We're going to sing number 33. Come thou fount of every blessing. Tune my heart to sing thy grace. Thank you. Oh It's nice to have you back, Norm
and Beth. I think Dawn said that our singing last week was a bit
like an ambulance in service, and I'm not quite sure what that
meant. Sorry, Dawn. I won't do it to you again. It's lovely to sing joyfully,
and it's lovely to have Beth back again with us. I'd like
us to turn to the book of Malachi. I want us, as we go through John's
Gospel and as we study the New Testament, to have these last
words in the Old Testament before us. These were words that rung
very deeply and very seriously in the ears of the men that the
Lord Jesus Christ was speaking to. They knew these words off
by heart. They had an extraordinarily deep
expectation that the Messiah was due to come. All they had
to do was do the mathematics out of Daniel's Gospel and other
writings in the Old Testament. So they knew the Messiah was
coming. Malachi begins with declarations of God's love and eternal purposes
of grace. Malachi is a book where the Lord
has a conversation with these people without them saying a
word. And it's a good thing to ponder,
isn't it, that the Lord changes not according to Malachi 3. And
so all through the book of Malachi you'll hear Him speaking to these
people and telling them what their thoughts are and then telling
them His response to their thoughts. And if you recall what happens
in John Chapter 5, they make accusations against Him and the
Lord speaks and finishes John Chapter 5 with accusations against
them which are so reminiscent of the book of Malachi that you
can't help but wonder, did they actually hear? Did they hear
what the Lord was saying? And He doesn't require them to
give a physical answer to Him because they've already answered
in their hearts. Let's just read this first chapter
of the book of Malachi. and pray that the Lord will use
the words of Malachi to help us to see what is the conversation
between the Lord and us in John chapter 5, because these are
words that are written to us. The burden of the word of the
Lord to Israel by Malachi. I have loved you, saith the Lord,
yet you say, wherein hast thou loved us? What an extraordinary
question these people ask. And his answer was not Esau,
Jacob's brother, saith the Lord. Yet I loved Jacob, and I hated
Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the
dragons of the wilderness. Whereas Edom says, says Esau,
saith, we are impoverished. But we will return. Don't you
love it? Every time someone in the scripture
says, I will, God says, no, you won't. Every single time. We will return and we will build
the desolate places. Thus saith the Lord of hosts,
they shall build, but I will throw down. And they shall call
them, the children of God shall call them, the border of wickedness,
and the people against whom the Lord hath indignation forever. Your eyes shall see, and you
shall say, The Lord will be magnified from the border of Israel. A
son honoureth his father, and a servant his master. If then
I be a father, where is mine honour? And if I be a master,
where is my fear? saith the Lord of hosts unto
you, O priests, that despise my name. And you say, wherein
have we despised thy name? You offer polluted bread on mine
altar and say, wherein have we polluted thee? In that you say,
the table of the Lord is contemptible. And if you offer the blind for
sacrifice, is it not evil? And if you offer the lame and
the sick, is it not evil? Offer it now unto thy governor.
Will he be pleased with thee, or accept thy person, saith the
Lord of hosts? And now, I pray you, beseech
God that he will be gracious unto us. This has been by your
means. Will he regard your persons,
saith the Lord of hosts? Who is there among you that would
shut the doors for nought? Everything you do, you do to
be paid. Neither do you kindle a fire on mine altar for nought. I have no pleasure in you, saith
the Lord of hosts. Neither will I accept an offering
at your hand. For from the rising of the sun,
even unto the going down of the same, my name shall be great
among the Gentiles, and in every place incense shall be offered
unto my name, and a pure offering for my name shall be great among
the heathen, saith the Lord of hosts. But you have profaned
it, in that you say, The table of the Lord is polluted, and
the fruit thereof, even his meat, is contemptible. You said also,
Behold, what a weariness it is! And you have snuffed at it, saith
the Lord of hosts, and you have brought that which was torn and
lame and sick. Thus she brought an offering.
