ever function as priests.
There is a political saying about Republicans. They call them RINOs. I think that is kind of a nice name—my grandson loves animals. RINO means “Republican in name only.”
I wonder whether we are not all just PINOs—priests in name only. If God is going to recover His testimony, we must respond as the priests of God. You do not have an option.
His first issue of divine judgment is with the priests. You may think, “I am too old.” You may think, “I am too young.” You may think, “I am not capable.” You may think, “I am not gifted.” But you nevertheless are a priest. If you do not begin to function, the testimony of Jesus will not be recovered.
Malachi 1:6 says:
A son honoreth his father, and a servant his master.
If then I be a father, where is Mine honor?
And if I be a master, where is My fear? saith the Lord of hosts unto you, O priests, that despise My name.
What divine judgment! You might say, “I do not despise His name.” But they were not functioning as they should. Not only were they not functioning as they should, but they were offering polluted bread on the altar—the table for sacrifice.
You may say, “What on earth does that have to do with me as a priest?” Well, sometimes we do not offer God the best. It is sort of like when I get home late: you might get the leftovers. Sorry, honey, your leftovers are good. But you do not get the best.
You give God what is left over. Your whole life, as a saved and called one, is lived for yourself, and then perhaps—just perhaps—God will have some of the leftovers. It might even be polluted. It might even be from your flesh.
This is a serious word. We need to pay attention to it. May the Lord help us.
It goes on to say that the table of the Lord is contemptible, in Malachi 1:7 and Malachi 1:12. That word translated “contemptible” occurs only in Malachi, in these three places. It is the same Hebrew word that occurs twice in Malachi 1:7 and is translated “despised.”
Can you imagine? They had come to the point, as priests, where they were offering what was second best, what was old, what was polluted, and the table of the Lord had become contemptible. They despised it.
The second thing I want to talk about is divine judgment toward the people. There are many words addressed to the people. It begins in Malachi 2:11, where they had dealt unfaithfully and married the daughters of a foreign god.
We may not think, as the people of God who are to bear the testimony of Jesus and be the expression of the testimony of God, that this has much to do with us. But, in fact, it has everything to do with us.
They were warned not to marry the women of the land. Now, do not misunderstand me: this is not talking about mixed marriages or racial matters. It is a spiritual principle. It has to do with compromise with the world.
They married into the world, and that system brought them down. Often, brothers and sisters, the testimony of Jesus among us as the people of God is compromised.
I have always said to people that the most fearful thing that can be said of you as a Christian is for someone who knows you quite well to come up to you and say, “I did not know you were a Christian.”
Think of that old saying: if you were convicted as a Christian, would there be enough evidence to bring a sentence? They were so compromised, and their condition was so low, that you could not tell them apart from the world.
I think these are very serious matters. In Malachi 2:17, it says:
Ye have wearied the Lord with your words.
Yet ye say, Wherein have we wearied Him?
Their condition was so low that they said doing evil was good in the sight of the Lord. They said it was vain to serve the Lord. They wearied the Lord with their words.
Brothers and sisters, we ought to pay attention to this. I am sorry I have to bring such a word. This is for me, but it is also for you. Is our condition this low? Is it that low?
If it is, this is His mercy, because He wants to expose it, deal with it, revive, restore, and recover.
We could go on to Malachi 3:6–7:
Return unto Me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of hosts.
But ye say, Wherein shall we return?
They did not know. They did not miss the fellowship. They did not realize communion was broken. They did not realize there was something absent—a vital, living fellowship. They said, “Wherein shall we return?”
Or think of Malachi 3:8–9:
Will a man rob God?
Yet ye rob Me.
But ye say, Wherein have we robbed Thee?
In tithes and offerings.
This is a very serious matter. I think preachers love that verse. I think they use it as a stick to beat people over the head in order to get more money, and I do not think we ought to use it like that at all.
But let me tell you something: if you are saved and your pocketbook has not been touched, something is wrong with your salvation.
There is an old saying about marriage: what is hers is hers, and what is mine is hers. That is how it works, young brothers. I am kidding you. Marriage is a delight.
But do we rob God? The strongest judgment comes after this:
Ye are cursed with the curse.
Think of it. “Ye are cursed with the curse.” Do we rob God? Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse.
Just let me say this: bear with me. If you think it is folly, you can ignore it. I think the word we heard from Mac on the grace of giving was one of the most powerful and complete words I had ever heard on that subject. That was not very long ago. I am not sure that it has sunk into the hearts of the brothers and sisters.
This was God’s divine judgment. Finally, in Malachi 3:13, it says:
Your words have been stout against Me, saith the Lord.
Their spiritual condition was so low that they began to speak against God. We can do that. When I grew up, I might have done it once or twice—spoken against my father—but he had a way. I think he would be in jail now according to the new standards of discipline. Nevertheless, we did not speak back. I tried. It did not work.
But these people were in such a low spiritual condition that they began to question God and speak back to God. “Do You really mean that? Do You really mean that?” They wearied God.
They even went so far as to say, “It is vain to serve God. What profit is there that we keep His charge?” That is what we are supposed to do. That is all we are supposed to do in this life as Christians: keep His charge.
That is what it means to bear the testimony of Jesus—to keep His charge. Yet they said, “What profit is there in keeping His charge and walking mournfully before Him?”
I think back to Psalm 51, that great psalm of David’s repentance:
Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation.
These are strong words. But, brothers and sisters, I just have a few more thoughts. Let me end with these. These divine judgments are just as true today for us as they were at the end of the Old Testament.
These divine judgments are not for destruction, but for our gain. The end of these divine judgments is found in Malachi 3:2–3:
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.
