There rings a melody, there rings a melody above.
And many an hour should gain an interest in the Savior's blood.
And then on the back is the note about the chili cook-off, the 14th annual chili cook-off.
That's going to be on Thursday, October 31st at 5 p.m.
The alternative is to go worship Satan somewhere. No, I'm just kidding.
But anyway, we don't celebrate Halloween because we don't like the emphasis of glorifying death, darkness, evil, goblins, ghouls, all that kind of stuff.
And so this is not a Halloween thing, so don't come up dressed like a warlock.
Okay, this is just a time of fellowship, just an alternative to that.
And we do have the chili cook-off contest, but we limit it to the first 20 chilis that show up
because there's just only so many chilis that we can have competing and it gets ridiculous at some point.
So the first 20 chilis will be entered in the contest.
The rest of the chilis will just be enjoyed as a potluck.
The best way to bring it is to bring it in a slow cooker.
So we're not saying that you have to make it in a slow cooker.
That's just the best way to bring it because then we'll set up power strips and then you can plug it in and it'll stay there like a warmer.
So once you make your chili, put it in a slow cooker and then we can plug those in and that'll keep it nice.
And then be sure to read all the rules carefully lest you be disqualified.
And then upcoming events are listed there below that.
That's about it for announcements.
Let's go ahead and count up the soul winning from the last few days.
Going back to Thursday, anything from Thursday?
Nine.
Nine. What was the date on Thursday?
That would be the 19th, 18th, 17th, right?
Alright, so we had nine for that team.
We had one more here, one more here.
Okay, anything else from Thursday?
Alright, and then of course we had the numbers from the Navajo trip.
And then what about anything other than the Navajo trip on Friday or Saturday outside of the Navajo?
We got four, one.
Okay, anything else from Friday?
Anything from Saturday outside of the Navajo trip?
Three for Saturday.
Okay, anything else from Saturday?
And then what about today?
Let's start with our main groups.
Brother Scott.
Twelve for the main team with Brother Scott.
Two with Brother Madison.
Two for Chandler.
Anything else from today outside of that?
Any other soul winning from today?
Alright, keep up the great work on soul winning.
And with that, let's go ahead and sing our next song.
Come lead us.
Our next song is going to be Psalm 150.
So if you see one of these lying around and if somebody else needs one, pass it off to them because we're kind of short in those.
Psalm 150.
Praise be the Lord.
Praise God in his sanctuary.
Praise him now.
Turn moment of his power.
Praise him for his mighty acts.
Praise him according to his excellent greatness.
Praise him with love.
Sound of the trumpet.
Praise him with love.
Salty and hard.
Praise him with a timbrel and bells.
Praise him with strength instruments and organs.
Praise him upon the loud cymbals.
Praise him upon the high sounding cymbals.
Let everything that, that, that praise the Lord.
Praise he the Lord.
Okay, our next song is going to be song number 248.
Song number 248, Now I Belong to Jesus.
Song 248.
Now I Belong to Jesus.
Jesus, my Lord, will love me forever.
Come, there, no power of evil can sever.
He gave his life to ransom my soul.
Now I Belong to him.
Now I Belong to Jesus.
Jesus belongs to me.
Not for the years of time alone, but for eternity.
Once I was lost in sin's degradation.
Jesus came down to bring me salvation.
He lifted me up from sorrow and shame.
Now I Belong to him.
Now I Belong to Jesus.
Jesus belongs to me.
Not for the years of time alone, but for eternity.
Joy floods my soul for Jesus has saved me.
Freed me from sin that long had enslaved me.
His precious blood he gave to redeem.
Now I Belong to him.
Now I Belong to Jesus.
Jesus belongs to me.
Not for the years of time alone, but for eternity.
All right, this time we'll pass to offering plate.
And as the plate goes around, let's turn our Bibles to Malachi chapter number two.
Last book of the Old Testament is Malachi.
Malachi chapter number two.
And as we always do, we'll read the entire chapter beginning in verse number one.
And as we follow along silently with brother Nick, as he reads Malachi chapter two, starting in verse number one.
Malachi chapter two.
And now all ye priests, this commandment is for you.
If ye will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart, to give glory unto my name, sayeth the Lord of hosts, I will even send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings.
Yea, I have cursed them already, because ye do not lay it to heart.
Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces, even the dung of your solemn feasts, and one shall take you away with it.
And ye shall know that I have sent this commandment unto you, that my covenant might be with Levi, saith the Lord of hosts.
My covenant was with him of life and peace, and I gave them to him for the fear wherewith he feared me, and was afraid before my name.
The law of truth was in his mouth, and iniquity was not found in his lips.
He walked with me in peace and iniquity, and did turn many away from iniquity.
For the priest's lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth, for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts.
But ye are departed out of the way, ye have caused many to stumble at the law, ye have corrupted the covenant of Levi, saith the Lord of hosts.
Therefore, have I also made you contemptible and based before all the people, according as ye have not kept my ways, but have been partial in the law.
Have we not all one Father, hath not one God created us? Why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother by profaning the covenant of our fathers?
Judah hath dealt treacherously, and an abomination is committed in Israel and in Jerusalem.
For Judah hath profaned the holiness of the Lord which he loved, and hath married the daughter of a strange God.
The Lord will cut off the man that doeth this, the master and the scholar, out of the tabernacles of Jacob, and him that offereth an offering unto the Lord of hosts.
And this have ye done again, covering the altar of the Lord with tears, with weeping, and with crying out, insomuch that he regardeth not the offering any more, or receiveth it with good will at your hand.
Yet ye say, Wherefore? because the Lord hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously.
Yet is she thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant.
And did not he make one? yet had he the residue of the spirit, and wherefore one? that he might seek a godly seed, therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth.
For the Lord, the God of Israel, saith that he had he hateth putting away.
For one covereth violence with his garment, saith the Lord of hosts.
Therefore take heed to your spirit, that ye deal not treacherously.
Ye have wearied the Lord with your words, yet ye say, Wherein have we wearied him?
When ye say, Everyone that doeth evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and he delighteth in them, for where is the God of judgment?
Our Father and Reverend, we should come before you, pray for you, and thank you for your goodness, your grace, your loving kindness, and your mercy.
And we know that thou art good to us and over us, and we just thank you for that.
We pray while at your night, in the bathroom, in the anointing with your spirit, in the peace of your word, when we ask and pray in favor, in the name of your precious and holy Son, Jesus Christ, amen.
