The Bible Study Podcast, episode 795. Today, the Bible Study podcast continues the study of the book of Malachi with chapter 3.

Welcome to the Bible study podcast. I'm your host Chris Christensen. We start Malachi with these familiar words.

I will send my messenger who will prepare the wave before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple.

The messenger of the covenant, whom you desire will come, says the Lord Almighty. But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he

appears? For he will be like a refiner's fire or a launderer's soap. He will sit as a refiner and

purifier of silver. He will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the Lord

will have men who bring offerings in righteousness,

and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the Lord as in days gone by,

as in former years. So I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against

sorcerers, adulterers, and perjurers against those who defraud

laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners

among you of justice, but they do not fear me, says the Lord Almighty.

And so we have these words here that talk about a messenger who will prepare the way before God,

the way before the Lord. And of course, when I'm here in the end of the Old Testament prophets,

and I think about the messenger, I think of John the Baptist, and we think about the Lord coming

to his temple, I think about Jesus, either in the first time he came or in the time when

he is coming again. And which, again, are we talking about here? Isn't all that clear and maybe

both. But it talks about this messenger of the covenant who will come before the Lord, because God

is coming. And God is coming to set things right.

Now, whether we're talking about Jesus who is going to go into the temple and turn over

tables and talk about what is happening in the temple where they've turned it into a marketplace

instead of a place of worship or whether we're talking about Jesus when he comes again

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