Should I accept this at your hand, saith the Lord? But cursed
be the deceiver, which hath in his flock a male, and voweth
and sacrifices unto the Lord a corrupt thing. Four. I am a
great king, saith the Lord of hosts, and my name is dreadful
among the heathen. My name is to be held with dread,
my name will be held with reverence. I love the fact that in the midst
of the darkness of what Malachi confronted, there is and there
are these glorious gospel declarations. In the midst of the darkness,
the glory of the Lord shines even brighter. Last week we looked
at that wonderful declaration. In verse 11, for from the rising
of the sun even unto the going down of the same, my name shall
be great among the Gentiles, and every place incense shall
be offered unto my name, and a pure offering for my name shall
be great among the heathen, saith the Lord of hosts. But I want
us to go back a little bit and just look at that glorious declaration. What an extraordinary thing that
the Lord would love a people who are so rebellious, so openly
rebellious to him. There is that famous poem. I'd
like to read it to you. You know the third stanza of
it, but let's read it. 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 hill. The guilty pair bowed down with
care. God gave his son to win. His erring child he reconciled
and pardoned from his sin. when years of time shall pass
away and earthly thrones and kingdoms fall, when men who here
refuse to pray on rocks and hills and mountains call, God's love
so sure shall still endure, all measureless and strong, redeeming
love and saving grace. the saints' and angels' song. Then this is the stanza that's
famous. Could we with ink the ocean fill? And were the skies
of parchment made? Where every stalk on earth a
quill, And every man a scribe by trade, To write the love of
God above Would drain the ocean dry, Nor could the scroll contain
the whole, Though stretched from sky to sky. O love of God, how
rich and pure, how measureless and strong. It shall forevermore
endure, the saints' and angels' song. God in his mercy comes
and speaks and challenges his people, doesn't he? Again and
again in the scriptures he comes and he reminds us of who we are. who we are in Adam, what we are
in this flesh and he reminds his people again and again of
who we are in the Lord Jesus Christ. One of my favourite verses
in the scriptures and for any of you who are backsliding and
continually backsliding, Hosea 14 verse 4 should be a verse
that you write and memorize and repeat and call out to the Lord
about often. He says, I will heal their backsliding. And then he says, I will love
them freely. That word freely is a word that
indicates that the love of God is free. It means that the cause
for his love is not in us. The cause for his love is in
himself. Mine anger, because I will heal
their backsliding, I will love them freely. For mine anger is
turned away from him. All of the wrath of God was turned
upon the Lord Jesus Christ for all the people who were in him
and one with him, crucified with him. And God in holiness can
only punish once. God in omniscience can only punish
perfectly. God in omnipotence can only punish
with the perfect power of God. And God alone knows exactly those
for whom he died. And that's why he comes and he
says, I'll heal their backslidings because I love them. Really,
I've loved them everlastingly is what he says. My langar is
turned away. We can sing again, thanks. Number 44. Now we rock the boat Okay, let's go back to the word
of God, back to Malachi. The burden of the word of the
Lord to Israel by Malachi. I just want to have a look at
these first five verses and I want us to plead with the Lord and ask that
as we read these verses, as we contemplate what is written here
by God, that our eyes will see, and they shall say, The Lord will be magnified from
the border of Israel. I love that word magnified, isn't
it? It's what we want to do in church and it's what we want
to do in all of our meditations. To magnify something is to take
something that looks extremely small. I was with my son-in-law
down in Bega a few weeks ago and his little son had a tick. and he was scratching at it and
they didn't know what it was and eventually they sort of found
it and they pulled it out and then Rob put it under this microscope
and I don't know how many thousand times it was but you could actually
see the lungs of this tick and you could see that it had this
little pointed barb that looked like a swordfish and you could
actually see remarkable details and it was like a speck of dust
without that. Well, something that's magnified
is something that's taken, that's indistinct, that is insignificant
and has expanded before you. And the Lord Jesus Christ, our
God, is to be magnified and we cannot magnify him too much.