In other words, all His divine judgment has a single purpose in view: He is refining us. It is not destruction unto death.
No Christian will go through the great white throne judgment—the judgment of final destruction unto death. Christians will go before the judgment seat of Christ, the family judgment. All the time in our lives, we judge ourselves so that we are not judged with the world, as it says in 1 Corinthians.
His judgments are a refining work. But secondly, they are not only a refining work. Look at Malachi 3:7:
From the days of your fathers ye have turned aside from Mine ordinances, and have not kept them.
Return unto Me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of hosts.
But ye say, Wherein shall we return?
All His divine judgments are for the single purpose of causing us to return unto Him. That is the reason these are God’s mercies.
All the divine judgments are for the single purpose of reviving the people of God from their low spiritual condition, restoring them to the place of fellowship where they should be, and recovering the testimony of Jesus in its fullness.
That is the only purpose for divine judgment—for the priests and for the people of God.
Now let me end. Not only is divine love the first thing, and not only is divine judgment essential, but this book ends with divine desire. God has a desire.
Unless we understand that desire, we will live all our lives for what we get. But once we begin to understand the divine desire and it gets hold of us, we begin to live life differently. We begin to live life for Him.
That is the whole point of this book. It begins with divine love. Out of divine love comes divine judgment. Then it ends with divine desire. Ultimately, He is after a people who know His divine desire and are given to it.
There are a couple of things, and I will just end with this. You notice the word “curse” in this book four times. A lot of people struggle with that word. But actually, it is God who is cursing, and you might think, “Oh my goodness, that is not my teaching. God never curses; only Satan curses.” But that is not true.
In the Garden of Eden, God cursed Satan first, in Genesis 3:14. Right after that, in Genesis 3:17, the second curse in the Bible, God cursed the ground because of man’s sin.
Then, when you read Deuteronomy 28, that great chapter dealing with curses, God is the One who says He will bring these things upon you if you do not walk according to His commandments. It is God who curses.
But here is the point I want you to hear: God’s divine desire is not to curse, but to bless. That is His intention. His divine desire is not to curse. What He wants to do is bless, and bless in superabundance.
That is what He is after. That is what He wants. You remember the story in Numbers 23 about Balak trying to provoke Balaam, saying, “I told you to curse the people, and you have altogether blessed the people.”
Balaam said:
He hath blessed; and I cannot reverse it.
He wants to bless. In Malachi 3:10, where we read that strong rebuke concerning tithes, it says:
Prove Me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts,
if I will not open you the windows of heaven,
and pour you out a blessing,
that there shall not be room enough to receive it.
You know what that means? Darby’s note says, “a blessing to superabundance.” That is the divine desire.
Sometimes, as the people of God, we make that the whole gospel. It is what we get out of the Lord. It is the blessings from the Lord. Of course, you can read Ephesians 1:3:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.
It is God’s intention, His divine desire, to bless. But sometimes, as believers, all we concentrate on is the blessings we get from Him.
Brothers and sisters, there is a divine desire He wants us to see. It is more than the blessings we get. It is something in His heart. If the testimony of Jesus is to be recovered, we must see this, and we must embrace it.
To me, it is the most critical thing in this whole book. If you will turn with me to Malachi 3:16:
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.
I remember years ago, when we first came together, this verse was special. We used to pray about this verse. We used to pray, “Lord, we want to be that kind of people.”
They fear Your name. They gather often, and we gather because we love to speak of Your name. They are people who have a passion for Christ. They are people into whose hearts He has put the divine desire, and it is what controls their lives.
He is looking, brothers and sisters, for such a people at the end of this age. If there is to be recovery of God’s testimony at the end of the age in which we live, we must see something of what His divine desire is.
He makes such a big deal about it. He says a book of remembrance is written about this. He says He heard it.
I think this is the most important thing. He says, “They shall be My own possession.” Can you imagine? Talk about the love of God.
This is what He says in the end. This is the divine desire. He is looking for people who will respond in this way, who will have this kind of passion, who will gather in this way, who will pray that this becomes contagious among all the people of God, and that the testimony of Jesus might be restored.
This is what He is after. I wonder, do we even have any sense of it?
Brothers and sisters, I wonder, have we completely lost the sense of this verse? Are we going on in a good way, learning much together for some years, but have we lost the essential thing, which is the divine desire?
If we lose the divine desire, we have lost the testimony of Jesus.
This is how the book concludes. May the Lord help us.
Brothers and sisters, I will say it again: I told the Lord I did not want to share this message. But I believe that because it is the concluding word of the Old Testament, and because it does not deal merely with a bygone era, we should carefully consider what is in this book.
I believe it is for now, not just then. I believe we, as the priests of God and the people of God who are to be the expression of His testimony in the earth, do well to heed the words of His messenger.
Lord, we just come to You, unable to say what You would want to say to our hearts, but at least telling You that we feel some sense of it. We ask You, by Your Holy Spirit, would You not let us go?
When we consider the depth of Your love, we are overwhelmed. Who can comprehend it? When we consider Your mercies—that You know us altogether and are not willing to let us go, but according to Your light You judge with the intention to restore and revive—we are thankful.
We consider these Your divine mercies.
But Lord, we do not want to miss, while having all Your blessings, that thing that is in Your heart. Would You be kind to us once again and show us Your divine desire?
We confess that we are not sure how much it still holds us. But Lord, we want it to hold us. We are willing that it should hold us.
We want You to find this kind of people. So we offer to You today our feeble prayer in Your presence, that You would find among us again this kind of people.
For we ask it in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.