Malachi 3-4 - Outline

Sun Apr 7 09:29:10 PDT 2013

“*TWO ARE BETTER THAN ONE” MINISTRIES*

*Jim & Marie Watt*

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

*Web: www.2rbetter.org*

April 7, 2013

 *OCT 15 - MALACHI 3-4 - A PICTURE OF LIGHT*

 *1. 3:1 (3:1-3, ESV) MESSIAH’S FIRST AND SECOND COMING. “Behold, I send my
messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you
seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in
whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts.” *Your ways
Father, are *sudden*. Restoration of Passover was this way (2 Chronicles
29:36 ). Pentecost was this way (Acts 2:4) Now comes Your visible Kingdom
suddenly through Christ, and the Feast of Tabernacles Harvest! *Hallowed be
your :name!*

 *2. 3:6 (3:4-6) JEHOVAH: RESTORES AND PURGES ISRAEL. “For I the LORD do
not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed. *You do
not reward us according to our desserts, O Jehovah Father! In wrath You
remember mercy. Your longsuffering protects us. Intercessions of a Moses
preserve us. *Your :kingdom come.*

 *3. 3:10 (3:7-12) JEHOVAH: REBUKES ISRAEL FOR TITHE FAILURE. “Bring the
full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And
thereby put me to the test, says the LORD of hosts, if I will not open the
windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is
no more need.” *If under Old Covenant Israel tithed, *how much more* should
the Church, the One New Man - do today under the Covenant of Grace! Grace
from the Holy Spirit is more powerful than the rules and laws of the Old
Testament. *Your :will be done, As in heaven, so on earth!*

 *4. 3:13-14 (3:13-15) JEHOVAH REBUKES ISRAEL FOR VAIN WORDS. “Your words
have been hard against me, says the LORD. But you say, ‘How have we spoken
against you?’ 14 You have said, ‘It is vain to serve God. What is the
profit of our keeping his charge or of walking as in mourning before the
LORD of hosts?” *But this is false reasoning. Forgive us Father our sins,
if we like Israel have let such thoughts lodge in our minds. *Our :daily
:bread Give us this day.*

 *5. 3:16 (3:16-18) JEHOVAH: DESCRIBES HIS RIGHTEOUS PEOPLE. “Then those
who feared the LORD spoke with one another. The LORD paid attention and
heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who
feared the LORD and esteemed his name.” *Blessed be Your Name Father, for
such a word of comfort and consolation! You are the God Who is with us in
hours of testing. *And forgive us our :debts, As we also have forgiven our
:debtors.*

 *6. 4:2 (4:1-3) JEHOVAH: FORETELLS JUDGMENT AND BLESSING. “But for you who
fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its
wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall.” *Final victory
comes from *You*, Father! You in Christ will eventually overthrow Satan.
We’ve read it in Your Book, *our* Rod of Moses! *And bring us not into
temptation!*

 *7. 4:5-6 (4:4-6) JEHOVAH: REMINDER OF MOSES AND ELIJAH. “Behold, I will
send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD
comes. 6 And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the
hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a
decree of destruction.” *What a reconciliation! We rejoice in this powerful
promise from You, Father! *But deliver us from the evil one!*

 *NOTE**: 3:2-3 (3:1-3) **CHRIST: HIS WORK AT HIS COMING! “But who can
endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is
like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap. 3 He will sit as a refiner
and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them
like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the
LORD.” *Lord Jesus, we submit to Your purging ministry, for we are a
Kingdom of priests, after the order of Levi.

