The Messenger of the Lord

00:02 Amen. You may be seated. Turning your copies of the Scripture this morning to the Book of Malachi. Be sharing from verses 2:17 through 3:6 this morning. It's an unfortunate passage, an unfortunate chapter break there. 00:20 It should more appropriate be at the end of verse 16, between verse 16 and 17 of chapter 2. But 17 begins like this: "You have wearied the Lord with your words. Yet you say, 'In what way have we wearied Him?' In that you say, 00:39 'Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord.' And He who delights in them..." And He delights in them... "...or where is the God of justice? Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to His temple, 00:59 even the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight. Behold, He is coming," says the Lord of Hos. "But who can endure the day of His coming, and who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner's fire and like launderer's soap. He will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver. 01:20 He will purge the sons of Levi..." Purify the sons of Levi... "...and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer to the Lord an offering in righteousness. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasant to the Lord, as in the days of old, as in former years. And I will come near you for judgment, 01:40 and I will be a swift witness against sorcerers, against adulterers, against perjurers, against those who exploit wage earners and widows and orphans, and against those who turn away an alien. Because they do not fear Me," says the Lord, "for I am the Lord. I do not change. 02:01 Therefore you are not consumed, O sons of Jacob." In this topsy-turvy world, sometimes we wonder which ends up. Never have we had a week quite like this where you'd listen to the news one day and it changes from day to day, from hour to hour, and even from minute to minute. 02:22 And it seems like the whole world is in a topsy-turvy spin that we haven't probably seen for many, many years, if ever, where global things are, in a sense, spinning out of anyone's control. 02:36 We've been noticing this in a social way this past week, but it's also been happening in a moral way around the world in the last number of years. And the fast pace by which things have been changing morally leaves one somewhat scratching his head at times, saying, "Is anything not changing? 02:57 Is anything not open for change?" And it just seems like we've entered a time and period where the words here in verse 17 are for our day, that everything that is good is considered evil, and that which is evil is considered good. 03:16 And we wonder sometimes if the Lord knows what's going on. We know He does. And if He has anything to say about it, we know He does. But at the same time, it gets a little bit unnerving at times in this day in which we live. But this passage of Scripture this morning assures us that a day is coming when Christ will set everything right. 03:37 He will set everything right that is wrong. And there's a lot of stuff that's wrong. And there's a lot of things that look like far from God's will in this world around us. We see the effects of sin every day, everywhere around the globe. 03:52 And yet there is coming a day when the Lord Jesus Christ Himself will set those things right that are wrong. Whether it be on a personal level, on a family level, on a church level, or on a national or international level, the day is coming when the rights... when the wrongs will be righted. 04:13 And He will do this at His coming to establish His kingdom. So as we look at this text this morning, we see that God is weary of their disobedience. We see in verse 17 that God is weary of them calling evil good and good evil. There's a woe that's pronounced on those who do this in Isaiah 5:20. 04:35 It says, "Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil. That put darkness for light and light for darkness. That put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes and prudent in their own sight." And really, that's the bottom line. When you go around switching definitions of sin, 04:56 switching definitions of morality, calling those things which are evil good and those things which are good evil, you are really being wise in your own eyes. And a culture that does that is being wise in their own eyes is being arrogant. 05:10 To change the changeless Word of God and make it like the shifting sands of the culture around us is unwise and is sinful and has a woe pronounced against it. 05:22 The first lie here that we see in verse 17 that the people were believing is that God is pleased with evil and thereby pleased with evil ones. Let me tell you this morning that God is not pleased with evil, and God is not pleased with the evil... the evil ones... those who practice evil. And yet they were saying, 05:42 "Well, because nothing happens immediately to judge these people, sometimes it would be almost helpful if judgment were meted out on sin in a similar way as Ananias and Sapphira, where there was an immediate, instant display of judgment. But it doesn't work that way. 06:01 In fact, we can say that payday is someday. But just because payday does not happen today does not mean that payday will not happen. And so there will be payday someday. But because in this verse, God was not... God was not immediately judging them, 06:21 He was being assumed that He's okay with what's going on around them. The second lie was that maybe God was powerless to do anything about it. Or where is the God of justice? Where is God when... if God really cared about these things, people would say... if God really cared about these things, why isn't He doing something about it? 06:43 If God is God, why didn't He do something about suffering people in Sudan and various parts of the world? If God is God, why didn't He do something about abortion? If God is God, why didn't He do something about disease and about the crisis of refugees and about little children dying in the streets of India and all of the injustice around? 