On this last Sunday of 1987 we are going to read the last three verses of the Old Testament together.

So I'd invite you to turn to Malachai Chapter 4,

verses 4 through 6, and follow along with me as I read.

Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and ordinances that I commanded him

at Horrib for all Israel.

Behold I will send you Elijah the Prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes,

and he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the land

with a curse.

Well, we come to the end of the year and to the end of Malach, and to the end of the Old Testament, as Tom just said.

And we find in these three verses at the end of the Old Testament something I would expect to find, and something I wouldn't expect to find.

I do expect to find a bridge, a glance back at the past and then a glance forward. Let's look at that first.

And I'll tell you what I wouldn't expect to find. The glance backward is in verse four. Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes, the ordinances that I can

hand at him at Horum.

Remember.

So there's the word that sends us backward, right?

When anybody says, remember, you look back. But the next verse says,

behold, I send, it means I will send. You, Elijah, the Prophet, before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes.

And so the glance is forward now.

There's coming a day of victory, a day of the Lord, and a preceding preparer of the day of the Lord Elijah.

So I expect that.

That's the way I would write at the end of a book

that ends the Old Testament. You look back and you remember the great deeds of God at Sinai or Horrib, same place.

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