Man, the title of my sermon tonight is The Dung of Your Solemn Feast.
Look at there in verse number three, it says, Behold, I will corrupt your seed and spread dung upon your faces, even the dung of your solemn feast,
and one shall take you away with it.
These are some pretty strong words from Malachi.
God has inspired him to preach this.
God is leading him to preach God's word here, and he gets up and preaches a hard sermon.
And he says, Look, I'm going to corrupt your seed, and I'm going to spread dung in your face.
Now, that's some pretty hard preaching.
I think today in America, if a pastor got up and said something like this without people knowing that it's in the Bible,
they'd say, Hey, that's over the line.
You're over the top.
You're preaching too hard.
How dare you say that?
You don't have love.
I mean, that's the kind of things that people would say.
But let me tell you something.
It's the soft, watered-down preaching of our day that is not of God.
It is not of God.
Okay?
God, all throughout the Bible, has ordained hard preaching.
We see it in the Old Testament with Isaiah being told, Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet.
Show my people their iniquity.
Show the house of Jacob their sins.
We see Ezekiel being told to smite with the hand and stomp with the foot.
We see Jesus crying out when he preached, calling out the hypocrites, the serpents, the vipers, and preaching hard.
You know, the disciples preached hard.
And we need to get back to hard preaching if we're going to see God's people grow in the Lord and please God.
Okay?
Now, the Bible warned us that a time would come, and this time often comes, when people will not endure sound doctrine, the Bible says.
But after their own lust, shall they heap to themselves teachers having itching ears, and they shall turn away their ears from the truth and shall be turned unto fables.
He tells the man of God, rebuke, reprove, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine, preach the word, and then he says, they will heap to themselves teachers.
Notice, the man of God is told to preach, they will seek out the teacher.
Okay?
Now, of course, teaching is good.
There's nothing wrong with teaching.
In fact, all good preaching is also doubling as teaching.
Right?
Preaching should teach us something, but all teaching is not preaching.
Okay?
When you have somebody that doesn't have any passion, they don't have any fire with it, they don't have any yelling or getting animated, then it's not really biblical preaching.
They might be teaching you something, and there's a place for that, but the preaching of the Bible is crying out with a loud voice, and it's preached with passion, with fire in the belly.
Okay?
We need hard preaching.
Don't get offended at hard preaching.
Don't be one of these people that just everything to you is just too inappropriate or it's just too harsh or too mean.
You know what?
There is a time when God is angry and God's men need to cry out and condemn the sin and the wickedness that God's angry about.
Now, the context of the book of Malachi, and of course, it's a very significant book because it is the last book of the Old Testament, so it has a very significant place in the Bible.
It's going to get read more often just by being right before the New Testament because you know a lot of people just kind of want to see what that last book is about or what's going to happen right before the New Testament, right before Jesus comes on the scene.
And I would venture to guess that even people who haven't read the whole Bible cover to cover, probably most people have read Malachi just because of its significant placement at the end of the Old Testament.
And it's the perfect place to end the Old Testament because what the book of Malachi is about is the Jews are in a state of apostasy.
Their religious leaders have led them astray and God's very angry about it and it ends with the prophecy of John the Baptist.
And if you flip over to Malachi chapter four, you'll see that it says in verse five, these are the last two words of the Old Testament and they're preparing us to roll right into the book of Matthew.
It says, Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.
And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.
So he's saying, look, I'm going to send somebody to straighten you out.
They need to be straightened out and he's going to send someone to straighten them out.
And Jesus identified this as John the Baptist, because when his disciples came to him and said, why do the scribes say that Elias must first come?
He said, well, Elias has come already.
And then they said, oh, then they realized that he spake unto them of John the Baptist, that John the Baptist was who was intended by this prophecy of Elias or Elijah the prophet coming before the great and dreadful day of the Lord.
So John the Baptist came in the spirit and power of Elijah, and he's being prophesied here as one that will straighten them out because they're in a state of apostasy.
Now, what is the reason for their apostasy or what is the root cause of why their religion is so messed up?
Why their morality is so messed up at this period when Malachi is preaching to them and also in the period when John the Baptist comes on the scene?
Because he finds them in the same condition and Malachi is the John the Baptist of his day, you know, and then John the Baptist comes along and finds them in a similar spiritual condition.
Well, the main root problem that's identified in the book of Malachi is the lack of the fear of God.
Okay.
And let me show you that over and over again.
I'll just give you a sampling here.
Look at verse six of chapter one.
He starts out right away with this theme.
Verse number six of chapter one, a son on earth, his father and a servant, his master.
If then I be a father, where is my honor?
And if I be a master, where is my fear?
Sayeth the Lord of hosts unto you, O priests that despise my name.
And then he goes on to explain why he says that about them.
Jump over to chapter two, verse five.
When he's talking about Levi and the covenant that he had with the tribe of Levi, it says in verse five, my covenant was with him of life and peace.
And I gave them to him for the fear wherewith he feared me.
Oh, and by the way, he was afraid before my name.
So notice the repetition there, fear, fear, afraid.
Just in that one verse, he's hammering the fact that that was when Levi was right with God.
That's when the priesthood was doing what they were supposed to do when the priest, the preacher, the pastor feared God.
And they taught the congregation to fear God.
He's saying that's when things were right.
Okay.
Jump down if you would to chapter three, verse number five.
Malachi 3-5, and I will come near to you to judgment.
And he's going to explain some of the wickedness that's just running rampant in their society at this time.
And I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers and against the adulterers and against false swearers and against those that oppress the hireling and his wages, the widow and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right.
But here's what it all comes down to, and fear not me, saying the Lord of Hosts.
You know what he's saying there?
He's saying if you feared me, you wouldn't be a sorcerer.
If you feared me, you wouldn't be committing adultery.
If you feared me, you wouldn't be swearing falsely.
If you feared me, you wouldn't be oppressing the hireling and his wages.
If you feared me, you wouldn't mistreat the widow and the fatherless.
If you feared God, you'd be afraid to do those things because you'd be afraid of God's wrath coming down on you.
And so the fear of the Lord is what God's looking for in the book of Malachi chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3.
Jump down to verse 16.
He gives a positive example about good people because there's always a righteous remnant.
Even when a society goes bad, even when a country goes bad, there's always a righteous remnant.
And he speaks of those people as what?
Verse 16.
They that feared the Lord, right?
Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another, and the Lord hearkened and heard it.
And a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the Lord and that thought upon his name.
So this is a big emphasis in this book of saying, look, you need to fear God.
