Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. You sound exasperated. Do you wanna try that one again? No, I'm good. Let's go. Alright. I'm right. I'm ready. Alright we're ready. Let's do it. We're talking. Malachi. How could I be exasperated when we're talking about Malachi? You just, you long exhaled before we started. Yeah. Is it something I said? No, it's when I said you're unfit to be a pastor, did that bother you at all? Man, we are throwing that out there. Okay. I'm just kidding. Alright. I did not say that for the record. Alright, keep that in the record. Do not strike that from the record. Look no. There's just times in life that life is just, it calls for the exhale, it calls for the sigh and it's a, it's an okay thing., Yeah, that's true. So it happens, it does happen. But and that's why Hebrews 13 is so encouraging and we love that so many of you in our church help us make our job a joy. And you really do. And we're grateful for that. And it's a, it is a pleasure to be able to shepherd the, this flock. We, we love you guys and are grateful for our church. Indeed we are. Yeah. Among the people that we're grateful for is Kelly Smith, who today is having some work done on our shoulder. So if you think about her, we'd love for you to pray for her so that it happens quickly and speedily and she's able to recover quickly so she can Yes. Continue doing what she does so well. We make her lift a lot of heavy things in the office. That's my first plan to do. Yeah. I was thinking about having her do some shoulder overhead presses with 50 pounds each on either side. I haven't rearranged my office in a while. I'm just gonna have her come in here and rearrange my office for you, Kelly overhead. Press my desk, put it over there. Yeah, no, that's a good call to, to to remind us to, to be praying for that. So yeah, please pray for your community group. I don't know, you probably don't need the reminder. Whoever your small group home fellowship group is. There are so many great tools available now. It's really hard to even have the good excuse of, I don't know how to keep up with my prayers and all these other things. And really, there's never an excuse. Let's just put that aside. But there are so many great helps for you to stay on top of your prayer list. Go find one. Find one that you like, and use it and pray for. Pray for the people that God has put in your life. They need that. Yeah, for sure they do. Yeah. Prayer's huge. PrayerMate is the app that you use, that's my favorite. Yep. I love it. And they've recently, they're gonna update to the general public, I think later this month. No, 'cause it's still September. As we record in October, they're gonna release an update where their sync engine is vastly improved. And man, it is a hundred percent better. I love it. I've been using it a lot more because of that. And if you have a Mac, you can pull up the iPhone. Or I don't know if it's the iPhone or iPad version on your computer. And so now you have a full keyboard to type out all the prayers and make sure it stays up to date and spiffy and all the cool things. There you go. I love it. So your prayers don't have typos. Not anymore. Yeah. And if markdown, it accepts markdown language, so you can make it look all nice and pretty too. It's got all the good things. There you go. There you go. I don't know, markdown. It's really easy. I know what it is. I just, I don't know it. Yeah, it's easy. Yeah. Super easy. Hey, we've got Malachi today. This is the it, this is it. This is the end of the Old Testament. All right. And then we jump in New Testament tomorrow. Yeah. Give yourselves a pat on the back, maybe maybe do a high five, maybe have some cake or steak. I probably had some yesterday. Yep. Have them both at the same time. Yep. That's worth, you got through the Old Testament. Most Christians give up around Leviticus. You did not, you carried yourself all the way to the beginning of the fourth quarter, which is Oh yeah. It is October, isn't it? No. When's October? When do we start the New Testaments? Oh God. What day is today? Today is September 30th. The 30th. So tomorrow is October. It's tomorrow. Oh, it's not the New Testament yet. Today's the last day, right? So you're there though. So don't give up today. Don't give up today. If you're gonna give up December 31st and then start again on, on January one. Yeah, great job is what I was trying to say. That was a very long way to say good job. I just wanted to point out how important it was, how significant a milestone, because most have you read, of course you did. You saw the email. It's going all over the interwebs. Ligonier annual, I think it's an annual study they do now where they do this. Data of the Bible, how are people engaging with the Bible? Whether or not they're engaging what Christians believe, and some of the stats are quite shocking, quite. So we want to be a church that knows the Bible well enough to have some pretty good theology, and that usually is. It's the meat and potatoes of the whole thing. If you get the Bible right, a lot of other things come downstream that are beneficial. But if you don't, if that's not the cornerstone of your walk with God, it'll make sense then that you have a lot of erroneous thoughts about God, about life and everything else. So with that said, we want you to be in your Bible and fact, go look up Ligonier. Org. Yeah. Look up the state of the Bible. Is that what