You're listening to the Vice Chancellor's Hour, a ministry of Radio ABC 993 FM on the campus of African Bible University. I'm Jeremiah Pitts, a professor and administrator here at the African Bible University in Uganda. The purpose of Vice Chancellor's Hour is to provide biblical and theological teachings that are an extension of the ministry of the university. Welcome back to another episode of the Vice Chancellor Hour. VC Hour is a show we do here at African Bible University on our radio station, Radio ABC 993 FM. You may be listening to us on the radio. If you are, God bless you. I really do appreciate it. And it's such an honor to be able to reach out to the listeners in the Loboa area and into Kampala, sometimes even down to Entebbe. And we have some of the best listeners, honestly, that a radio station could ask for. We get regular encouragement from you guys and so forth, and it's just such a pleasure to be a part of that. If you're listening to this show and we're going through a series, you ever wish, hey, I wish I had heard more of that. Well, we also have some episodes online as well. We record them. All the stuff we put on the radio for this show, we also put out at vchour.buzzsprout.com, or you can just look for Radio ABC and African Bible University on sermonaudio.com. You can hear all of those episodes are free. You can hear them anytime you want. We're finishing up a series here in Malachi, finishing out that last chapter, mostly chapter 4, and this is what Malachi has to say for us. I promised you in the very beginning that it's such a great way to start. It talks about God's love for us. The middle episodes, while there are elements of encouragement, have a lot of direct instruction that can be a little bit harder to hear. But this book finishes so strongly, I'm very sure this episode is going to be a great encouragement to many of you. Listen to what Malachi has to say. and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared the Lord and esteemed his name. 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. Then once more you shall see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked. between one who serves God and one who does not serve him. For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you, who fear my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall, and you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when I act, says the Lord of hosts. Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and rules that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes, and he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children, hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land." with a decree of utter destruction. That's the tail end of the book, and man, what a great word for us. You may be thinking, how is that a great word? It ends talking about destruction. Well, it doesn't really, actually. Let's dive in here. You know, this passage starts like a lot of the other chapters or sections of the book. It starts out with an accusation. God makes an accusation and tells them what they're doing wrong. God makes an accusation and he tells them what they're doing wrong. And then they question it. But then something different happens. I mean, you can see it in the response. The response that we find here is different from every other response throughout the rest of the book. Sure enough, he starts out by saying, you've spoken against me. They say, how have we spoken against you? And he explains it. But then in verse 16, it says, then those who feared the Lord spoke with one another. We didn't see that anywhere else like this. The Lord paid attention and heard them. Again, we don't see that anywhere else in the book. And a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared the Lord and esteemed his name. They shall be mine, says the Lord. Look at that firm embracing. It's the type of embracing we saw at the very beginning when he said he loves them. The Lord of hosts here, saying these people are mine. The day when I make up my treasure possessions, they're gonna be a part of that. I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him, the one who's doing what's right, who listens and who obeys. And you're gonna see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between the one who serves and the one who doesn't serve. Very, very different response from what we saw before. The response of the people was those who feared the Lord spoke with one another. The previous responses we had seen had been murmuring and insolent questions. In fact, just back in verses 13 through 15, that's exactly what we saw. Every time presented with a fact, the people, they don't like it, they question it. And I don't know what your response to God is. Maybe when you read God's Word, maybe when you read God's Word, you respond correctly. But I think for a lot of people, when they read God's Word, there are things in God's Word which confront us rightly about who we are and what we're doing in the world. And I've said this a number of times, and I'm certainly not alone in doing so, but I've said a number of times to you that if you read a Bible that never confronts you concerning your sin, then you are not reading the Christian Bible. The Bible tells us about the nature of who God is, and that God is holy. And what's more than that, there is an outworking of the holiness of God called the law, and the law condemns us, so that when we see God in a sense, we see what we, by nature, are not. And I don't just mean that God has special powers or special abilities, special strengths, special characteristics, although those are certainly true. I'm speaking here specifically of a good, a righteous, and a holy God. And when we see him as he is, we see that we don't belong there, and that puts us in a position where we can react in one of two ways. One way is to find every way around that. You