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Welcome to Bibleline with Dr. Ralph Yankee Arnold, pastor of Calvary Community Church in Tampa, Florida. Clearly declaring the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the radio and the internet. Your regular prayers and monthly support make it possible for Bibleline to continue on the You can reach us toll free at 1-800-576-3771. Online donations may be made through the Bibleline website at calvaryoftampa.org. We pray that you’ll enjoy our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ, and that today’s concluding message of this teaching will be a blessing to you and your family.

God still loves His people, and He wants them to believe it. Even though here God had told them, I brought you out of Egypt. I brought you into the land that I promised you. And I told you that I would whoop all the enemies. All you had to do is trust me. They had trouble trusting God. After seeing him open up the Red Sea, where they could walk across on dry ground. They saw all of this. They literally, as a people, they saw their shoes and their clothes that didn’t wear out after 40 years.

I think I got some of my clothes that’s 30 years old. But 40 years, it never wore out on them. They saw how God provided them miraculously. Waters out of rocks in the middle of a desert. A special little health food bar that came down from heaven called Angels Food or Mana. And God took care of them. And it came on certain days and not on other days and double on one day. And they had trouble trusting God. Now you’d be surprised.

Here we are living in good old America. Don’t you think God was good to let us be born here in America? What have we been born in some other country? And our parents were, say, Muslims and taught us all of that. And then we would wind up believing that. You know I’ve talked to Jehovah’s Witnesses and they’re Jehovah’s Witnesses because their parents were Jehovah’s Witnesses. I’ve talked to Mormons and they were Mormons because their parents were Mormon. And I’ve talked to the Church of Christ and you name the religion, I’ve talked to Catholic, their parents were and they are.

And they believe that they’re right and probably fight to the death that they’re right and yet you know everybody can’t be right. the some reason or other they can’t believe that they could be wrong. Everybody’s wrong, but them. Well, here you and I don’t we believe it. We’re right. And all the religions are wrong. You say, well, that’s the truth. I mean, we really are right. And the way you can separate truth and errors is that everybody believes in your work for salvation, that’s false.

And so there’s a few people who believe it’s by grace and it’s totally free and they’ve got to say you can give me eternal life and You know, there’s maybe not that many people that believe that, you know, the Bible says the way to heaven is narrow It means it’s only one way and The broad way that leads to destruction a lot of people believe that There’s religion man’s way and there’s God’s way. That’s what’s narrow So I guess I’m narrow-minded Some people are so narrow minded they could look to a keyhole with both eyes.

That’s pretty narrow minded. Look in verse 1, the burden of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi. Now that burden is talking about, it’s a heavy sentence. It’s a heavy thing God is unloading upon the people. You see, sometimes some people can’t carry much. You can unload too much upon people and they crush them. you ought to see what God unloads on these people. He said, well, it’ll destroy them. God loads it, buddy. And he pulled no punches.

He hit them right between the eyes. He talked about, you know, we should not try to offend people. And I’d do everything I thought they can not to purposely offend. But I know that just by me being me, I offend. I don’t really want to. I don’t want to hurt nobody. But I have a great love and appreciation for what truth is that sometimes I just figure in my mind, get a grip, get a life. Don’t worry about it.

This is what God said. Boom, that’s it. And so I sometimes fail to be really sensitive to people and how something that I say might affect them. Though I don’t want to purposely hurt somebody’s feelings, I know that in time I do. But you ought to see what God says. So he says here in verse two, I have loved you, sayeth the Lord. Look what he says, I have loved you. Now wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.

God, you just split the nation because of what Solomon did. You lie to your series to come in and take Israel, top 10 tribes, then you’ll love the Bible and they come in here and do that and destroy our nation. God, you let people starve to death. They boiled their kids because they were hungry. You let them be taking a thousand miles in the captivity for 70 years, and then after 70 years, a lot of those people were too old, they couldn’t come back.

Now they’re ingrained in the beliefs, or falling in love with Babylon, and didn’t want to come home. Not all of them did. Come back, the city is destroyed. There’s all kinds of problems. People tried to kill them while they were trying to build the wall, try to get them to quit. And Yimiah says, I can’t come down and talk to you. Got the Lord’s work to get done. And they worked and laid blocks and had their guns and bazookas and all that stuff up there and tanks.

Okay, well maybe they had a sword and a spear. And they built and they did what God says to do. But that didn’t mean that all the people were spiritually minded. certain things that you can have for your homeland. And they wanted their temple built and they did these things and there were some great problems that they had that they had to deal with. But under Nehemiah, see a lot of the people did do some good things and spiritual things and well it had to be enough time after that that maybe Nehemiah was no longer on the scene.

