Overcoming Hard Thoughts Toward God

This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

Malachi’s Final Disputation and the Question of Who the Oracle Is For

Well, we're continuing our study in the book of Malachi. We're in the third chapter. And if you remember, the book of Malachi is a series of six oracles, or six disputations with the people of Israel after they had returned from a long stay in Babylonian captivity.

And we find ourselves here in this third chapter, in the midst of God's last and final disputation with the people. And so if we read and starting in verses 13 or 13 to 15 to refresh our memories of what this dispute was about.

Your words have been hard against me, says the Lord. But you say, how have we spoken against you? You have said, it is vain to serve God. What is the profit of our keeping his charge or of walking as in mourning before the Lord of hosts?

And now we call the arrogant blessed. Evildoers not only prosper, but they put God to the test and they escape. And the verses we're going to look at are 16 through 18. And we will continue on, on this theme of this dispute here.

But before we have a look at this, I'd like to ask a question. And that is this oracle, this prophecy here, this dispute with the children of Israel. Who is it for? Because on the one hand, it seems obvious.

We just look at the text and it says, your words have been hard against me. Just like all the other oracles, it was towards the nation of Israel as a whole, the unbelieving among them that God had these words.

But though that's a correct statement, it was addressed to them. My question is not who was it addressed to, but who was it written for? Because there's a difference. Just consider one of Ezekiel's prophecies.

The Lord of Ezekiel came to him and here's what he said. The word of the Lord came to me. Son of man, set your face towards the mountains of Israel and prophesy against them and say, you mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord God.

Thus says the Lord God to the mountains and to the hills, to the ravines and the valleys. Behold, I, even I, will bring a sword upon you and I will destroy your high places. Now it's clear there that Ezekiel was addressing the mountains and the hills, but clearly it wasn't written for the sakes of the mountains and the hills.

So in like manner, when you look at the prophecy here in Malachi, I don't think it was written primarily for the sake of unbelieving Jews. And the Old Testament, for that matter, I don't think was written primarily for unbelieving Jews.

Just consider what it has to say in the New Testament. Whatever things were written beforehand were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope. And that was Paul speaking to the saints in Rome.

So I say that all just to come to this point, is that when we come across this prophecy here in the book of Malachi, we should be thinking that there's a lesson for us here who are Christians. And when God charges them that your words have been hard against me, we should be asking, have our hearts been hard against God?

And it is very common and easy for that to happen. And it can happen even to the most eminent among Christians. Just consider the man Asaph. Asaph, if you remember from the Old Testament, was a chief among the Levites.

And he was selected among them to lead the congregation in praise. He was also a prophet, and he happened to write a number of the Psalms. Well, in Psalm 73, he recorded a time when his heart was hard toward God.

And he recorded in there some of the words that he was saying, that when you look at them are virtually indistinguishable from what these people are saying here in Malachi's prophecy. Here in Malachi, they were saying, and now we call the arrogant blessed.

Evil doers not only prosper, but they put God to the test and they escape. And then back in Psalm 73, Asaph says, For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. In Malachi, they were saying, It is vain to serve God.

What is the prophet of our keeping his charge, or of walking as in mourning before the Lord of hosts? Asaph's words were nearly indistinguishable. He says, Behold, these are the wicked, always at ease.

They increase in riches. All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. For all the day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning. And Asaph eventually snapped out of this hardness of heart that he had.

And when he did so, he looked upon that time as a time when he was a brutish man. He says, I was like a beast before you, more brutish than any man. And then, so in Malachi here, we should be considering if our hearts have been hard.

Is there any areas in our life where we think that God hasn't been dealing well with us? Some kind of hard providence maybe, or perhaps we see him as someone with demands and commands that are too high for us, too hard to keep.

Or maybe once we have kept his commands, that we see no labor and no fruit, and we wonder if our labor has been in vain as well. And then, if that happens to have struck a little bit home with any of you as we were considering this, and you find some hardness in your heart, I'd just like to ask, is that really what you think God is like?

A hard task master? That somehow all your reasonings about him have somehow been true, and that this God really does turn out to be a hard God toward you. And what else I would ask is, do you do well to think such low thoughts of God?