We cannot magnify his glory too much. We cannot magnify his honor
too much. We cannot give him too much honor. We cannot think too highly of
him. As Solomon said when he built
the tavern, the heaven of heavens, heavens can't contain you. He
is bigger than this universe. I love what Hebrews 1 says that
this universe is so small compared to the Lord Jesus Christ, you
can wrap it around him like we do a shawl. isn't he? He upholds it all by the word
of his power and when he says enough of this creation it will
be enough. We cannot magnify him too much
and we magnify him most here when we simply put our trust
in what he says and particularly when our trust is rested and
when our faith rests on who the Lord Jesus Christ is. And what
he says about himself, we children of God are not much interested
in the opinions of men. The longer you go on, the less
I care about the opinions of men. I just want to hear what
God says about himself. As I said earlier, there are
remarkable parallels between Malachi's glorious declarations
of God and the way he deals with these people who pretend and
purport to worship him and what is going on in John's gospel
when the judge of all flesh comes, the one who sees the hearts of
all people comes, and he speaks with absolute clarity and purpose. Malachi means my angel, it means
a messenger, the angels of God are messengers of God. The Jews,
as I said earlier, esteemed this prophecy of Malachi. They called
it the seal of prophecy. They called him the last of them. Other than the 400 years in Egypt,
God had spoken fairly regularly to the people of Israel. They
never heard him with any great clarity. Malachi speaks as the
last of them but he also speaks of the glory of what is about
to come and so he speaks in a way which is preparing the people
of God for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And there's
no better way to be prepared than to be exposed for what you
are here and now. What a remarkable mercy from
God it is that God allows us to interact with him and engage
with his word here. There'll come a day when every
mouth will be silenced and all the world will be held guilty
before him. And so we want to put nothing
in the way in terms of religion between you and him. We want the brazen serpent to
be lifted up so high that anyone can see him. The Lord Jesus Christ
speaks these words that you might be saved. He wants this message
to be run loud and clear. God has a purpose and God has
a people and now God comes and when he comes he speaks to his
people. That word magnified in verse
5 is an interesting word in the original. It means to twist together
a cord. And it's a beautiful picture,
isn't it, to make something extraordinarily strong. So I picture the fact
that you actually You sort of twist together the absolute sovereignty
of God and the absolute holiness of God and the absolute justice
of God and the omnipotence of God and the omniscience of God,
the omnipresence of God. You take all of the characteristics
of God and you actually have them entwined because you can't
separate them. We separate them to examine them,
but as soon as we separate them, we need to put them back together
again. To magnify them, in a sense, is to hold all of the attributes
of God as tightly together as possible. They are all in perfect
harmony. They all are reflections of His
glory, which is why the psalmist said, Oh, magnify the Lord with
me. They're the words of the Lord
Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ magnified God the Father
in remarkable ways, didn't he? But also he magnified him and
we magnify him in the Lord Jesus Christ. So we magnify God when
we come and we worship and we bow and we love and we adore
God as he's revealed in the scriptures. Mankind by nature wants to magnify
himself. That's what we got from Satan
in the garden, isn't it? You shall be his gods. You will
magnify yourself and you will magnify all of your attributes.
