Malachi 2:17-3:5
March 31, 2019
preached by Doug Cooper
Download

Time of Reflection Quotations

“To know oneself is to disbelieve utopia.”

~ Michael Novak (1933-present), American Catholic philosopher, journalist, novelist, and diplomat

“I’ve been to Hollywood, I’ve been to Redwood,
I crossed the ocean for a heart of gold,
I’ve been in my mind, it’s such a fine line,
That keeps me searching for a heart of gold,
And I’m getting old.”

~ Neil Young (1945-present), Canadian singer-songwriter

“I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God. I will save you from all your uncleanness.”

~ Ezekiel 36:25-29

“God’s vengeance did not fall on the sinners, but on the only sinless one, the Son of God, who stood in the place of sinners, Jesus Christ bore the vengeance of God… That was the end of all false thoughts about the love of a God who does not take sin very seriously.”

“Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.”

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), German pastor, theologian, anti-Nazi dissident

“The cross is the surest, truest and deepest window on the very heart and character of the living and loving God.”

~ N.T. Wright (1948-present), English New Testament scholar and retired Anglican bishop

“We are meant to long supremely for the Lord himself, for the Giver, not his gifts.  The absence of blessings – rejection, vanity, reviling, illness, poverty – often is the crucible in which we learn to love God for who he is.  In our idolatry we make gifts out to be supreme goods, and make the Giver into the errand boy of our desires.”

~ David Powlison, contemporary author and counselor

Sermon Passage

Malachi 2:17-3:5 (ESV)

Malachi 2

¹⁷ You have wearied the Lord with your words. But you say, “How have we wearied him?” By saying, “Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and he delights in them.” Or by asking, “Where is the God of justice?”

Malachi 3

¹ “Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. ² But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap. ³ He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the Lord.⁴ Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.

⁵ “Then I will draw near to you for judgment. I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired worker in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, against those who thrust aside the sojourner, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.