All right, little ones, I think it's time to go celebrate together in the back. I think Miss Stephanie and Miss Janice got big plans for y'all. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Let me get that out right there. I got it. I got it. Alright, y'all ready to pray? Let's pray. Thank you, Jesus, for this sweet day you've given us to celebrate you. I pray over these little ones that, Lord, you would just plant your seed of life and grace and truth within them, that they would get to see Jesus, and that you would be with Miss Janet and Miss Stephanie as they continue to love on them and serve you. We praise you for the greatness of this work. In Jesus' name, amen. That's your great niece, Carolyn. Carolyn said that is her great niece. You pray for her? Well, praise Jesus. All right. Everybody, y'all take your revelation you brought with you today and turn with me to the book of Malachi. Malachi. Malachi is the last book in the Older Testament. We're gonna get set up to go live. We got some folks on the road, out of town, at home. We've been getting testimony of people who have been watching So we just thank God for the opportunity to be able to serve others, amen? All right, Malachi, let's turn to it. Anybody got a praise report? You pray for me? Thank you, Carolyn. I need to be prayed over. Who else needs to be prayed for? Amen and amen, I tell you, no doubt about it. I sure need it. All right, Malachi, Malachi. Davin, I'm gonna get turned on this instrument here too. That way everybody can hear me. I don't talk loud enough for y'all to hear, but we'll get it going, amen? We're up to what, chapter number three? Chapter number three in our reading, but I'm gonna give you, there's no way with all the good stuff that we can cover all of it in one given service. We talked about it earlier in Sunday school. We are gonna get in it, Lord willing, tonight as well. We'll continue to pick up where we leave off this morning, but turn to Malachi one, chapter number one, Malachi. Chapter number one. Malachi's name means messenger. He was a messenger. We don't know a lot about him. We don't know where he's from. He doesn't give us any of those in the introduction. The scripture says that he had a burden of the Lord placed upon him that was for Israel, a message for Israel that would go through him. And that burden was obviously a sense of urgency because it's not necessarily as important to know exactly where the messenger is from when God has a message, the important thing is, is the message and knowing that it's from God. and what he has for us and that's what we see with Malachi. Now something I want you to think about, we just read last month, we read in the book of Ezra and in the book of Nehemiah. the timing of Malachi's prophetic burden that was placed upon him is a follow-up to the messages and the testimonies given through Ezra and Nehemiah. Now what God had done, y'all keep in mind, that because of idolatry, Because of misled living and misinformation and misunderstanding and misconduct, what did God do to the northern 10 tribes of Israel? He dispersed them through the Assyrians. Many moons later, he dispersed the southern tribe of Judah, which made up of Judah and Benjamin, and he led them in 605 B.C. up to about 586 B.C., he took them into Babylon because they had continued to push back at the word of God, at the words of the prophets of God, and you gotta keep in mind, God sends prophets when his people get out of line with him. love to them, he does that in his compassion toward them, that he sends a message and patiently waits that he may be gracious to them. We find that in Isaiah 30. God says, I am gonna wait for you to respond that I may be gracious to you. God wants to be gracious to us, amen? And he is gracious, he is good, but oftentimes, we push back at it and we question him and his faithfulness and his goodness. So what God did was he took him into the captivity in Babylon, which he had foretold and promised he would do through the prophet Jeremiah. He said that they would be in Babylon for how many years? Y'all know this, y'all know this, how many years? 70 years, 70 years. Y'all know, I'm gonna give you just a little bit on our nesting with Jesus. I figured this up last night. Periodically, I go through and look at how many Bible books we've read since, for the most part, I don't have every single month since November 2008, but just about every one of them, I've been able to keep up with what we've read, when we've read it, where we were going through one chapter at a time, through one book at a time, and the only books we read more than one chapter is in the book of Psalms. We read five so that we can read through the whole book of Psalms in one month. But we have read in the New Testament individually one chapter a day, one book at a time. We've done that through these New Testament books 228 times. That meant we read some books like 10, 11, 12 times, some books five times, some books seven times. But 228 different times, we've read through every single New Testament book. Now in the Older Testament, we have walked through them, if I'm not mistaken, some 131 different times. So that, I think that's somewhere around 359 different times throughout the years we've read through these books. You know what that tells me, Brother Billy? I should have a pretty good understanding of what these messages are about, amen? If I've journeyed through those chapter by chapter, day by day, little