THURSDAY, 4 March, 2021 “The Last Word”

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Hello my “Walking with Jesus” friends,

When you were younger, did you have a reputation of needing to have ‘the last word’ in a ‘discussion’? If you are a parent or grandparent, do you sometimes feel the need to be sure you get in the ‘last word’? So what does sound like when GOD speaks ‘the last word’?

In our “walking with Jesus” we’ve been on a several month journey, starting way back in October, in which we’ve been following a chronology of the people of Israel starting with the prophet Samuel, all the way through the Kings; the fall of Jerusalem; the exile; the return from exile; the remarkable stories of Esther and Daniel; the rebuild of Jerusalem’s city wall, and now we are finally in the last chapter of the Old Testament, Malachi 4.

I intentionally chose this journey to coincide with the last month leading up to the American Presidential election and then the months following. This has been an invitation to look closely at leadership and how God responds when leadership or the people either turn away from HIM or return back to HIM from their drift. We’ve had lots of opportunities to learn important lessons and apply them to our lives today, no matter where you live in the world.

So today, let’s look at God’s ‘last word’ of the Old Testament. The year was about 420bc, the speaker a little known prophet named Malachi, probably speaking and writing these messages to the people living in and around Jerusalem. Ezra and Nehemiah may well still have been alive. Malachi’s messages have been dire warnings for the Jewish people whose hearts had turned calloused toward God and their spiritual passion had turned into traditions and rituals for most people. The people had no way of knowing but something dramatic was about to happen.

For more than 1000 years the Jewish people had been accustomed to having prophets or priests or kings or judges proclaiming God’s words to them. We have much of it recorded for us in the Old Testament. To the people, Malachi was simply one more religiously radical voice calling the people to pay attention to their spiritual drift. Most people yawned. But God wasn’t yawning. God was about to go silent! The words we’re looking at today were the ‘last words’ God spoke to the human race for nearly 400 years!! Silence can sometimes be loud can’t it, especially when mankind fills God’s silence with our noise!

Listen to Malachi’s final message: “Remember the law of My servant Moses, the decrees and laws I gave him at Horeb for all Israel.” (Mal. 4:4) ‘Remember’ is a word God often uses, even in our day. The danger of NOT remembering is that we disregard all the important lessons our ancestors learned in the past, and we then will very likely make the same mistakes, fall into the same terrible traps, do the same dumb and maybe horrific things of the past.

One of the worst things a society can do is disregard or destroy or rewrite their past! Sadly, America has been doing that recently, as other parts of our world have done. It’s a doomsday disaster when we reject or forget the past!! God’s final words start with a clear call to REMEMBER what God has done, what God has said in the past!

“See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents, or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction.” (Mal. 4:5,6)

And then Malachi set down his stylus and parchment! There was nothing more to write. God went Silent!

For Jewish people the name Elijah stirred up deep emotions. We looked at him way back On Oct. 30,31 and Nov. 1,2 in 2020. Elijah was profoundly courageous as went nose to nose against wicked king Ahab and queen Jezebel and their 450 prophets of Baal. Remember the showdown on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18)? In response to Elijah’s call, God sent fire from heaven to burn up the sacrifice, and the people declared that day there is no god other than Jehovah God and they killed those wicked, deceiving false prophets of Baal! King Ahab and queen Jezebel both died horrible deaths as God judged them for their wicked leadership of Israel.

Elijah however didn’t die a normal death, in fact 2 Kings 2 gives us the account that as he was walking along with his disciple Elisha, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire swooped down from the sky and swept up Elijah to heaven! God knew that as Malachi would speak this word of prophecy about someone coming in the future like a modern Elijah, the people would watch with great anticipation.

But no one like that emerged in their generation, or the next generation, or for 20 generations. These words had long been forgotten when one day an old priest named Zechariah was in the Temple in Jerusalem praying and suddenly the angel Gabriel appeared in the Temple with him! His appearance profoundly stunned old Zechariah, but what shocked him even more was the message Gabriel spoke: “I am Gabriel, I stand in the presence of God and I have been sent to speak to you and tell you this good news…your prayer has been heard, Zechariah. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, you are to call him John…he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from birth. Many of the people of Israel will he bring back to the LORD their God. And he will go on before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” (Luke 1:19,13-17)

Zechariah was a student of the Old Testament, and these words spoken by Malachi 400 years earlier suddenly came alive to old Zechariah! God has broken the 400 year silence by sending Gabriel directly from God’s throne room to the Temple in Jerusalem and announcing the prophecy of Malachi was coming true. Zechariah & Elizabeth, though old, did have a son and they named him John. We know him as John the Baptist. His life mission was to call the people to prepare for Messiah. . .Jesus! He identified Jesus. He baptized Jesus. He was the modern day Elijah for his generation! Look around my friends, wherever you live in the world in 2021… is there an Elijah in your country today?

In closing today my friends, let’s look at God’s final words of the Old Testament: “He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents, or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction.” (Malachi 4:5,6)

What is the evidence of parents turning away from their God given responsibility to birth, nurture, care for, love, teach, mentor their children, raising them to be God honoring adults who will do the same? May I give you these modern evidences:

* Abandonment of children by their biological fathers. It’s an epidemic in our world.

* Women choosing to have children with no desire for a husband or a father for their children.

* Mothers and Fathers choosing to kill their babies in the mother’s womb before birth!

* Mothers and Fathers so selfishly strung out on drugs, alcohol and other forms of self destructive lifestyle that they leave the children unattended, abandoned.

* Abusive mothers or fathers, starving or beating or horribly abusing their children.

Do you see any of these in the countries where you live? Do you see God’s warning, “I will come and strike the land with total destruction”?

God will not indefinitely allow adults to abuse, abandon or kill their children. God will respond and when He does, it will be “strike the land with total destruction”!

My “walking with Jesus” friends, God’s last words of the Old Testament are striking, significant and frightening. Look closely at the part of the world where you live? Does it appear the moral darkness is getting ever darker? Does it appear evil is gaining power in every aspect of your society, especially among corrupt leadership?

The messages of Malachi are for our day! Jesus came once and He was crowned with a crown of thorns as He paid the full ransom price on the cross so any person could be saved from their sin. This next time Jesus comes, He will come as Triumphant KING and God’s judgement on Satan and evil will be thorough! The warnings of Malachi are for our day my friends. Are you ready?

Tomorrow we will begin a new journey together. We will walk with Jesus toward Easter! Imagine what life would be like for you, me and every human if there had never been Jesus’ EASTER!!! I’ve included a song today, to help you consider Malachi 4 and Jesus’s first and future coming to earth. “Jesus we crown you with Praise”, and I urge you to worship my friends with profound gratitude, praise and prayer, as you consider the majesty of the words of this song:

Today’s Scripture is Malachi 4.

Choose below to read or listen.

Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.

Have a comment or question about today’s chapter? I’m ready to hear from you, contact me here.

Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)

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