it's called? I think so, yeah. Can you just put a Ligonier, I'm almost positive that's what it's called. Dot org here. I'm sure it's on their front page. I got it via email. And I got it from Jeff Mooch, so I got it two ways. Yes. I am still loading and I'm not there yet. Do you happen to have it? I don't have it. Okay, that's fine. We're gonna start in our Bible. Is Malachi mul? It's mul. You couldn't do it. The Italian prophet, he couldn't do it. The Italian prophet is returned. Yeah. No one mentioned it when you preached it and I thought that was good. Yeah. No one did that, but I'm glad to bring it back up. Yeah, he is. Malachi's the last voice before the 400 years of silence. And the 400 years of silence are the time all often referred to as the intertestamental period. It's the time in between Malachi and John the Baptist. 'cause John the Baptist is the next voice that we hear from as far as direct word from God. And so Malachi to John the Baptist, there's this 400 years of silence. It doesn't mean that God was had abandoned his people during that time. It doesn't mean that he wasn't interested in what was going on or sovereign over the events that were taking place there. In fact, it's a fascinating. A fascinating event that, or a fascinating time period, I should say. These four centuries that take place here you've got the Maccabean Revolt, you've got a lot going on. This is when Daniel's talking about a lot that's gonna happen with tikis epiphanies and the abomination of desolation. You've got Hanukkah and. Represents Hanukkah, all the events behind Hanukkah ca taking place during this intertestamental period. So there's a lot going on here but Malachi is the last voice that we have as far as the authoritative inspired canon. Before we have John the Baptist voice again, that picks up in the New Testament. But Malachi again is going to be a post exilic. The date is a little bit fuzzy, but he may have been prophesying during the same time as Nehemiah that we just read about sometime around fourth. 34. 34. Many of the sins that Malachi confronts here are similar to those that Nehemiah confronted with the returning exiles back in, in Nehemiah chapter 13, which you just read yesterday. And so as we get into the opening of the book, one of the main indictments that ne, that Malachi is gonna bring against the people is they're despising or dishonoring of God, that they had fallen prey to approaching God flippantly or casually that they had not been, responding to him the way that, that God wanted them to respond to him. And that had bled over even into the way that the priests were worshiping him. They were offering imperfect animals. They were offering animals with blemishes. They were not offering animals fit for the sacrifices, and they didn't think that was a big deal. They thought that God should just be happy with them going through the motions. And Malachi confronts them and even says, on behalf of God in verse two, I have loved you, and they respond. How have you loved us? There are these questions that the people are going to ask in response to Malachi or in response to the Lord. And there's multiple questions throughout the book where Malachi's gonna make a statement saying, this is what God has said. And the people are saying responsible. How has he done that? And so this is a stubborn people that are gonna challenge so much about God but God is gonna rebuke them for really their neglect. Of him and in this opening chapter they're. It's hard to put it in either way. They're pathetic offerings. They're offerings that they wouldn't even bring to dinner at their local governing officials home, let alone would it be fit to offer the God of creation. And so God is calling them out. And also in chapter two, calling out the priests for not doing their job either. One of the most egregious charges against God is that being a Yahweh follower is a, they use the word weariness. What a weariness this is in verse 13. And you snort at it, says the Lord of hosts. You bring what has been taken. By violence or LaMer sick and you bring this as your offering and he says, shall I accept that from your hand? God essentially is putting his finger on something that I think a lot of Christians can also think, even if they're not in the same situation as malachi's audience, which is that being a Christian is too hard and is not worth it. This it takes too much effort. The reward is not high enough. This is just too demanding. And of course, this flies in the face of what Jesus says. My yoke is easy, my burden is light. And being a Christian should not. Feel like the continual beating down of some, I don't know, some. Pushing someone down to the dirt. Being a Christian is liberating. Being a follower of Christ is something that gives freedom and not takes it away. Now, I guess you could say there is a sense in which God limits our freedom, but that limitation is from things that actually hinder and hurt us, not things that help us and make us. Truly thrive and become happy. So one of the things that Malachi attacks is this heart of bitterness toward God that says, you're too strict. You ask too much of me. This is too hard. I don't want anything to do with you. Yeah. The other thing that he's going to go after, not only their. Failure to worship in a way that got it prescribed. But also, and we talked about this when we preached through this in the minor prophet series, that