The one that's enthroned in heaven laughs at them. Psalm 35 verse
26, let them be ashamed and brought to confusion together that rejoice
at mine hurt. Let them be clothed with shame
and dishonor. that magnify themselves against
me." That's what mankind is doing, isn't it? If you want to know
what the big conspiracy is in this world, you go and read Psalm
2 and you read God's response to all of that. Let those that
seek thee rejoice and be glad in thee. Let such as love thy
salvation say continually, the Lord be magnified. The Lord be magnified. And we, as I said earlier, are
a privileged people. As the people of Malachi, we're
an extraordinarily privileged people. It's a remarkable privilege,
isn't it, that you are here, alive. When you think about it,
you have been a production. You are now a living example
of successful reproduction for thousands and thousands and thousands
of years. But for the children of God,
these people, these people that the Lord is speaking to in Malachi
have come back to Jerusalem and they've come back by a sovereign
hand of God moving the hearts of a king to say that you'll
return, moving the hearts of a king to say that I'll build
the temple for you, moving the hearts of a king to say I'll
build the walls of Jerusalem. And they knew, these people,
they knew that the desecration of the worship with God was the
reason that they were there, that they had dishonoured the
Lord Jesus Christ in their worship. And yet, what a picture they
are of us, an extraordinarily privileged people who take the
privileges of God with a lightness that I trust the Lord will expel
from us and cause us to go back to him and plead with him again
and again that he'll be merciful to us. Israel was an extraordinary
nation. They were an enormous number
of people Possibly a couple of million people that came into
a land of milk and honey. And by their wickedness, they
were reduced from 12 tribes down to two tribes. And then those
two tribes were reduced in the exile and 42,000 came back. So out of a nation that had lived
in a land of milk and honey. under the promises of God. They
were reduced by God just down to these 40. And these were part
of it. And they knew why they had gone away. They knew why
that they had been there for 70 years. They knew why they
were brought back there. And it was all a sovereign hand
of God. They had every reason, as we
do, to be humbled before our God. They had seen the hand of
God moving the hearts of kings. They had seen the hand of God
turning the conspiracies of all the enemies against the nation
Israel to the point where God's people, when the temple was built
and when the walls were built, everyone could say, this is God's
work, this is God's hand has done this. And here they are
within years of all that, living and saying to God, where in have you loved us? Isn't
that remarkable? Where in, verse two, where in
have you loved us? I have loved you, saith the Lord. I have loved you, saith the Lord.
Yet you say, in your hearts you're saying, where in have you loved
us? I look around at the circumstances
of my life and I can't see the love of God. And the Lord goes
on in this exposition of his love to them to show them the
nature of his love. And I know these verses are challenged
by many, but it comes back to the question, can you read these
verses and say the Lord be magnified? Because listen to what he says. They ask, where are you and have
you loved us? And then the Lord's response
is, was not Esau Jacob's brother, saith the Lord? Yet I loved Jacob. And I hated Esau and laid his
mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness. And Esau says, whereas Edom saith,
we are impoverished, but we will return and we will build the
desolate places. Isn't that exactly what man is
saying, isn't it? We are going to build ourselves
a tower to heaven. We are going to build a civilization. We are going to build civilizations
and economies and war machines and we will protect ourselves
and we'll make a name for ourselves. Listen to what God says. Listen
to what God says about man building. Whether it's building those empires
or whether it's building the empire of our self-righteousness,
listen to what God says. They shall build, so there will
be in their eyes, there will be a building and there will
be something that they can see and something that they can esteem
from their works. They shall build, but I will
throw down. And they shall call them the
border of wickedness, and the people against whom the Lord
hath indignation forever. And your eyes shall see, children
of God, your eyes shall see. And you shall say, the Lord will
be magnified from the border of Israel. You will see the hand
of God's electing love. You will see the hand of God's
discriminating grace. What had Jacob ever done to earn
the You read the history of Jacob.
You go back to Genesis and read Jacob's history. You think of
one thing that he did. Here's just a picture, isn't
it? All of God's children are called
the children of Jacob. It's not meant as a compliment
to our flesh and our fleshly activities, brothers and sisters.