And he couldn’t keep that tight control upon the people for some reason. Now we know he had gone back and they came back later with 1800 more but as time moves on there’s probably 30 years difference in here between when he probably stopped his work and makes a note here’s Malachi because by the time the book of Malachi is written the temple is built. They have been doing the sacrifices and the people were corrupt. So he begins to lay down the rule to them about, look what I’ve done for you.

I loved you. And even though you were all these things that have happened, he says, I did because I love you. Now have you ever had children and you didn’t want to spank them, but you knew you had to spank them because they were rebellious and you’d rather have them feel the pain coming from a loving hand than the pain that would come on down the road because of bad decisions that they never learned and never suffered for. So sometimes because you love children, you have to discipline them, you have to tell them no.

There has to be correction. It’s not because you hate them because you love them. And this is what the Lord says. I loved you. He says, don’t you remember that there was Jacob in Esau? He says, and I love Jacob and not Esau. But Jacob and Esau, they had been dead for years. I mean, thousands more years or so. Don’t go on. So he’s not talking about those two individuals, but what they represented. Because you see, Esau, well, he became Edom.

Let’s eat them. And so, Moab, those people on the other side of the Jordan River, if you ever go over there and you look at it, it’s desert. It’s terrible. And you look at the land of Israel and it’s blossoming like a rose, totally different. Looks like a land of paradise. And everything they grow there, their grapefruits, their grapes and all that stuff, it’s just Just like you was reading in the book of Numbers where they went into the land and spied out the land and it came back with all this, the fruit.

It’s true. Man, you can eat good in Israel. And every time I’ve been over there, six times, I think, man, you can eat like a king. And they have something that they raise that’s bigger and better than just about anywhere else in the whole world. But see, what God says here in this first two was not, he saw Jacob’s brother, sayeth the Lord. Yet I love Jacob. Talking about, I loved Israel. I gave them the best land. I gave to Israel, the choice, the promised land, the land that flows with milk and honey.

He said, he saw because he despised his birthright. He said, I gave him that land over there. He said, because I loved you. And it boiled down because of Jacob and the way Jacob was. Now he was a supplanner. He was a liar. He was a deceiver. At most times he was a bad man. But there’s still something on the bottom that he loved the Lord. You ever seen people who loved the Lord but still they keep doing stupid things?

Well Jacob did that. But the times and the moments of his battles that he had and like he fought with the angel and he wouldn’t let him go and say, you bless me, you got to bless me. Jacob wanted the blessings. He did not despise the birthright. He just had a little help and stole it. He wanted it. And God blessed him. But he says in verse three, he’s, and I hated Esau, laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.

Whereas Edom saith, we are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, they shall build, but I’ll go down. And they shall call them the border of wickedness and the people against whom the Lord hath indignation forever. And as you stand there in Israel and you get upon the ridge of, like you name of it now, you look down toward the south and you see all the greenery. And then you see this desert, the cycloid was talking about here.

This is 400 years before. Where God says, I am going to bless this one, and this one has been chasing. But it says, because I love you. It’s almost a type of the spirit and the flesh. It’s almost a type of a Christian who serves the Lord and the Christian who doesn’t. So God doesn’t honor the flesh. God doesn’t honor the man who walks in the flesh. But the Christian that loves the Lord and will walk with the Lord, God has promised in his word that he will honor that man.

If any man served me, him will my father honor and God will bless.” So he makes this statement and he says, and then verse four, the border of wickedness. And I believe that you can see from the border all the things that God’s talking about. But look at what he says in verse six. In verse six, a son honored his father and a servant, his master. If then, I be a father, where is my honor? If I be a master, where is my fear or where is my respect?

Where is my respect? Lord, there’s something that God wants from the people of Israel. Now you and I are commanded in the book of Romans chapter 15 that the Old Testament written for our admonition and so we’re supposed to learn some things from it. They can help us. So as you see how God deals with Israel, it’s like Israel is a person, like it’s sometimes referred to as just Jacob. Even though there’s can be millions of them, but it’s just like God talking to that one person, Jacob.

With you and I, you and I were born miraculously into God’s family by faith and faith alone. So when we trusted Christ as our Savior, God gave us eternal life and as a child of God, we have a piece of property. This body of mine is the Holy Land. And I live in this Holy Land. And I’m supposed to conquer this land for the Lord. You see, I have an Amalekite that lives inside the Holy Land. He was there first.

And remember the message that I preached on then came Amalek. Well, Amalek was there before there was a king in Israel. And so my old sinful nature, the old Amalek that lives inside of me, has this piece of property. But God says to me as a child of God, I’m given this property to you. Now I can do similar to what the spies did. the twelve spies, they went into the land. Two of them says that we can take this land.

