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MALACHI 3:1-51 “I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the Lord Almighty.WHO CAN ENDURE?WHO CAN ENDURE?
MALACHI 3:1-52 But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. 3 He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver.WHO CAN ENDURE?WHO CAN ENDURE?
MALACHI 3:1-5Then the Lord will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, 4 and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the Lord, as in days gone by, as in former years.
WHO CAN ENDURE?WHO CAN ENDURE?
MALACHI 3:1-55 “So I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless,
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MALACHI 3:1-5and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, but do not fear me,” says the Lord Almighty.
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WHEN QUESTIONSHAVE TURNEDINTO ACCUSATIONS
When there is high trust, there are fewer questions. When there is low trust,
there are far more questions.
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EXHAUSTING THEINEXHAUSTIBLE GOD
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GOD HEARSOUR HEARTS
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WE CANT KNOCK HIM OUT SO WE WEAR HIM OUT
When it comes to fights, some people are knock-you-out, some people are wear
you out.
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ACCUSATIONSAGAINST GOD
GOD, THAT IS WRONG1
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“
”
They’ve got two accusations that they begin with against God. The first is that God is
evil and we are good.
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No longer is God on the throne judging us, we’re on a throne judging him. How
many of us emotionally have been there? “God, that’s
wrong. You shouldn’t have allowed that to happen.
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You should have intervened. You should have stopped
them. You should have done something. You should have said something. God is evil; I
am good.”
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WHERE IS THE GOD OF JUSTICE
2WHO CANWHO CANENDURE?ENDURE?
“
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Their second accusation is, “Where is the God of
justice?” We’ve all been here. Some catastrophe
comes into your life, something horrifying, or somebody you love is
victimized in a horrific way. WHO CAN ENDURE?WHO CAN ENDURE?
Usually it’s when we’re hurting, we’re very
emotional, or someone we love is hurting and very
emotional. And what they’re doing—and this is what hurt
people do, this is what religious people do, and this is really what hurt religious
people do. WHO CAN ENDURE?WHO CAN ENDURE?
See, God is just and God is loving, and what happens is
it says early on, “I have loved you,” and here it says,
“Where’s the God of justice?” So, when we sin, we want God’s love. When
they sin, we want God’s justice.WHO CAN ENDURE?WHO CAN ENDURE?
You get that? We call that hypocrisy. “You hurt me—justice. I hurt you—love.” They’re doing the same
thing. And because God is loving and just, our sin makes it complicated.
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The Bible says that God is a great physician, and that sin infects all of our being, and that when we get impatient
and we want him to deal with everybody and
everything right now, we think that God is slow.
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RECONCILINGGOD AND EVIL
Atheism says there is no God. It is what it is. God’s
not involved in evil because there’s no God. DeismDeism says, well, there is a God, but he’s far, far away. He’s inactive,
he’s distant, he’s an absentee landlord.
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MonismMonism says that God is both good and evil. This is a lot of eastern religion, the
yin and the yang, black and white, God is good and evil. So, the good and evil we see in the world is a reflection of
the character of God. WHO CAN ENDURE?WHO CAN ENDURE?
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JESUS ISTHE ANSWER
When someone is hurting, when someone is struggling, when someone is suffering,
when they become absolutely concerned with
themselves, every time you see them, all they want to
talk about is, WHO CAN ENDURE?WHO CAN ENDURE?
Because the answer to the questions is always the
same, and his name is Jesus. Most of your questions will
not get answered in this life.
WHO CAN ENDURE?WHO CAN ENDURE?
Until we get to the kingdom of God, there’s going to be
things that we don’t know. It doesn’t mean that there
isn’t an answer, but there’s not an answer that is revealed to us yet.
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God won’t answer all of your questions in this life, but his answer to your questions is
his presence in your life. The Bible says that he’ll never
leave us, he’ll never forsake us. He’ll be with us always until the end of the age.
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PEOPLE GET READY,JESUS IS COMING
This is what we celebrate every Christmas where we say that Jesus is Immanuel,
which means, “God with us.” Malachi’s telling us the
Christmas story.
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The people walking in darkness have seen a great
light. It’s Immanuel, God with us. God’s come down to
be with us. So, who’s coming? It’s the Lord.
Ultimately, we know that’s the Lord Jesus Christ.
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It says that the Lord is coming to his temple, and all
of this is foreshadowing Jesus.