07:04 And so really, they're not much different than what people are today, that God either is okay with all of this stuff or He doesn't really care and He isn't around. And the writer of Malachi here, whose name, by the way, if you remember, means messenger... Malachi means messenger. 07:23 The messenger is going to tell us that there is a message that is coming down the road... down the pike here. And he goes into verse 1 and gives us the plan for the coming of the Messiah. "Behold, I will send my messenger. He will prepare the way before me, 07:44 and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to His temple, even the messenger of the covenant." So we have two messengers here... three actually. You have the messenger Malachi, who's making the proclamation. You have the messenger in verse 1, who's preparing the way of the Lord. And then you have the capital M, 08:04 messenger, in the middle of verse 1, who is the Lord Himself. Now, as you look at this passage of Scripture, we can see shadows of both the first coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and the second coming of Jesus Christ. You see shadows and pictures of both. You see... 08:24 and it's not exactly easy to tell which is referring to His first coming and which is referring to His second coming. We know that this does refer to His first coming because in the book of... in the Gospels, it refers to John the Baptist as being the small M messenger in line 1 of verse 1. 08:44 And... but the prophets... the prophets basically, in the Old Testament, as they stood back and looked forward in the distance, they were unsure at times whether or not this was referring to His first coming or His second coming or if it was just His coming. 09:04 And it's almost like if you were driving to a mountain range... you're driving to Colorado and about Nebraska somewhere or Eastern Colorado... Central Colorado... you see the Rocky Mountains ahead of you. If you've ever done that, it's beautiful. And you see the mountain range and you see, "Ah! There's the mountains ahead of us." And that's like the coming of the Lord. 09:25 But as you get closer to the mountains, you begin to see individual mountains that are precise and defined and more namable. 09:40 And so as we get closer to the time of the Lord and the end of time, we recognize those... that the prophecies referred to His first coming and those were maybe not fulfilled in His first coming, and so they relate to His second coming. 09:55 Or maybe there is what is called the law of double fulfillment, which there is a sense in which the mountain of His first coming also corresponds with the mountain of His second coming. And so I think there are things here in this passage of Scripture that refer to His first, that refer to His second, and that refer to both... 10:16 His first and His second coming. And so His coming... that is the message... He has come... He is coming... He will come... and when He comes, whether the first time, the second time, or both times, He will set things right. 10:38 So I want to give you an outline this morning of this coming. We have in verse... in verse 1, we have the messenger. In verse 3, we have the refiner. In verse 5, we have the witness. And in verse 6, 10:58 we have the changeless one. We have the messenger. We have the refiner. We have Him coming as a witness and Him coming as the changeless one. So the messenger here that we see this morning, verse 1, is referring to John the Baptist. In the first line there, that messenger is referring to John the Baptist. 11:20 Jesus said of John the Baptist in Matthew 17:10, "His disciples asked Him, saying, 'Why then say the scribes that Elijah must come first? Before the Messiah come... before the messenger of the covenant... before the Lord would come? Elijah must come.' And Jesus answered and said unto them, 11:38 'Elijah truly shall first come.'" So He makes that statement. He will come and restore all things. By the way, if you just turn the page over to chapter 4, verse 5, you'll see a little bit of this mountaintop thing I was talking about. In Ephesians... 11:58 excuse me... Malachi 4:5, He says, "Behold, I will send you Elijah, the prophet, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord." So you have a messenger coming to announce the way of the Lord in chapter 3, verse 1, and you have Elijah coming in chapter 4, 12:18 verse 5, before the great and dreadful day of the Lord. So you've got Elijah coming. And they said, "Well, Elijah has to come before the Messiah came." Jesus said He already came, but He's coming again. He shall come... first come... and restore all things. "But I say unto you that Elias or Elijah is come already. 12:39 And they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of Man suffer of them." Then the disciples understood that He spoke unto them of John the Baptist. And Scripture makes it clear that John the Baptist fulfilled the words of Scripture in Isaiah 40. "The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, 13:00 'Prepare ye the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted. Every mountain and hill shall be made low. And the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough place is plain. 13:14 And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.'" So you have the fact that God predicted... prophesied through Isaiah and also through Malachi that there would be a messenger who would come and set things in order for the true messenger, 13:35 the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's who we talk about in the second half of this verse. "Even the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight..." or whom they were saying that they were delighting... "Send us the Messiah... send us the Messiah... 