Turn with me, if you would, to
the Old Testament book of Malachi. Malachi chapter 1, the last book
of the Old Testament. Let's find Matthew and go back
a few pages. The older I get, One of the things I always think
about at the beginning of the new year is just how fast the
previous year's gone by. And then I begin to think about
just how fast the last 10 years have gone by. To put that somewhat
in perspective, this past week we started our 10th year together
with me as your pastor. 10 years. That's just hard to
believe. Seems like only yesterday. In
1989, Teresa and I, along with our three children, moved here
to attend this church. And I was thinking yesterday,
that was 33 years ago. And I was only 33 years old. Wow. And in that 33 years, a
lot of folks have come. and a lot of folks have gone.
Many are now with the Lord, and some are still alive, but no
longer attend. And a lot of things have changed
for each and every one of us. Many of us have lost loved ones. But one thing remains the same,
and one thing remains constant, and that being our great God,
who never changes. That being our great Savior,
who's the same yesterday, today, and forever. Isn't that such
a comfort? To know that my God, who rules
and reigns all things, never changes. Someone once said, if
He ever loved me, He loves me still. What a blessing that is. And there's been one thing that
has remained the same 2015 Bueller Road, Madisonville, Kentucky
for over 50 years now. And that's the preaching of the
gospel. The burden of the word of the
Lord. And that's my subject this morning. Malachi chapter one, verse one. It reads, the burden of the word
of the Lord to Israel by Malachi. Now there are four things that
we immediately see in these first 12 words of the last book of
the Old Testament. First, there is a burden. Secondly,
this burden is of the word of the Lord. Thirdly, this burden
of the word of the Lord is to someone. Here it's to Israel.
And this burden is delivered by God's prophet Malachi. It's
the same today. It's the same today. God has
given a burden to some. And this burden has to do with
the word from the Lord. Now, if you don't hear from the
Lord, it won't profit you in the least. If you just hear from
me, just from a man, a sinful man, I might add, one just like
you, then you will not profit from
it at all. And this burden, this word is
given to Israel, God's people. This is a word for God's people.
That's who this book was written to. Yes, sinners in the way of
warning, but to believers in the way of comfort. Oh, I want
you to be comforted. I want you to be comforted by
these words. Fourthly, God delivers this burden
through a preacher. That's just the way God does
it. That's the way God has always done it. In the Old Testament,
through his prophets. In the New Testament, through
his preachers. Now, the world defines the word
burden as a heavy load. You know that. As a noun, it
means misfortune that causes hardship. A load that has put
the object that carries that load at capacity. That's the
definition. And as a verb, the word means
to cause hardship and distress. And synonyms for the word burden
are load and weight and responsibility, duty. obligation, liability,
trouble, care, problems, anxiety, tribulation, affliction, trial,
difficulty, strain, stress, across the bear. It means to weigh down,
to encumber, to overload, oppress, cause suffering and distress,
to grieve, torment, and overwhelm. You know, there's a lot of that
going on in this world today. And the word burden here in our
text certainly to some degree includes all those things, but
it also means much, much more than we might even think. Here
the word burden means tribute, praise, the praise of the Word
of the Lord. It's a tribute to who God is. It means to praise God for who
He is. And the word in the Hebrew also
means utterance. It's an utterance of the word
of the Lord. It's an utterance of who God
is. It's an utterance of what God has done. It's an utterance,
it's preaching. That's what it's talking about,
the preaching of the word of the Lord, the utterance of the
word of the Lord. And this burden, this utterance,
is death and doom to some. And this burden, this utterance,
is life and deliverance to others. And this utterance is a heavy
and a weight and bondage to some. And this utterance, this burden,
is freedom to others. And this word burden in our text
also means desire. preaching the burden, the utterance,
the desire of the word of the Lord, the gospel. That's what
this is talking about, the gospel. It always has one of two effects,
one of two results. Some believe and some don't. Acts 28, 24. Some bow and some
rebel. God's prophets of old, oh, they
carried such a burden. They had an utterance, they had
a word from God, and it burned within them. They had a desire
for sinners to know their God. That's not changed either. Not
for God's true servants, not for God's true messengers. True
preachers, pastors, shepherds, they still have a burden. They
have a burden to bear. They have an utterance to share.