To be called the children of Jacob is to be declared what
we are in our flesh. As Paul says in Romans 7, in
my flesh dwells no good thing. No good thing. The only thing
that we can do, the only thing that magnifies the glory of the
Lord, the glory of his name, is the fact that he's the one
that does it all. He's the one And that's exactly
how Jacob came to be, isn't it? Jacob was the grandson, as you
know, of Abraham. And Abraham was an Iraqi idolater
and God pulled him out of Iraq and says, I'll have you. You're
mine. I'll make your name great. You will be the father of the
faithful. Abraham and Sarah, as you know,
put their hand to the work of God and said, we will assist
the promises of God and bring them to fruition by our works. That's what they did, didn't
they? I'll take an Egyptian handmaid and Abraham, you can sleep with
her and out will come something and someone which will further
the promises of God. Ishmael was never declared to
be a son by God. Ishmael pictures all legalistic
works righteousness in all this world. And then Isaac has a miraculous
birth. Rebecca has a remarkable birth
and out of her comes these two children, Jacob and Esau. And
you know the verses in Romans chapter 9. And if sometimes we
would find so much more peace if we just read what God said
and heard what God said and asked for God to be the interpreter
of His Word. Because I know what the religious
world does with these verses as it does with so many other
passages of Scripture. It says, that they rest the Scriptures
to their own destruction. To rest the Scriptures is to
put them on a rack. You know, the old-fashioned racks
as a torture in years gone by. They would tie people's hands
and their feet and then they would just wind them apart until
all their bones were out of joint. And they could get them to say
something that they didn't ever really want to say. That's what
resting the Scriptures is. We just want to hear what God
says. Let's read from Romans 9 verse
6. It's not as though the Word of God has taken none effect. The Word of God is powerful and
effective. For they are not all Israel which are of Israel. They
are not all Israel which are of Israel, neither because they
are the seed of Abraham are they all children. But in Isaac shall
thy seed be called. That is, they which are the children
of flesh, these are not the children of God, but the children of the
promise. are counted for the seed. And for this is the word of promise. At this time I will come and
Sarah will have a son. Not only this, but when Rebecca
also had conceived by one, even our father Isaac, for the children
not yet being born, neither having done that the purpose of God according
to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth. It was said unto her, the elder
shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have
I loved, but these all have I hated. And then God anticipates our
questions, doesn't he? What shall we say then? Is there
unrighteousness? Is this an unrighteous activity?
Is this God being unrighteous? God forbid. For he saith to Moses,
I will have mercy on him, I will have mercy, and I will have compassion
on him. I will have compassion. So then,
this is the result, isn't it? It is not of him that willeth,
nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. Not every time, but often when
I read Romans 9, I'm reminded of coming back from India to
a local Bible study group, and I thought rather than talking
about what was happening in India, it would be much easier just
to talk about God. And so I just read Romans 9. And I read it as it is and read
it slowly and quietly and probably didn't explain very much at all.
And then there was a silence at the end of reading Romans
chapter nine. And one young fellow finally
spoke up and said, that's not the God that we speak about in
our church. to see what would happen. Neither he nor anyone else took
it with any more serious than that. Verses in Malachi are verses
that cause the people of God to say, the Lord be magnified,
magnified for his electing love, magnified for his discriminating
grace, magnified for the declaration of his name, magnified for his
justice and for his holiness. And the people that object to
it, object to what God says, their objections generally are
centered on one thing, that they think they are worthy. They think
they have earned something. They think they deserve something
from God. Listen to what God says. Are
we better than them? Are we better? Romans 3.9, in
no wise, For we have proved before the
Jews and Gentiles are all under sin. Sinners, sinners love. Sinners love the glory of God
as it's revealed in the scriptures. And this love of God is the source
and it's the fountain of all of our mercies. And it begins
in eternity. God's love is like God, isn't
it? It's a reflection of God is love. His love is a reflection of His
love. His love is eternal love. His love is sovereign love. His
love is powerful love. His love is efficacious love.
The objects of His love always have been loved that's what he
says we read Jeremiah 31 verse 3 the Lord hath appeared of old
under me saying yea I have loved The love of God draws people
to the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not an ineffectual, wimpish,
pathetic love that we hear about these days. that God loves everyone but his
love doesn't do anything to save them unless they add something
to his love by their activities. But God's love is declared. I have loved you. I have loved
you with an everlasting love. I have loved you. I have loved you freely. It is It is a declaration of
the fact that God's love is discriminating and distinguishing and it's effectual. There is in the scriptures in
Ezekiel 16 a thing, a time, a time called the time of love when
God comes and reveals himself to love to his people. The Esau's of this world will
have their mountains laid waste and their heritage waste. They
will, they will even in their impoverishment, they will say
again and again and again, we will return, we will build, we
will, we will, we will. And God is in the business. God is in the business. of undoing
the towers of Babel of this world. God is in the business of undoing
the kingdoms that men build in this world. God is in the business
of undoing the kingdoms that we build to make our nest in
this world, so that we can find ourselves safe and secure from
the troubles of this world. God is in the business of removing
all the props of the lives of all of his people so that they
rest. They rest in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why there are so many
storms that come into the lives of believers. It used to be thought
that if you come to Christ then all of your troubles will be
over. You come to the Lord Jesus Christ
and you will have troubles that you never possibly imagined you
had before, and you'll have a friend in the midst of those troubles
who will prove himself faithful again and again and again in
all those trials and troubles. Is that not true, brothers and
sisters in Christ? If you've walked with him for
any time at all, you've been in moral trials. I've had more
emotional and physical anguish in the last 20 odd years than
I had in all the rest of my life put together, and it's nothing
about getting old. I've had more sleepless nights
and more anxiety and more anxious thoughts and more troubling circumstances,
and they've been magnified. And all through it, again and
again and again, God has proved himself perfectly faithful to
his word of promise. a long time ago. I trusted him
and I loved him and he's used all of these trials to grow my
love for him, to grow my awareness of his faithfulness to his word.
