This episode captures the essence of prophecy through the lens of Malachi, focusing particularly on the second advent of Christ. Understand the symbolic purification foretold for those entering the kingdom, and learn about the challenges faced by the people post-exile. Dr. McGee also presents the timeless call for repentance, inviting listeners to return to a meaningful relationship with God and reflect on the personal and collective spiritual paths.
Merry Christmas from Through the Bible. We’re so glad to spend this special day with you in God’s Word. Our teacher, Dr. J. Vernon McGee, is our guide through the book of Malachi. Before we dive in, here’s an introduction to help us in our study.
SPEAKER 01 :
Now, prophecy as we think of it is only in the terms of that which is predictive. That is, it speaks of the future, that which has not happened. However, the prophet not only predicted the future, he also had a message for the present and he spoke for God to the people. You see the priest and the prophet, and I think I’ve said this before, but it needs repeating. The prophet came out from God, and he spoke for God to the people. The priest comes from among the people, and he goes to God, representing the people. And therefore, we have in the person of the Lord Jesus, he is prophet, priest, and king also. He’s the coming king. But he today is our great high priest. We have a great high priest. He’s the Lord Jesus Christ. And he’s also God’s prophet. And he spoke not only for God, but he spoke of the future also. But we have now the subject of predictive prophecy. And it lifts revelation above human ability. It’s history, actually. pre-written. One-fourth of the Bible was prophecy when it was written. Now much of that has been fulfilled. And may I say to you that fulfilled prophecy is one of the great proofs that the Bible is the Word of God. No man could ever have done this at all. Now we’ve been excited recently about our attention being called to Orwell, who wrote the book 1984. And the reason he picked 1984 was because he wrote it in 1948, and he just turned 48 around and made it 84. That was a book that’s caused a little excitement because we are in 1984 when I’m making this statement. Now, 36 years ago, he saw certain trends, and he followed them to the logical conclusion, and the logical conclusion was, little brother’s watching you. And believe me, that’s the way we’ve moved. But he wasn’t the only one in 1948. Because I remember at that time, many of the great fundamental preachers of that day that are gone now, those men spoke of what was coming. And it was very similar to what Orwell said. And it didn’t take any deep insight to see the direction that we were moving. But you see, the Bible predicted the birth of Jesus in the Garden of Eden. And my friend, that’s a long ways to give a prediction and have it come to pass. And the place that Jesus was to be born in Bethlehem was given 800 years before he was born. And so we have the major divisions of prophecy, that which is fulfilled and that which is unfulfilled. Now, the Bible, therefore, predicted a great deal of what concerned the first coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. We have, for instance, 28 prophecies were fulfilled while he was hanging on the cross. And we are, therefore, to become students of prophecy. And that doesn’t mean that we are to prophesy. The trouble today is that many go beyond what is written And when they do, well, that causes a great deal of difficulty, of course. Now, prophecy is divided into several categories, actually, and I’d like to mention them. There’s prophecy in the Old Testament, and there’s prophecy in the New Testament. Then there is prophecy that concerns the nation Israel. There is prophecy that concerns the Gentile nations of the world. And there is prophecy that concerns the church. And it’s all different. We need to make distinctions when we’re studying prophecy. And then there are certain prophecies concerning the first advent of Christ, his first coming. There are certain prophecies concerning the second coming of Christ to the world. And then there are prophecies that had to do with the Babylonian captivity and things that took place before the captivity. Then there were prophecies concerning during the captivity and then prophecies concerning what would be after the captivity. There are prophecies concerning Judah and prophecies concerning Israel, the ten tribes in the north. And then there were several different places in the Word of God where prophecy is given to us today. And I think probably the greatest difference that’s given to us is the prophecy between the kingdom and the church. And there’s much confusion today concerning those two. We’ll say something in a moment, but I’d like to turn to Deuteronomy 18.15. For the Lord says, the Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet from the midst of thee of thy brethren, like unto me unto him ye shall hearken. And that applies, by the way, to the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, how are we to understand prophecy? That is one of the things today that causes a great deal of difficulty. It worried me for a long time because one man would say that he had the interpretation, another man had something contrary. Well, the Lord Jesus said in John 16, verse 13, he says, how be it? When he, the Spirit of truth, has come, he will guide you into all truth, for he shall not speak of himself, but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak, and he will show you things to come. Only the Spirit of God today can interpret prophecy for our hearts.