13:49 send us the Messiah..." Well, let me tell you, Israelites, the Messiah is coming, and He's coming to set things right that are wrong, including you and your wrongs and your lack of faithfulness and your need for purification and cleansing. 14:07 And so we see here the Lord Jesus Christ as the messenger... the Word... "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Speaking of Jesus, the messenger has to do with the Word... the proclamation... 14:26 the creative energy of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself to take the Word of God and pronounce it and proclaim it and communicate. This messenger is a communicator. He is communicating to us who God is. He is communicating to us the very nature of God. 14:47 "And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory... the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." So the messenger communicating the Word... the messenger communicating the nature of God... and the messenger communicating a new covenant... a new covenant. 15:07 You see covenant all the way through Malachi, for this is the sins that he is addressing... is that you have violated the covenant that God made with Israel and that God made specifically with the tribe of Levi, which we know as being the priests in which we talked about in previous messages. And so we have a new covenant that this messenger is declaring to us... 15:27 Hebrews chapter 8, verse 6... "But now hath he obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better principles or promises... better promises." Hebrews 13:20 says that great shepherd of the sheep, 15:48 through the blood of the everlasting covenant... the new covenant solidified and sealed and formalized by His blood. And so we have the Lord coming as the messenger. Then we see in verse... in verse 2, we have the Lord coming as a refiner... 16:10 a refiner... "So who shall endure... who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner's fire and like launderer's soap." Some translations have in this the idea of ly... 16:31 the strength and toxicity of ly. I guess it wouldn't be toxic, but it would be... yeah, it would be... it would be dangerous if it were unrestrained and got in the wrong places... get ly in your eye and can blind you. So the launderer's soap to cleanse and refine... we're talking here about the... 16:51 the... the cleansing of the people of Levi... the tribe of Levi. And reading through the Old Testament... Leviticus... Numbers... especially through Exodus and Leviticus... you see the emphasis on the clean versus the unclean. And so the tribe of Levi was used to being cleansed. 17:11 They had to have their robes cleansed. They had to have their bodies cleansed. They had to make sure that they were clean before they came into the presence of the Lord. 17:19 Leviticus 16:30 says, "For on that day, the priests shall make atonement for you to cleanse you, that you may be clean from all your sins before the Lord." And so all these washings and rituals and bloodshed and... and... and blood being put on... on the... the altar and... 17:38 and on the priests and on the priests' linen... you know, if you read through there, these priests had these beautiful... beautiful new white robes. And then first thing... first crack out of the box, what they did to that beautiful new white robe is sprinkled blood on it... messed it all up... stained it... stained in blood... 17:57 is the blood for the purification of even the temporal things to be dedicated to the use of God Almighty and the worship of God. So they dedicated the temple and they cleaned... cleansed the temple and they cleansed the priests and they cleansed the garments and they cleansed the houses... if your house had... had leprosy or... 18:17 or... or mold... and they cleansed the leper... if you had a skin disorder... skin disease... you would have to go through washings and cleansings... and they cleansed the person who had a discharge... they cleansed the... a... a... a woman after her menstrual cycle... they cleansed anybody that touched the dead or that had to... 18:35 that had to tend to a dead body or a dead person's body. And... and there's cleansing... washing... washing all the time... cleansing... washing... and... and... and this says that the refiner is going to come and cleanse you spiritually... spiritually... these washings and washings and washings could not cleanse the soul... 18:55 but this refiner is going to come, and with the refining fire of Almighty God and the ly of the launderer's soap is going to purify like silver and purify you like gold, 19:09 so that you may offer an offering in righteousness and not in hypocrisy." And so we have here 53 times in the book of Leviticus... 53 times the... the word cleanse is used or some form of it. And when we think about this refiner, 19:28 it has the idea of refining or testing or smelting... smelting iron or ore in its... in its native... native... uh... form, whether it be silver or gold or iron or copper... the smelting process... it's a rather complicated process, but it always involves heat... 19:50 whether that heat is created by a fan blowing fuel and charcoal uh to heat it up or... or some... today they use more uh... uh... uh acids and those kinds of things to purify and to cleanse and to smelt uh... uh iron and... 20:10 uh and... and gold and silver... whatever it is, it is a process that... that refines... that purges... he uses the word purge here... going to purge them as silver and gold to strain or extract, to distill, to take out all of the impurities. And how do you do that? You do that by fire... you do that by heat... 20:29 you do that by... by pressure... and... and so it is in the lives of us as saints... for the Bible says, "I indeed baptize you with water." This