They have a desire for the lost to be saved. And it's rightfully
called the burden of the word of the Lord. God's true prophets
always meant business, and they still do. We're not playing games. This is a matter of life and
death. We don't play at preaching. We
plead with men to be saved. We don't talk or preach just
for the sake of talking. A lot of preachers do. They like
to hear themselves talk. But a true preacher, a true minister,
a true servant of God preaches to persuade sinners to trust
in Christ. Paul wrote, woe is unto me if
I preach not the gospel. And if there was ever a man who
should speak earnestly and sincerely and solemnly, it should be one
who speaks in the name of God. They're burdened with God's Word.
They're burdened with the souls of the lost. Their anxiety is
that none should perish. It's a burden because it's the
Lord's Word. All who believe will be saved
and all who do not believe will perish. What a burden that is. If what I preach is only of man,
then I may preach as I like. It won't much matter. No burden
about it, but if God's Word is inspired of God, then it's most
definitely a weighty matter. And it is. Because it is God's
word and it is a weighty matter. I'm convinced that no man can
preach the gospel rightly until he has experienced this burden
in his own soul. There's no preaching the conviction
of sin if you've not suffered and struggled with sin yourself. and being forgiven of it. Oh,
I can remember when God first truly showed me my sin, showed
me what I was, showed me what I'm capable of, showed me that
without a substitute and a sacrifice and a surety to have finished
what God requires of me, that I'm forever gonna be condemned. Oh, I remember that. So I still
remember. I'm reminded very often of my
sin And you cannot preach repentance
unless you have repented. You can't preach the forgiveness
of sins with any conviction at all if you yourself have not
experienced forgiveness from God. Paul exhorted those who
believed to be kind to one another. He said to be tenderhearted to
others, forgiving them, even as God, for Christ's sake, hath
forgiven you. God loves us and forgives us
for one reason. What is it? For Christ's sake. God didn't look ahead in time
and see, oh, Linda, she's gonna be such a good girl. I think
I'll save her. No, no, no. Before she was born,
before she done any good or evil, God in love and mercy set his
affection upon her and gave her to Christ. And she didn't have
anything to do with it. And she'll be the first one to
tell you that. Every believer will be the first to tell you
that. Not by works of righteousness that I've done. No, it's by the
mercy and grace of He who loved me and gave Himself for me. Do you desire to be forgiven?
that you must, for Christ's sake, forgive others. There's no room
for pride or unforgiveness. I certainly want to be forgiven,
but I do struggle with forgiving others. I think we all do, to some degree. And you know what? I was thinking
again this morning, it's nothing but pride when we don't. I'll forgive, but I won't forget.
And you haven't forgiven. And that's what the word of the
Lord does, friends. It rebukes the pride of man.
God's word has contempt on all human glory. That's what makes
man's self-righteousness so appalling to God. One who believes that
they can change their own nature and make themselves acceptable.