SPEAKER 02 :
Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for your son Jesus. We lift him high, the one who is both the author of our faith and the one who will bring that faith to completion in our lives. In his name and for his glory we pray. Amen. Here’s our study of Malachi 3 on Through the Bible with Dr. J. Vernon McGee.
SPEAKER 01 :
Now friends, we come back to this wonderful third chapter of Malachi. And it opened by God mentioning the fact that there were two messengers that would be coming. The first messenger would prepare the way for the second one. And that first messenger was John the Baptist. But the messenger of the covenant that is mentioned here is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, all four Gospels quote the prophecy concerning the first messenger as fulfilled in John the Baptist. And nowhere do the Gospels quote the messenger, the covenant being fulfilled in the first coming of Christ. And the reason is obvious. This is his coming, not in grace, not as a redeemer, but as a judge. as the one to establish his kingdom and to put down the rebellion that’s on this earth. And suddenly he’d come to his temple. Not soon, but suddenly he would come. Even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in, behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts. Now, that is verse 1 of chapter 3 here. Now, these verses that we were in when we left off last time reveal that it has to do with the second coming of Christ, for it reveals him as, for instance, he’s called the Lord, and he is the one that owns the temple. And we’re told here that thus saith the Lord of hosts. So it’s definitely a reference to the Lord Jesus Christ in his coming the second time. And he will sit as a refiner and a cleanser. Those that enter the kingdom are to be cleansed. And he also purifies, is the refiner. and putting all of the dross that is in the ore, in the pastel, is that what it’s called, where the metal is put over a red-hot fire, and then it begins to melt, and the dross can be drawn off, and the metal is made finer. He’s a refiner, purifier of silver. Now, verse 4, “…then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto the Lord.” The Lord will take great delight in it. Why? Because the ones that are offering it now are cleansed and purified. God’s not interested in you going through rituals until your heart is right, friend. Until you have forsaken your sin, you’ve turned from it. Verse 5, “…and I will come near to you to judgment, and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers.” Now, again, through these mixed marriages of marrying heathen and pagan women who worship idols, why, sorcery was brought in. The occult, demon worship. And that is the thing to fill this great vacuum that is in our country today. Multitudes are turning to the occult. That explains the reason the exorcist was so popular. Believe me, it’s a reflection on the church. The church certainly hadn’t filled that void or that vacuum at all. And he says, I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers and against the adulterers. These that had made the mixed marriages, divorced their wives, married these foreign heathen women, and against false swearers, that is, liars. and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, and that turn aside the sojourner from his right. In other words, they were not witnessing for God and the stranger in that day that they should have witnessed to actually turn from God. and did not fear God, saith the Lord of hosts. Verse 6, For I am the Lord, I change not, therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed. But he’s a gracious God. God is a God of judgment. But he’s also gracious. The reason that they hadn’t been absolutely obliterated, as the Edomites were, was because of his grace. Because God is gracious. And he’s gracious because he never changes. And thank God for that. God today is still a God of judgment. That’s a terror to the wicked. But he’s also a God that never changes in reference to his grace. And that is a comfort. And that’ll accept the grace of God. Now we come, friends, to the sixth one of these very smart-alecky retorts. that these people give to God. There are eight of them, and we’ve had five of them, and now we come to the sixth one. In other words, they are, as it were, putting God on a quiz program. God makes a statement, and they ask him to prove it. They want to know the answer to it. And God brought eight incriminating accusations against the nation. And they countered by asking eight very impertinent and presumptuous questions. And he answered them politely but emphatically. And in other words, he was attempting to detour them from the destruction they were headed toward. Now, to interpret these questions, I think that it might be well to pause here again to understand the generation who asked them. You see, after these people had been in captivity 70 years, a remnant returned. Reluctantly and half-heartedly, they set about restoring the city and rebuilding the temple. They had known the rigors and suffering of slavery. Like their fathers