Malachi 1-2 - Outline

[Jim Watt]

“*TWO ARE BETTER THAN ONE” MINISTRIES*

*Jim & Marie Watt*

*Tel: 253-517-9195 - Email: jmbetter at gmail.com*

*Web: www.2rbetter.org*

April 6, 2013


 *OCT 14 - MALACHI 1-2 - A PICTURE OF DARKNESS*


 *1. 1:2-3a (1:1-5, ESV) JEHOVAH: HIS SOVEREIGN CHOICE BY PREDESTINATION. “I
have loved you,” says the LORD. But you say, “How have you loved us?” “Is
not Esau Jacob’s brother?” declares the Lord. “Yet I have loved Jacob 3 but
Esau I have hated.” *You are a Sovereign God, O Father, and as the Potter
You do as You will with us, the clay. Your choices are hidden in the
mystery of Your will and purposes. Your ways are past finding out. This is
the nature of Your eternal Kingdom. We do not always understand, but we do
trust You implicitly, without reservation. *Hallowed be your :name!*


 *2. 1:6 (1:6-10) PRIESTS: DISHONOR JEHOVAH’S NAME. “A son honors his
father, and a servant his master. If then I am a father, where is my honor?
And if I am a master, where is my fear? says the LORD of hosts to you, O
priests, who despise my name. But you say, ‘How have we despised your
name?” *Shame on us Father, that we too pollute Your Name. So often we as
leaders are guilty of this. We would offer You *our best*! *Your :kingdom
come!*


 *3. 1:11 (1:11-14) PRIESTS: OFFERINGS OF HYPOCRISY AND CORRUPTION. “For
from the rising of the sun to its setting my name will be great among the
nations, and in every place incense will be offered to my name, and a pure
offering. For my name will be great among the nations, says the LORD of
hosts.” *There is no name like Your Name in all the earth, Father! To give
inferior and unacceptable gifts unto You, dishonors Your great Name! Pure
praise and worship glorifies You. Where required, we amend our ways! *Your
:will be done, As in heaven, so on earth.*


 *4. 2:6 (2:1-9) PRIESTS: JUDGMENT OF JEHOVAH UPON THEM. “True instruction
was in his mouth, and no wrong was found on his lips. He walked with me in
peace and uprightness, and he turned many from iniquity.” *In the beginning
Levi was jealous for Your Name, O great Jehovah Father. But he departed
from this carefulness. Eli is a picture of the contrast with Phineas
(Numbers 25:10-13). O forgive us wherein we have walked carelessly like
Eli. *Our :daily :bread Give us this day.*


 *5. 2:10 (2:10-13) JUDAH: SINS OF THE PEOPLE. “Have we not all one Father?
Has not one God created us? Why then are we faithless to one another,
profaning the covenant of our fathers?” *Friendship with the world is *
fornication* against God! Father forgive us for letting this enmity against
You enter our hearts and churches. Help us discern the enemy’s devices. *And
forgive us our :debts, As we also have forgiven our debtors!*


 *6. 2:14-15 (2:14-16) JUDAH: SIN OF DIVORCE AMONG MEN. But you say, “Why
does he not?” Because the LORD was witness between you and the wife of your
youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and
your wife by covenant. 15 Did he not make them one, with a portion of the
Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring.
So guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the
wife of your youth.” *Father guard us from this ungodly sin. *And bring us
not into temptation.*


 *7. 2:17. JUDAH: SIN OF HARD WORDS AGAINST JEHOVAH. You have wearied the
LORD with your words. But you say, “How have we wearied him?” By saying,
“Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the LORD, and he delights
in them.” Or by asking, “Where is the God of justice?” *These are not words
of Your Kingdom, Father: but Righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy
Spirit. *But deliver us from the evil one!*


 *NOTE**: 2:16 (2:14-16) DIVORCE: HATED BY JEHOVAH. **“For the man who does
not love his wife but divorces her, says the LORD, the God of Israel,
covers his garment with violence, says the LORD of hosts. So guard
yourselves in your spirit, and do not be faithless.” *Divorce - apart from
fornication or an unbeliever leaving - verboten!


