29 May 2022 Sunday Morning Service
Bible
Malachi 3:1-12
Luke 1:67-80
Malachi
3:1 “See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the LORD Almighty.
3:2 But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap.
3:3 He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the LORD will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness,
3:4 and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the LORD, as in days gone by, as in former years.
3:5 “So I will come near to you for judgment. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive aliens of justice, but do not fear me,” says the LORD Almighty.
3:6 “I the LORD do not change. So you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.
3:7 Ever since the time of your forefathers you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the LORD Almighty. “But you ask, ‘How are we to return?’
3:8 “Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me. “But you ask, ‘How do we rob you?’ “In tithes and offerings.
3:9 You are under a curse–the whole nation of you–because you are robbing me.
3:10 Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.
3:11 I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not cast their fruit,” says the LORD Almighty.
3:12 “Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land,” says the LORD Almighty.
Luke
1:67 His father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied:
1:68 “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come and has redeemed his people.
1:69 He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David
1:70 (as he said through his holy prophets of long ago),
1:71 salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us–
1:72 to show mercy to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant,
1:73 the oath he swore to our father Abraham:
1:74 to rescue us from the hand of our enemies, and to enable us to serve him without fear
1:75 in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.
1:76 And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High; for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him,
1:77 to give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins,
1:78 because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven
1:79 to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.”
1:80 And the child grew and became strong in spirit; and he lived in the desert until he appeared publicly to Israel.