Fear the Lord and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man, it says in Ecclesiastes chapter number 12.
And so the fear of God causes man to depart from evil.
We need the fear of God.
And when you have watered down, weak preaching that strengthens the hands of the evildoers, nobody fears God.
Because they're exposed to a fake God that is not the God of the Bible.
They're exposed to a God that doesn't judge.
They're exposed to a God that doesn't have any wrath.
They're exposed to a God that's not very fearsome.
He's not very fearful.
The Bible says that our God is a terrible God.
Not terrible as in bad, but terrible as in he ought to terrify you.
The Bible says, well, what about the New Testament?
Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men.
2 Corinthians chapter 5.
So it's in the New Testament, it's in the Old Testament, fear the Lord.
We need the fear of God to be preached into the churches of America.
But sadly, if we go back to chapter 2, that's kind of an overview of the whole book.
Sadly, when God looks down at many of the churches of America today,
when he looks down at their solemn feasts or solemn assemblies or solemn gatherings or solemn church services,
when he looks down at them, he looks at that and he says that's a piece of dung.
I mean, isn't that amazing that God would say that?
I mean, can you imagine God looking down at a church and saying, this is dung.
Pardon my language, but your church is a piece of crap, is what he's saying.
This is dung. This is excrement.
That's what he's basically saying.
Now, you can't really get a bigger insult than that.
You know, if he's describing a church, he could say, hey, you're apostate.
You know, you've fallen away.
You've lost your first love.
You've gotten lukewarm.
Or he could just say, you're dung.
You're just complete dung, you're excrement.
And that's what he's saying.
I mean, this shows that God is very angry at false religion and he calls it out for what it is, dung.
And it says here, let's read the passage here to get the context.
It says in verse 2,
If you will not hear, if you will not lay it to heart to give glory unto my name, sayeth the Lord of hosts, I will even send a curse upon you and I'll curse your blessings.
Yeah, I've cursed them already because you do not lay it to heart.
You say, I already know you're not even listening to my message.
You're not going to take this rebuke.
So in fact, I'm just going to curse you in advance because I already know you're not going to listen to Malachi the prophet.
Verse number 3, behold, I will corrupt your seed and watch this, spread dung upon your faces.
Even the dung of your solemn feast and one shall take you away with it.
What's he actually saying?
He's saying, I'm going to take a piece of dung and he said, I'm going to shove it in your face.
Now, I've never had anyone do that to me.
I've never had any dung shoved in my face.
But it's got to be one of the worst insulting, humiliating things that someone could ever do to you would be to smear dung on your face.
I mean, I can't think of anything that would be much dirtier, much more offensive, much more insulting.
I mean, this is another level from just spitting in someone's face.
This is spreading dung in their face.
And God is saying to them, I'll spread dung in your face.
And he says, the dung I'm going to use is the dung of your solemn feast.
Your church is dung and I'm going to shove that in your face.
And then he says, and one shall take you away with it.
Basically, he's saying, as dung is discarded, you will be discarded.
You will be taken away with the dung.
You're going to be flushed down the toilet with all the dung because that's what you are.
That's where you belong.
These are some very harsh words.
So, you know, if we're smart, we would want to make sure that we would never resemble these type of churches, that we would never resemble these type of people.
We would be wise to study the Book of Malachi and figure out what it is that's making God so mad so that we make sure that we don't go there and that we would fear the Lord.
He says in verse 4, and ye shall know that I have sent this commandment unto you that my covenant might be with Levi, sayeth the Lord of hosts.
So what he's saying is, you know, I want to have my covenant be with Levi, but in order for me to have my covenant with Levi, Levi is going to have to get his act together.
Okay?
I'm not just going to have a covenant with Levi that just never ends and basically has no stipulations where Levi can just teach lies and extort money and do whatever he wants.
You know, that's not going to work.
Okay?
And we've already seen earlier in the Old Testament when some of the Levitical priesthood was wicked, God swore and said, I'm going to remove you from being a priest.
And he ended up going with the other branch of the family of Levi and discarding the wicked branch.
The sons of Eli were cursed and so forth.
So he says in verse 5, my covenant was with him of life and peace and I gave them to him for the fear wherewith he feared me and was afraid before my name.
The law of truth was in his mouth and iniquity was not found in his lips.
He walked with me in peace and equity and to turn many away from iniquity.
Now, I don't believe that this is talking about the person Levi.
We don't really see any evidence in the Bible of the biblical character Levi from the book of Genesis doing any of these things.
You know, there's nothing in the book of Genesis that would indicate that Levi did any of these things.
Typically, God will talk about groups of people by the name of their ancestor like he'll call the whole nation Israel.
But Israel is a person's name, right? Jacob's name was changed to Israel.
Sometimes he'll in fact call the nation of Israel just Jacob.
He'll say Jacob this, Jacob that.
He's talking about a nation.
In fact, in chapter 1 of Malachi, he talks about hating Esau and destroying Esau.
Again, there's no record in Genesis of God destroying the person Esau, but he did destroy the Edomites, okay?
And so we see that often Esau, Jacob, Levi, Judah, these are referring to the nations or the tribes that would descend from these people.
So when he talks about his covenant being with Levi, you know, God didn't show up in Genesis and make a covenant with Levi.
The covenant was actually made with Moses and Aaron and the sons of Aaron, the Kohathites, the Mararites, right, the Malites.
So he made the covenant with the Levites in the time of Moses, okay?
And throughout the history of the children of Israel, from then forward, Levi was the priest, okay?
But not back in Genesis.
Starting with Exodus is where Levi, quote unquote, becomes the priest and what that means is the tribe of Levi.
Notably, Moses, Aaron, the sons of Aaron, etc.
So he says the law of truth was in his mouth.
He's talking about Levi's mouth representing the Levitical tribe.
He's saying there was a time when the Levites were preaching good.
There was a time when the priests and the Levites had the law of truth in their mouth and iniquity not found in their lips.
That's what he's saying there.
He walked with me in peace and equity, verse 6, and did turn many away from iniquity.
So if we want to know what a pastor should be doing, what should a preacher be doing, he should have the word of God in his mouth.
He should have the law of truth in his mouth.
Not just preaching his own opinions, not just preaching the philosophies of this world, but actually using the word of God and preaching what the Bible actually says about any given subject, okay?
And then it says that he should walk with him in peace and equity and turn many away from iniquity.
So it should be the goal of the pastor to get up and preach in such a way that people would be dissuaded from sinning, right?