is what the messenger said... the small m messenger... he said, "I baptize you with water, but he that cometh after me is mightier than I... the big... 20:48 the capital M messenger... whose shoes I am not worthy to bear... he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire... fire... be careful when you pray that God would come with His fire... 21:04 because when the fire gets involved, the heat gets turned up and the pressure is put on to purify the impurities out of the soul of man and women." People sing about this... this fire in... in modern worship music... and... and just... 21:23 just be alert when you sing about that... and when you ask God's refining fire... I think there's even a song that says, "Refining fire... my heart's desire... my heart's desire is to be holy." Well, let me tell you, when you start praying for the fire to fall... guess what it does? It consumes the flesh... 21:43 not saying you shouldn't pray it... just be ready to pray it in sincerity... "And extreme heat to remove those impurities from the natural elements... even the elements in the ground that... 21:56 from which are extracted gold and silver and precious metals are done so in an impure condition that need to be purified... And so it is with our lives... He will purify us with the... with the refining fire whose fan is in His hand..." Interesting... 22:15 they would use a fan... use air movement... air current to fan that fire to make it hot so it does its work... "And He will thoroughly purge His floor and gather His wheat into the garner, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire..." That's speaking of the messenger of the covenant... 22:38 fire and wind for refining gold and silver and refining wheat from its stubble... This was done the first time when Jesus came... it'll be finished the second time... it was started the first time... it'll be completed the second time... 22:59 When you look at biblical prophecy and you see the seven-year period, which is... we refer to as the great... the time of the great tribulation... primarily for the purification of the Jewish people... it is also for the... the judgment of the nations... 23:17 but alongside of that judgment will be the purification of the tribe of Levi... the sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob... It's known as the time of Jacob's trouble... there will be economic... social... moral... 23:36 and religious chaos... and you think this past week has been a time of something topsy-turvy... you haven't really seen anything yet... what is coming upon the nations of this world... and all eyes are even now being focused on a renewed wave of anti-Semitism... 23:54 it's amazing that anti-Semitism after what was taking place back in the Second World War, where we thought we were rid of anti-Semitism and the Jewish people could live in peace... well, God has not yet settled everything... there's more to come... and the Bible says in Matthew 24:21-22, 24:14 "For then there will be great tribulation, such he... as He has not been... such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time... no, nor ever shall be... and unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved... but for the elect's sake, those days will be shortened..." We don't exactly know what he's referring to... 24:36 if it is an actual shorter day or if it is a shortening of the period of time of judgment out of the mercy of God... we don't know... but we just know that there's coming a day and a time and an hour and a period of history such as the world has not yet ever seen on a global scale... a global scale... 24:58 And so this refiner... the refiner sits in judgment, but his judgment is to purify the sons of Levi... Thank God that our sins have been judged, but there also is the purification of the believer... 25:17 purification of the believer where God turns the heat up and sanctifies us... you've heard the story told... I cannot verify this... but you've heard the story told of the smelter who was asked, "How do you know when you got the... the heat just right for the purification of the gold?" He said, "I know when it's just right... 25:37 when I can see my reflection in the gold..." Well, that's a nice little story... I've not been able to... to verify that by looking at the process of smelting... but nevertheless, it does make sense that that's what God is... was after in the purification of his people... 25:54 that they may offer up unto him an offering in righteousness... the word offer here means to... to draw near... to approach unto something... and so we must be cleansed in order to approach unto the holy place of God's dwelling... 26:14 and that cleansing for us as believers is through the precious blood of Jesus Christ... you can go through all of the washings of your body... you can wash your hands 50 times a day... and it will not wash your soul... 26:32 only that which is the blood of Jesus can wash the soul and make it clean... 26:41 I told a Sunday school class this morning that I went for an MRI here recently for my tremors... I went for an MRI... had one done on my brain... see if there was one in there... and there is... the guy said... when I went to the neurologist... he said... he said, "Your brain looks really... 27:01 really good if there is such a thing..." and he sliced it in the pictures... he sliced down through this way and down through this way... and it all looked good... he said, "There's no tumors... there's all of the places where there's... there's... looks like there could be dementia... there's nothing there for dementia..." he said, 27:19 "You have a perfect brain..." but he didn't tell me I had a perfect mind... because perfect mind can only be done by renewing the mind in Jesus Christ and his word... now it's true probably that the brain... that the mind is in the brain... 