know, we talked about this before, but plenty of people try to say, well, does God's Word really say that? That's the old lie from the devil. did God really say. Then some people take a different tact of more Pharisaic, and they say, okay, I'm just going to double down. I'm personally just going to try harder. I'm just going to work at it. And then, if I do all of those things, God is really going to love me. If I'll just do the things he tells me to do, he'll finally love me. He doesn't love me now, but if I do what I'm supposed to do, he'll finally love me. We have here in Malachi a different response. We do. And that's the response of a people who feared the Lord and encouraged one another. Their disposition towards God changed. their disposition towards God changed. This idea of fearing, don't have a picture in your mind of someone who's running away terrified. You know, you see something scary and you run away screaming. I saw a clip the other day of a guy who's out in the bush and he comes across a giant snake. And thank goodness it's not a poisonous snake. But when he sees it, he turns in fear and he starts just screaming and running away. It's almost comical. He was afraid. But that's not what the Bible is talking about when it talks about fear. It's not talking about abject terror. We run waving our hands and screaming, but it's talking about that sense that we have when we're in the presence of someone or something far more powerful than we are, far more able than we are. You might say even far better than we are. And in fact, that is the right response. Perhaps you've had an experience like that in life, where however in control you think you are, you come across something, some experience, where you realize you're not ultimately in control. When you're in the presence of a holy God, you will be overwhelmed by who he is, and it will change your disposition. And the Scriptures tell us, far from being something that we should avoid, that instead, it is something that's good for us. The Proverbs say, in Proverbs 9, 10, and in other places, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. So that if you want to be wise, I hope you want to be wise, the opposite is to be a fool, no one, I hope, wants to be a fool. You want to be wise? The beginning of that is to correctly assess the Lord, and in so doing, see yourself as you truly are. This is very hurtful to our pride. Of course, by nature, humans love to make themselves gods. That's one of the ways we make false gods, is we try to lift ourselves up. And I know no one on planet Earth has ever gotten rich by telling people to be humble and meaning it. So for sure, I know this isn't a message that people in general want to hear. So as the Bible says, I'm not trying to tickle anybody's ears. I'm not trying to tell you something I think by nature you want to hear. But instead I'm telling you this because it's true. When we see God as revealed in the Scriptures as He is, our response, our correct response, an accurate assessment of who He is will cause us to see what we are not. And that's the beginning of true wisdom. Scriptures are clear. What does the psalmist say in Psalm 130? He says, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness that you may be feared." Many, many people struggle with this idea. They puzzle over it, because that's not really how we tend to think of things most of the time. We usually think of the fear of the Lord as being attached to the law of God only, but here the psalmist tells us it's attached also to the forgiveness that God gives to us. that even seeing God's forgiveness is an overwhelming experience. This is an encounter with God and seeing the work of God that causes us again to reassess who he is and who we are in return. I hope this is an experience you have regularly. I hope you have that experience as you're reading through God's word, as you're meditating on God's word, if you hear godly preaching in your church. If you're going to a church and it's not teaching you the word of God, that's not really a church, that's just a group of people getting together, it's a club. Okay? But if you're getting together and you're regularly hearing the Word of God preached, that should be confronting you with who you are. And when you hear of His forgiveness, also you should be overwhelmed by that as well. And what was their reaction when it says they feared him? What did they do with that? It's very specific. It says they spoke with one another. They spoke with one another. Here we have the same word for speak that we found in verse 13. In verse 13, it's not used for good. There it says, how have we spoken against you? So that's a bad thing, right? They get confronted by God and they say, hey, how have we spoken against you? But here you see it's speaking, but it's a very different kind of speaking. It's the speaking where they're building each other up and encouraging each other instead. You might say that the previous words were insolent or rebellious words, but now they've become godly words. The fear of the Lord has transformed their actions, so that where before they were saying bad things about God, even to each other, now they're speaking to each other, but it's good. What caused that response? It's God working through His words. This is precisely what we should expect in response to the Word of God. In response to us hearing or reading the Word of God, we should expect a heart and life change is directed by it, and that it will actually cause us not to become more isolated, but instead for us to become people who work together, using the very tools that before had been negative tools, using them for good instead, encouraging each other with the Word of God. And the people here in Malachi are actually exhibiting some of the marks of the true Church. Maybe you've heard before, there's a couple of different ways for sure that church is framed