To where people would walk out and say, you know, that sin I was going to do, I'm not going to do that anymore.
That iniquity that I've been into, I'm going to quit that.
That should be the goal of preaching, to help get sin out of people's lives.
You say, well, just preach the gospel.
Look, the gospel is important for getting people saved, but who's saved?
Raise your hand if you're saved in here, okay?
So here's the thing, done.
All right, so why would I get up and just preach the gospel and salvation every service when there's a whole Bible here and all scripture is given by inspiration of God and the Bible says that it's all profitable for instruction in righteousness.
It's all profitable for correction.
So it's my job to get up and correct and instruct, to rebuke, to reprove, to exhort with the word of God.
Look, we need preaching that is what the Bible says, not someone's opinion.
Let me give you an example.
I listened to a whole sermon one time about the subject of people cutting themselves, self-harm.
It was basically the pastor had obviously been reading up on a bunch of psychology and psychobabble.
So he's getting up and preaching about anxiety disorders and panic attacks and he's going on and on.
And he barely used the Bible.
I think the verse that he used was, you know, thou will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee for he trusted in thee.
Or something like about the peace of God which passeth all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds to Christ Jesus.
That was pretty much the only Bible in the whole hour-long sermon.
So he gives a couple verses on peace from God.
Then he proceeds to spend an hour talking about people self-harming, cutting themselves.
And yet he just totally failed to go to the scripture on people cutting themselves.
It's not like that's a subject the Bible doesn't deal with.
I mean you've got the prophets of Baal cutting themselves.
You've got scripture in Leviticus 19 commanding you not to cut yourself in a context of witchcraft, eating blood, cuttings in your flesh for the dead.
Then you've got in the New Testament people who are demon-possessed.
And what are demon-possessed people doing?
They're cutting themselves with stones.
Not only that, they would throw themselves into the fire, throw themselves into the water, try to drown themselves and do all these self-harming activities.
Look, if you're going to get up and preach about self-harm, if you're going to get up and preach about cutting yourself, great.
But why don't we preach what the Bible says about it?
You know, if we're going to preach about the Sodomites, why don't we preach what the Bible says about it?
I don't want to hear any sermon about the Sodomites unless it's what the Bible says about it.
I don't care if it's good stuff that you're saying.
I don't care if you're condemning sodomy.
I want to hear what the Bible says about it.
You know, I want to hear the Bible's language.
I want to hear the Bible's teaching.
I want to hear what God thinks about these things.
Not just, well, you know, here's what we believe and here's what people are saying and here's how we can help and blah, blah, blah.
Look, show me chapter and verse.
And, you know, some people act like calling out for chapter and verse is a bad thing.
Hey, we should ask for chapter and verse when people come at us with some teaching.
If somebody comes at me with some exotic teaching, I'm going to say, hey, you have chapter and verse for that?
Because if you don't, then you have no authority.
You know, that's just your opinion and you could be wrong.
So we need chapter and verse for what we believe.
We need the law of truth in our mouth and we need preaching that turns people away from iniquity,
not preaching that strengthens the hands of the evildoers by saying everyone's good even though they do evil in the sight of the Lord.
Okay, that's the wrong kind of preaching.
Let's keep going.
It says in verse seven for the priest lips should keep knowledge and they should seek the law at his mouth for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts.
So the priest lips, first of all, he needs to know the Bible.
He needs to know what he's talking about in the first place.
And then people should come to him looking for God's word, looking for the law, seeking the law at his mouth.
The law here is talking about the Bible.
Okay, that's what the word law is referring to.
It's referring to Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.
You know, they go to the Levite, they go to the priest, they go to the prophet, they go to the man of God and they expect to get an answer from God's word.
He knows the Bible.
Maybe they don't know the Bible that well.
So they go to the guy whose job it is to know the Bible and say, hey, what does the Bible say?
And he is supposed to act as the messenger of the Lord of hosts.
Okay, so he's not supposed to be serving his own agenda, putting his own spin on things, but rather he is to figure out what God's judgments are and just pass them on.
You know, and then when he gets up and preaches a hard sermon, he could say, don't kill the messenger.
You know, don't kill them.
I'm not the one that wants to spread dung in your face.
I would never do something like that.
But God will.
That's what God said, right?
So we, as preachers, are to be messengers of the Lord of hosts.
What are they doing?
They're doing the opposite.
Look at verse 8.
But ye are departed out of the way.
You've caused many to stumble at the law.
You've corrupted the covenant of Levi, saith the Lord of hosts.
Therefore, have I also made you contemptible and base before all the people, according as ye have not kept my ways, but have been partial in the law.
He's saying, I am going to humiliate you.
I am going to take...
And, you know, that's part of the symbolism of the...
I mean, that's a pretty humiliating activity right there.
But when he says there, I'm going to make you base, or I have made you base, because he speaks of the things which be not as though they are.
You know, it's as good as done when God sets out to punish you.
But he says, I've also made you contemptible and base before all the people.
He's saying, people are going to despise you, and you are going to be base.
Base?
What's base?
Base is at the bottom.
He's saying, you're going down.
I'm going to bring you down.
I'm going to humiliate you in front of everybody.
I am going to punish you.
He said, you've not kept my ways.
You've been partial in the law.
Meaning that they would basically enforce the law on one person, and then their buddies in the good old boy club, they get a free pass.
Right?
So one person can get away with murder, and then another person, you know, they're going to come down on them like a ton of bricks for every little thing.
Okay?
They're being partial in judgment.
Look at verse 10.
It says, have we not all one father?
Have not one God created us?
Why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother by profaning the covenant of our fathers?
Judah had dealt treacherously, and an abomination is committed in Israel and in Jerusalem.
For Judah hath profaned the holiness of the Lord, which he loved, and have married the daughter of a strange God.
Now, when he says here, have we not all one father, verse 10, and hath not one God created us, some people will twist this and use this as a proof text that everyone is God's child.
They'll say, well, we're all God's children.
And if you ask for chapter and verse, this would probably be where they would take you to claim that God is all of our father.
But what you have to understand is that when he says, have we not all one father, what does he say at the end of the verse?
Profane the covenant of our fathers.
He's talking to people that he's actually literally related to.
He's saying, why are we doing this to our brother?
Because they're talking about the fact that, hey, we're of the tribe of Levi, or we're of Jacob at least.
We're Israelites.
And the Bible often has laws that say, hey, don't do this to your brother in Hebrew.
Don't do this to your brother in Israel.
