Howdy,
My phone has pretty much been working this week—it died recently but I don’t clearly recall if that was this week or last—so as we come back around for a Sunday Scripture series post I have my ESV Bible app on my iPhone available for choosing a passage from my “FAVORITES.”
The pick? Malachi 3:16-17.
Clicking that favorite, I think of how meaningful it is in context (usually important, right?), because of how bad off, how far the people had strayed, and how much they had to go through as a consequence as well as all the trust and work required to put pieces of a life under God as a nation back together. It’s the story of a lot of the Old Testament, or the Hebrew Scriptures, and there’s more to come—a shift, a prophesied twist—with the next testament, the New Testament, because Christ will be coming next, since Malachi is the last book in the OT. There is a period of 400 years of silence in-between first.
But listen to what God leaves them with, under a subtitle submitted for the text: “The Book of Remembrance.”
God is good.
“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. ‘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’” (Malachi 3:16-17).
My treasured possession, says the LORD—that always catches my attention. Amazing, and in context: incredible. We recognize those Old Testament stubbornnesses and repeated failings, though, don’t we? God comes and creates a treasure possession of that which was lost, those who were less.
Have a happy and treasured Sunday.
—Billy
Reading. Writing. Living.