as, but how do you know? Maybe you've thought about this before. How do you know you're in a church? Well, historically, we would think of three things, okay? If a church has these three things, I would say you're going to a good church. So think about it. As I mention these three things, think about your church. Does it match this? What are the people told to go out and do? They're told to go and preach. So proclamation of the Word of God. Jesus himself directed the leaders of the church to go and do that. Jesus himself did it, and if we look at the book of Acts, we see that the leaders of the church did go out and do that as well, and encouraged others to do it. The preaching of the Word of God. So in order to have a true Church, you have to have the preaching of the Word of God. And what do we see in this passage? We see that when the people have the fear of the Lord, they begin speaking to each other. That is, this book itself, the book of Malachi itself, is a proclamation of the words of God. I want to bring to remembrance here how much it is the Word of God and not the Word of a particular man. If you go back to our first episode in this series, you may remember that the author of Malachi is very obscured, meaning he's almost hidden. We don't know anything about him. The name he's given is a very generic name that may just mean the messenger. And we have more direct discourse. Remember, that means that we have God speaking directly to people, more in this book than any other book. That's prophecy. So we're seeing God up front and central, talking to us so that we can know this is God speaking his word. And the same should be true in the church. It shouldn't be about the man at the front. It shouldn't be about his personality. It shouldn't be about his wardrobe. It shouldn't be about his charisma. It shouldn't be about his handle of the language, or certainly not how entertaining he is. A church, a good church, a true church, is about the preaching of God's Word. Without preaching, there's no church. And I hope you think of it as that central to what God is doing. There's a lot of people who want to center their church on a lot of things. I've seen churches try to center on family. I've seen churches try to center on youth, center on entertainment, try to center on mercy ministries. I've seen them try to center on political engagement. all manner of things, but if they're not actually centered on God by His Word, they are not doing what they're there to do. So assess the church that you attend. I trust you want to go to a good and a true church. It should have the true preaching of God's Word. And when you hear a sermon, your first thought shouldn't be, how funny, how entertaining, how deep was the pastor? You should be thinking, how true to God's Word. What did God teach me from His Word today? The second thing you should be looking for is discipleship. Some people phrase it as being disciplined, but I think discipleship is the better word. It's a type of one-anothering, working together. If you were to trace through the New Testament, you would see the New Testament is full of things that the Church should be doing to and with one another, there's a one-anothering, there's a discipleship that takes place. In fact, you might see that the core of Christ's Great Commission is to make disciples. So in what sense could we say we have a Church if there's no discipleship? And in fact, that's exactly what we see here in Malachi as well. They spoke with one another. They spoke with one another. That means they didn't keep it to themselves, but actually they were sharing with each other. I love African Bible University for a number of reasons. One of my favorite ones is, while we're not the Church, we're members of the Church of God, and I am blessed to share God's Word with other people and have them share them back with me, to share prayer requests. Later today, we'll have our staff prayer meeting. We meet once a week, and we come together. We bear each other's burdens, and we also reinforce what's being said with Scripture. and it's not one-directional. I am certainly responsible for my people here as a vice chancellor, it's one of my responsibilities here, but we in fact share with each other, we carry each other's burdens. I hear other people's preaching and teaching and read other people's books, and I benefit from it. So we're not the church But we are modeling something that's true about the church. We say that all the time. And when I attend my church, I attend a church nearby. I'm not going to say the name. I don't want you guys to flood to it just because I said a name. But when I attend my church, I see the same things. I'm standing outside a church before or after, mostly after, and people are coming out. We find out how people are doing. We ask them, hey, how's your family? And we keep up week to week with one another. We want to see how things continue to develop. And there's a number of things going on in the church about specific areas that need to be developed. And how can we have discipleship like that? Well, it's all according to God's Word. See, God's Word is the motivation for it, and he gives us the method of it, and it's what we're being discipled in, you see. So discipleship is what we've been sent into the world to do, and we do it by God's Word. And if we're not doing that, then we're not doing church. Church can be doing a lot of things, but if it's not discipling its people, both positively and negatively, then it's not operating as the church should operate. Now one of the implications of this passage that we can draw, and I'm going to be straightforward with you here, it's not direct, it's implied, but that's the right use of the sacraments. Now how would I say that? Well, you may remember that one of the central problems in the book of Malachi was the people were not providing sacrifices correctly. You go back