Hey, do it to the stranger.
Do it to the one that's a foreigner.
But, you know, your brother, you shall not do that to them.
And so we see here that he's just saying, you know, we all have one father and one God has created us.
He's not saying that those are the same thing.
He's not saying, hey, if God created you, that makes God your father.
That's not true.
Why?
Because the Bible says in the New Testament, as many as received him to them gave you power to become the sons of God, even them that believe on his name.
That means that they were not previously the sons of God.
They become the sons of God when they believe on his name.
The Bible also says, ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.
So what is the vehicle by which we are the children of God?
It's our faith in Christ that causes us to be born again when we believe on Jesus Christ.
Behold what manner of love the father had given unto us that we may be called the sons of God.
They, therefore the world knoweth us not because it knew him not.
Beloved, now are we the sons of God.
Right?
Everybody is not a son of God.
You got to believe on Jesus Christ to be a child of God.
But he says in verse 12, the Lord will cut off the man that doeth this.
The man that does what?
That profanes the holiness of the Lord and that marries the daughter of a strange God.
So don't try to mix the Lord's religion with false religion.
You know, the priests, they've turned away from the Lord who they loved in the past.
They've profaned the holiness of the Lord, which they had loved previously.
And they're married to the daughter of a strange God.
You see, we see that all around us where we see Christianity married to Buddhism.
Christianity married to Hinduism.
Christianity married to paganism.
It's called the Roman Catholic Church.
It's called the Greek Orthodox Church.
Where you have all these pagan practices that are totally foreign to scripture.
But yet, here they are.
We walk into a Catholic Church and we have all kinds of voodoo and hocus pocus, idolatry, monks, nuns, monasteries.
All things that are straight out of worshipping a strange God.
They come from paganism.
They come from Buddhism.
They come from Hinduism.
If you ever find something in Roman Catholicism or the Greek Orthodox or one of these apostate Christian, quote, unquote, churches.
And you're trying to figure out, like, where did they get this?
This isn't in the Bible.
Where did this come from?
I guarantee you will find it in false religion that existed before Christianity.
You'll find it in the worship of Baal.
You'll find it in the worship of the Roman Pantheon.
You'll find it in the worship of the Greek Pantheon.
You will find it in Hinduism.
You will find it in Buddhism.
Things that came before Christianity where they took Christ's message and then they married the daughter of a strange God.
You know, they borrowed all this stuff from heathen, ungodly religion.
OK.
We need to be solely getting our doctrine from scripture.
And if it's not in scripture, it should be discarded.
No nuns, no monasteries, no idolatry, no images, no icons.
OK.
We don't need to borrow anything from the devil's religion.
The devil can have his religion.
Our religion needs to be based on the word of God.
It's not like the Bible is short.
There's a lot in here to do.
This is what we need to be doing.
And not get sucked into these other ecumenical practices where we're bringing in other religion and trying to merge it and so forth.
We don't need to be Judeo-Christian or Chrislam or anything else.
We need to keep it separate.
I don't want anything from Islam.
It's a wicked perverse religion.
And so, you know, we don't need to learn from it.
Except learn what not to do.
Except learn how to win them to Christ and get them out of the cult that they're in.
But look at verse 12 of chapter 2.
It says, the Lord will cut off the man that doeth this, the master and the scholar out of the tabernacles of Jacob, and him that offereth an offering unto the Lord of hosts.
So here's what he's saying here.
Look, it doesn't matter if you're a master, a scholar, or if you're the guy who's literally doing the burnt offering, you're getting cut off.
You see, being a scholar or a master, you know, your master of divinity, you got your masters in theology.
You got your masters in Christian ministry or whatever.
That does not make you right with God.
That does not make you a man of God, okay?
Being a scholar.
Did you know that there's a wicked kind of scholarship?
And in fact, there are Bible scholars that are super wicked that don't even claim to believe in Jesus.
There are guys who are literal Bible scholars.
Look, you can go to Harvard and get a masters degree in theology at a secular university.
You can get one at Yale or Princeton and not even believe the Bible.
They're not going to be like, all right, you know, they're calling the role like, you know, Charles Landreth, you know, come forward and get your degree.
You believe in Jesus, right?
Because, I mean, I'm not going to give you this master in theology unless you believe the Bible.
You think they're going to say that?
Do you think on the final exam it's like, bonus.
Is Jesus the son of God?
You know, and if you say no, you're thrown out of the program.
Folks, there's no requirement to be a Christian or believe the word.
Look, there are all kinds of heathens who are experts in theology, experts in textual criticism of the New Testament,
experts in the original languages of scripture, experts in Near Eastern religion and the Middle East.
And they are Semitic scholars and they know all these things.
But, folks, that does not prevent them from being evil and lying to you.
Why wouldn't uns—look, just think about it.
If you didn't believe in Christ, if you're an atheist or an agnostic,
why would you go spend six years in college studying the Bible and get a master's degree in religion?
I mean, it doesn't seem like that would make a lot of sense.
Maybe they're being driven by some dark force to do that since the Bible tells us that unsaved people walk according to the power of the prince of the power of the air.
The spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.
Maybe the devil is using unsaved people, whether knowingly or unknowingly, to do his bidding to infiltrate institutions of higher learning,
to infiltrate academia and scholarship and put out a bunch of lies and garbage to try to get people to doubt God's word,
to forsake God's word, to get on a new version of God's word.
And you know what? Look at the people who are behind these new versions of the Bible.
And you know, you're going to find some very wicked people.
You're going to find a lot of wickedness.
You're going to find—and you'll find that the experts in textual criticism often are not even claiming to believe that Jesus died and rose again.
And so when you say, oh, well, you know, these scholars have told us that the ESV and the NIV, okay, who are these scholars?
What are their names?
Because when you start actually looking at these guys and figuring out what they believe, you'll find out that at best they are super liberal in their interpretation and application of God's word.
And at worst, they are full-blown atheists or agnostics that will not even begin to—like they'll deny the virgin birth or something.
I mean, I'm not saying liberal like, hey, you know, they're just a little watered down in their preaching.
I'm saying like they'll deny the virgin birth.
They'll deny the bodily resurrection.
They'll deny the deity of Jesus Christ.
These kind of—that's what I mean by liberal scholars, okay?
We have the Word of God, the King James Bible right here.
We don't need textual criticism.
You know why we don't need textual criticism?
Because it already happened and it's over.
You know what I'm saying?