And make themselves all that God would have them to be. Have
yet to see the true meaning of God's word. They've yet to see
the burden of the word of the Lord. Can an Ethiopian change
the color of his skin? Can a leopard change his spots? Can you, that are accustomed
to doing evil, do good? If a sinner ever escapes from
his ruin and his eternal condemnation, it'll be through the revelation
of the Word of God by the Spirit of God in him or in her. That's it. I see you shaking
your heads. I'm not a bit surprised. The
Lord has shown you this. The Lord has revealed this to
you. Certainly not by our own works. Boy, I'm sure thankful
for that. What about human intellect? Canst
thou, by searching, find out God? Can you find out the Almighty
unto perfection, the Word of God ask? Can we with our own
finite and puny minds comprehend God? No, His ways are past finding
out. Human understanding, wisdom,
and intellect has got to go. It's just got to go. It will
hinder you more than help you. God's ways pass. It takes a divine
intervention. We've talked about that so many
times. It takes a divine revelation. It takes God being our teacher
and showing the things of Christ unto us. It has to be revealed
to us by God. In modern day, preaching remains
quiet about the wrath of God to come. Well, God loves everybody. Let's just all skip along to
heaven together. But what about the wrath of God
to come? The scripture's very clear about
it. If you don't bow to the Lord Jesus Christ as the only means
of being saved, you shall die in your sin. You shall perish
in your sin. And then you must appear before
the judgment seat of Christ. It's appointed unto men once
to die and then the judgment. And we have to give an account
of our sin. Oh my, oh my. All the things
that we've supposedly done in secret that we would absolutely
hide under the pew that folks knew about are gonna be openly
revealed one day. My, my. And if there's anything that
I desire for you to take into this new year with you and on
into eternity, if there's any burden within me concerning those
to whom I preach, it would be that you and I intimately, intimately
know the Lord Jesus Christ. Like Paul, every true servant
of God is determined to know nothing among you, save or accept
Jesus Christ and Him crucified. That's the message. That's your
hope, Adele, and that's mine, that Christ died to put away
my sin. There's no comfort apart from
that. The work's finished. There's nothing for me to do.
That's the theme of our preaching. We preach that all the time.
I never grow tired of preaching it, and I never grow tired of
hearing it. It's finished. Nothing for me
to do but rest. And I like to rest. A few years back, I had someone
say to me, sometimes I think we're prideful about being sinners. Well, I'm gonna tell you, a true
believer's not. Hold your place here in Malachi,
because we're coming back to it, and turn with me to Romans
chapter six. Romans chapter six. I wanna show
you that. Oh, I'm not prideful about my
sin. Here in Romans chapter six, verse
one, look what Paul writes. He said, shall we continue in
sin that grace may abound? You know, in Romans chapter 7,
Paul, in desperation and despair, cried out, O wretched man that
I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? Does
that sound like a man that's proud of his iniquity? I hear professing believers excuse
their sin all the time by saying things like, well, I'm just a
sinner and sin is what sinners do. That may be so, but a believer
does not excuse their sin. They cry out like Paul did in
desperation and need because of their sin. Paul's response to their excuse
of continuing in sin found here in verse two is, God forbid. How shall we live that are dead
to sin? How shall we that are dead to
sin live any longer therein? Therein what? There's our sin. Well, are you saying, Brother
David, we can live above sin? In Christ we can. And in Christ
we do. We don't take pride in our sin
and excuse it. We hate ourselves because of
our sin. I can't tell you how many times
I've caught myself saying when I've bought something or done
something, and it's quite often, I might add, and I just, I'm
like, you're so dumb, you're so stupid, because we are. And friends, there's a death for
sin and there's a death in sin, but the child of God is dead
to sin. Look at verse three. Know ye
not that so many of us as were baptized, now that doesn't mean
getting dunked in water, that's just a representation of what
this is talking about. But that word does mean immersed
and it does mean made one. Know ye not that so many of us
as were immersed or made one into Jesus Christ were or are
baptized, immersed and made one into his death? Now stay with
me on this as I bless you. Therefore, we are buried with
him by baptism, our union with him, our immersion in him, into
death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the
glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in what? Newness of life. Well, I'm just
a sinner, and that's what sinners do, is sin. No, no, no, no, God
forbid. Verse five, for we have been
planted together, baptized, immersed, made one with Christ in the likeness
of His death, and we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection. Knowing this, that our old man,
is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be, what? Destroyed. That henceforth we
should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed
from sin. Now, if we be dead with Christ,
we believe that we shall also, what? Live with him. Isn't this a beautiful progression?