to Malachi 1, if you need to listen to those episodes, feel free to listen to them, but they weren't making right sacrifice and they weren't bringing what they ought to bring for tithes and offerings, and the result of that was bad. And why were they doing it? Well, he says it's because they weren't fearing their great king and God, Yahweh. Here we have them fearing God. So if the problem changes, the cause of the problem changes, we can, I think, surmise from that that they returned to a fear of the Lord, which would have changed their actions. I think that's what's suggested here. so that we would see that they actually began making right sacrifice. You may know that there is a continuity here for us as well, that we've been given certain things by God to do. We talk about baptism, talk about the Lord's Supper. God gave the Church these things as tangible, visible signs for his church. And churches that don't do those, they don't do baptism, or don't do them correctly, or they don't do the Lord's Supper, or they don't do it correctly, are neglecting the things that God has ordained for us to do for our benefit in the church. And so one of the things you should be looking for would be, are they doing the New Testament sacraments correctly? Are they doing them appropriately? Because if these people before, when they didn't fear God, they didn't do those things correctly, once they fear God, I think we can draw the conclusion they must have begun to. So you need to be looking for those three things. By the way, all directed by the Word of God. You need to hear the right preaching of God's Word. We ought to have discipleship in the church. We ought to have the right administration of the sacraments. That's what a good church is. And I think you see those things. Those things can only happen by God's Word and Spirit, by the way. They can't happen by going through the motions, they can't happen by the prescription of man. Just like any other thing in the world, they have no value, they have no lasting value unless God is in them. How true it is for all of us that we should look to see God working in his world in the ways he said he would work. The question is, how did God respond? Well, it says that the Lord paid attention, the Lord heard them, and a book was written in his presence. The assurance that God didn't miss anything that happens, and it is stated three times, and it's in strong language, right? You paid attention. You know what it means? Like in class, and I say, hey guys, pay attention. I'm not just saying, hey, put your eyeballs on me. I'm not just saying, hey, you know, listen to the sound waves. I want you to be focused the thing that's happening. And the book of Malachi is telling us God was paying attention, that he heard. And what's more, you might say he was taking good notes. book was written in his presence." Now isn't this exactly what God had offered to them? In chapter 3 verse 7, didn't he say, return to me and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. This same Lord of hosts, a few verses before, said return to me I'll return to you. He reaches out, they respond correctly, and God paid attention, heard them, and a book was written in his presence. Isn't that exactly what he said would happen? Praise God, the promises of God are true. Listener, I don't know if you have a sense of that, but the promises of God are true. We see it immediately here. This obstinate people, they had a hard heart. You might even say they had a hard head. Rebellious, confronted by God. Now remember, they didn't go to God. God came to them because he loved them, that's what he says. He came to them in love, presented to them their problem, their rebellion, their arrogance towards him, their lack of fear of him that he deserves. and they respond poorly, chapter after chapter after chapter, and nevertheless God said, hey, you return to me and I'll return to you. This is the Lord of hosts, the Lord of all the angelic forces, the Lord of the army of the Lord, right, who commands the army of the Lord. You shouldn't think he has to have anything from us. He doesn't have to have anything from us. He's not saying it because he has any need from us, because we have something that he wants. It really is motivated solely by his love. But even in all of our rebellion, he keeps going, return to me and I will return to you. And then he makes it good. He does what he said he would do. He did it. When they returned, he returned. Of course, they found he was there all along. What reward is there? Well, he talks about the day of the Lord. There's going to be a clear distinction between those who are of the Lord, that means those who are righteous, it describes those who are in service to him, and those who are not, those who are wicked, and those who therefore don't serve the Lord. What happens with the righteous? What happens with those who serve the Lord? Well, it says his people will be a A treasured possession. A treasured possession. Do you have a treasured possession? You have something, God forbid, if your home was on fire, that thing you would have to be sure to grab, that's your treasured possession, whatever it is. You have a treasured possession, something so valuable to you, and it says you'll be his treasured possession if you're his people. Not only that, because of it you will be gloriously spared. The wicked are not so, as the psalmist says, but are like a chaff that the wind drives away, right? So you have the righteous and you have the wicked, but the righteous are spared. Not only that, but it says the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. The sun is a pretty common picture in the ancient Near East of a great and a glorious king. And here, there's absolutely no doubt, it speaks of Jesus Christ. By the way, the sun of righteousness is not S-O-N, but S-U-N, like the sun that's in the sky, that great ball of fire, a