Choosing a Side
Does it actually matter if you try to be a good person?
The study notes for this passage are still being written. The passage itself is below — read it now, and the notes will be here when you return.
Malachi 3:13-4:6
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13“Your words have been harsh against me,” says the LORD. “Yet you say, ‘What have we spoken against you?’
14You have said, ‘It is vain to serve God,’ and ‘What profit is it that we have followed his instructions and that we have walked mournfully before the LORD of Armies?
15Now we call the proud happy; yes, those who work wickedness are built up; yes, they tempt God, and escape.’
16Then those who feared the LORD spoke one with another; and the LORD listened and heard, and a book of memory was written before him for those who feared the LORD and who honored his name.
17They shall be mine,” says the LORD of Armies, “my own possession in the day that I make. I will spare them, as a man spares his own son who serves him.
18Then you shall return and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him who serves God and him who doesn’t serve him.
1“For behold, the day comes, burning like a furnace, when all the proud and all who work wickedness will be stubble. The day that comes will burn them up,” says the LORD of Armies, “so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.
2But to you who fear my name shall the sun of righteousness arise with healing in its wings. You will go out and leap like calves of the stall.
3You shall tread down the wicked; for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I make,” says the LORD of Armies.
4“Remember the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded to him in Horeb for all Israel, even statutes and ordinances.
5Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes.
6He will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse.”