by little, week by week, month by month, year by year, 359 different times we've traveled through these books, and been in like the book of Malachi three or four times through the years. So these things oughta, as I spend more time in them and as I really seek to know these messages that God has for us, because I wanna tell you, his message is important, amen? It's important. So this message that we find with Malachi is an important message that we need to know, why? Because what had happened when God brought them back to the land after that 70 year of captivity, God raised up a Persian king by the name of Cyrus, and he released his people, God's people, to go back to Jerusalem to rebuild God's house, his temple, and he called that whole area the house of God, And they were to establish that temple again back in it, rebuild those walls and repopulate and establish the city and the countryside of Judah. Well, the natives that had been left behind and the people that had moved in while they were gone, attempted to thwart God's people from doing what God had called them to do. And they just got to a place where they were confused in their mission because this one said we need to be doing this and this one said we ought to be doing that. And they got off the assignment that God gave them and they started focusing inward upon themselves and they used the blessings and the resources God put in their hand to reestablish his witness in the land and they took care of themselves. They just neglected the things of God. Now what God did was raise up three prophets during this timeframe. The first one was Haggai. He raised up a prophet by the name of Haggai. And Haggai came and says, what in the world are y'all doing? It was a burden, a weight upon his heart that God put upon him like Malachi to see things that they couldn't see of themselves. And God sent Haggai and said, look, y'all need to get back to what you were sent here to do. You've been wasting time and wasting these resources on your own living and you haven't reestablished the identity and the witness of God back in this land. God also raised up a prophet by the name of Zechariah. He is another prophet that God came and sent to them. Now in the midst of that, he sent people like Ezra and Nehemiah as these wall building difference makers to lead and guide these people in the messages that God had for them. Now what we find is that they had made some terrible mistakes and some misstep leadership within the nation even with some of these leaders like Ezra for an example. The book of Malachi is a response to the priesthood and the people like Ezra who had misguided and misled God's people to do some things that they pressured them. They put pressure on Ezra and put him on the spot and said, you gotta make a decision. Whatever decision you make, we'll do it, but we need to put these wives away that we married that are foreign lands. And Ezra gave them permission to divorce their wives and send their children away. Well, this message of Malachi is in direct response to that. God didn't deal with the rebuke in that particular time because Ezra comes, then Nehemiah comes, and we know what Nehemiah did. Nehemiah brought great revival. and reform in the land. And for 12 years, he brought the people back to looking unto the Lord. Then Nehemiah had to go back to King Artaxerxes and fulfill the duties as his cup bearer. Even though he was governor over Jerusalem, when he goes back to Artaxerxes, he stays gone, Deborah, for about three or four years, four years, five years, somewhere. We don't have a exact number of how many years he was gone, but the kids that were born while he was gone was old enough to talk when he came back. That's how we know about how time frame he was gone. When he came back, Ms. Broadwood, the kids were talking in foreign languages. because these men, including the priesthood, who had already made a covenant they wouldn't take foreign wives, begin to marry foreign women who had foreign gods, and these foreign women with their foreign gods from the lands around them taught the children how to speak in the home, and those children was walking down the street speaking in a foreign tongue that Nehemiah couldn't recognize and others couldn't recognize, and he says, what in the world is going on? Y'all made an agreement with God you wouldn't do this. And then he went into the house of God and the priest had kicked out some Levites who was supposed to be serving and they opened up a storeroom in the house of God that was supposed to supply the Levites and the people of God and they put an enemy in there because they had intermarried with these foreigners and they let them have a place in God's house that they didn't belong in and they neglected God's house and neglected God's servants and now these servants are out in the field trying to just get food to eat because they didn't have it the way it was supposed to be set up. See, Malachi is a response to these issues that God has seen something in the people in the priest, in the leadership, and all the way up to the bottom, and now he burdens Malachi, this messenger, he burdens him with his burden, God's burden. And that burden is to go tell the people what God can see. And you see, God does that with you and me today. He did that with all his messengers. We read in Jeremiah 6, 27 and Jeremiah 1, 10, that God told Jeremiah, Jeremiah, I'm elevating you, I'm putting you in a position that is