Thru the Bible

Steve Schwetz: Do you have religion, or do you have Christ? Well, that's the question Dr. J. Vernon McGee asks this time on Thru the Bible. I'm Steve Schwetz, and before we open to the book of Malachi, let's hear something Dr. McGee said years ago about the incredible opportunity that we have to take God's Word to the whole world. Back when he recorded this statement, Thru the Bible was in just 24 languages. Today, by God's grace, it's in more than 250 and still growing. Here's Dr. McGee.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: And friends, an opportunity today actually to go to the entire world with the Word of God. It's a privilege that we never dreamed would be ours, and somehow or another, it's been dropped in our lap, or shall I say, the ball has been passed to us and we have been running with it. But we need a lot of interference today. And if you'll just run a little interference for us, I think we're going to be able to reach out and touch actually millions today with the Word of God in their language. Stay with us and pray for us.

Steve Schwetz: Well, that's a powerful reminder. And I've asked Greg Harris, Thru the Bible's president, to share how God is still using His Word and the faithfulness of friends like you to continue this movement.

Greg Harris: Well, Steve, He's using it in ways that defy gravity, defy human expectations, human wisdom. We love that. We love to talk about that. And those who listen to us regularly know we don't talk much about money. Dr. McGee doesn't, you and I don't. Of course, we are completely listener-supported, but what we believe is what God has been doing now for pretty much six decades, which is that we give out the Word of God, we share the power of what His Word is doing around the world, the stories, the impact, and people want to be a part. So, we were just talking about we don't even like the word fundraising for our ministry because that implies like you're pulling something up through your own effort, whereas we just plant the seed and then we watch God bring in the resources that are needed. And we're so grateful for that.

Steve Schwetz: It's really fulfilling the Great Commission: "Go therefore and make disciples," and Thru the Bible is a program that does that so well. It feeds into the growth of individuals, the conversion of many people. It's also an evangelistic tool, and it supports and builds local churches as a result of people coming to Christ and going, "Let's form a church."

Greg Harris: Yes. Now having said all that, I also want to say, if you do financially support us, if the Lord leads you to do that, we're grateful. We do need the funding. We just don't make a ring a loud bell and talk about it a great deal or have a challenge at the end of the year. Every dollar you give, somebody else who's got a lot of money, probably more than you, will give $2. We don't do that because we don't have that. We would never do that. That's high-pressure methods that Dr. McGee talks against. And what I love is when we hear from our listeners who love to support what God is doing through Thru the Bible. You want to read this one from Brad?

Steve Schwetz: Yeah, this is from Brad. "I started listening a number of years ago on both the radio, WBRF in Galax, Virginia, and on your app. I drive a truck, so I have time to listen most days. Although raised in the church, I didn't truly start to understand the meaning of being a Christian until the last couple of years. God is great, and He thankfully has been patient with me. Dr. McGee has helped open my eyes. I've got a long way to go, but I am trying. I help with a tank of gas from time to time, and hope it helps. Thanks for all that you're doing."

Greg Harris: Yeah, and he is representative of so many people who consider it a privilege. They know they're being blessed. They know that they're on the Bible bus and we love we've heard, "We're replacing windshield wipers." I remember one person said, "I think I've been in my seat so long, I'll pay for some new upholstery." "Set of tires." "Tank of gas," as Brad said. And so we just want to thank all of those of you who give of your hard-earned money because and we take it seriously. I was just this morning with our Chairman Emeritus, Leo, who we love so much, and we were talking about how we're so appreciative of those who give and we think about you all the time when we're investing the money.

Steve Schwetz: And Greg, I'd like to say just on behalf of the board, as chairman of the board for Thru the Bible, just a big thank you for so many people who I know faithfully give. Yes, you give in regular amounts, you give when you're able, you give when you step into the presence of the Lord in eternity through wills and estates. We're thankful for every aspect of people that give, and we're conscious of that, as Greg had said. We want to be good stewards of that. I pray that you would be a part of this ministry by supporting in that way if you feel the Lord's leading you. Greg, why don't you pray for us as we begin?