Is that not your story? We are the distinguished and
particular objects of the faith and the faithful love of our
God. And we want, as a response to
that, as we see what goes on in this world, we want the Lord's
name to be magnified, isn't it? Your eyes shall see. What do
you see? You see God's hand of grace and
mercy. You see God's hand of promise
fulfilled. You see it all in the Lord Jesus
Christ. You see every promise of God,
yea and amen, in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what your eyes
shall see. And only the Lord opens the eyes of these people
to see those things. He opens their eyes to see Him. He gives the seeing eye and the
hearing ear and then He gives their mouths that say, doesn't
He? And then you shall say. Every time you get to the Scriptures
and see the will and the shall from the mouth of God, you can
write down, it's finished. It's done. It's done. They shall say, The Lord will
be magnified. The Lord will be magnified. He's magnified in Malachi as
he is in the Gospel accounts we read. He's magnified when
he comes to those who are his enemies. He's magnified in his
glory, he magnifies his name. You think of what we've been
looking at in John chapter five, the Lord Jesus Christ magnifies
his name before those people who are determined to kill him.
And rather than shirking from declaring the glories and the
praise of God, he just tells them more and more. He tells
them 27 times in that one speech and he doesn't expect a word
of answer from them. He says, it's my father, it's my father,
it's my father. You accuse me of being God, I'll
tell you all about who God is. and God standing before you.
And God's calling his people to himself and we are called
to stand and see the glory of the Lord. We are to stand and
see the accomplished redemption of the Lord Jesus Christ. We
are to stand and see the extraordinary gift of eternal life in the Lord
Jesus Christ. We are to stand and see and see
that on Calvary's cross all of my sins were born in his own
body God punished them, and they are gone. And I stand before
God, presented in His sight, in His Son, holy and unblameable
and unapprovable in His sight. And the world can tell me I'm
not like that, and my conscience will tell me I'm not like that.
And God says it's true. God says it's you. I have loved you. He loves them
to preserve them. They are a picture of the preserving
grace of God, these people, and why were they preserved? There
was a child to be In 400 years from this prophecy
there was a child to be born. In fact there were two remarkable
children to be born and all of them went through all of those
trials and all of them were there as God came to these rebellious
people who deserved absolutely nothing from Him just as Jacob
did and God preserved them and He preserves His people in the
Lord Jesus Christ. He preserves His people for the
Lord It is a glory of the gospel that
God works such a way in history that he will cause his name to
be great. He causes his name to be great. Let me finish this time by reading
verse 11. I have loved you, he says, I
have loved you. We see his hand upon them and
the verse 11 says in Malachi 1, from the rising of the sun
even to the going down of the sun, my name shall be great among
the Gentiles. The Gentiles will see all of
this. The Gentiles will see and rejoice. The Gentiles will see
and rejoice what the children born as the children of Israel
will never see. I shall be great, my name shall
be great among the Gentiles, and in every place incense shall
be offered unto my name. and a pure offering, for my name
shall be great among the heathen, saith the Lord of hosts. He's
great. He's a great God, a great and
glorious God and Saviour. May the Lord bless his words
to our hearts.