Ten of them says there’s giants in the land and we can’t do it. That is similar to a Christian and saying. I want to serve the Lord. I want the blessings of God, but there’s too many battles and I can’t handle it. I got too many addictions. I got too many problems. You see, there’s 10 of these amulex and two of these I can, Joshua and Caleb. So inside of you, you fight this battle. And God says that you’re supposed to bring all of your thoughts into the captivity of crosshairs.

You see, the devil wants to capture your mind. That’s a piece of property. That’s territory. And so I’m supposed to surrender this piece of property to the Lord so that he can capture all of my thoughts. If I don’t, then the 10 spies that lives on the inside of me will say, well, I can’t ever have victory and get the benefits of this this piece of property that God says is mine and my right to live. I have the right because I’m a child of God and my body belongs to the Lord and I’m supposed to do this.

Have you had any problems lately? Any battles going on? You see from the time that you trust the Lord until the day we get home, there’s always these little pockets of the enemy that’s still is inside of this body and it will battle against you. Israel always had battles going on trying to get victory. Now under a couple of the kings they got a lot Solomon and David but David was a man of war. It will not be until we leave this body and get our new body.

That will be the land that flows with milk and honey for real and there won’t be no enemy in it when we get our new body. But until then we’ve got these battles going on. And so God is telling us here in the book of Malachi. Jacob have I loved and I have blessed you. I’ve done all these things for you. I even had to chasten you. I even had the enemy come and destroy the temple and everything else in order that I might get a remnant, a handful that will serve me.

And I believe God’s always had that little remnant in any exist even today. But look what he says in the last part of verse 6, O priest that despise my name. And ye say, wherein have we despised thy name, ye offer polluted bread upon mine altar. And ye say, wherein have we polluted thee? So the temple had to be built. They had to have the sacrifices going on. They were making their offerings and so on. So the priests were there and this was going on.

But see, this wasn’t done so much on the Nehemiah because they had to build all the stuff. And so I believe by the time they got through, Nehemiah is an old man in Ezra. And after this, you know, the books, some of the prophets, Sakurai and Haggai, they already off the scene. And here’s a letter written to God’s people and it’s a warning. Evidently they didn’t, they didn’t heed the warning, didn’t pay any attention to it. And they said, the table of the Lord is contemptible.

In other words, do you believe that even though like Sunday we had what we call the Lord’s table, a divine command? Do you believe that some people, even God’s children still believe that’s just a contemptible thing and they don’t talk to the Lord. They don’t examine their life. They don’t judge anything. But they’ll partake of the Lord’s Supper and make mockery of it. I hope and pray that nobody does. But with as many people, there’s always that possibility that things are done with a lot of people that are simply ritual and there’s no real meaning to it.

There’s no really love for the Lord. You see, they were going through the motions. They still were making sacrifices. But the problem was, is it wasn’t doing it God’s way. You see, they would even, God had told them, says, whenever you bring an offering, He says, this offering is to be without spot, without blemish, healthy, the cream of the crop, the best you have. Well, that’s not exactly how they were doing things. They didn’t do it the way God says to do it.

You see there in verse eight, and if ye offer up These animals that they were offering, the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? If he offered the lame and the sick, is it not evil? Offer it now unto thy governor. Will he be pleased with thee, or accept thy person? Seth, the Lord of Host? Now, you see, when it says the word governacy, for a while there’s the Nehemiah was probably the first governor when it came back. And then he left for a while and whether somebody else filled in.

But there’s also historically about a Persian governor and whether somebody else was filling in while gone and the time of the, I don’t know. I don’t know if anybody really does know. But it’s not referenced to a king. They didn’t have a king. And the Bible says in the book of Isaiah chapter four verse three where he talks about and they shall be without a ephod and so forth for many days and without a prince. And so that has been proven to be true.

Look what he says here. When they’re supposed to be offering the best, they weren’t doing what God says. You see, they were going through the ceremonial. It’s like people today, they go to church, but there’s no change in their life. They hear the word. They read it in the Bible. They all stand. They all sing songs. And walk out that door, and there won’t be one change in their life. Why do we come to church? Why do we study the Bible?

To change things. To change things. You and I are supposed to be growing spiritually. And growing spiritually will affect our lives. But if nothing that you hear or read or see in God’s Word or sing about changes your life, stop it. You just plan a game. When I said and read and study the Word of God, I do it with a heart, Lord, reveal to me something that I need to do or an attitude that I need to correct.

There ought to be something that’s real between you and God, and nobody can make it real to you. But there’s a God in heaven that knows when people are playing games and if it’s just going through the motion, putting in the time because you’re afraid not to because you’re afraid God will zap you, but you will just do enough to try to give a tip to keep them off your back. I’m not sure if y’all really are following me.

I hope you are. I’m not God, but I have a responsibility to keep you on your toes. I’m supposed to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comforted. I hope I do a good job. So he says in verse 9, and now I pray you beseech God that he will be gracious unto us. This hath been by your means. Will he regard your persons safe, the Lord of Host? God has done so many things and people will not give him the honor or the due respect.