Now, as much cause as there is in God to return evil for evil, and to bring swift rebukes on us for our hardness of heart toward him, it's often his way that he wins us over, wins his saints back to him through words of peace and grace.

And it says, By mercy and truth, iniquity is purged, and by the fear of the Lord, men depart from evil. And John Newton said it similarly, when he said, It was grace that taught my heart to fear. And there's something about the nature of God, of being treated with loving kindness and mercy, that melts the heart and pricks the conscience more than a way that an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth could ever do.

And I think all of us, even though at times we may be overcome with hardness of heart, I think that all of us, to some degree, have a measure of hardness of heart towards God. I think all of us do. I don't think any of us truly esteem him as we ought to, and our thoughts of him are too low.

But when we hear the heartbeat of God and see in his word what he's really like, it snaps us back to reality and brings our hearts back to him. Just consider what God is like, what his heartbeat is like.

Just listen to this short passage from Hosea. When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. The more they were called, the more they went away. They kept sacrificing to the Baals and bringing offerings to idols.

Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk. I took them up by their arms, but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of kindness, with the bands of love, and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws, and I bent down to them and fed them.

So that's the approach God is going to take here in Hosea. A message Hosea gave addressed to the unbelieving and wicked in heart of Israel, but written for his saints. And he's going to come to us in mercy and love, and with grace poured upon his lips, he's going to bring three powerful arguments for us to consider.

That we would know that God is not a hard task master, but that he is a loving and gracious God, worthy to be served with all of our hearts. So that's what we're going to look at right now. Argument number one.

God Remembers Every Good Work and Magnifies the Smallest Acts of Faith

You'll remember every good work. Read with me in verse 16. Then those who feared the Lord spoke with one another. The Lord paid attention and heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared the Lord and esteemed his name.

A book of remembrance. So a good question to ask here is, what is this book of remembrance? And we can start by thinking about what it isn't. Because I don't think it's a physical book that's recorded in heaven.

Just as I don't think that God keeps our physical tears in bottles for him to remember. God doesn't need such things, he's all-knowing. He doesn't learn like us where you learn by contemplation and observation.

And nor does he forget. So I don't think it's a physical book written in heaven. But I do think it is a figure of speech aimed toward us to convey two important ideas. And those ideas, I think, are very real and important.

So the first thing that we should think about when we think of a book of remembrance, when it says remembrance, is that it's a book of recompense. When God says, I will remember something, it's not as if he takes this book and takes it off the dusty shelf to open it up and look at what is recorded there like we might with an old photo album just to reminisce.

But when God says, I will remember, what he is saying to us is, I will recompense. I will repay. Now if you remember the time that David was fleeing from his son Absalom and he was crossing the river and a man named Shimei came out to meet him.

And he began to curse David and cast stones at him and then David carried on his way and let him be for the time being. But afterwards when Absalom was dead and David was returning, Shimei came out to meet him again and he said, Let not my Lord hold me guilty or remember how your servant did wrong on the day my Lord the King left Jerusalem.

Now what was Shimei asking, don't remember, don't remember my wickedness? Was he saying, don't recall it to mind? Well that would be pretty foolish if that's what he meant. Because if David had forgotten, well Shimei just remembered, reminded him, didn't he?

No, but what he was asking when he said, don't remember is, don't repay me according to my wickedness. And so this idea of remembrance as recompense is found in other parts of the scripture as well. Listen to this text from Hosea.

They have deeply corrupted themselves as in the days of Gibeah. He will remember their iniquity, he will punish their sins. Here's another one also from Hosea. As for my sacrificial offerings, they sacrifice meat and eat it, but the Lord does not accept them.

Now he will remember their iniquity and punish their sins. They shall return to Egypt. Or here's another one from Isaiah, a passage that would be familiar to many of us. I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.

Now is he saying there that he won't remember as in, I'll put away my omniscience? No, that's not what he's saying. He's saying I will not repay your sins. So that's the first idea of this book of remembrance, the recompense.

