Both Malachi and Paul gave their readers God’s reassurance—God sees, God listens, God notes, God cares. The Book of Remembrance is for eternity, and those who reverence and love God will find their names in that book.
Minor Prophets: Malachi, Refiner’s Fire
God would begin with the spiritual leaders of the people, first purifying them, then refining them. Their public sanctification would necessarily involve intense suffering, for the heat of the refiner’s fire would bring all the impurities to the surface, where they would be seen and removed.
Minor Prophets: Malachi, Where is the God of Justice?
The Lord’s answer to the cry for justice begins with Messiah, but God’s answer continues with the promise to return and bring just judgment. However, God will begin with God’s own people.
Minor Prophets: Malachi, Faithless Marriages
The next two offenses God listed had to do with marriage: marrying outside the faith, and divorce, problems that existed among the priests as well, even in the high priest’s own family.
Minor Prophets: Malachi, Covenant of Levi
There can be no mistaking the public nature of God’s indictment and discipline. The final piece was being removed from office.
Minor Prophets: Malachi, Bad Attitude
After the prophet had delivered God’s message of love, he now took the priests to task who were polluting God’s altar and God’s table with blemished sacrifices.
Minor Prophets: Malachi, Today is not Tomorrow
Whatever we are going through can feel like it will last for the rest of our lives, without escape. Sometimes, some aspect of that really is true. But so much more often, now is only now, the middle of the story, and what the Lord has in store is unknown.
Minor Prophets: Malachi, Jacob not Esau
Irreducible Complexity: Election is simply this, that Sovereign God loves whom God loves. The Lord foreknows and calls those to respond to the good news of God’s grace and at the same time God works through a person's choosing to believe.
Minor Prophets: The Book of Malachi
Malachi may be associated with the jackal, which features early in his book, for God had left Edom to jackals, yet now God’s own people were acting like jackals.
Minor Prophets: Zechariah, Finish With A Flourish!
Now, at last, this final vision rests on a time of great celebration, when all shall be made “Holy to the Lord.”