elevated, that you can see what's going on in the nations, you could see what's going on with my people, you could see what's going on in the land from my angle, how I see it. They can't see it, but I'm gonna show it to you, and then you're gonna go show it to them. And when you show it to them, it's with solutions to turn them back to me, but not all of them are gonna turn back to you. They're not all gonna turn back to me. So they're gonna take this message that Jeremiah has, or this message that Malachi had, and they're what, gonna turn it around, and they're gonna be upset with the messenger. because of the message that he proclaimed. Why? When God puts you in a position to be able to see people how he sees people, you're gonna see the uglies that are in people's lives that they can't see the uglies. And when you tell them about the uglies in their life that they can't see as ugly, they gonna get ugly with you. Are you with me? That's how life is. That's how life works. So this burden also was mingled with a blessing. That is a burden of what God sees with the nation and His people who are just neglecting God. It's a scathing rebuke. It's one of those words when you read through it, it just, it'll make you feel bad. Why? Because you can find yourself in here. And if you hadn't found yourself in here, like in our modern day, in our modern times, I don't think you're seeing it from God's vantage point. And that's what we wanna see, amen. We wanna see it from His, how He sees a thing. Now this book is spoken to us as if there's a dialogue going on. Remember, this is a message that Malachi had, a message that he would proclaim and write down. We don't have the words that he wrote, but we have a copy of the words that he wrote, just like we've seen with Jeremiah. They read a copy of the things that God gave Jeremiah. We don't have the original. but God is able to preserve his word for us that we have his words copied for us today to be able to see not only what was going on then, but what's going on in my life that is very similar that was going on in the lives of these men and women in that day that God was not well pleased with and his graciousness toward them, he sends them a message to open their eyes to see life how he sees it, to see their way as he sees it, but he gives them solutions and hope in the midst of it to turn unto him. And when you and I go out and we tell the story of Jesus, When you tell the story of Jesus, you gotta tell the story just like we just got out of the book of Esther, because Esther preceded Ezra and Nehemiah. And if you recall what God did for the Jews during the days of Xerxes, we in King Art of Xerxes. Now, Art of Xerxes is on the throne when Malachi writes this. Remember what that word was. Haman had that decree and that decree went forth and said all the Jews were to be annihilated and destroyed and killed on a certain day of the year. And man, they wept and mourned and couldn't do anything about it. It was a command, a royal command with a royal message for the Jew. They were to die. But remember, God had an intercessor, right? God had a man by the name of Mordecai and a queen by the name of Esther, whose original name was Hadassah. And God allowed them to be put in the position to not only stand in the gap for themselves, but they stood in a gap for their people. And they, by the king's decree, wrote another royal message. And they sent out royal messengers throughout the provinces. And Karen, they said, yes, we can't change what that first law went. You're condemned under sin. You're gonna die. in that sin, but we sending out good news, you can defend yourself on that day. And I wanna tell you there's a message that God sends out to the whole world, and that is the wages of sin is? Death. Death, and the soul that sinneth must? Die. Die, and that God has appointed a day that all men shall die and then face a judgment. That is a condemnation that falls upon the whole world. Yeah. Because all have fallen short of the glory of God. But you see, we've got good news, don't we? That somebody else took that judgment for us. And we like royal messengers go forth with a royal message to let the world know, yes, you are appointed to death. Yes, you have sinned. Yes, you have missed the mark with God. Yes, you fall short of the glory of God. But we've got good news of one who took your judgment and died in your place. and shed his blood to forgive you of your sin and reconcile you to a holy God and then send you out as his royal messengers to let the world know of God's burden and God's blessing all in one, amen. So when you go tell people they're sinners, you tell them there's uglies in their life and they can't see those uglies in their life, they're gonna turn around and get ugly with you. But you know what? You keep loving them through, amen? You keep loving on them, you keep telling them, you keep lifting it up and say, look, you come to Jesus, give your life to Jesus. Jesus will set you free from those things. So here we have. This dialogue, going back and forth. And remember, it's not actually a dialogue. Though it's written in the form as if it's a dialogue, you gotta keep in mind, God sees things that are not as though they were and things that are as though they weren't. He sees it all. And by the way they were living, By their lifestyle, this would be the natural dialogue if they were to hear from God on this matter. It goes back and forth, back and forth. Let me