We died with Him, we were buried with Him, we were risen with
Him, and we live with Him. Verse nine, knowing that Christ
being dead, that being raised from the dead dieth no more.
"'Death hath no more dominion over him, "'for in that he died,
he died unto sin once, "'but in that he liveth, he liveth
unto God.'" Now look at this, verse 11, "'Likewise reckon ye
also yourselves "'to be dead indeed unto sin, "'but alive
unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.'" Not because of our
good works, not because we're good little boys and girls, but
because of Jesus Christ who loved us and died for us and finished
that work that God required of us. That's the gospel. That's
the best news a sinner could ever hear. Verse 12, let not
sin therefore reign in your moral body, that you should obey it
in the lust thereof. Neither yield ye your members
as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, but yield yourselves
unto God as those that are alive from the dead, and your members
as instruments of righteousness unto God." We don't take pride
in our sin, we abhor it. For sin shall not have dominion
over you, for you're not under law, but under grace. We've talked
about this before. You go out and get a speeding
ticket and you go to court and they say, you got to pay this
ticket by such and such a date and then you die. You still have
to pay that ticket? Well, how are you going to pay
it if you're dead? Same thing, same thing. We're not under law, we're under
grace. And he says again, God forbid.
God forbid, sin shall not have dominion over you. Know ye not,
verse 16, that to whom you yield yourselves servants, to obey
his servants ye are, to whom ye obey, whether of sin unto
death or of obedience unto righteousness. You can't take the matter of
substitution too far. My union with Christ through
his substitution and sacrifice made me everything that God requires
of me. And do you hear what God's word
is saying? When the child of God was made
the very righteousness of God in Christ, they really do possess
the perfect righteousness of God. You really are the very
righteousness of God in Christ. They don't take pride in their
sin. They don't excuse their sin. They rejoice that Christ
has put their sin away. And that's what we must preach.
That's the good news. That's the burden of the Word
of the Lord. A believer trusts what Christ
has done for them. They know that they could not
themselves do it And that's the very thing that's good news to
them. That's what they want to hear. Tell me that again. Will
you tell me that story again about how Christ died for sinners? Tell me the story of Jesus. Ms.
Coleman loved that song. You know why? Because she's experienced
it. There's a burden to me. This
is a burden to me because of the consequences of bearing these
truths to you. The consequence to the unbeliever
is death. But there's also a consequence
to the preacher. You see, God made this very clear
to the prophet Ezekiel. He said, God told Ezekiel, he
said, when I say unto the wicked, thou shalt surely die. And that,
he's talking to the prophet. He said, and you don't give them
any warning. And if you don't speak to warm
the wicked from his wicked way to save his life, the same wicked
man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood will I require
at thy hand. What does that mean? Just what
it says. Christ and his gospel is serious, serious business
to the hearer and to the preacher. How will the Lord deal with me
if I'm unfaithful to you? No wonder Paul said, woe unto
me if I preach not the gospel. I don't know, I know a lot of
preachers, gospel preachers, and I don't know one of them
that hadn't at one time or not thought about quitting. Because
this is a burden to bear. This is a heavy load. This has
such great consequence and such responsibility. But we can't
quit. Serious business. So it's a great
burden to preach the gospel, especially when I see some reject
it. And it's particularly when I
see that some will not have it. There are some who hear the ridicule. They pick out some little thing
that they don't agree with, and they make it all about that.
One day, you and I both will have to give an account. And
what sort of message will I wish that I had preached when I die?
And what kind of sermon do you wish you had heard when you lie
on your deathbed? There was a man in Ashland, Kentucky,
by the name of Charlie Payne. He lived there in Ashland. He was a faithful, faithful believer.
