SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/24/2016 8:36 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
An unannounced Coming
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: Malachi 3:3
Message of the verses: 3 “He will sit as a smelter and purifier of
silver, and He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and
silver, so that they may present to the LORD offerings in righteousness.”
As I follow
the outline from Dr. Warren Wiersbe it seems to me that this section we will be
looking at today is under the heading of “The messenger of the covenant”—Jesus Christ”
which covers Malachi 3:1b-6.” I will
give a quick introduction to this section before we look at verse three of
Malachi chapter three.
Dr. Wiersbe
writes in his introduction “The first prophecy refers to our Lord’s first
coming in grace and mercy, but this prophecy speaks of His second coming in
judgment. When He comes, He will prove
that God is just by purifying His people and judging rebellious sinners. Jesus Christ is the ‘Messenger of the
Covenant’ in that He fulfilled all the demands of the covenant in His life,
suffered the penalties in His death, and rose from the dead to usher in a New
Covenant of grace (Jer. 31:31-40; Matt. 26:26-30; Heb 8:6-13). All the covenant s in Old Testament history
unite in pointing to Jesus Christ and His marvelous work of redemption.”
Now we will
move to the very short commentary on verse three which is the focus of our
Spiritual Diary for today.
Now in the
introduction we mentioned that we are now talking about the second coming of
Jesus Christ, and I want to point out that when we were studying the later
portions of the book of Zechariah that that book also had chapters that looked
at the first coming of Jesus Christ and then other chapters that looked at the
second coming of Jesus Christ so Malachi is similar in that way.
The second
coming of Jesus Christ will be sudden and unexpected and the purpose of this
coming will be to judge sinners and then establish His kingdom here on
earth. Jesus told His disciples in the
24th chapter of Matthew in what is known as the Olivet Discourse “But
of that day and hour, no one knows, no, not even the angels of heaven, but My
Father only” (Matthew
24:36. Then we can also look at 1
Thessalonians 5:3 which says “For when they say, ‘Peace and safety!’ then
sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman” (1
Thess. 5:3).
Now between
the first coming of Jesus Christ and the second coming of Jesus Christ back to
planet earth there will also be an event that is called the Rapture of the
Church which will be the culmination of the church age which began on the Day
of Pentecost after the Lord went back into heaven. So we have to remember that each of these
events, the First coming, the Rapture, and the Second coming are different as
Jesus first came to die for the sins of the world, and then His coming in the
clouds is to bring all the church saints to heaven with Him, and then the Second
coming, Jesus comes to judge the earth and set up His Kingdom which will last
for 1000 years after which the entire universe will be burned with fire as
Peter talks about in 1 Peter 3:10, and then after that there will be a new
heaven and a new earth and also a new Jerusalem where all of the saints will
dwell for eternity with the triune God.
11/24/2016 8:55 PM
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