in the brickyards of Egypt, they were certainly groaning. But on returning, they endured hardship, severe persecutions, discouragement. And believe me, they thought when they returned that everything would be happy and nice and easy for them. But that was not the case. These were God’s methods to discipline. It was a form of correction. And it did not have the desired effect because discipline will either soften or harden you. They became hardened and embittered under the yoke which galled them. These people, they became as hard as nails. They’re like an inmate of a prison. He’s released, but not reformed. They had come out of slavery, but apparently had not learned the lesson. Actually, there’s not much more that God could do for them, even God. He exhausted his infinite arsenal of correction. It was out of the soil of this generation. that there grew the poisonous plant of Pharisees, Sadducees, and scribes that were in existence at the time the Lord Jesus came 400 years later. What was the pimple of rebellion against God in the time of Malachi? It was just a scratch on the surface of the nation. It became at the time of the Lord Jesus an internal cancer. And God tried to stem the spread of the virus, to cauterize it. And he brought these eight charges against them. And their response reveals their attitude. They pled not guilty to every one of them. And they expressed surprise that God would even suspect them. They affected an injured innocence. They feigned hurt feelings. They assumed ignorance. They played the part of being highly offended. And with a wave of the hand, they dismissed the charges as unworthy of them. And we come now to a little different division that we have here. And we find that the people are now rebuked for religious sins. And this is this sixth sarcastic question that the people give to God’s penetrating charge. God’s going to call on them to do something. And we find that in verse 7. And we are through this little parenthesis that we had, the prediction of the two messengers. Now, will you listen? Even from the days of your fathers, ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of hosts. But ye say, in what way shall we return? Oh, what… Smart addicts they were. They said, well, now you say we should return to you. We didn’t know we’d gone away. We’ve been going up to the temple to all the services. We don’t miss them. We tithe to a certain extent. We’ll see that next time. And we are doing this, that, and the other thing. But we want you to know that how can we return when we haven’t even left you? They were so far gone that they did not realize their true condition. And I would say that that’s pretty much the picture today of the church. Ritualism has been substituted for reality. Pageantry has been substituted for power. The aesthetic is substituted for the spiritual. Form for feeling. And even in the orthodox, conservative, and evangelical circles, they know the vocabulary. But the power of God is gone. They’re satisfied with a tasteless morality. And they follow a few little shibboleths. And they feel like that everything is all right. And God says, return. You’ve departed from me. Now, what does he mean by return to him? He means repent. And that’s what repentance is. And I’d like to take a moment or two because this will be our last opportunity in the Old Testament because we’ve had this before. And God has only said to those that are his people, as he says here, you repent, you return to me. You see, the unbeliever can’t quite fulfill that song where it says, Lord, I’m coming home. You haven’t even been home. You didn’t even have a home. You see, the prodigal son had to leave a home before he could come back to his home. He was the son all the time. But he left home. He had to repent. He had to change his mind. Now, repentance actually means that. And you do not get the full meaning of repentance till you come to the New Testament. Metanoia, the Greek word, means to change your mind. It means to be walking in one direction. And you find out you’re going the wrong way. And you turn right around and go the opposite way. Miss McGee and I went over to Glendale here in Southern California. It’s right next to Pasadena. And we asked for directions to get to a certain place we wanted to go. And a girl gave us the wrong direction. She said, turn left. And we turned left and we ran right up against the side of the mountain. And I said to her, I think the girl told us wrong. So what did we do? We turned around. We had to return back to where we turned off. And then we went the other direction and found out that the other direction was the right direction. That’s repentance. When I turned around, I found out I was wrong. Now I want to go the right way. That’s repentance. Now, God speaks to his own. Now, the interesting thing when you get to the New Testament, that it’s always to believers that God says, repent. To those that have been his children, supposed to have been his children, he says to them, repent. And to all of the seven churches… God has one message in Revelation. We’re going to see that when we