You know, back in the 1500s, people spent decades and decades going back to the Greek, looking at the Greek manuscripts, looking at the Hebrew text, right?
And they went through it, and scholars and people who loved the Word of God went over it with a fine-tooth comb.
They got it all dialed in, and you want to know when they finished that process?
1611, right?
1611, it's done, folks, right?
Because you've got Erasmus, you've got Stephanus, you've got Beza, and they're working out the Greek and Hebrew text.
Then you have these 54 brilliant scholars get together and give us the finished product, the King James Bible, which, by the way, just happens to be the greatest book ever published in the history of mankind.
Which just happens to be the best-selling book of all time.
Which just happens to be the greatest translation in the history of planet Earth, okay?
And you say, well, you know, according to who?
Folks, it is the standard.
It's everywhere.
It's 400 years later, it's still in print, okay?
There have been more versions of the ESV printed than Spider-Man movies in the last 30 years because they're coming out with a new ESV all the time, a new NIV all the time.
They just keep, hey, isn't it funny how the King James is still the same 400 years later, we're still on the King James version.
And, of course, they came out with their stupid new King James version, which is a lie and a fraud and a flop.
And you know what? People are still using the old King James.
There are thousands and thousands and thousands, and you know what?
They did a Pew research poll a few years ago, and they were looking at what the most popular Bible versions were, and currently the best-selling Bible version is the NIV.
That's the one that sells the most copies.
But when they actually did research on who read the Bible, the KJV was the most read Bible by a landslide.
The NIV is for people who don't care about God's Word, who just buy it and carry it to church three times a month, and woo, you know, and they go to some shallow church fun center, and then they take it home, and they put it on the shelf, it collects dust.
They don't actually read the thing. Hey, people actually read the Bible and care about it. They're not reading the NIV.
Okay? Look at even a secular research study. Pew Research did a poll, and it showed dramatically that the King James Bible is the most read Bible.
People who actually read the Bible, more people today are reading a King James than any other version.
Tomorrow, the day after, the day after that, this week, more people will be reading a King James Bible than any other Bible.
And it was translated 400 years ago, and still it is the standard by which all other Bibles are judged.
And the devil is at an all-out assault on it, all these publishing houses, all these advertising companies, you walk into the Christian bookstore, it's all geared towards selling you something else.
Okay? They're always pushing something else. All the colleges and the seminaries and everything, 99% of them are pushing something else, trying to push people away from the King James.
But isn't it amazing just how stubborn that King James Bible is? That even just with all the opposition against it, they cannot stop it.
And it's growing, by the way. Somebody sent me this really cool graphic where they showed Google searches of the terms KJV, NIV, and ESV.
And they showed it like, I think, 10 years ago or 12 years ago or something like that.
Ten years ago, they showed that they were kind of close in how many people were Googling those three items.
And then it showed how over the last like seven, eight years, it was just like trending compared to the other ones.
Like you could see where the ESV and the NIV or the King James was just taking off and trending.
Okay? So why? Because with the advent of the internet, it's easier to expose these versions.
Because, you know, the Christian bookstore is not going to tell you the truth about the difference between the versions.
You got all these Bible colleges, seminaries, and churches leading people astray.
And so the internet has given people a chance to be able to look at charts, comparing verses side by side, you know, putting the KJV side by side with the other versions.
And showing how these new versions are filled with lies, heresy, and exposing how they have sodomites on the translation committee of the NIV.
Two open sodomites on the translation committee.
And, you know, it's funny how these modern versions, they talk about how, oh, they brought in a diversity of religious leaders so that it wouldn't be slanted to any one denomination.
But when they say diversity, here's what they mean.
The most liberal Baptist they can find, super liberal Presbyterian, a Lutheran, an Anglican.
They didn't bring in a fundamentalist.
Okay? Because the real fundamentalists aren't going to want anything to do with corrupting God's word.
Okay. So they're not bringing in, they're not bringing in people who are representing the traditional text or representing the view of what's been passed down to us, the received text.
No, it's all just different brands of liberal.
Oh, look at all the diversity.
We got a sodom, we got a queer and a lesbian.
They do on the, you know, you got, you got Woodstraw and Molincott.
There's your two sodomites, you know, that work with the NIV.
And then they say, oh, you know, Virginia Molincott, she wasn't really that important.
She just consulted the style.
Yeah, I noticed.
I noticed the style of the NIV was kind of queer sounding.
That's the last thing I want a queer working on.
I'd rather have them work on anything but the style.
I mean, good stinking night.
Like, oh, don't worry, that was just for the style.
Yeah, the style of your church.
The style of the way that you act.
Okay?
And so, you know, these modern versions are garbage.
And don't be fooled by the so-called scholars.
They are often overrated.
And anybody who actually does real learning and study can usually expose these guys that they actually are fake.
Their scholarship is often fake.
They, often they're pretending to be experts in the original languages.
And a lot of these guys who worked on the translation committees are not even fluent in these languages.
You can't even, you could hand them a Hebrew Old Testament and open to a random scripture.
They're not going to be able to navigate it.
They've, you know, they've learned how to parse verbs or whatever.
But, folks, there's a wicked scholarship that's out there.
So don't just think that if somebody's a scholar,
oh, this guy must love the Bible because he spent so many thousands of hours.
Maybe he spent thousands of hours because he hates the Bible.
Maybe he spent thousands and thousands of hours because he's on a mission to corrupt God's Word,
because maybe he's under the influence of Satan.
So scholarship does not equal godliness.
Now, there's a right kind of scholarship.
It's good to study to show yourself approved unto God.
But the Bible says here the master, master, like a teacher, an expert, or a scholar,
he says, I'm going to cut you off.
That means nothing to God.
He's not a respecter of persons.
And this have ye done again, covering the altar of the Lord with tears,
with weeping, and with crying out,
insomuch that he regardeth not the offering anymore,
or receiveth it with good will at your hand.
Yet ye say, Wherefore? Why?
Because the Lord hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth,
against whom thou has dealt treacherously,
yet is she thy companion and the wife of thy covenant.
And did not he make one?
Yet had he the residue of the Spirit,
and wherefore one, that he might seek a godly seed.
Therefore, take heed to your spirit,
and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth.
For the Lord, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away,
saying he hates divorce.
For one covereth violence with his garment, saith the Lord of hosts.
Therefore, take heed to your spirit, that you deal not treacherously.
Verse 17, You've wearied the Lord with your words.
You know what that means?
I'm sick of you.
You've wearied me with your words means I am sick of listening to you.
I'm sick of your solemn feasts.