Greg Harris: Father, You are the God that gives us so many things. You are the great giving God, and it's our privilege to give back to You as an expression of gratitude. Thank You for all those who make this ministry possible all over the world. In Jesus' name, amen.

Steve Schwetz: We're off to Malachi 1 on Thru the Bible with Dr. J. Vernon McGee.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: Now we are in this little book where the people, after having returned for a hundred years and actually nothing spectacular was taking place. They were just going through the form of worship. They were prosperous. Things were going nicely. It was a period of peace, and that was unusual for this nation. And they were taking things easy. Had you been in Jerusalem and seen the crowds going to the temple all day long, why, you would have been impressed. You would have said, "My, how religious these people are." And they were religious, but their heart was far from God.

And they were making certain complaints, and these complaints reveal a heart condition. God laid it on the line at first. He said, "I love you." Oh, how arrogant they are. They said, "We just don't believe that. How do we know You love us?" And then God cited them from their history that He had demonstrated it from the call of Abraham right down to their present condition.

And then they had another thing that was terrible. They despised the name of God. Going through a God-given ritual, they were breaking it. And the first thing that they did was they were bringing maimed and crippled and sick cattle and sheep to Him, offering that, and they thought they were getting by with it. And God says, "You make me sick. I don't accept that," because God had said that that offering is to point to the coming of Christ, the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world, and an old maimed, sick calf won't represent Him. It has to be one that's without spot and without blemish. And so they were offering that. They had no conception of spiritual worship.

And then added to the way in which they despised His name, they said, "Oh, this is wearisome. This is tiresome. This business of going through the ritual all the time, what a terrible thing it is." In other words, they had a form of godliness, but they denied the power thereof.

And I read verse 13 again of chapter one of Malachi: "Ye said also, Behold, what a weariness is it! and ye have snuffed at it, turned up their nose, you see, saith the Lord of hosts; and ye brought that which was torn, and the lame, and the sick; thus ye brought an offering: should I accept this of your hand? saith the Lord. But cursed be the deceiver, which hath in his flock a male, and voweth, and sacrificeth unto the Lord a corrupt thing: for I am a great king, saith the Lord of hosts, and my name is terrible," that is, reverent, "among the nations."

Now, that's what it's going to be someday. It's not that way today even. And one of the things that has brought God's name into disrepute has been actually the ministry and those that represent Him here, believers. And I don't question their salvation, and yet I'm afraid I do question the salvation of some. Have you ever noticed that God never called a real believer a hypocrite? But I tell you, the Lord Jesus really laid it on the line when He was talking about those religious Pharisees in His day, and He said terrible things about them. My, it was awful what He said to them. He called them "whited sepulchres." Can you imagine that? That's an awful thing to call these people, whited sepulchres. But that's what He called them. And He called them a dish that on the outside is beautiful, but on the inside wasn't even washed, didn't even get in the dishwasher, and it comes out filled with all kinds of garbage. And He said, "That's the hypocrite."

That's what these people were. First thing they'd do would bring those old sick cows. Now the thing they're doing is they says, "Oh, this is boring, all these long services, you know. My, Bible study is certainly boring." When you go through a form of religion, now, let's put it on the line. Do you have religion, or do you have Christ? Are you real, or are you just going through the form of it? Do you wear your Christianity like it's a garment that you can take it off any time and put it aside? And you generally do when you're not in church. You assume a certain attitude, become very pious, and you could quote pious platitudes. But how real is Christ to you?

I thank God that over a period of years, in fact, for 21 years, we averaged on Thursday night 1,500 people. And that was said to have been for that period of time the largest midweek service in America and probably in the world. I don't know that. All I know is what people told me. And I always thank God for that. But when somebody came and patted me on the head and told me how wonderful it was, well, I always told them this, and if it was late in the afternoon, I would take them down and show them those great buildings there in downtown Los Angeles that were emptying of workmen. I said, "Did you know that well over 200,000 people are down here that are leaving and going home? And out of that number of 200,000 and some odd thousand, about 1,500 will be back here for Bible study." I said, "Our batting average really is not very good, is it?"

