This weekend, Victory is starting a brand new series called Remember This. It’s a four-week sermon series covering the entire book of Malachi. Why Malachi? What’s with this obscure prophetic book from the Old Testament?
By way of introduction, here are five things about Malachi that makes it interesting for modern readers:
- Malachi was written for a people who grew tired of waiting for the fulfillment of the promises of God. When the Babylonian captivity was over, the Jews returned back to their land expecting for the Messianic Age to start. They rebuilt the temple and the wall but the Messiah didn’t arrive. It seemed like God didn’t make good of his promise. The Jews felt like God doesn’t love them. Malachi opened the book with an “I love you” message from God. This is the only book of the Bible that starts with an emphatic “I love you.”
- For many of us, Malachi is an obscure book. Most Christians only hear of it when it is quoted for tithes and offerings. I promise you, this book has so much more to it than tithes and offerings.
- Malachi is God’s last word in the Old Testament. Or at least that’s what our English Bibles tell us. This is significant. As we all know, last words always pack a punch. Watch for this punch as we go over the entire book in this series.
- Malachi was written as a series of disputations or arguments between God and the Jews. Don’t miss what that means for you and me: God speaks and he graciously hears your complaints too. For the nerds out there, you might also be interested to know that Malachi used the Socratic method of argumentation. The book was written at about the same time when Socrates was alive.
- The last chapter of Malachi specifically prophesied the coming of Jesus and John the Baptist. Flip your paper Bibles over to the next page and you will see that Matthew opens with the account of the arrival of Jesus. Luke, on the other hand, tells of the story of the birth of John the Baptist. This series will end in the last week of November and will be followed by our upcoming Christmas series. Malachi is a very good introduction to Christmas.