go to Revelation next. And we’ll see that to five of those churches God said, repent. But to the martyr church of Smyrna, he didn’t say that. They were dying for him, so he wouldn’t say that to them. And to the church in Philadelphia, which was holding to the word of God, he did not say to them, repent. But to all the rest of them, including Laodicea, his message to the church is repent. Now, we’ve got the notion today that we tell the unsaved there to repent. Well, what are they to repent of? To change their direction? Sure, but wait just a minute. That’s not the message to the unsaved. That’s the message to believers to repent. And my feeling is that that message of repentance that’s being given over the heads of believers to unbelievers is falling on deaf ears, naturally. And the people it should be given to that are sitting right down in front are the ones you should say, repent. That’s what he says even to the church in Ephesus, repent. That’s what you’re to do. Now, it means to be going one direction, turn, go the other direction. Somebody says, you mean that the unsaved that comes to Christ is not to repent? All the repentance he’s asked to do is in the word believe. You say, how do you know that? Now, when Paul went into the city, of Thessalonica, he did not preach against idolatry. It was running riot, but he didn’t preach against it. He didn’t preach against alcoholism. He didn’t preach against those things. And friends, that’s the reason I don’t follow that pattern. Only when the Word of God touches on these things do I touch on them. Because our message to the lost world is what Paul gave to the Philippian jailer. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shall be saved. In the word believe is all the repentance you need. Notice that one to the Thessalonians. When Paul went there and preached, what did he preach? Repentance? No, he preached Christ. And he says how you turn to God from idols. They were going one direction. Paul says, I want to tell you about Jesus Christ who died for your sins. And they turned to him. But when they turned to him, they turned away from idols. And that turning away from idols is repentance. They turned around, you see. But it’s in the word believe. You’ve got to have something to turn to, friend. Just to say to a man, repent. Well, you can weep your eyes out. I went down to an altar. There’s a little boy. Nobody talked to me. I just wept. That is all. And I wept because the boy next to me wept. And his mother was a shouting Methodist. And she wept. She started it all. And we wept. And a fellow across from me jumped up and said he’s prayed through. I don’t know what he meant by that. But whatever it was, it didn’t do it. Nobody presented Christ to me. I was ready to repent because, well, I wasn’t the best boy in the world, let’s say. All of my mother thought so. But I can weep for my sin, but I needed Christ. And when you turn to Christ, you’ll turn from these things. But many of God’s children, like the prodigal son, they get in a far country. And he says, repent, come home. That’s the fellow that should come home. And a lot of believers, oh, I know from the letters I get, a lot of believers I’m speaking to today need to come home. And he’s not talking about the unsaved fellow down the street from you. He’s talking to you. He says, come home. What are you doing in that liberal church? We’re speaking now to believers. And these are God’s children. And he says, return unto me and I’ll return unto you. Well, that prodigal son, He didn’t get a whipping when he went home. He got a whipping in a far country. And if you think that pig pen was delightful, you’re wrong. Any Christian that gets into sin will testify that it’s not near as much fun as you thought it was. And I think many of us could say that. But the important thing is, get out of the pig pen. And friends, if you don’t get out of the pig pen, there’s not but one class of living creatures that like pig pens. That’s pigs. They’re the only one. Sons just don’t like them, and they’re going to get out of it. And God says here, they deny that they need to return to God and need to repent. And there are a lot of folks in our churches today, they think everybody else needs to repent. They don’t. But they need it, my friend. We need to return to God today.
SPEAKER 02 :
That’s a really good word, especially in this season. We’ll continue here next time. Join us on our app or at ttb.org. And we’d love to hear from you this month. Tell us what the Lord has been teaching you in our study of God’s word together by sending a note to BibleBus at ttb.org or Box 7100. Pasadena, California, 91109. In Canada, Box 25325, London, Ontario, N6C 6B1. Or call 1-800-65-BIBLE. I’m Steve Schwetz, wishing you a joyful Christmas celebration.
SPEAKER 03 :
Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe. Sin had left the prison safe, he washed it white as snow.
SPEAKER 02 :
Through the Bible exists to take God’s whole word to the whole world. And we invite you to stand with us with your faithful prayer and financial support. Where will God’s word go today?