I'm sick of it.
I'm tired of it.
Weary means what? Tired.
If I said, Oh, I'm so weary, it means I'm tired.
Yet you say, Wherein have we wearied him?
When you say, Everyone that doeth evil is good in the sight of the Lord,
and he delighteth in them.
Oh, God loves everybody.
These sodomites and, you know, God delights in them.
Or how about a book called God's Not Mad at You by Joyce Meyer?
You know, basically, what are they saying?
They're saying, Everyone that doeth evil is good in the sight of the Lord,
and he delighteth in them, praising the wicked.
The Bible says, They that forsake the law praise the wicked,
but such as keep the law content with them.
And by the way, Joyce Meyer, no woman needs to be preaching in the house of God, period.
Okay, it blows me away how it seems like the Southern Baptists are always arguing about the issue of women preachers.
You know what?
Any denomination that has to argue about whether we're going to have female pastors is a stupid denomination.
You need to get out of it.
Why not just be an independent Baptist?
What do you need them for?
Oh, so great we have our cooperative program.
Why would I want to cooperate with somebody who's so feminist and so liberal and so ignorant of the Bible
that they're going to put a woman behind the pulpit as a pastor?
I want to cooperate with that.
That's nonsense.
What, so I can make sure that some of my mission's money goes in the trash?
Oh, man, we can work together.
It's going to be great.
And then what percentage of it's going in the trash?
What percentage of it's going to some flaming liberal?
Okay, that's why we're independent Baptists.
We don't want to be yoked up with some denomination that's going to try to water us down
and try to get us to accept women preachers or something.
By the way, there's a major, and I'm not an expert on Brazil,
but from what I understand, the major Baptist denomination in Brazil,
someone who lived down there told me, is ordaining women.
I'm not an expert on that.
You'd have to verify that.
But we see these denominations in various parts of the world ordaining female pastors.
You say, there's nothing wrong with women, but there's something seriously wrong with having a woman be the pastor.
When the Bible says, I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
The Bible says, let your women keep silence in the churches, for it is not permitted unto them to speak.
Nothing could be clearer.
And if you're going to disregard such a clear scripture that says,
let your women keep silence in the churches, for it's not permitted unto them to speak,
and then you're going to say, all right, let's have them preach a sermon.
Let's have them teach the Word of God.
It shows that you don't give a rip what the Bible says.
That's what you're saying.
I don't care what the Bible says.
I'm going to do what I want to do.
All right, Levi.
Well, you know what?
You're going to get wiped out then.
That's wickedness.
And it's so funny.
And then they say, oh, so what are you saying?
The women just have to walk in and they can't sing a song?
You know, those are the kind of arguments people use to try to nullify God's Word.
They try to nullify God's Word.
Here's God's Word.
And what do they want to do?
They want to nullify it.
They want to just cancel it out.
Like, oh, the Bible says, swear not at all, but what about this oath, and what about
that oath, and what about this?
You know, it's just like they just want to nullify when God just said, don't do it.
Don't do it.
Let the women keep silence in the churches.
It's not permitted unto them to speak.
Obviously, the context is it says, learn in silence.
It says, let them learn in silence.
If they will learn anything, let them ask their husband at home.
It's a shame for women to speak in the church.
Obviously, he's not saying they can't sing a song.
Obviously, he's not saying that they can't talk in the church building or talk to each
other and fellowship or say something.
Okay, what he's saying is they are not to teach.
I suffer not a woman to usurp authority over the man.
He said, I suffer not a woman to teach, nor do you serve authority over the man.
What is being a pastor?
It's being an authority figure.
What is being a pastor?
Teaching.
If the woman is not supposed to be teaching the word of God and not supposed to be usurping
authority over the man, she's supposed to learn in silence, how can you put her behind
the pulpit and have her preach a sermon?
Not to say that they couldn't sing or talk about something else, but preaching the
word of God is not to be done in the house of God by women.
It's to be done by men.
He said, well, you know, if the men would step up to the plate, then these women
would not.
They would not get up.
There are so many men preaching all over this world.
You mean to tell me there's a city in America where you can't find a Baptist
church where a man is the pastor?
It's just so, well, the men are, well, you know what?
Then there's something wrong with your denomination.
If you have a church with hundreds of people and there's not a hair-legged
man in the building who wants to get up and preach, then what are you doing?
What are you, you know, and look, if you go to, by the way, if you go to a
church and there's no men in there, you know, and I'm talking about a big
church, you go to a big church and they can't get any men to come.
What's going on?
What's the deal?
I mean, there's a problem, right?
So to sit there and say, oh, well, men aren't stepping up to the plate.
No, there's a man down the street stepping up to the plate.
You just don't want to hear what he has to say.
You don't want to hear about the dung that's going to be spread at your
face is what's going on.
That's why you're not going down the street and you want to listen to
Joyce Joker Meyer, Joyce Joker Meyer.
Folks, why would anyone listen to a preacher that's a woman that looks like
the Joker?
She looks like the Joker.
Why?
I mean, look, if you look like her, you should, why would you put your
picture on the book?
You know what I'm saying?
Like, look, if you're a woman, you look like the Joker and you're
publishing a book.
Here's a little tip.
Don't put your picture on the book.
You know, you don't have to put a picture on the book.
And you say, well, she can't control it.
She's making herself look like the Joker.
She wasn't born.
She didn't come out.
She wasn't born in the hospital and the doctor's like, ah!
Ah!
What is this?
It's the Joker.
She wasn't born looking.
She paints her face to look like the Joker.
She literally, I mean, look, just Google image, Joyce Meyer.
And you'll be like, I accidentally typed in Joker.
Let me type it in.
It's like, no, I typed.
I'm serious.
I mean, it's just like, eh.
Just, she's got her short hair, which is a shame because women are
going to have long hair.
She's got her hair real short and she's got her face.
It's not just that she's wearing makeup, folks.
She's wearing a Joker makeup.
And I defy anyone to actually Google that and come up and say,
I don't think she looks like the Joker.
You're just in denial.
But that just goes to show you how people are so far removed
spiritually from where they need to be that they would seek out.
They would actually go to the store and find that book with
the Joker on it and be like, oh, this is where I'm going to
learn the word of God.
Pass by shelves of King James, right?
Pass by men of God that are thundering forth the word of
God and get that book that's called God is not mad
at you by Joyce Meyer.
Well, you know, I'm going to write a book called God's
mad at you.
You know, I don't care who you are.
I don't care what you God is mad.