sun of righteousness. Yeah, a lot of kings back in the day would represent themselves with a sun, like the sun in the sky. It's powerful, it's life-giving in a sense, it's awe-inspiring, it's a bright and burning heat. and this sun will rise. It clearly is telling us about Jesus, the coming of Jesus. Who comes with healing to restore us? By the way, this is exactly why I know that this passage isn't saying, you just have to work harder to be righteous and you'll be righteous. Have you thought about that? The son of righteousness has to come, and he has to come with healing. Now, let me ask you, who needs to be healed? Didn't Jesus sort of ask this very question as the Pharisees came to him, confronted him about his association with sinners, and Jesus on more than one occasion points them to the idea that he came to help broken people. The physician comes to heal the sick, not the well. He came to help the unrighteous, not the righteous. The Son of Righteousness comes with healing because the people are broken. Malachi is telling us it's only a people who know they are broken who will be accepted as righteous, because their righteousness is not from themselves, it is from that Son of righteousness who will rise. And so too with you and me, there is no righteousness of ourselves. Again, when we are confronted with a glorious and a holy and a righteous God, we cannot help but recognize that we are not righteous as he is righteous. But the good news is, just as we see here in the book of Malachi, it is actually us recognizing it and us turning to him, which in turn changes not only our status before him as being a righteous people, he makes us righteous, but he also causes us to act in ways we were not acting before. It's a beautiful, beautiful picture. We know this picture is of Christ not just because it speaks of a healing that he promises to bring, but also because he is the light of the world. He told the people that he was the light. The light they were looking for was there. It was him. Not only that, but he tells us that we may have light in his light. He's telling us in great clarity that the thing that he is we may participate in, that his righteousness becomes our righteousness. What a beautiful picture for you and me. And what should that cause us to do? Well, it says they're actually going to celebrate with joy. They're going to go out leaping like calves from the stall. I don't know if you've ever seen video of calves. They've been locked away in a barn or in a building for a long period of time. If you haven't had a chance to do that, you should look it up sometime. There are some places in the extreme northern hemisphere where they're actually locked away for most of the winter months in that area. So you might imagine somebody being, an animal, a cow, being locked away December, January, February. They're inside of a stall, inside of a barn, inside of a building. And then the spring rolls around and they get cut loose. They get to leave. And these calves are leaping. It's almost like dancing. They're bouncing up and down, up and down, up and down. And it's one of the most joyous things you can see. There's all this energy. It's like something that has been pent up, has been restrained, has now been turned loose. And the response to that is great energy and excitement. That, I think, is our response to the Son of Righteousness bringing healing in His wings, that we're gonna go out leaping like calves, we're gonna just be full of the joy of the Lord, the joy of the Lord will literally be our strength. And I can say, experientially, as I contemplate the greatness of God, and I see the smallness of myself, and I'm filled with awe of who He is, especially filled with awe, as the psalmist says, of His forgiveness of someone like me, far from crushing me, it lifts me up. Far from depressing me, it fills me with joy, because my great God and King has restored me, has healed me, has made what was unrighteous righteous, and no one can take that away. What a blessing. I'm overwhelmed even talking about it, to be honest with you. That's the fate of those who turn to Him. They find that He was already there. That even though we were broken, he will heal us, and though we were bruised, he will bind us up. He'll make us better. Better than we were before. Better than we can imagine being. The wicked are not so. Those who don't serve God. The arrogant evildoer, he says, will be like stubble. That little bit that gets burned off and cut down. It says they'll be set ablaze. They'll be utterly destroyed. They will be tread down by the jubilation, the excitement of the people who fear God. Now, I told you before, this actually ends really well. The book of Malachi starts out by telling us God loves us, and it ends by saying, and that's why I'm going to save you. I love you, and that's why I'm going to save you. What a beautiful book. If you've been following along to this point, we've come to these last few verses of the last chapter, and it is a promise of hope. God promises He's going to send a new Elijah. Now, you have to know, of course, that the Bible is not advocating reincarnation. He's not saying Elijah was alive, and then he died, and then another literal Elijah was going to come back. No one hearing that or even reading it today thought that's what he was saying, and there's no biblical evidence for that. The Bible is not for reincarnation. But it is for allusion, meaning a drawing, a connection between two people and demonstrating their similarity. You may have heard my series on the Sermon on the Mount, and one of the points of the Sermon on the Mount, especially the early chapter, is that Jesus is superior to Moses. He is. And you see that clearly. In fact, if you see the appearing of Elijah and Moses with Jesus, you see that Jesus is portrayed as being superior to the two of them, that's a big thing. So it is for allusion, and