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THE MESSIAHHAS COME
Now, here’s the point: God wanted to make sure that
the way we used to worship him is no longer the way we worship him. We don’t go to the temple, we go to Jesus. We don’t go to a priest, we go to the great High Priest. We don’t offer a sacrifice;
we have faith in the sacrifice of Jesus.
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We believe that to get close to God, you don’t go to a place, you go to a person
named Jesus, that the connecting point between heaven and earth is not a
wall, right, it’s a risen Savior.
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THREE THINGS TO NOTEABOUT THE BIBLE
IT IS FROM GOD1WHO CANWHO CANENDURE?ENDURE?
Number one, the Bible’s from God. This is the book that God wrote. One of the
ways we know that is something called prophecy, that in the Old Testament in
particular, WHO CAN ENDURE?WHO CAN ENDURE?
IT IS THE ONLY BOOK GOD WROTE2
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Number two, this book is the only book that God wrote. It’s unique. The only place
you’ll find stuff like this is in the Bible because this alone is the book that God wrote.
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IT IS ALL ABOUTJESUS3WHO CANWHO CANENDURE?ENDURE?
Number three, it’s all about Jesus. It’s all about Jesus.
The point of the whole Bible—all the concepts, themes,
directions, stories, and trajectories—is about Jesus.
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There’s hope for you. There’s forgiveness for you. There’s provision for you.
There’s love for you. There are answers for you and it’s all in Jesus. Let’s talk about
Jesus.”WHO CAN ENDURE?WHO CAN ENDURE?
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HE ISCOMING
Jesus’ first coming was for salvation. His second coming
will be for damnation.
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JESUS CLEANS1WHO CANWHO CANENDURE?ENDURE?
And you go live a clean life because you’ve already
been made a clean person in Christ. At the cross, all of our filth went to Jesus and all of his righteousness came to
us. WHO CAN ENDURE?WHO CAN ENDURE?
JESUS MINES2WHO CANWHO CANENDURE?ENDURE?
Jesus cleans us and he also is not only like a cleanser,
but he’s like a metalworker. And the way it would work in
that day is that you would go out and you would pan,
or dig, or sluice, or however it worked, WHO CAN ENDURE?WHO CAN ENDURE?
and you would get—it mentions it here—your gold or your silver, your precious,
precious metals. But, the problem is they’re not pure. There’s a lot of impurities in them. They’re commingled with a lot of other things that are not valuable or
precious.WHO CAN ENDURE?WHO CAN ENDURE?
So, you need to separate that which is precious from that which is not. How do you do that? How do you
separate like thatThe answer is heatheat.
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What happens then is some of us want to be pure, and we want to be precious, we just don’t want pain and we
don’t like heat.
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And there’s always a lot of teachers going around
saying, “There’s a way to be precious without the heat.”
Those are called false teachers. There’s no way to be purified without the heat.
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Sometimes, this is heat you caused. You did something, made your own life pretty
hard, and God’s going to use it. Sometimes, somebody
else sinned against you, and they brought the heat.
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Don’t start accusing God and questioning his character. Don’t try to live your life to avoid all heat because you
will not become more precious and valuable.
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The Lord Jesus wants to look down on you and see his
reflection in your character, and to get there is going to
be some heat and cleanings.
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See, God is trying to get the imperfections and the impurities out of your
character and mine so that he would get more glory and
we would be prepared for our future. WHO CAN ENDURE?WHO CAN ENDURE?
JESUS AS JUDGE3WHO CANWHO CANENDURE?ENDURE?
Jesus came the first time for salvation, coming the
second time for damnation. And it says in particular that nobody is getting away with anything, all right? Do not be
deceived. God will not be mocked. We all reap what
we sow.WHO CAN ENDURE?WHO CAN ENDURE?
You can’t control God. You can’t manipulate God. You can’t cajole God. You can’t force an outcome that you want by pressing his hand.
That’s sorcery. Most religious teaching is sorcery, how to get God to give you
what you want.WHO CAN ENDURE?WHO CAN ENDURE?
Their question is, “Where is the God of justice?” Justice comes for all in one of two
places: at the cross of Jesus or the white throne of Jesus.
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When Jesus came the first time, he went to the cross to die in our place for our sins as our substitute. There’s the justice and the love of God kissing on the cross of
Jesus.WHO CAN ENDURE?WHO CAN ENDURE?
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