And he was a right-hand man to Brother Henry. And I've heard
this from so many folks that attended there. I talked to Paul
Mahan about it recently. But they're still finding out
things. He's been dead a long time, probably
35, 40 years. And they're still finding out
things that he did for the glory of God in the church there in
Ashland. And he never told anybody he
did. And Brother Payne had his second heart attack and he was
in bad shape. And people came to see him in
the hospital. He was so upbeat and he was so
positive that it took folks by surprise. Why should it? Shouldn't
a believer be Being positive, even when they're laying on their
deathbed. Why? To live is Christ and to die
is gain. To be absent from this body is
to be present with the Lord. When a believer dies, it's a
promotion. We're going to be with Christ.
We're leaving this world of sin behind us. We ought to be happy
and upbeat. Brother Mahan, though he already
knew, he asked him, he said, what's the source of this joy,
Charlie? And he said, Brother Mahan, because
I know that what you've preached to me is true. And that is just
what I just said, to live is Christ and to die is gain. I
know that's true. God revealed it to me, I know
it's so. To be absent from this sinful
body is to be present with the Lord. He's gonna give me a glorified
body, a body without sin. Why wouldn't I be upbeat and
positive? And I'm telling you, a man on
his deathbed will not fear death if what you've preached to him
is the truth. And God has revealed it to me.
And let me say that I know there are some who despise the gospel
that I preach, and they don't think much of me because I preach
it. That's okay. That's okay. My conscience is clear. It was
the same with the Lord. He said, am I therefore your
enemy because I tell you the truth? And it's by this gospel that
your burden be eased. Oh, I want to ease your burden.
If you trust in Christ, everything, everything, everything is going
to be alright. Not because of what you've done,
but because of what Christ has done for you. And regardless
of what burdens that you and I bear, the Lord Jesus Himself
bore a far heavier burden. Peter said, who his own self
bear our sins, and his own body on the tree, that we, being dead
to sins, there it is again. I'm dead to sin. Do I still sin? Unfortunately, yes. But God didn't
see it, because Christ put it away. Being dead to sin, we should
live unto righteousness, by whose stripes ye were healed. Look to the cross of Christ.
It was his burden that has made our burdens light. Now I want
to take just a few minutes longer to tell you something of Malachi's
burden and lamentation. Look back at our text if you
hadn't already turned back. Just as it was with Israel, it's
the same with us. God's people often pass through
great trouble. But in almost every case, you
can look back on the history of the Old Testament and the
New, in almost every case, their trouble was brought upon them
by their sin. Yet in their trouble, God remembered
them in grace and mercy. That's what's going on here in
Malachi. God remembered them. This is
the truth as it relates to the majority. There are many to whom
God has been exceedingly kind who are yet not converted. God has dealt with them in such
a way that they might truly say, that God might truly say to them,
I've loved you. And that's what God says to them
here in verse two. He says, I have loved you. Did
you notice their response? Yet ye say, now this is God speaking,
yet you say, wherein hast thou loved us? What ingratitude. They didn't
believe that God loved them. They saw no signs or proof of
God's love and mercy and grace. What a horrific manifestation
of sin that is. Their hearts were still beating.
Blood still flowed through their veins. They were still breathing.