just illustrate it in verse number two. The scripture says, God has said, I have loved you. Remember, this is Israel he's talking to. He's not talking to everybody. This is the message to what? Israel, this is the burden. Look what verse one says. The burden of the word of the Lord to who? to Israel by Malachi. I have loved you, Israel, says the Lord. Yet Israel responds in their way of living, how they're operating and the way they're thinking, he says, in what way have you loved us? That is basically saying they are what, Miss Pat, questioning the love of God. They are saying we don't have any proof. of your love toward us. We don't have any tangible evidence of your love. Look at where we are. We are under a Persian ruler and there's evidence in this word of them still being under this Persian ruler. Matter of fact, the word governor you read in here and the word king in chapter one in verse number 14, both of those words come from Aramaic word to show that they are still under the oppression of these foreign Persian rulers, even though God is still over all. And they had missed this. But they had questioned the reliability and the faithfulness of God's love. They said, we can't see that you love us. We don't think that you love us. We can't see the tangible evidence of your love. is the idea of the way they were living. Their lifestyle said, we don't believe God loves us. And then God's gonna explain to them, once we get past the first few verses here, of how they had manifested this. For an example, God's gonna say, let me just share a little story with you about your history. Look in verse number Two, I have loved you, says the Lord, yet you say, in what way have you loved us? And God says, was not who? Esau, Jacob's brother, says the Lord. Yet Jacob, God says, I have loved. I have placed my love upon Jacob. I broke Jacob. I wrestled with Jacob. I changed Jacob. I transformed Jacob. I established something in Jacob. But he says, but Esau, on the other hand, I have what? I hate it. That simply says God didn't do anything with Esau. He left Esau to himself. He passed over Esau. Jacob had a twin brother who was his older brother and his name was Esau. The Bible refers to him as Esau. in the scriptures as Edom or the Edomites and also as Mount Seir. Those are different terminologies that God used. They were twin brothers. Because God is a selective God and because God had an eternal purpose and redemptive plan, he was working in Jacob who would eventually have his name changed from Jacob. What's Jacob's name mean? What does it mean? A deceiver, right? He was a surplanner, a deceiver. Now his brother Esau, his name means rough or red. He was a red-haired guy who had come out of the womb with hair all over his body. He was a hairy little fella. You ever seen those little ones come out when they got a lot of hair on them? He was one of those that have, they referred to him as being rough because of the hair, where Jacob on the other hand was a smooth-skinned little boy. He didn't have the hair that his brother had, and the hair that he had was red. It was a reddish color. That's where we get edom from, which means red. But Esau has the idea of rough. He was rough. with his hair on his body when he came out. But when he came, he was the firstborn of his mother, and his father's name was what? Isaac. Esau and Jacob was born to Rebekah and Isaac. Rebekah had not had a child. And they prayed unto the Lord and sought God and God planted within her womb these twins. She didn't know she had twins. She didn't know. God told her it was gonna be well. Her husband said it was gonna be well. Well, Rebecca says, if it is well, why is this rumbling, this struggle going on in my belly right now? So she inquires of the Lord and goes to him and prays and God says this, he says, Rebecca, you have two nations. You have two people in your womb. That was the first clue that she had twins within her. She didn't know what God was gonna do. She didn't know how God was gonna work this out. She didn't have this word right here that we have. God didn't come to Rebecca and say, Rebecca, I love Jacob and I hate Esau. God didn't do that. Why? That mama's heart was to love both of these boys. Just like our heart is to what? Love all people, amen. We don't know that God has selected this one or passed over that one. That's why we what? Love everybody, amen. And we let God do God things and we do what God's called us to do. But he says in her, there's two nations in you. There's two people groups in you. And they're gonna struggle and fight against one another. One's gonna be mightier than the other and one's gonna lead the other. The younger is gonna lead the elder, and that would be Jacob. All because of a divine electing, selecting choice that God chose Jacob over Esau to put his seed of the Messiah who would eventually get to marry, and from Mary we get Jesus. We see God at work in all this. But within that womb, when God came to her, She didn't know, but God did say this later. Paul elaborates on this in the book of Romans, chapter number nine. We move into Romans, Tuesday. But in Romans nine, Paul brings up this passage out of Malachi and regards to the nation of Israel and to the electing work of God that God loved Jacob and he hated Esau. That God shows compassion and mercy to whomever he chooses and those he doesn't chooses, they are hardened in their heart. God just passed over him. You gotta keep in mind, God had not worked