But the other thing that I think it's meant to convey to us is the idea of delay. It's not like these other passages that we just read of where God says, now I will recompense and now I will repay. But all we have here is seeing that it is written in a book that God will remember.

And this was Israel's faulty thinking when they were complaining against God. They weren't looking at the end of things, but they were just looking at the present circumstances. Their horizon was too short, and then they were blaming God for it.

And that happened to be Asaph's problem as well. He snapped out of his delusion when he considered the end of the wicked. And I think that can be often our problem as well when we look on difficult circumstances or times in our life, when it seems that all that God does, is just note it down in a book and move on.

And that's a warning to us Christians because we can often think like that. It's not to blame God for those times in our life where that's all God seems to do. Don't think of him as a hard task master because of that.

Because he does promise there will be a recompense, but often it's just that it's not yet. Let's consider more about this book of remembrance, what it is, and consider what it is that is recorded there.

And thanks be to God, it's not our evil works that are recorded in that book. Just like we read or heard just previously in Isaiah, your sins and your iniquities I'll remember no more. But what is recorded in there is our good deeds that we've done through faith in his name.

And it's not only our good deeds there that I'd like us to notice here, but it is every good deed. We look at our text here in Malachi, what is it that pricked God's ears to take notice of them that caused him to lift up, to write it down in a book, and make this great proclamation that he does in our text?

Did he look and see Billy Graham preaching to a multitude for their conversion or some missionary pouring out their lives in a foreign land or a Bible translator or someone to set up a bunch of orphanages or set up hospitals?

Was it the kind of thing that God took notice of, of what we like to look of and take notice of and write down in biographies? What does the text say? Then those who feared the Lord spoke with one another.

The Lord paid attention and heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before him. They spoke to one another. And what that tells me is that God chooses to remember not just those things that we might consider great feats of faith, but every little thing that has seemed insignificant and minute in our eyes that is done for God's name through faith.

They spoke to one another. That means that your service to God is not in vain, but it will be repaid, every little work that you have done. If you happen to run the soundboard or greet saints at the door or clean the church or hand out a tract or pray for a brother or sister or even if you just say praise the Lord to someone and let the world know that God is precious to you, God will remember that.

If you so much as give a cup of cold water to a saint in the name of a disciple, you will by no means lose your reward. And it's not only that, that God chooses all these little things to remember and reward, but his memory is better than ours.

So that means when you think about all the things we've done as Christians or will ever do, things that after years gone by, we don't even recall ourselves, those are still recorded there in that book.

And I think we'll be quite surprised and shocked when it comes time, this day of recompense, when God brings up all these things that we have done and he rewards us and there'll be much praise. Well, I'll go further than that because the Bible goes further than that.

It's not just that God takes every little good work and rewards it, but he takes these little things of ours, these little things like these saints here talking to each other, a small little thing with a seed of faith and God takes it and magnifies it like it were a big deal.

He's like the proud father or proud mother who looks on a child who is doing some new thing for the very first time and then they might say a first word or something like that and then the parent's reaction is, look at that.

Would you look at that? Isn't that amazing? And then they rejoice in that. And that little thing they magnify and that's like what God does towards us, even the little works. And you can see that dispersed throughout the Bible.

I have a few examples here just for us to get a hold of this idea and see what our God is like. One of my favorite ones is Gideon. Gideon, if you remember, in that day was in an Israel who was beset by the Midianites round about them.

They were the enemy of the day and Gideon was timid and fearful of them and so if you remember, he threshed his grain at night so that he wouldn't be found out. And then God came to him and he said, go in the strength of yours and save Israel.

And Gideon questioned God at that point and asked for a sign and then God said to him, well, he said to him, go and tear down the altar of Baal that your father has and tear down the Asherah that is there.

And Gideon, if you remember, he did hearken to it but not without a little bit of a fight first. And again, he questioned God a little bit and he went out and he did it at night, it says, because he was afraid.

And then there's the incidence of the fleece where Gideon asked not once but twice for a sign from heaven. And in all this timidness of Gideon that we see would characterize the man. I think back on that and I look at the way that God addressed Gideon.

And he said to him, the Lord is with you, you mighty man of valor. And so the Lord put upon Gideon a kind of a title and a badge that day. And so you remember when they went out to battle, what the cry was?