they're their neglective marriage. This goes back to some of what Nehemiah was confronting again in Nehemiah chapter 13. And again, what Ezra was confronting and there's really two issues at stake here. Number one is just divorce in general. And Malachi is gonna say, Hey. God hates divorce. And number two is, and a lot of people think that these two issues were interrelated the marrying of foreign women, that he puts it as the daughters of foreign gods. And so this inner marriage that, again, we read about Nehemiah, we read about in Ezra, a lot of people think that the reason that this is paired with the divorcing of the wives of their youth. Is that there were Israelites who were leaving their wives to go after these foreign women. And that was a double a double wound a double despising of God's design for marriage. Not only were they divorcing their wives, but then they were going and yoking themselves to women that were lovers of foreign gods, and that was compromising the integrity of God's people. And so God is gonna confront them for that here in in Malachi chapter two, towards the end. As we get into then chapter three in response to all of this, God is gonna warn them that the Messiah is going to come. And when he does come, he's gonna judge and purify the people from their evil and their wickedness. That's in verses one through four. And the question at the end of chapter two, you're asking, where's the God of justice? He responds in chapter three saying, God's coming. And in verse five, God is gonna sit in judgment over their sinful, lack of concern for justice their pursuit of sin, thinking to themselves God's not gonna show up. God's not gonna pay attention. God must not care. 'cause where is he? God's gonna deal with that. And in verses six through 15, he confronts the people for their disobedience, specifically here in, in giving. And compares it to robbing him so much like they were bringing lame animals. They also weren't giving to the Lord the way that they should have been giving to the Lord. And so he's calling them out on that, confronting them on that, and saying to them, Hey, why don't you put me to the test, give the way that I've called you to give and watch what I'm gonna do in response. Watch how I can bless you in response. And in verses 16 through 18, you have some that do respond favorably and God is gonna take them and record their names like we talked about in Nehemiah. These names are gonna be honored. They're gonna be written down in a book of remembrance. I've heard people use Malachi chapter three and people preach sermons from Malachi chapter three, where. God says, put me to the test, of course, connected to the Christians', giving to the church and to things like that. Is that a right use of Malachi three? If not, how should we understand this in light of our present dispensation? I would say first, no, not a right use of Malachi three, but I would say that there's some. Principles there that the church could hold onto and learn from? I think no, because this was connected to God's promises. Even going back to, to, to Deuteronomy and the blessings for obedience and the cursings for disobedience, that part of the blessings for obedience were the blessings of them being faithful to give the way that he had commanded them to give according to the law that he would provide for them. And we see that sometimes in the book of Proverbs too, in the book of Proverbs. There's a lot that talks about how God will. We'll fill the vats in the barns with those that give. And in similar language to what we read here in Malachi chapter three. What I think the problem is sometimes as a church we throw out any thought of that at all because we're afraid of being those that are the health, wealth, and prosperity gospel preachers. Yeah. So we don't want to give the any impression that if you are generous to the Lord, that the Lord's gonna fill up your barns. That the Lord's gonna bless you financially. And we can't guarantee that's true. And we have to be careful not to guarantee that. And if any pastor stands up and says, if you give to this building fund, God's gonna bless you 10 times over. He has no authority to stand up and say that with any credibility because we can't guarantee that. But could he? Sure. Do you put yourself in the way of his blessing anytime you're obedient to him? A hundred percent. Absolutely. You do. Is it a call on the Christian's life to give to the Lord? Yes, it is. And so is it a way for us to put ourselves in the way of his blessing to obey by giving to the Lord and giving to the church? Yes, it is. Are we risking putting ourselves in the, in, in his disfavor by disobeying him in that regard? Yeah, we are because of disobedience versus obedience. So the principle of blessing for obedience and. Judgment or punishment discipline for disobedience. That's a New Testament concept as well that we can hold onto. We just can't say thus says the Lord, you're gonna get a tenfold return on what you give to us today. Yeah. So if someone were to say, for instance, look you can't out give God, God is really generous. That's true. We would agree with that. When we say that we don't necessarily and always mean material goods, that if you were really generous to the church, you gave a hundred thousand dollars gift to the church for this thing or that thing. We don't expect you to get a million dollar payout at the end of the year because