with any nation of men upon the planet like he did with Israel. Acts chapter 14 tells us that from the beginning of creation to when God used Noah and from Noah he used Abraham and from Abraham, Isaac, from Isaac to Jacob, from Jacob to the 12 tribes of Israel to the nation of Judah, all the way down to Jesus. When we see that, you gotta keep in mind, Acts 14 tells us that God did not intervene in the lives of the rest of the people of the world. He selected one small group of people as his allotment, as his tithe, as his own out of all the peoples of the earth. And the rest of the world went their way and did their things, but God was good to them. in the fact that God gave them rain and he gave them sunshine and he gave them fruitful seasons, but he didn't intervene into their life like he did with Jacob and Israel and the rest of his people. The scriptures tell us that God didn't do anything with Esau. God didn't do anything with Moab. Remember, we talked about Moab a lot over the last few years, that Moab was his washpot. And what did he do with Moab? He used Moab to deal with his people whenever his people went wayward with him. But he never changed Moab. He didn't do anything with them. He said they were like a wine that was made that never had its smell changed, that never had its taste changed because God didn't invest. God didn't show any interest in. God just passed over them. He went over them. So for centuries, Brother Shannon, God let people do their own thing. But when he brought Jesus into the world, the scriptures tell us in the book of Acts chapter 17, that God now sends us out to all the world, and we command all the world to repent in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that God has determined a day that he would judge the entire world by one man, and that is the standard of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's why we go bear the bad news of the condemnation of sin and judgment, but we carry with it the royal message of our great royal king that he stepped in the place of my judgment, and they too can respond and receive him in this life, amen? So when we look at that, people have a hard time with this selecting, electing process of God, and they question it. Paul even, when he wrote it in chapter nine of the book of Romans, the logical thing is that the next question was, well, why does God find fault with people if he made us this way? And the scriptures then say, Paul says, who are we to dialogue in such a way and question God's trustworthiness, his love, because the biggest thing is not that he passed up Esau, the biggest thing is he done anything with Jacob. The biggest thing is he's done something with you and me, amen? Not that he left the rest of the world to go their way, but the fact that he intervened in your life, and he brought you a message about your waywardness and sin, and that you were condemned to death, but he brought the gracious love of the Lord Jesus Christ to you and transformed your life. That's what we get caught up in, and then that's what we go tell the rest of the world. But you wanna make note of that, that God didn't tell Rebecca that he loved one and hated the other. This comes hundreds and thousands of years later, we get this revelation. And then we even get further revelation on it in the Book of Romans. Why? Because God wants us to go forth in His name and be kind and loving and good and gracious to all people. And we go tell the same message again and again to everybody because that message is the only message that'll rescue them out of the uglies in their life, amen? The message of the Lord Jesus Christ. So, they questioned his love and said, wherein have you loved us? And God says, look, God done a special work in you. God's been changing and transforming you. God has blessed you, just look. Just look at Esau's place. Esau don't even exist, the land is not there. It's occupied by the people of Jordan this day. And that's what God says, look, he said verse four, even though Edom read, the Edomites has said, we have been impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places, thus says the Lord of hosts. Yes, they may build it again, but God says he was gonna do what to it? Throw it down, why? They shall be called the territory of wickedness and the people against whom the Lord has indignation perpetually forever and ever. The idea is this, Kate, this is the important part. Esau represents a world without God. Jacob represents a world with God's grace. And there's nothing in this world that a man can do that can please God without God. And there's nothing that a man that has grace can do that can please God apart from faith. You gotta have faith to walk with the Lord, and the only way to have faith, you gotta hear from God, and to hear from God, that means God's gotta bring a word to you. And God had brought this word to them, where he didn't bring this word to the Edomites, the people in Esau, and he said, just look at their pattern, just look at everything about them. You say, you can't see no evidence of God's love? Just look beyond the borders of Israel and see what goes on outside of these places and their desolations. And God has a perpetual hatred toward the natural flesh of man that is in rebellion and enmity to the things of God. That is the message of the cross. God hates sin and had to deal with it and he dealt with it himself because man can't deal with it themselves. And God took our place