PT-3 "Doubting God's Love" (Mal. 1:4-5)

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/14/2016 7:37 PM

My Worship Time                                                                  Focus:  “PT-3 Doubting God’s Love

Bible Reading & Meditation                                     Reference:  Malachi 1:4-5

            Message of the verses:  “4 Though Edom says, "We have been beaten down, but we will return and build up the ruins"; thus says the LORD of hosts, "They may build, but I will tear down; and men will call them the wicked territory, and the people toward whom the LORD is indignant forever." 5 Your eyes will see this and you will say, "The LORD be magnified beyond the border of Israel!"”

            We begin this SD by looking at the third evidence of God’s love which is God’s evident blessing on the people of Israel.  Verse four is where we get this from as it speaks of what God is going to do to Edom and from that we can see from other passages in the OT what God did for Israel after the Babylonian invasion.  Now we must remember that to the Jews the invasion was done by God as a chastening, and this is because they are family, however to the wicked people of Edom it was done for judgment and even though they thought they would rebuild God had other plans for them.

            Now as we look at some of the history from the OT about what God was going to do to Israel because of their sin, mostly idolatry, He was going to leave them in Babylon for 70 years and even had a man picked out before he was born to bring them back out of Babylon and into their land.  Isaiah tells us that Cyrus was the one picked out by God to return Israel back to their land, which he did.

            We also want to mention something that we will see throughout this book and that is the name of God that is used 24 times in Malachi, and almost 300 times in the OT, which is the Lord of Hosts, which means the God of heavens armies.  God will fight for Israel as we saw prophesied in book of Zechariah.

            Verse five speaks of God wanting to use Israel to speak to the Gentiles, something that has been very difficult for a very long time.  I was speaking to a Jewish man a few weeks ago who knows that I am a believer and he told me not to speak about Jesus to him.  There is still great animosity between many Jews towards Christians.

            Dr. Wiersbe ends this section speaking of the troubles that Malachi had with the ministry that God gave him by writing “Every difficulty is an opportunity to demonstrate to others what the Lord can do for those who put their trust in Him.”

11/14/2016 7:48 PM