The sword of the Lord and of Gideon. And that's just one of the kind of ways that God looks on his children, sees a little bit of a mustard seed of faith and magnifies that and glories in it. Or we could take the example of Sarah, Abraham and Sarah at the Oak of Mamre.

When the Lord appeared to them and he said to Abraham that he will come again and that Sarah will have a son. And then if you remember that one, Sarah overheard when she was in the tent, the door of the tent.

Actually, let's read this one. I'll read it to you here. So the Lord appeared to him and it was the angels, the three men that were with him bringing this message. They said to Abraham, where is Sarah, your wife?

And he said, she is in the tent. The Lord said, I will surely return to you about this time next year and Sarah, your wife, shall have a son. And Sarah was listening at the tent door behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years.

The way of women had ceased to be with Sarah. So Sarah laughed to herself saying, after I am worn out and my Lord is old, shall I have pleasure? The Lord said to Abraham, why did Sarah laugh and say, shall I indeed bear a child now that I am old?

Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the appointed time, I will return to you about this time next year and Sarah shall have a son. But Sarah denied it saying, I did not laugh, for she was afraid. And he said, no, but you did laugh.

And here's where it gets interesting. The Lord didn't just pass by Sarah's fault. He noted it. He didn't gloss over it. But he reproved her for it. But that's not the thing that he chose to dwell on here with Sarah.

That's not what he focused on and magnified. Now consider all the ways that Sarah could have been remembered given this account of her. Do you remember how God chose to remember her? You can read about her in Hebrews chapter 11 where he says, by faith Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed because she judged him faithful who had promised.

And so the way God chose to remember her was that she would go down in history in the great hall of faith. I do have one more example I want to get to. And I trust you don't mind me laboring this point because these are the kind of things that we should glory in.

We should glory in the loving kindness and goodness of our God. The thief on the cross, a man who had lived immorally without God and without hope. His whole life, according to his own pleasure, wasted his entire life.

And as he was on his cross there in his final hour, in his very final breath, he did two things. First, he reproved the other sinner that was there being crucified with him. And the other thing he did was to say to Jesus one short sentence, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.

And what was the response of our Lord when he heard that? You know it well. Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise. Does that not melt your heart, prick your conscience for any hard thoughts you might be having toward God?

But this is what God is like. This is what Scripture testifies of him. Well, if that hasn't convinced you that God is not this hard taskmaster, let's move on to his second argument. That is, he will own us as his treasure.

God Will Own His People as His Treasured Possession

Verse 17, they shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts. In the day when I make up my treasured possession. Now what I want us to see here is that this, what is said for these people, is a unique and special promise for them.

It wasn't given to the nation of Israel as a whole, to which Malachi was reproving at this point. But for these ones here, those who feared the Lord and those who esteemed his name. Now, a question that you might be thinking or that might be brought up at this point is, if these ones were here, were called a treasure of God, what about the nation of a whole?

Because it wasn't, weren't they called God's treasure? And there is some truth to that. And let's look at that. The closest thing we have to that, we have a statement in Deuteronomy 7 .6. Deuteronomy 7 .6 says this,.

For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. And when we look at that verse, what I would suggest is that indeed it's true that Israel as a nation was chosen to be God's special treasure.

But I don't believe they have actually, to this day, fulfilled that purpose of being a treasure in God's sight. I believe they will someday. But as long as they were under the old covenant, this statement of them being a treasure was always conditional.

If you want to see that, that can be found in Exodus 19. And look at the conditional nature of this when God says in Exodus 19 verse 5,. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples for all the earth is mine.

And you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel. So has Israel ever become a kingdom of priests to God? Well, they have not.

But who has attained that? It's the church, right? In the New Testament talks of, New Testament talks about the saints being a treasure, a kingdom of priests unto God. So then, it is a unique promise then that is given here to these ones, these faithful ones in Malachi, to be God's treasure in a way that Israel has never yet attained.

And when we think about the nature of what it is to be a treasure, just contemplating what it is, what does a statement mean then to be God's treasure? Because when you think of it, a treasure is something that is valued in one's sight.

