SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/25/2016 10:53 PM
My Worship Time Focus: An Unprepared People
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: Malachi 3:1
Message of the verse: “1 "Behold, I am going to send My
messenger, and he will clear 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.” “1 Behold, I will send my messenger, and he
shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly
come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come,
saith the LORD of hosts (KJV).”
We want to
begin with the highlighted phrases to show that the people of Israel in Malachi’s
day were wanting to see the Day of the Lord, that it would come soon. Sometimes when you wish for something you may
be very unhappy that you get it. They
did not understand exactly what the Day of the Lord was all about otherwise
they would not be wishing that it would happen.
When we studied the book of Amos they too were wishing that the Day of
the Lord would come, but the Day of the Lord is going to be a day which Jesus
tells us in Mt 24:22 “Unless those days had been cut short, no life would have been saved;
but for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short.”
These
Jewish remnants were only reading the prophets to see the good things that were
going to happen in the kingdom age, and not reading what the horrors of it would
be like. There is much to see in the
readings of the OT prophets to show both the good things that will happen
during the kingdom age, along with the horrible things that will happen leading
up to the kingdom age.
Dr. Wiersbe
writes an endnote on this subject: “Some
of the old editions of the Bible made this same mistake in their chapter
headings. If the chapter was about
blessing, the caption read “God’s blessing on the church,” but if it was about
judgment the heading said, ‘God’s judgment on the Jews.’ Yet the Bible tells us that ‘judgment must
begin at the house of God’ (1 Peter 4:17).”
Dr. Wiersbe
concludes his commentary on this section by writing “These Israelites were not
unlike some Christians today who talk about the coming of the Lord as though
seeing Him will be more like beholding a visiting celebrity and basking in his
or her glory. Standing at the judgment
seat of Christ will be an awesome experience, even though we know that we have
a place reserved for us in heaven.” I so
appreciate how Dr. Wiersbe can bring even the OT Scriptures into something that
we as a part of the church can benefit from.
11/25/2016 11:12 PM
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