27:38 but you can't take an MRI of the mind... and you can't cleanse yourself from sin by washing... and you can't cleanse yourself from sin by taking a bath... and oh, there's times in our innermost being if we just would be able to have our minds cleansed... 27:57 and our soul washed from all the filth and impurities of the world... but the only way you can do that is by the refiner and his fire... his cleansing... we go on this morning to see the witness... 28:18 the witness... he said, "I will come near for you... near you for judgment... I will be a swift witness... a witness against sorcerers... against adulterers... against perjurers... against those who exploit people... 28:40 wage earners... withholding wages... exploiting widows and orphans... against those who turn away an alien... some translations... translate that... who deprive the foreigners living among you of justice... there's an unequal balance of justice... some people are judged on one balance... 29:01 other people are judged on another balance... and if you're... anyway, we won't say much about that other than there's a sense of justice that must... must be had in the way we treat one another... but I want to just spend a moment here this morning speaking about this thing about sorcery... it's not something that we talk about readily or... 29:21 or often here at... at... across this pulpit... but nevertheless, it is a need to talk about sorcery as something that needs to be repented of... the word judgment here is a legal term... it is a legal decision... it is a legal sentence as in a court case... 29:41 and he says, "I'm going to preside as a witness and as a judge over this court case... and I am against the sorcerers and against the adulterers and against the perjurers and against those who exploit people and oppress people because they do not fear me," says the Lord... 30:04 sorcery is the practice of using occult supernatural means such as incantations and/or spells in order to control forces in the spiritual realm with the intention of influencing the physical realm... now we believe in prayer... we believe in prayer... 30:24 we believe in prayer to Almighty God who is the sovereign God of the universe... and we pray for things to be affected in the physical realm for his glory... amen... in sorcery, they pray to another God... 30:44 whether that God be Satan or demons or people praying to demons and don't know that they're praying to demons because they've been camouflaged as an angel of light... but when sorcery is used, it is in order to gain control of the environment and/or people... it is not about letting God, 31:03 the sovereign of the universe, order the world for his glory... it is about man ordering the universe for their well-being... and so it is with those who want to gain control of an environment or people to foretell the future... 31:24 to summon spirits... to harm others or the benefit of oneself... I'm quoting from... from an article by a man by the name of Matt Slick... it is often associated with magic whether it be black or white... black magic is the attempt to produce harm upon someone through curses and spells... 31:45 so you want to harm someone else... white magic is the attempt to use incantation and spells for personal benefit... so you have the black wanting to harm and wanting... and the white wanting to benefit yourself... but it all is around self... 32:07 self... self... being in control... being glorifying of self... God forbade the Israelites to practice sorcery and instituted the death penalty for involvement with it... Deuteronomy 18:10 and Exodus 22:18... following are some of the verses that... 32:26 from the scriptures that discuss various aspects of sorcery... sorcery can be such things as astrology... astrology... astronomy is different than astrology... astronomy is the study of the heavenly beings to search out the... the... the... 32:45 the... the stars... astrology is the stargazing to order one's life according to the stars or the planets or the monthly cycles... 33:02 stargazers and monthly prognosticators are referred to in Isaiah 47 as astrologists... and so we... while we maybe have a telescope and we have the Hubble telescope and we have the space station who are out there searching the nature of the planets and their rotations... 33:22 astrology says that the nature of the planets and their rotations means something to determine human behavior of yours or someone else's... so horoscopes are based on astrology... zodiac signs based on astrology... 33:40 there's a section in the paper every day... a horoscope... don't read it... don't read it... don't pay attention to it... don't look at it... just overlook it... it's meaningless... in fact, just recently they came out with... with... uh Al Mohler had an... 33:59 um one of his daily briefings on the astrological... uh horoscope MAC... the sign... uh horoscope... uh signs of the zodiac... and he said, "They're all messed up anyway... there's actually a 13 cycle... 13 cycles of the... 34:19 of the zodiac instead of 12... and everybody's basing their life on the 12 or whatever... anyway, it was... it was quite fascinating even though I didn't pay attention... very close attention to it... but it's all messed up... it's meaningless... and if it has any meaning, it's demonic... and it's one of those things that... 34:35 it's one of those gateway drugs of the devil which wants to pull you in by enticing you with a harmless little horoscope... a little bit like the Ouija board... I don't know if you can still buy those or not... back in the day you could... and not... and recently I... 34:54 I... and then the last couple of years I've heard of them being available again... Ouija boards where you want to have someone tell your future or communicate some message that's unknowable by humanity... and you open yourself up to demonic spirits... you open yourself up... divination... witchcraft... 