It's something that is esteemed, something loved. So another way of saying that we are God's treasure might be to say that we are loved by God as a treasure is loved, which is a true statement. But again, there's a question because if this is a unique promise to these faithful ones here in Malachi, what of the nation of Israel?

Weren't they loved by God? And when you think back to the opening in Malachi, that's indeed what God told them. I have loved you, He says. So I conclude then that this promise, which seems to be taken specifically and uniquely for these faithful ones here in Israel, that they are a treasure in God's sight, not like Israel is a treasure, but that they were loved as a treasure, not like Israel was loved.

Both were loved, but not in the same manner. Now, I want to share with you something I learned from Jonathan Edwards about this who talked about the nature of love. It was very helpful for me, and so I'll share it with you.

He observed that there's two basic kinds of love. The one he called a love of benevolence, and the other he called a love of complacence. And a terminology he used isn't really that important. No one seems to speak that way anymore.

Anyhow, what the concepts I want to share with you, that we would understand them. The love of benevolence, he described, is a delight in the well-being of another, to paraphrase him. That's like the kind of love that we are commanded to love our enemies with.

On the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told us to love our enemies. He described what it would look like to those who are evil to you, you repay with kindness. Pray for them who persecute you, even as your Father is merciful to the kind and to the evil.

And that's the kind of love also that God had for the children of Israel. When Malachi said, I loved you, and they said, how have you loved us? He went on to describe what that love looks like, what kind of love that is.

And then so he compared it with the way he treated Israel, with the way he treated Esau. And what we see is that God had a desire for the well-being of Israel. He loved them with a love of benevolence.

But there's another kind of love, quite separate from that, that Jonathan Edwards called the love of complacence. He said this is a love, not for the well-being of another, but a delight in the beholding of the beauty of another.

So my enemies, for example, I may love them with a love of benevolence, but I don't behold the beauty of my enemies. I don't esteem them as my treasure. Whereas my wife, on the other hand, I do esteem as a treasure.

I love her not only with a love of benevolence, but with a love of complacence. Now, this is an important idea for us to understand, this love of complacence. Because I believe if we don't understand it or acknowledge it correctly, we will find that we at times put up a barrier between ourselves and God and put some distance between us.

And it will be like what happened to Peter. If you remember that time that Peter was out on a boat with Jesus and the disciples and then Jesus had a great display of his divinity that he showed in the multiplying of the fish.

And then Peter saw that and he saw the holiness of the Lord. And though he understood Jesus' love of benevolence for him, he had no need to doubt that. He knew that God was caring for his well-being, that God was treating him well.

But yet nevertheless, his response when he saw that was to say, Lord, depart from me, for I am a sinful man. And Jesus didn't, Peter didn't see himself as a treasure in God's sight. And so he put some distance between him and the Lord, a wall of defense between him and his Savior.

Now when I talk about this saying that he didn't see himself as a treasure, I don't want you to think of me as speaking like the world might think, that you just need to have some self-esteem and love yourself because you're worth it.

That's not the point I'm getting at here. But what I am saying is that we need to understand this so that we don't unnecessarily put up these walls of barrier between us and our Lord. If you happen to be in a room crowded with people and you stink and you're sitting there and you're putting off a pretty awful aroma, it doesn't really help much or comfort you very much that the people around you care about your well-being, that they love you with a love of benevolence.

It doesn't help you so much for them to say, that's okay, that's okay, we love you anyway. But what you want to do is put some distance between you and them, isn't it? You want to withdraw and you want to get out of there a little bit.

I think that's kind of what Peter felt when he was there on the boat with Jesus because he was not seeing himself as a treasure or a treasure in God's eyes. And this is something that I think Christians can take a good long while to get a good grasp of.

And Peter himself, even later on, when Jesus was with them, even to the very end in the upper room, Peter was there again with Jesus and then the Lord did something pretty remarkable at that point when he stooped down and he had a basin of water and he began to wash the disciples' feet and then to wipe their feet with a towel that was around him.

Well, Peter was there again and just as before in the boat, he was seeing here that there was a kind of a parable that Jesus was teaching, not about washing of your physical feet but about moral cleansing.