we have an allusion here of a prophet who is coming, who is like the old prophet Elijah. In that sense, you would say he's a new Elijah, a new prophet after his type. There's an archetypal prophet, that's Elijah, this guy's gonna be like it, and it is John the Baptist. Now, John the Baptist is not literally Elijah. You can go to John 1.21 and see that for yourself. I am not, he says. But Jesus said that John the Baptist fulfills the prophecy, he is Elijah who is to come. That's what he says, Matthew 11, 14. So Jesus is telling us very clearly that the Elijah who is to come is John the Baptist. Not in the literal sense that he's literally Elijah, but he is of the same type. Elijah the prophet, John the Baptist prophet have so much in common. Now, was that the Elijah that the people of Jesus' time expected? Is that who he thought it would be? The answer is no. They had some idea of what Elijah would be like, and what would happen when Elijah showed up, and he came with a very different message. He came with a message of repentance and turning, and while many people accepted that message, not everyone would. One of the ways we know this for sure is that Jesus says in Matthew 11, 14, not only that John the Baptist is he, that is, the Elijah who is to come, but he says, if you are willing to accept it. This suggests that there are people who did not accept it. In fact, you can see Elijah was martyred, he was killed. So some people were not willing to accept it. Nevertheless, it is the one whom Malachi is pointing towards. This new Elijah, John the Baptist, is filled with the same spirit as the original Elijah. You may remember the story in 2 Kings 2 where Elisha, who sort of apprenticed under Elijah, asked for a double portion of the same spirit of Elijah. In Luke chapter 1, we see this. He will be filled with the Holy Spirit. He will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah. There was a prophecy concerning John the Baptist in Luke chapter 1, that he would have Elijah's spirit. So it's not really a mystery, right? There's no mystery. Elijah's a prophet according to the Holy Spirit that he had. Another prophet's going to be coming who has the Holy Spirit. That's John the Baptist. And Jesus even says, it's John the Baptist if you're willing to accept it. Not everybody did. Why? Because he wasn't what they wanted. It's what they needed, but many people, it's not what they wanted. John the Baptist came to bring a type of restoration, because he was the one who came before Christ Jesus, who restored all of his people to himself. In Luke 1, that angel who prophesied that John will come will bring a type of reconciliation found in Malachi 4, the very promise that we're reading here. The message of the new Elijah is one of repentance and looking forward to Christ. So if you want that reconciliation then, you have to look to Christ, and our repentance for sin is the way by which we have some reconciliation with Christ. So John the Baptist fulfills Malachi 4, and the promise of a great people who will come to Yahweh, to God, through Elijah. That is John the Baptist. And who sent him? Who did the work? Well, it's God himself. God, reaching out in human history, promising he's gonna send help, I'm gonna send Elijah the prophet, he says. He's gonna turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and hearts of the children to the fathers. And what is the point of all this reconciliation? It is because otherwise when I come, there's utter destruction. Everything will be destroyed. He's coming to save, not to destroy. And Jesus says the same thing, doesn't he? He didn't come into the world to condemn the world. Those who don't believe are already condemned. Isn't that what he says? So the book of Malachi ends with this message. In fact, I'll end the series with this message. God loves you, a great and a holy God. He loves you. I don't know what other kind of loves you have experienced in your life. Maybe you've had a great relationship with a spouse. Maybe you've had a great relationship with your parents. Maybe he had a great relationship with children or a friendship that's been strong and it's been deep, and I praise God for all those things. I assure you they pale in comparison. They are nothing compared to the great love our God has for his people. That's for you. And it is for that very reason that he sent a messenger into the world in John the Baptist to prepare the way for him showing up in the person of Jesus Christ our Lord, so that we might have reconciliation, a unity would be brought back together with the people who are broken, that a healing will come between us and our righteous God, so that we can see Him as He is and certainly be overwhelmed by it, but also rejoice in it together because of its great evidence of the forgiveness that He has for us as well. I tell you, I can't hear that message, a message of a God who loves us so much that He worked in human history. This isn't just a story, this happened, and it was for you and it was for me. We receive that by faith, knowing that this God will transform us into the image of His Son. And in so doing, we know that He will take us and call us righteous forever. Oh, what a great and a gracious God. Have you been heeding the Word of God, listening to it? Have you been turning to Him? Today is the day. This is the hour. God is calling. By His Son, He brings reconciliation. Will you be reconciled to God? I pray that you will respond to Him by faith. Our God is true to his word. He always, always will restore his people. You're listening to the Vice Chancellor's Hour, a ministry of Radio ABC 993 FM on the campus of African Bible University. I'm Jeremiah Pitts, a professor and administrator here at the African Bible University in Uganda. The purpose of Vice Chancellor's Hour is to provide biblical and theological teachings that are an extension of the ministry of the university.