 *Quote by Thomas Reade - *When the Gospel was preached in these first ages
of the Church, it was revealed to the hearts and consciences of sinner with
great power. They deferred not their repentance one day.


 *Our Psalm for the Day: 104:33-34 (104) O LORD MY GOD, YOU ARE VERY GREAT.
“I will sing to the LORD as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God
while I have being. 34 May my meditation be pleasing to him, for I rejoice
in the LORD.” *Father, we consider Your great creation; then all Your acts
and deeds; then we meditate upon You and Your ways. As we rest in
contemplation upon You, our hearts are awed!


 The poem contains a complete cosmos: sea and land, cloud and sunlight,
plant and animal, light and darkness, life and death, are all proved to be
expressive of the presence of the Lord. Traces of the six days of creation
are very evident, and though the creation of man, which was the crowning
work of the sixth day, is not mentioned,m this is accounted for from the
fact that man is himself the singer. It is a poet’s version of Genesis. We
have no information as to the author, but the Septuagint assigns it to
David, and we see no reason for ascribing it to anyone else. His spirit,
style, and manner of writing are very manifest therein, and if the Psalm
must be ascribed to another, it must be to a mind remarkably similar, and
we could only suggest the wise son of David - Solomon, the poet-preacher,
to whose notes upon natural history in the Provers some of the verses bear
a striking likeness.


 104:1. *Bless the Lord, O my soul. *This Psalm begins and ends like the
Hundred and Third. When we magnify the Lord, let us do it heartily:” our
best is far beneath His worthiness; let us not dishonor Him by rendering to
Him half-hearted worship. *O Lord my God, You are very great. *God was
great on Sinai, yet the opening words of His law were, “I am the Lord your
God”; His greatness is no reason why faith should not put in her claim and
call Him all her own. It is not “the universe is very great!” but, “You are
very great.” Many stay at the creature, and so become idolatrous in spirit;
to pass onward to the Creator Himself is true wisdom.


 104:4. *Who makes His angels spirits. *God is a Spirit, and He is waited
upon by spirits in His royal courts. Angels are like winds for mystery,
force, and invisibility, and no doubt the winds themselves are often the
angels, or messengers of God. *His ministers a flaming fire.* That the
passage refers to angels, is clear from Hebrews 1:7; and it was most proper
to mention them here in connection with light and the heavens, and
immediately after the robes and palace of the Great King.


 104:9. *You have set a bound that they may not pass over; that they turn
not again to cover the earth.* That bound has once been passed, but it
shall never be so again. The deluge was caused by the suspension of the
divine mandate which held the floods in check: they knew their old
supremacy and hastened to reassert it, but now the covenant promise forever
prevents a return of that revolt of the waves. Jehovah’s Word bounds the
ocean, using only a narrow belt of sand to confine it to its own limits:
that apparently feeble restraint answers every purpose, for the sea is
obedient as a little child to the bidding of its Maker. Destruction lies
asleep in the bed of the ocean, and though our sins might well arouse it,
yet are its bands made strong by covenant mercy, so that it cannot break
loose again upon the guilty sons of men.


 104:16. *The trees of the Lord are full of sap; the cedars of Lebanon,
which He has planted. *The trees uncared for by man are yet so full of sap,
we may rest assured that the people of God who by faith live upon the Lord
alone shall be equally well sustained. Planted by grace, and owing all to
our heavenly Father’s care, we may defy the hurricane and laugh at the fear
of drought, for none that trust in Him shall ever be left unwatered.


 194L28. *You take away their breath, they die, and return to their dust. *Note
here that death is caused by the act of God, “You take away their breath”;
we are immortal till He bids us die, and so are even the little sparrows,
who fall not to the ground without our Father.


 104:34. *My meditation of Him shall be sweet. *Meditation is the soul of
religion. It is the tree of life in the midst of the garden of piety, and
very refreshing is its fruit to the soul which feeds thereon. *(From “The
Treasury of David” by C.H. Spurgeon, abridged by D.O. Fuller)*



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