35:15 casting spells... omens... Galatians chapter 5 verse 20 says, "Sorcery is listed in the list of those things that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God..." it's in that list... magic... magicians... 35:34 may I say Harry Potter kinds of things... Halloween... oh, it's so innocent... it's just somebody's imagination... but it's a gateway... it's a gateway... Dungeons and Dragons... some of your video games... your intense, violent and... and... um occultic video games... 35:55 they're... they're gateways to pull you into the occult... they're also gateways for the enemy to come in and... and... and oppress you as a believer... now Satan, I don't believe, can possess a believer... but he certainly can oppress a believer... 36:14 because he's real and he's looking for any opportunity to make an impact and an inroad into one's life... it also refers to mediums... those who practice necromancy... communication with the dead... I haven't studied this much... 36:32 but I do believe in the basis that of what I have studied that those who... who... who want to connect with their dead relative actually connect with a demonic spirit... well, there's a message coming from the unknown... from the other world... but it's not from your dead loved one... 36:52 it's from your... it's from a demon... it's from a demon... a demonic spirit... sorceries and spells... magicians... 37:02 the Bible says in Revelation 21 verse 8, "But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral sorcerers, idolaters and all liars shall have their part in the lake of fire which burns with fire and brimstone. Which is the second death... Revelation 22:15 says, "But outside are dogs and sorcerers... 37:23 they are outside and sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters and whoever loves and practices a lie..." this is such a serious matter that in Acts chapter 19 in the city of Ephesus when those people got saved and had that divine glorious move of God in the book of 37:41 Acts uh chapter 19 verse 19 it says that they that practice magic arts brought their books and burned them in the sight of all... and in today's currency it would amount into about $6.4 million dollars worth of magic paraphernalia... 38:02 so we don't say these things to scare one... but we do say to warn one another about the occult... it is very... very real... it is also something not to be played with... because there is a sinister design to all of these gateway activities... 38:25 and that is to draw one away from God... to possess what God rightly owns and to take control... to take control of your life... your soul... your mind... your will... your emotions... so we need not be afraid of the enemy... we need not be afraid of the occult... 38:46 we need not be afraid of spells and witchcraft... but neither do we want to participate in them in any way... such thing as superstitions... oops, a black cat walked across my path... so what? It's a nice black cat... the only thing that matters is what you believe about that black cat... 39:09 and if you're superstitious... you walk under a ladder... you step on the crack and break your mother's back... all kinds of weird stuff that people have designed through the years to... as superstition... they're gateways to allow the enemy to control... 39:26 but thank God we have the promise of our final messenger here today... final aspect of the messenger... and that is, "I am the Lord... I do not change... I do not change..." that God is changeless... he is coming... 39:46 and what he came to do with his first coming he will finish on his second coming... and as he purifies us may he purify us now so that when we see him we shall come forth as gold... he doesn't want to consume us... he wants to purify us... 40:04 he wants us to be able to offer up to him offerings in righteousness... that we may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness... he is coming to set things right... so fear not... appreciated that message by Brother Marv this morning... 40:23 fear not... but fear the Lord... and allow him to come into our lives as a messenger... as a refiner... as a witness... witnessing to us about truth in our own lives... and as a changeless one who is forever the same... 40:44 let's pray... Father in heaven, we thank you this morning that you are God and there will never, ever be a time that you are not God... you are in control and there will never, ever be a time when you are not in control... 41:03 you are designing the nations according to your plan and your sovereign will to ultimately bring judgment on sin and Satan and on the judgment of the world around us who know not God and don't want to know God... and there will never be a time when you are not in control... 41:26 there will never be a time when Christ didn't rise from the dead... there will never be a time when Christ is not Lord... that's a backwards way of saying that you are Lord... you are in control and that is forever... 41:43 and so Lord, we bring ourselves to you this morning and we just humbly bow at your feet... we come under the sculptor's knife... chisel... we come under the refiner's fire... 41:57 we come under the wind that blows away the chaff and leaves pure seed... 42:09 we ask you, Lord, to witness to our spirits about our sin so that we might repent and ask forgiveness and be forgiven and be cleansed and be changed... we ask, Lord, this morning that if there is someone who needs their... their... their... their inner man cleansed that they would come to Jesus... 42:30 we ask if there is someone who is bound up in such things as the occult and Satan having made inroads into their lives that they would come to Jesus and be saved... be free... be set free by the power of God... and we pray these things in Jesus' name... amen...