of some other thing that's coming through. What are some of the blessings then that God may give somebody after their generosity's expressed? If it's not funds? If it's not you give me a thousand dollars, I'm gonna give you 10,000. How does God? How does God out give us when we, 'cause we say things like that, right? You cannot give God, he, he is very generous, right? God's not stingy. What should we expect? I think continued provision for what you have right now. I think some of the things that may hold us back from giving more generously is we think to ourselves will. What if this happens? Or what if this happens? What if I lose my job? What if, I get sick? What if something like that happens? And so we have this contingency, the rainy day and we're like, I don't wanna give too much because I'm worried that I'm, I might need that in the future. Yeah. And so I think some of the blessings may be he continues to provide for you. Have the job that you've had, not that you're necessarily gonna get the promotion, but that you're gonna continue to get the paycheck for doing the work that you're doing. I think that's part of it. Sustaining your health to be able to work. There's a lot of different ways that God can bless us, even just with contentment. Maybe you go through a season of con of. Discontent. You're looking at your house, you're looking at your car, you're looking at things like that saying, I wish I had different things than I have. Yeah. And maybe part of that is that you're not being generous the way that God's calling you to be generous. And when we do and when we are generous that way, sometimes God allows us to look at what we have and say, God, I'm so thankful for what I have. It may not be what this person over here has, but it's what you've given me and I'm grateful for that. And so thank you for that. So some of the blessings can come in just being content. Rather than sitting there and thinking to myself and loving money so much to say, I wish I had more than what I have right now. Yeah, that's helpful. Chapter four is gonna continue the theme of God's judgment, but it's gonna look forward this time. Not in a looking forward to as an eagerness, at least not for the unbeliever, but for the future day of the Lord. The day of the Lord. That's gonna come, that's gonna bring the judgment with it. And before that day though, is going to come Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord. Now put a pin in that for tomorrow. Because tomorrow, October 1st, you are going to read in the New Testament about the coming of this one. That is Elijah, and that is gonna be in the announcement of John the Baptist. And so it's awesome the way that God has designed a scripture. The way that we have it is we finish the Old Testament with this prophecy about the coming of Elijah to prepare the way of the Lord. And then we open up in the New Testament with the voice of Elijah preparing the way of the Lord. And it was a literal prophecy that was literally fulfilled. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. It seems to me that God is interested in literally fulfilling the prophecies that he makes. You're doing that? Not metaphorically. I don't think it's a metaphor. I think there are spiritual fulfillments as we talked about at one of our recent leader meetings, but I see evidence even with internally from the scriptures, that God is interested in having his prophecies fulfilled in a literal way, even if there's multiple fulfillments. And we do see that. They're still literal even. Yeah. We'll save it for talking about John the Baptist. Let's pray. God, we are thankful for that reality the literal fulfillment of your word, that we can read it, that we can see its continuity, we can see its unity, cohesiveness. And I just pray that even as we turn the page tomorrow into the New Testament, you would help us to understand the New Testament even better because of what we've read. So far this year through our time in the Old Testament, help us to see the layers, help us to see these things that are contained in the pages here, that can cause us to say, wow I wouldn't have understood that as well as I do now if I hadn't spent that time in the Old Testament. So thank you for the fullness of your word and the continuity that the singular thread that runs through it all being the. Hope that we have in Christ. And even though the Old Testament people, they didn't understand that this was Jesus, they didn't understand that this was gonna involve the cross. They did trust you and they did have their faith in the same God that we have our faith in today. And so we pray that as we read the New Testament, we'd appreciate that even more. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Keep bring your Bibles. Tune in again tomorrow for another edition in the Daily Bible Podcast. See you folks. Bye.

Well, thank you for listening to another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast, folks! We're honored to have you join us. This is a ministry of Compass Bible Church in north Texas. You can find out more information about our Church at compassntx.org. We would love for you to leave a review, to rate, or to share this podcast on whatever platform you're listening on, and we hope to see you again tomorrow for another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast. Ya'll come back now, ya hear?

Yeah. I would agree with everything that you said