And let's turn to the Lord and pray, and then we'll look at a couple of texts of scripture together. Gracious Lord, we thank you, Father, that you are working in this world. And we praise you, Father, for the work that you have done in each of our hearts to turn us from darkness to light, to give us that new heart which you have promised as a result of the gospel. We thank you, Lord, for this opportunity that you've given to us to gather this evening. We pray, God, that you are honored and glorified in our gathering, and I pray, God, that your Holy Spirit will help me, Father, to teach your word, Father, with precision, and I pray, God, that you will be with each of us, Father, helping us, Lord, to understand the text and then to make application of the text in our own lives. In Christ Jesus name we pray, amen. Let's open our Bibles, if you would please, to the book of Malachi. The book of Malachi. As I mentioned, I have been preaching through the book of Malachi and have greatly enjoyed our meditations in this book. Malachi chapter 1, God has called his people to promote his kingdom. God has called his people to promote his kingdom. In the book of Matthew, and not just in the book of Matthew, but repeated, we have the Great Commission, right, in which God commands us to go into all the world, make disciples of all people, teaching them to observe everything that I have commanded you, says our Lord to us, doesn't he? In the Lord's Prayer we pray, Thy kingdom come. We want to promote the advance of Christ's kingdom in prayer. When we pray, Thy kingdom come, we pray that Satan's kingdom may be destroyed and that the kingdom of grace may be advanced. That's from the West Minister, Shorter Catechism, question number 102. The scriptures present us with beautiful promises regarding God's kingdom. Think about the parable of the mustard seed and the way that that seed is sown in the ground and germinates and grows and becomes a great tree. Jesus Christ said that his kingdom was like that mustard seed. And we could think of the, in some ways, the beginnings with John the Baptist and Jesus, not to say that there was no expression of the kingdom of God before that, but think about John the Baptist and Jesus, just two men apparently. And then we think about the 12 that Jesus calls to be with him. and to go with him wherever he went, and he taught them, poured his life into those 12 men for three years. And then we can think of the 70 that Jesus Christ sent out, and we see that growth taking place. And then we can think of the 3,000 that were baptized in one day on the day of Pentecost and the way in which the gospel throughout the book of Acts continues to go out to many people and the church established in many parts of the world. So in that parable of our Lord Jesus Christ, we have promises which now living 2,000 years later, we can look back and see how the Lord has worked those promises out and brought those promises to fulfillment. The Lord also gives us a realistic view of what that kingdom will look like in the parable of the wheat and the tares. And we know that that advancement of the kingdom isn't all going to be easy or necessarily equally beautiful. There are times of struggle and there are tares among the wheat. The people listening to Jesus' parables had little knowledge of what it would look like for him to bring many sons to glory. But as we look at those parables, we can have an optimistic view of the future of the kingdom of God. We can have an optimistic view of the kingdom's growth and expansion. And as we look back over history, we can see how that has been brought to pass by our Lord. As a matter of fact, we could say that today there are around 40 million evangelicals living in our world. In post-exilic Israel, there was a great need to promote God's kingdom. And we're gonna see that here in Malachi chapter one, we'll begin reading with verse six. The current manifestation of the kingdom was weak and half-hearted in their worship of God. A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If then I am a father, where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is my fear, says the Lord of hosts, to you, O priests, who despise my name? But you say, how have we despised your name? by offering polluted food upon my altar. But you say, how have we polluted you? By saying that the Lord's table may be despised. When you offer blind animals in sacrifice, is that not evil? And when you offer those that are lame or sick, is that not evil? Present that to your governor. Will he accept you or show you favor, says the Lord of hosts. and now entreat the favor of God that he may be gracious to us. With such a gift from your hand will he show favor to any of you, says the Lord of hosts? Oh, that there were one among you who would shut the doors, that you might not kindle fire on my altar in vain. I have no pleasure in you, says the Lord of hosts, and I will not accept an offering from your hand. For from the rising of the sun to its setting, my name will be great among the nations. And in every place, incense will be offered to my name, and a pure offering, for my name will be great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts. But you profane it when you say that the Lord's table is polluted, and its fruit, that is its food, may be despised. But you say, what a weariness this is, and you snort at it, says the Lord of hosts. You bring what has been taken by violence or is lame or sick, and this you bring as your offering. Shall I accept that from your hand, says the Lord. Cursed be the cheat who has a male in his flock and vows it, and yet sacrifices to the Lord what is blemished. For I am a great king, says the Lord of hosts, and my name will be feared among the nations. Here we have our Lord through Malachi and the name Malachi means my messenger, my messenger. Malachi was the messenger of the Lord and here we have the Lord bringing