Breath still passed through their lungs. Everything they had, God
had given them. It's the same with us. Paul asked
that very question. What do we have that we did not
receive? And if we received it from God, then why do we glory
or why do we take pride as if we didn't receive it? That's
a good question. Anything apart from death and
condemnation and eternal destruction and judgment is mercy and grace. Yet men and women refuse to believe
it is God who gives them life and breath and sustains them
in all things. They believe that they are the
rulers of their own destiny. They believe themselves to be
the reason for their material prosperity. They claim to be
self-made men and women. They pick themselves up by their
bootstraps. They work hard. They themselves
made the difference, even in the matter of salvation. It's the same as saying, when
did you love us? When did you ever love us? And
here we have a very clear picture painted for us in the scriptures
concerning our fallen nature and our attitude by nature towards
God, our creator. First God says to those who had
wondered from him that he loved them and he's constraining them
here to ask for mercy in his hands. What do they do? They question his love. Their
response is, well, we're in, hast thou loved us? They're short,
they're sharp, they're full of unbelief, they're full of pride
and rebellion. It's the same today. They do
not see the goodness of God in their prosperity. God has blessed
them and their family with health. Boy, that's something we take
for granted until we don't have it. They have all that their
hearts could desire, and yet they ask, wherein hast thou loved
us? Even many professing believers
that find it difficult to give God their undivided attention
and worship three to four hours a week. Shame on us. Shame on us. They doubt every promise of God,
if God doesn't give them everything they ask for, to consume upon
their lust, James said. They think, believe, and declare,
God, I thought you loved me. You know, not knowing that most
things that folks lust and ask God for will do them harm instead
of good. Are we ever gonna learn? Well, you
know, I asked God for this and He didn't give it to me. Maybe
I'll thank Him. He knows what's best. They don't understand that God's
unwillingness to give them what they ask for is really a great
mercy. But when God gives spiritual
life and when God saves a wretched sinner, the first thing they
discover when they are converted and become a child of God is
that God's always loved them. God's always loved me. If He
ever loved me, He loves me still. He always loved me. All of God's
dealings with Him have been proofs of His love. And then they cry,
how could I have ever doubted Christ's love to me and for me? What fools we are by nature.
God loves His people so much that He gave His only begotten
Son He gave His Son to die for them. Once saved, you come to
know the love of God and redemption that's in Christ Jesus alone.
And then you soon find out that God chose to save you from eternity,
from the foundation of the world. They truly hear and understand
the words of God who said, I have loved thee with an everlasting
love. Therefore, with loving kindness
have I drawn you. What kind of love? Everlasting. So today, I ask you to look back
upon this past year and every year since God saved you and
consider the love and the grace and the mercy of God for you
in Christ. Can you rightly question His
love? Yet sadly, there are some of
you who are yet without Christ. There are some of you who still
hate Him and His Gospel. I'm not going to sugarcoat it.
It's not that you just disagree with doctrine. You hate God.
You hate His message. But it's not too late. Today,
the first day of 2023, is the day of salvation. God's still
giving you bread. God's still giving you your heartbeat,
you still have your mental faculties. So even logically speaking, why
will you die? God has said that he has no pleasure
in the death of the wicked. Why won't you turn and repent? Why won't you repent and turn?
They're one in the same. To repent is to turn, and to
turn is to repent. God says, cast away from you
all your transgressions whereby you have transgressed. There's
nothing that pleases God more than to give you a new heart
and a new spirit. Ezekiel 33 11. Read it, it's
in your Bible. May God enable us to continue
to preach the truth of how God saves sinners in Christ alone. I'm going to keep pointing to
you by the mercy and grace of God and the Lord be willing.
And if I ever stop, throw me out of here. I'm going to point you to Christ
and I'm going to say, there's your salvation right there. Everything
that God requires you to do, He did it. May God grant us this grace this
year, next year, for the next decade and beyond until the Lord
is pleased to take each of us home or until the Lord Himself
comes back. From the cradle to conversion,
this is what we believe and we believe it until the Lord takes
us home. He's the same yesterday, today,
forever. And this is the burden of the
Lord, the word of the Lord. For the Lord will not forsake
his people for his great name's sake. Why won't God forsake me? Because he promised that he wouldn't.
And his great name is at stake. His honor is at stake. His glory
is at stake. Because it pleased the Lord to
make you His people. Isn't that amazing? And whatsoever
the Lord is pleased to do, that did He, and that does He. And
He still does. It pleases the Lord to save those
who have need of Christ. Oh, may God be pleased to give
you a need. A need. All the fitness that
God requires is that you feel your need of Him. Do you feel
your need of Him? May God be pleased to make it
so for His glory, His people's good, and for Christ's sake.