Amen and amen.

How we doing, church?

Everybody good?

Looking good.

If you got your Bibles, we're in Malachi chapter 2.

We are in week three of this series called Malachi,

where we're just walking word by word through this Old Testament prophet.

It's the very last prophet in the Old Testament.

It's the last thing God is going to say to his people.

Then there's 400 years of silence,

and then it's Christmas time. So this is what we have been studying. And remember, most of the

times what a prophet would do is they would show up to, there was very little encouragement

from the prophets most of the time in the Old Testament. There was a lot of correction.

There was a lot of rebuke. But remember, the whole thing started with God, like a good dad, is connecting before he corrects.

Remember the way he started this whole thing out as this.

I have loved you.

And then like a little twerpy teenager, the nation of Israel, talks back to their father.

Nobody understands that.

It doesn't have the teenagers,

right? But God is trying to, because he loves his people, he is going to connect and then correct

and say, these things I have against you, but essentially Israel talks back to God, kind of puts

him on trial, and they say, how have you loved us?

...