through his messenger a challenge to the lukewarmness of the people of Israel in this time. Historically, the people of Israel had been restored to the land of Israel after the exile in Babylon. This is the post-exilic people of Israel. Their ancestors had been disciplined severely for their idolatry. And we can think of the times in their history in which they gave themselves wholly over to idolatry. And that perhaps reached its climax with their king. Suddenly I'm drawing a blank. What was the king's name that made his son to pass through the fire? Same name as one of the sons of Joseph. What is it? Manassas, very good, very good. Manassas, who made his son to pass through the fire in worship to a false deity. They had reached such a point of decadence and such a point of rebellion against the Lord. And God said, that's it. You all are going to be disciplined. You're going into exile to Babylon. And God sends them prophets like Jeremiah who say, Guys, just go along with it, go peacefully to Babylon. At the same time, Jeremiah is commanded by God to buy a piece of property and register the piece of property, even though he's never gonna see that property again, but the promise of the Lord is you all are gonna return and these properties are gonna be your properties again. The people of Israel have been severely disciplined and in the midst of that discipline God gives promise, promise of restoration. They've been restored to the land of Israel now but still even though they never went back into idolatry in the same way and we never find mentions of Baal worship in the same way again. But even in spite of all that, their hearts were far from the Lord. Their hearts were far from the Lord as depicted in this first chapter of the book of Malachi. Their lukewarmness was such that God says he would even prefer that they shut the doors of the new temple that Zerubbabel had built. That to continue their lazy worship practices. In verse 11, in the midst of all this correction, we have a beautiful future prophecy. from the Lord, for from the rising of the sun to its setting, my name will be great among the nations. And in every place, incense will be offered to my name, and a pure offering for my name will be great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts. And I trust that by God's grace, we here today are a partial fulfillment of this prophecy, as God has promised that there will be worldwide global worship to our Savior. What a beautiful promise, and I trust that we are a partial fulfillment of that prophecy as we gather here today. Again in the book of Malachi, the people of Israel expressed shock that God would be displeased with them. How can this be? How are we going against you, God? How are we not fulfilling all that you want us to be doing? How have we despised your name? They consider themselves to be on the right side of history. They consider themselves to be on the right side of theology and were blind because of the deception. They were blind to the lukewarmness in their own hearts and lives. And into this setting of lukewarmness, God sends Malachi, God sends a few other men, and one of the men that God sends in the midst of this context of lazy worship, God sends a man named Ezra. Perhaps he's about four to eight hundred pages before Malachi in your Bibles. Well, let's open our Bibles now to the book of Ezra chapter seven, which is the introduction to Ezra as a person. Into this lukewarm and lazy spiritual environment, God sends a man to promote his true worship, this man, Ezra. Ezra chapter seven, we'll begin with verse one. Now after this, in the reign of Artaxerxes, king of Persia, Ezra, the son of Sariah, the son of Azariah, the son of Hilkiah, the son of Shalem, the son of Zadok, the son of Ahithob, the son of Amoriah, the son of Azariah, the son of Moriath, the son of Zerhiah, the son of Uzzi, the son of Buki, the son of Abishua, the son of Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the chief priest, this Ezra, went up from Babylon. He was a scribe, skilled in the law of Moses, that the Lord, the God of Israel, had given. And the king granted him all that he asked, for the hand of the Lord, his God, was on him. Verse seven. And there went up also to Jerusalem in the seventh year of Artaxerxes the king, some of the people of Israel, and some of the priests and Levites, the singers and gatekeepers and the temple servants. And Ezra came to Jerusalem in the fifth month, which was in the seventh year of the king. For on the first day of the first month, he began to go up from Babylonia, and on the first day of the Fifth month he came to Jerusalem for the good hand of his God was on him. For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord and to do it and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel. So verse 10 is going to be our text today. But we can notice a few things first. First of all, we notice that God's hand was on Ezra. That fact is mentioned at least seven times in the book of Ezra and twice in the text that we just read. And the evidence that God's hand was on Ezra, as mentioned here in our text, is that the king granted him all that he asked. The king granted him everything that he needed. And secondly, that his four-month trip from Babylon to Jerusalem was successful. He traveled roughly around 900 miles, the commentators say, accompanied by a large group, which likely included elderly people and children. And he saw the mercy of God and the help of God in bringing him safely from Babylonia to Jerusalem. And this reminds us that without God's blessing, the kingdom advancement, or our efforts at kingdom advancement, are futile. Without God's blessing, our efforts at kingdom advancement are futile. Without the help of the Lord, Ezra would have been able to do absolutely nothing. Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain that build it. Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman waketh, but in vain. Our reliance on God should be ever present in our thinking, ever present in our thinking, that we rely on him, that his blessing is necessary for any valuable spiritual work to be done. And may that be represented in our dedication to prayer, our commitment to prayer, to seek the Lord, and to cry out to him for help, and to pray the prayers that we could trace to Jesus' command when he says, thy kingdom come. Without God's blessing, our efforts at advancement in God's kingdom are futile. This verse shows us our reliance on God, but these verses should never be considered as a justification for laziness. In God's kingdom, laziness is reprehensible. Our friend Ezra was not lazy, but we find that he gave himself to doing certain things to advance God's kingdom. So God is building his church. Jesus Christ has said, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. And when we seek to work with God for the advancement of God's kingdom, we can have the confidence that we are working with something that's going to succeed. Something is going to see, so many of our efforts in this life are things which we just don't really have a clue about. But when we think about the kingdom of God, we're thinking about something that is going to be successful in the big picture. And praise be to God for that. And God uses human agency for the advancement of his kingdom. God in his love and in his compassion and his wisdom has chosen to use human agency for the advancement of his kingdom. He could have sent out thousands of angelic beings to announce the The good news? In some cases he has, right? But that's not the general method which he has used. God in this book of Ezra is going to use Ezra to bring his word to his people. So first of all we notice that God's hand was on Ezra. Secondly, we can notice that Ezra set his heart, verse 10, Ezra set his heart to study. the law of the Lord, to do it, and to teach his statutes in Israel. And those are gonna be our following points. But first of all, Ezra sets his heart. This phrase describes a determination to do the task set before him, the task of bringing God's word to his people. Ezra sets his heart to do that task. It starts in the heart, the center of the human's being, the place where his conscience, will, thinking, and affections reside. Of what value would it have been for Ezra to give his mouth to God but not his heart? Of what value would that really have been for him to give his mouth to God and not his heart? Ezra set his heart. And that begs the question, where is your heart, my friend? Will you determine to give God your heart? To love the Lord with all of your heart? To seek Him with all of your heart? Kingdom advancement is a matter of the heart, is a matter of the heart. May our hearts be for God, and may we love Him more than all else. So he sets his heart, first of all, to study the law of the Lord. In the order of things that Ezra did, study is mentioned first. Before Ezra could practice obedience to God's law, and before any meaningful teaching could take place, Ezra must know and understand what the law says. And so Ezra sets his heart to study the law of the Lord. Our group online, our online study group, we call it the Second Timothy 2.15 group. 2 Timothy 2.15 in the King James says, study to show yourself approved, right? And in the ESV here, it says, do your best to present yourself to God. And another translation says, be diligent. I think that's what the NAS says, be diligent to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. It's our goal that through that meeting, the men be challenged to be studying the word of the Lord for themselves and to study it together so that our lives would be changed and so that we would be able to obey it and then able to teach it as well. That's what Ezra set his heart to do. First of all, to study the word of the Lord. The word of the Lord is an inexhaustible well, isn't it? An inexhaustible well of riches of wisdom of God, which we need for our lives. First of all, he sets his heart to study the law of the Lord, and then it says, and to do it. to do it. We know from other scriptures that studying the law of the Lord is insufficient, isn't it? It's vitally important, but in and of itself it is insufficient. And the person who studies the law of God but not to do it is like a man who beholds his face in the mirror, and he goes away and immediately forgets how dirty his face was. James chapter 1, verse 22. But be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in the mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the man who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing." The person who hears the word and then doesn't practice it is what, according to this text? is self-deceived, right? Is self-deceived, deceiving his own self. I find this very frequently in my ministry. People who feel great about having heard the word of the Lord, but then are uninterested in taking it beyond that to obedience. And this, I think, is something very common in the culture where we live. People are superstitious. People think, you know, if I hear this, it's gonna do me some benefit. It's gonna help me out. And then they congratulate themselves for having sat there and listened, right? They congratulate themselves for it. But then they don't, they don't repent. They don't trust the Lord. They don't follow Him. It ends right there in many, many, many people's lives. And that congratulating of ourselves for having heard the word is what we could call self-deception, self-deception. And the bad thing about deception is the person who's deceived doesn't know he's deceived. He doesn't know it, he can't see it. May God have mercy on us. As we study, the practice of obedience to the word of God requires discipline and Ezra said it's hard to exercise the spiritual discipline of obeying the word of the Lord. The spiritual discipline of