And when Peter saw it and he caught on, he said to our Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head because he felt his pollution next to his Lord who was stooping in front of him, comparing himself to the Lord.

He saw himself as a man of filth that needed to be cleaned. But what did Jesus say then at that point? Did he say to Peter, yes, I know it, Peter, you are filthy but I love you anyway? No, but he said, he that is washed doesn't need except to wash his feet but he is completely clean.

Now, I know what some of you maybe are thinking at this point. You're thinking, right, he was clean because he had the imputed righteousness of Christ. He was spotless before Jesus because the righteousness of Christ was his and so God could look on that and see him as clean.

But what I want to suggest to you is that this is not at all what was going on in the heart of Peter or in the heart of Jesus when all this was happening because like before on the boat, Peter knew that he had peace with Jesus.

Jesus had chosen him to be an apostle and to be with him. Jesus was treating him with the greatest of love, even in this very moment. Now, justification, the imputation of Christ's righteousness to sinners that we may be accounted right in his sight, is not what was on Peter's mind here.

He was not coming into, he was not thinking of being made in a right state with God, but he was thinking about his own heart and his own corruption. He wasn't thinking about the righteousness that comes by justification and being made right before God, but he was thinking about that righteousness of the heart, Jesus was, that comes through the washing of regeneration.

It's by justification that we're made right and attain a right standing before God, but it's through regeneration that we are made a treasure in God's sight. Peter didn't understand it yet, and I think that many of us don't quite fully understand it yet either, that as Christians, we have become a new creation, born from God, created in righteousness and true holiness, and do we continue to have sin in our lives?

Well, Peter did. It wasn't long after this that Peter would go right out, that very night, in fact, and deny our Lord three times, and Jesus knew it. He told them, you have to wash your feet. Nevertheless, he told them that they were clean, that they were a treasure, and so, Christian, you too are a treasure in God's sight, because he loves you not only for your well-being and to see good done to you, but because he sees beauty, and he beholds a treasure when he sees you.

Now, if we can get a hold of this and understand that we are, become treasure in God's sight, then we can start to see how God rejoices as he does when he sees the little, tiny act of faith in the weakest believer, and he can say to Gideon, you are a mighty man of valor, or can esteem Sarah the way that he did, or that he can look upon these ones here in the book of Malachi, who are talking to each other, and God takes notice, marks it down, writes it in the book, and glories in that, because what he is seeing when he is beholding these things is the work of his own hands.

Now, does God delight in the work of his own hands, I ask you? Well, he sure does. He glories in it, and he magnifies it, and that should make us want to serve him more, not only because of the good that we can do to others through righteous living, not only to the good that we can do to ourselves, but because of the joy that we can bring to our Father.

And I'll also add this, that any of those times in your Christian life when you have had joy in the Lord, consider that God has had more. When you pray to God and you have had some time of sweet communion, you enjoy that, but God looks on that and he enjoys it more.

Every little temptation you escape, every little step of sanctification, every little act of faith, and there is rejoicing in heaven. Are those the kind of actions of a hard taskmaster, of a hard God who doesn't treat you well?

Well, if you're still not convinced, there's one final argument that our Lord brings, and this argument, really, should put the nail in the coffin of our unbelief forever, and that is, he says, he will spare us.

God Will Spare His Sons in the Day of the Lord

Verse 17, They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, in the day when I make up my treasured possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him. Now, a good question to ask at this point is, well, being spared from what?

And if we will carry on the train of thought here in Malachi, moves right on into chapter four, verse one, where a day is coming, it says, a day burning like an oven when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble.

The day that is coming that shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. They will be spared in this day. Verse five goes on to put a name on it, calling it the day of the Lord.

Behold, I will send you, Elijah the prophet, before the great and awesome day of the Lord of hosts. What is the day of the Lord? It's spoken of in many points in the Bible and the Old Testament especially.

But it's also talked about in the New Testament because this day is still future. It hasn't come yet. It is referred to as the day of the appearing of Jesus Christ. It's referred to as the day when the Lord Jesus Christ will come in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God and who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.