Folks, the Bible says the Lord's angry with the wicked
every day.
That means today on October 20th.
God's mad today at the wicked.
OK, this is one of his eternal attributes.
He has eternal never ending love.
He has eternal never ending wrath.
The smoke of their torment ascended up forever and ever.
That's an eternal burning wrath of God.
Oh, God's not mad.
God got mad at Moses.
God got mad at literally the best person on the whole
planet, the meekest man on the face of the earth.
God got mad at him.
That means impossible to go through life without God
getting mad at you at some point.
You have made God mad at some point.
You will probably make him mad again.
Joyce Meyer has literally lied to every single person
by saying, oh, God's not mad at you because at
some point that book's going to become a lie on
your shelf.
You know, if you put that on your shelf and the
eyes of it probably follow you around in the
dark or, you know, you get up to get your
water in the middle of the night and the eyes
of that book are following you, you know,
and at some point God's going to be mad at you
and then you look at that book and it's a lie
because God is mad at you.
You know, everyone that do it good is or
everyone that do the evil is good in the sight
of the Lord and he delighted in them.
No fear of God.
Just everything's great.
Everybody's fine.
God just loves everybody and nobody.
He's not mad at anybody.
And then also they say this at the end of
chapter two that where is the God of judgment?
You know, all this preaching about hellfire
and damnation.
Where is it?
You got to be careful saying that because God
is slow to anger.
God is slow to wrath and God does not punish
right away because to him a day is like a
thousand years and a thousand years is like
one day.
So often God's wrath is slow to hit.
But when it hits, it's too late.
So you've got to be smart enough to fear
the Lord while things are going good to
serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with
trembling as the Bible says.
And look, this is New Testament Ephesians six
with fear and trembling as unto Christ with
good will doing service as to the Lord and
not to men.
Where is the God of judgment?
And then, of course, he rolls into a
scripture about John the Baptist and Jesus
coming in Malachi chapter three, verse one,
because this is the Old Testament looking
forward to Christ coming.
Look at verse two, though.
You know, the verse one's the famous
verse, but it says in verse two,
but who may abide the day of his coming
and who shall stand when he appearance for
he's like a refiner's fire and like
fuller's soap.
And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier
of silver.
And he shall purify the sons of Levi
and purge them as gold and silver that
they may offer unto the Lord an offering
in righteousness.
Then shall the offering of Judah and
Jerusalem be pleasant unto the Lord as in
the days of old and as in former years.
Look, we want to please God.
We want the offering of the Lord to be
pleasant.
We want God to look down on Sunday
morning and be happy when he sees people
coming to church and having a solemn
assembly and they want to learn the Bible
and they want to see people saved and
they have a heart that's hungering and
thirsting for righteousness.
And when they show up to church, you
know, they respect God's house and
they're there with respect and fear and
they want to learn and they love the
Lord.
And you know what?
And the Bible says that that'll be
pleasant to him as it used to be.
Okay, so we want to make sure that our
church is pleasing to God.
And when he looks down on Sunday night
and Wednesday night and when he looks
down at a soul winning activity or if
he looks down at a missions trip,
whatsoever we do, we want him to look
down and be pleased with what we're
doing, not to find it to be dung in
his sight.
Okay, we want to be pleased with us.
We have to follow the word of God.
He tells us what he was mad about.
It's no mystery why he was mad.
It's no mystery what to do to get it
right.
We got to get rid of the adultery,
right?
We got to get rid of the sin.
We've got to get rid of the wickedness
and we got to have preachers that preach
the Bible.
As it's written, preach the word of
God.
Give us the truth.
Be a messenger of the Lord of hosts.
Tell us what God says.
Give us real knowledge and wisdom and
don't strengthen the hands of the
evil doers, but rather warn them,
scare them, put the fear of God into
them instead of just saying,
Oh, you'll be fine.
God's just happy with just the way
that you are.
He, you know, you're under the age of
grace and that just basically means
to do whatever you want and
everything's going to be fine.
That is a lie.
It is not true.
God is still a God of judgment,
even in the New Testament.
This is predicting the New Testament,
talking about his wrath and judgment.
The only thing that matters to me
about our church is whether our
church pleases God.
I don't care if it pleases anyone
else.
As long as God is pleased,
that's all that should matter.
Well, I don't know if visitors like it.
You know, I don't know if, you know,
my friends are going to like it,
my family is going to like it,
but does God like it?
Is it compatible with God's word?
Because you know what?
There are other places.
We could take people to a church
where your friends and family and
everybody's just going to love it.
I mean, everybody's going to love it
because it rocks.
You know what I mean?
And then nothing's going to be
said that offends them.
It's all going to be sweetness
and light.
But at the end of the day,
I want to go to a church that
honors God.
And that's all that matters.
It's everything.
And we need the fear of God.
We need hard preaching.
We need to never get away from
hard preaching as a church and
never just get to the point
where we're teaching the Bible,
but we don't have the preaching
of the Bible.
And look, I'm for the teaching.
I'm for the scholarship.
I'm for the learning.
But we've got to have the
fire in the pulpit.
We've got to have the
rebuke of sin.
We've got to have the wrath of
God being preached as well as
the gospel.
We need to preach the whole
counsel of God.
Father, we thank you so much
for this book of Malachi,
Lord.
I pray that people would let
this sink in and understand
the spirit of the book of
Malachi, Lord.
Go home and study the book of
Malachi on their own.
And throughout the years that
this book of Malachi would be
a part of their reading on a
regular basis on a yearly basis
that they would get through the
book of Malachi and that they
would realize the importance of
understanding the fear of the
Lord and the importance of
doing things right, lest we
are at the receiving end of
this kind of anger and these
strong words, Lord, help us to
be pleasant in your sight as in
the days of old.
In Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.
Before we leave this evening,
it's going to be song
number 108.
Song number 101 in your song
books, Jesus Never Fails.
Song number 101.
Earthly friends,
may believe the truth.
Thousands fears have
through the truth, doubts and fears assailed.
One still loves and cares for you, one who will not fail.
Jesus never fails.
Heaven and Earth may pass away, but Jesus never fails.
Oh, the sky be dark and clear, fierce and strong again.
Just remember he is near, and he will not fail.
Jesus never fails.
Heaven and Earth may pass away, but Jesus never fails.
In life's dark and bitter hour, love will still prevail.
Just his everlasting power, Jesus will not fail.
Jesus never fails.
Heaven and Earth may pass away, but Jesus never fails.