upon that cross and dealt with those sins so that we can have a reconciled, forgiven, at peace relationship with him. But a man without God that dies without God, there is a perpetual forever hatred toward that. That's what Esau represented. That's why there's a burden and an urgency for us to go tell men they gotta be saved in Jesus' name, amen? Because if they're never saved in Jesus' name, they die in the same position that Esau was in. And not just Esau, but like Adam. You gotta connect Esau with Adam. When Adam and Eve fell in the garden, his curse, Adam's curse fell on who? All of us, amen. All of us, the same thing happened with Esau. All Esau's descendants fell under that curse. That's the picture. The world is under condemnation and a curse, and the only thing that'll break the curse is the Lord Jesus Christ, is Jesus. So, we see that. And that's what God says. You go look on the other side of the border, God's gonna be magnified in their waste and in your blessings. God's gonna be magnified through it all. But they questioned it. And God says this in verse six. A son honors his father and a servant his master. And if I then am your father, where's my honor? And if I am your master, where is my reverence, says the Lord of hosts to you priests who take lightly or despise my name? Yet you say this dialogue, though they're not dialoguing, they are dialoguing in their what? The way they live. In what way have we despised your name? He says, you despised my name when you offered defiled food on my altar. What they were doing was bringing things that had been stolen from someone else. They'd been bringing things like lambs or bulls that were not in the best condition. Some of them were sick, some of them were crippled. and it didn't cost them anything to bring that sacrifice. And the scriptures teach us when we offer God anything, it's gotta cost us something. Now today we don't bring sacrifices, we are a living sacrifice. that we lay our life down on the altar of what God has created for us in Christ at the cross of Calvary, and we come holy and acceptable to him, which is our reasonable service, and we present our bodies to him, that we can be what? Transformed by the renewing of our mind, and we don't offer God our least, we give him what we can give him, the best of what we have, and that is we lay our life down for him day in and day out, amen? Well, what they were doing, Greg, in their actions, in bringing the defiled thing, the troubled thing, the crippled thing, the sick stuff, things that had pus in it and sores upon it, they were bringing and presenting that to the Lord. And God said, would you bring that to your governor? Would you bring that to Nehemiah and offer it to him? No, when dignitaries come to a place, the people always offer them the best they have. the best they have. When you respect people and respect their work and what they're doing, you bring the best. I know when we go places and preach and people treat us with great honor and they service the best they got. Now the best they got down here in the South gives you diabetes. And heart disease. You with me? But you see they giving me what they know how to do. And they lay that food out before you and boy, they want you to enjoy it. They spend time, they think about when those messages go out, that a church is invited, this preacher to come in and his wife to come in. They're gonna be with us for a week or so. They're gonna be with us for four or five days. Man, them ladies and them guys, they start planning. That church gets together and they say, what you gonna cook? What am I gonna cook? What you gonna do? What kind of fellowship we gonna have? We gonna go get, We're gonna go buy the hog, and we're gonna do a whole hog cooking, or we're gonna get the chicken, and we're gonna cook the chicken, and we're doing this casserole, we're making this dish, and man, I'm telling you what, they planted it out, and man, Josh, they lay it out before you, and in Jesus' name, you ask Jesus, don't let it hurt you, but you eat it, amen? Not that it hurts you, yes, from a physical standpoint, that day, that time, but it don't get in you and kill you. Well, I'm a product of my service. I got diabetes. Under control, managing, amen. But every time we have a fellowship around here and Deborah makes a pie, She made two pies last time. We had so many desserts, we put it in the freezer, Deborah. I almost convinced them Wednesday night to open that thing up and have a pie eaten Wednesday night. I wanted to, huh? But you know what? They said, no preacher, we need to put it in the freezer. It'll freeze and we'll bring it back out for another fellowship. We all do that. We don't, how many of y'all go out and find the worst chicken in the yard or go pick up the road kill and cook it and bring it to a fellowship or to take care of those coming in to serve? You don't do that, right? No, you sacrifice, you make a sacrifice. The same way when God said, when you build an altar, God said, I don't want you to put any stone. I don't want you to make that altar into something that is glorious in your artistic skills. I want it to be rough cut because when a man approaches that altar, I don't want them to look at that stone that's been carved out and said, man, what a great work that is. No, when they come to that altar, I want them to see me. Nothing else takes their attention. because they come and offer something unto a great king and glorious God. Well, the