obeying the word of the Lord. Obedience to the Word is a prerequisite to teaching the Word. The man or woman who seeks to teach the Word without applying the Word in their own life propagates hypocrisy. And let me just interject here, that's true. And at the same time, we're never perfect, right? We are never perfect. God is so gracious to us. God is so gracious to us. As we seek to teach the word, our attitude can never be, do as I say and not as I do. That can never be the attitude, right? The attitude must be, let's follow Christ together and let's obey Christ together, right? Let's obey Christ together. Obedience to the word is the second thing. And so he set his heart to study and then to obey and then to teach. to teach his statutes and rules in Israel. Post-exilic Israel needed to understand the law of God. Perhaps some were ignorant of his statutes. Perhaps others had a working knowledge of what God had said, but were not willing to submit themselves to it, and needed to be rebuked. And that's what we see in the life of Malachi, right? And in what he says. It was a stern rebuke. And as we read through the book of Ezra, you'll find Ezra dealing with many of the exact same sins that Malachi also was dealing with. Ezra set his heart to teach the law of the Lord. A verse that's a real favorite of mine and that in many ways informs what I do in my ministry is in the book of Psalms. Psalm 119 verse 130. I think of this verse frequently. As I think of the deception, as I think of the darkness, the spiritual darkness that people live in, as I think of the rebellion against God which just surrounds us and the apparent ignorance which surrounds us on all sides, this verse drives me on. It says this, the unfolding of your words gives light. And the word translated unfolding there in our Spanish translation says something to the effect of the exhibition of or the showing forth of. The showing forth of your word gives light. It imparts understanding to the simple. The word of the Lord is sufficient to give understanding to the simple. And it's my job to show forth what the word of God says to these people so that they will grow in understanding, so that they will have the understanding that the simple so desperately needs. The unfolding of your words gives light. Without the exhibition of God's words, men live in darkness. And darkness speaks of spiritual disorientation and speaks of hopelessness. Spiritual disorientation. Men without the orientation of God's word, they live slaves of superstition and they live for themselves and they live for the world, for the pleasure of the world. They live for anything but God, right? Without the spiritual orientation, That's how they live. What are our natural inclinations? Our natural inclinations are not towards seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness as natural men and women. We naturally have a tendency to follow the love of the world, very naturally. The unfolding of your words gives light, says this text. People need that light. They live in spiritual darkness. May the people who live in darkness see the great light. that Jesus has brought into this world. And then it also speaks of hopelessness, right? Hopelessness. So many people live in hopelessness. In our area, in that mountain town that we minister in, I don't know how many people have hung themselves since I began ministering there. But it's not one or two. And it's a small town. It's a town of maybe 100, 150 people, maybe. 150 people tops. And there's probably been five, six, seven people that have hung themselves in just that period of time that I've that I've been going up there, and you hear of someone dying here and there, and how did they die? Well, they died of drunkenness, they say to me. And how did they die of drunkenness? Well, they hung themselves from a tree. And great levels of hopelessness. People who reject the truth of the gospel and live in this hopeless, spiritually disoriented darkness. The unfolding of God's word or the exhibition of God's word brings light in those situations. May God give us the wisdom to know how to exhibit the truths of the scriptures in the context in which each of us live. Each of us lives in a different context. We live in a very different context from you all in Northern Mexico. But each of you has a context of your life and a series of relationships which God has given only to you. Perhaps as a parent, or perhaps as a co-worker, or as a neighbor. God has given to each of us a sphere of influence. And may God give us the wisdom to use the sphere of influence that God has given to us for the advancement of His kingdom. For the advancement of His kingdom. God has called us to work together with Him. for the advancement of his kingdom. Is that your desire, my friend, to live for Christ, to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness? I pray that it is. We all have unique opportunities. Let us prepare our hearts to steward those opportunities rightly. May God give us the wisdom to prepare our hearts to steward those opportunities rightly. as Ezra prepared his heart. He set his heart to study the law of the Lord and to do it and to teach God's commands and rules to Israel. Let's pray. Gracious Lord, we thank you, Father, for the great promise of global acceptable worship to you. And we pray, God, that your kingdom will come. We pray, God, for this city of Wichita, Father. And we pray, God, that you, Lord, will continue, Father, to cast out the kingdom of darkness and of Satan and to establish in this community the kingdom of Jesus Christ in the hearts and minds and lives of people. Oh, God, may your kingdom come. We pray, God, that you will prepare each of us, Father, to work for you, Father, to work with you, Lord. And we thank you, Lord, that you have not left us alone, but you've promised to be with us even to the end of the age. So come quickly, Lord Jesus. In his name we pray, amen.