 *Quote from Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence - *We hold these
truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; that among these
are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

 *Our Psalm for the Day: 105:8-10 (105) TELL OF ALL HIS WONDERFUL WORKS. “He
remembers his covenant forever, the word that he commanded, for a thousand
generations, 6 the covenant that he made with Abraham, his sworn promise to
Isaac, 10 which he confirmed to Jacob as a statute, to Israel as an everlasting
covenant.” *For Your Covenant Father, we *Hallow your :name!*

 This historical Psalm was evidently composed by King David, for the first
fifteen verses of it were used as a hymn at the carrying up of the ark from
the house of Obed-edom, and we read in 1 Chron. 16:7, “Then on that day
David delivered first this Psalm to thank the Lord, into the hand of Asaph
and his brethren.” Our last Psalm sang the opening chapters of Genesis, and
this takes up its closing chapters and conducts us into Exodus and Numbers.
We are now among the long Psalms, as at other times we have been among the
short ones. These varying lengths of the sacred poems should teach us not
to lay down any law either of brevity of prolixity in either prayer or
praise.

 105:5. *Seek the Lord, and his strength: seek his face evermore.* First we
seek Him, then His strength, and then His face; from the personal
reverence, we pass on to the imparted power, and then to the conscious
favor. This seeking must never cease - the more we know the more we must
seek to know.

 105:6. *O you seed of Abraham His servant, you children of Jacob His
chosen. *Election is not a couch for ease, but an argument for seven-fold
diligence. If God has set His choice upon us, let us aim to be choice men.

 105:8. *The word which He commanded to a thousand generations. *This is
only an amplification of the former statement, and serves to set before us
the immutable fidelity of the Lord during the changing generations of men.
His judgments are threatened upon the third and fourth generations of them
that hate Him, but His love runs on forever, even to “a thousand
generations.”

 105:11-12. *When they were but a few men in number; yes, very few, and
strangers in it. *The blessings promised to the seed of Abraham were not
dependent upon the number of his descendants or their position in this
world. The covenant was made with one man, and consequently the number
could never be less, and that one man was not the owner of a foot of soil
in all the land, save only a cave in which to bury the dead, and therefore
his seed could not have less inheritance than he. The smallness of a
church, and the poverty of its members, are not barriers to the divine
blessing, if it be sought earnestly by pleading the promise. Were not the
apostles few, and the disciples feeble when the good work began? Neither
because we are strangers and foreigners here below, as our fathers were,
are we in any the more danger; we are like sheep in the midst of wolves,
but the wolves cannot hurt us, for our Shepherd is near.

 105:17. *He sent a man before them, even Joseph. *He was the advance guard
and pioneer for the whole clan. His brethren sold him, *but God sent him*. *Who
was sold for a servant. *Joseph’s journey into Egypt was not so costly as
Jonah’s voyage when he paid his own fare: his free passage was provided by
the Midianites, who also secured his introduction to a great officer of
state by handing him over as a slave. His way to a position in which he
could feed his family lay through the pit, the slaver’s caravan, the slave
market and the prison, and who shall deny but what it was the right way,
the surest way, the wisest way, and perhaps the shortest way. Yet assuredly
it seemed not so. Were we to send a man on such an errand we should furnish
him with money - Joseph goes as a pauper; we should clothe him with
authority - Joseph goes as a slave; we should leave him a full liberty -
Joseph is a bondman: yet money would have been of little use when corn was
so dear, authority would have been irritating rather than influential with
Pharaoh, and freedom might not have thrown Joseph into connection with
Pharaoh’s captain and his other servants, and so the knowledge of his skill
in interpretation might not have reached the monarch’s ear. God’s way is
the way. Our Lord’s path to His mediatorial throne ran by the cross of
Calvary; our road to glory runs by the rivers of grief.

 105:37. *And there was not one feeble person among all their tribes. *A
great marvel indeed. The number of their army was very great, and yet there
was not one in hospital, not one carried in an ambulance or limping in the
rear. Poverty and oppression had not enfeebled them. Jehovah Rophi had
healed them; they carried none of the diseases of Egypt with them, and felt
none of the exhaustion which sore bondage produces. When God calls His
people to a long journey, He fits them for it; in the pilgrimage of life,
our strength shall be equal to our day. See the contrast between Egypt and
Israel - in Egypt one dead in every house, and among the Israelites not one
so much as limping. *(From “The Treasury of David” by C.H. Spurgeon,
abridged by D.O. Fuller)*

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