people had gotten so out of touch, so out of step, so out of tune of walking with the Lord that they didn't even see, they couldn't even see the uglies or the ugliness of what they had been doing, so God raises up a messenger and sends them. to let them know. That's why they questioned seven times. We'll pick it up tonight where we leave off here. But those little statements there like in verse number seven where he says, you offered defiled food on my altar and they say, in what way or wherein have we defiled you? They couldn't even see it, Karen. They didn't see it. They couldn't see their lifestyle wasn't matching up with how God viewed it. So seven occasions, God said something about their way, and they have to say, well, what are you talking about? We don't see it that way. You see, we wanna see things from his perspective, amen? From his perspective. Now, I don't wanna discourage you from bringing good stuff, like Mr. Lee Wayne brought some, he brought some of them pies. What you call them pies you brought? Caramel pecan chocolate chip. We call that something down in Louisiana, New Orleans, and I can't remember the rest of it. But it's the same thing, and them things are good. Miss Pat brought an egg custard. And I usually try not to do this, but I knew that egg custard would go fast. So I ate a piece of that egg custard before I ate anything else. And then afterwards, they had one piece left over, and I must admit, I confess, I ate it too. I did. Mr. Billy went down and ate oysters, so I figured I'd eat his custard. She made that knowing you liked that thing. Wasn't it good? It was all good. You see, but in our service, now this is what, just like you do it, what you do, everything you do, do it unto the glory of God. Keep bringing your best. Keep presenting your best to the Lord. But not just when you come here and do things in light of here. You do your best when we go to the job, in our community, whatever we do, we do it all unto the what? We love our parents unto the glory of God. We love our spouses unto the glory of the Lord. We serve him and love our co-workers unto the glory of the Lord. We don't want God have to come in and say, you're not doing it. You say, well, what do you mean I'm not doing it? We want to be out of step with him. We want to be in step with him, walking with him, amen? Walking with him in all that we do. Now, you keep reading the Malachi, there's gonna be, there's enough in there that's gonna all of us say, woe is me. I'm not giving my best. I'm not giving my all. I'm not living as a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable unto the Lord. People have told me before, said, Brother Nick, Jesus is the best part of my life, or most part of my life, The question goes back to not is he the best, but is he our life? That's where we wanna be at, amen? That he is our life and everything. So Father, we thank you today. We ask you to help us as we continue to journey through this message from your messenger to your people of how you expose in our journey ways that we may not be able to see. that your care and love for us, for just sending us a message about our life, proves again and again your great love for us. And the altar of the cross of Calvary, it is what compels us, that the love of Christ compels us, that we judged us, that if one died for all, then all died, and we died with you, that we would live no longer for ourselves, but for him who rose for us. So Lord, I pray that you help each one of us under the sound of my voice today, beginning with me, to lay these things at your altar for your glory. We're gonna praise you in Jesus' name, amen. Kids may still be working on a little something. She was doing something for them that needed to dry, and she was gonna take some pictures of them outside with it, so if y'all go back there, they still doing that, just give them just a second, okay? And they may be wrapped up, but anybody else? Five o'clock, we'll continue on. Y'all look, and as you read before you wrap up Malachi, there's those seven, seven areas that they were just so out of touch that God was exposing to them that we need to look at, am I in tune with these things that God is exposing them? Because I mean, it's the same things today as it was then. No different, no different. Amen? Amen. What's that? Malachi. Yes, yes, these guys, Malachi. Yes. No, that's perfect. Good question. But he's the third one, Malachi. Yeah, he followed them up. You've got Haggai, Zechariah, and then what we're reading right now, Malachi. That's the third prophet that God gave them. And from when Malachi closes out, we go into a 400 year period where God didn't give any revelation until the coming of John the Baptist and Jesus. So it was a long time in there. Now God was not silent. God still spoke and God still led and still prepared and did things with people. But nothing was penned as revelation for us for that 400 period of time. And that's where Malachi starts out with a burden and you've got to remember, what did it close with? A curse. that God was going to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the children's hearts to the fathers for fear He strike the earth with a curse. And that's where He promised He's going to send a messenger before the dreadful day of the Lord. That messenger was John the Baptist and of course the coming of Jesus. So this is all prophetic of what's to come. So Malachi is this final Older Testament prophet. Amen? Amen.