Remember the other night I was talking about, I think it was Sunday night, about how that God says when we get to heaven, He’s going to reward us for what we deserve. And if we deserve it there, it’s because we what? Deserve it here. And if we deserve it here, it’s because you’ve done what God says to do. But it doesn’t mean that everybody agrees with you and think you deserve anything. And you may not get the respect that you deserve.

But there’s a God who does watch and keeps the books. And remember, do you believe that God deserves to be honored, to be respected, to be feared? God deserves to be obeyed, doesn’t He? He’s God. Does he deserve our love, our worship, our gifts, our talents, our treasure? Does he deserve it? Well, if he deserves it, then why don’t we perform it and give it to him? He is gone. Look up here. Hey, somebody’s watching by the internet. I would hate for them to hear all this good stuff and not understand how to go to heaven.

Letting just hand represent, you know what I did the other day. There are these two guys. I says, can I, ask you a question? I said, sure. I says, this coming Sunday morning, I’m going to do an illustration that lasts about a minute and a half to two minutes. And I want to know if I can just explain it to you. You don’t have to do anything with it. You don’t even have to believe it. Just tell me if you understand it.

I’ll just say, can I do that? Oh, sure. Go ahead. I didn’t tell them that I do it every Sunday. But this coming Sunday, see, I’m going to do an illustration to explain something. And I simply wanted to know if they could listen to it because they won’t be there. And they could tell me whether or not did it make sense because they understand it. So I did. Anyway, this is you and me. The wallet represents sin, all the things we’ve done wrong.

But God says He loves us, but He hates our sin. And the Lord says that He loves us and wants us to go to heaven. And go to heaven, we have to be perfect as righteous as God. And none of us are perfect. None of us are good enough to go to heaven. The Bible says that because of sin, it has to be paid. And since we committed it, we have to pay for it. And that’s eternal separation from God, inhale.

But God, He loves us. He wants us to go to heaven. But He says, you can’t earn your way to heaven. You can’t buy it. It’s a gift. And this is what I mean. This hand represents Jesus Christ. He’s the Lord God in the flesh. He came into the world because He loves us. He hates our sin because our sin separates. So Christ took the sin, paid for it on the cross, came back from the dead. And God said that if we would believe that He did it for us, He’d put this payment to our account and we’d get to go to heaven on what Jesus Christ did for us.

That was the best news in all the world. If you have never trusted Christ as your Savior, all that you have to do is believe that God loves you, paid for your sins, and will you trust Him to take you to heaven whenever you die? Let’s pray, shall we? His bow nice clothes, no one looking around. Friend, if you are watching by internet and you’ve never trust the Lord, would you just talk to Him right now? See, God knows who you are and knows where you are.

And He loves you. He paid for all of your sins, would you believe it? He said, if you’ll believe that He did it for you, He would give you as a free gift ever lasting life. Never cast you out, never lose you. You can know that you’re going to heaven whenever you die, because Christ paid for all of your sins. and I’m not sure if it’s written on for you to pay for. He already did it. I pray that you’ll believe that.

Our Father, we thank you so much for all that you’ve done for us, for your word that you’ve given us, for the, a brief study here in the book of Malachi that has a lot of good stuff that can really help us to see how you think, how you love us, even though you have to chasten us sometimes. We pray, Lord, that we would realize that the things that you talk to them about, maybe we we could learn something from it and correct things in our own life that, but if we would judge it, we won’t have to be.

So we thank you for this time together and I ask Lord your blessings upon each person here. We pray for a good day this week, a good Sunday. So bless us in Christ and we pray. Amen. You’ve been listening to Bibleline, a teaching ministry of Calvary Community Church in Tampa, Florida, with Dr. Ralph Arnold. We pray that you were blessed by today’s message. If you have enjoyed our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ, you can reach Bibleline and pledge your support to keep us on the air in your area by dialing toll free 1-800-576-3771.

That’s 1-800-576-3771. If you wish to hear today’s program again or would like to download a free MP3 of today’s or any previous Bibleline program, Go to BibleLineMinistries.org and click on the spinning globe in the upper right corner of our homepage. If you’re in the area, we welcome you to visit us. The address for Calvary Community Church is 4811 George Road, Tampa, Florida, 33634. Our Sunday morning services begin at 1030 and at 6 o’clock on Sunday evening. broadcast of our services may be seen by going to our church website, calvaryoftampa.org.

Thanks for joining us on Bible Live. And now a closing thought from Pastor Arnold. Friend, one day it will happen. The trumpet will sound. We will be changed. Caught up to meet the Lord in the air. So live today and every day. Believing that the Lord is coming soon. soon and just keep looking up.