But most of those people were church members. And on Easter Sunday, oh my, they're all out there on Easter Sunday, you see. And they're also out in Dodger Stadium, too, and they can always make that Sunday afternoon when they find it's impossible to get to the Sunday evening service. You see, friends, there is a great deal of religion, but very little really of Christianity, of the real article. A great many folks are just plain playing church. When I was a kid, we played store. I used to fill tin cans with dirt and sell them, you know, to the other kids in the neighborhood. My, I ran a store, playing store. It's a lot of fun as a kid, and there are a lot of people having fun today playing church.

When I was ordained to the ministry, the man who gave me the charge of entering the ministry, he said there are three great sins of the ministry that you want to avoid. And I've always remembered them. Maybe I haven't followed through as I should, but I've always remembered those three sins. What do you think of the three great sins of the ministry? Number one is laziness. Yes, that's right. That's the reason that we don't have more expositors of the Word of God today is because it requires study to be an expositor of the Word of God. And it's so easy to get so busy during the week, and shame on you if you're taking up your preacher's time during the week and not letting him study if he wants to study. And any church that has a man that's an expositor and wants to spend time studying, you let him study. He needs that, and he'll have to have that if he's going to be an expositor of the Word. You can't be lazy and be in the ministry and get anywhere.

A fellow I'd had in school at Biola became a pastor up in the San Joaquin Valley. After he'd been up there about three years, he came down and said he wanted to talk to me. He and I went to lunch and I asked him, I said, "What's your problem?" He said, "You know, I'm getting ready to get out of the ministry." And I said, "Why?" Well, he said, "I've run out of things to preach. I'm just beginning to repeat myself, and people notice it." And I said to him, "How long do you take in preparing a sermon?" Well, he told me. He says, "I've preached all of yours that I've got, and I've preached others, and I generally just get up one about three hours." And I said, "Well, if you ever have preached any of mine, I can tell you this: the sermon may not look like it, but I spent over 24 hours just preparing that sermon because I never preached until I was ready to preach. And I never do a tape until I think I'm ready to do a tape." Sometimes it doesn't sound like it, but the time's been put in back of it.

Laziness is a great sin, and I don't think God excuses that. I dealt with a young fellow recently, wants to go into the ministry, and he had high hopes of going to a seminary. Now he has the vain notion that he can become a preacher by just going out and the Holy Spirit will teach him. And I can tell you one thing: the Holy Spirit has never yet taught a lazy preacher. He'll only teach the one that's willing to go all the way in studying. That's the first sin of the ministry, you see. And that's one of the problems. This thing became wearisome to those people. Why? They didn't love the Word of God. You have to love the Word of God. That's the reason the Bible is different than any other book. Any other book, you got to read it before you love it. You must understand it before you can love it. But my friend, you got to love the Word of God before you can understand it. The Spirit of God's not teaching lazy folk.

And then the second great sin of the ministry is an overweening ambition. That is, it can manifest itself in several different ways. It's a form of covetousness of fame, of wanting to be a big preacher, of wanting to preach to the crowd. Oh, that is a great sin of the ministry, wanting to speak to crowds. And I very frankly am convinced that the great preachers today are not in the big churches, and they're not always the ones getting the big crowds. I listened to a man some time ago preach a sermon, and I don't think he had a hundred people present. But it was a great sermon, expository sermon, just thrilled my heart to hear that young preacher preach. And I said to him, "How long did you spend?" He says, "I've been working on that all week." I suppose that boy put in over 20 hours getting up that message. May I say to you, he's willing to be pastor of a small group of people.

All this idea of trying to become a great preacher and go to a great church, it's like the preacher I heard of. This is somewhere in Texas that came in and told his wife one day, says, "You know, over at the next town that's larger than our town we're in, the church over there has asked me if I would consider a call to the church." And he said, "It's a larger church, and they pay a larger salary, and they're really lots better people over there." And he said, "I'm going upstairs and pray about it to see what the Lord wants me to do." And his wife says, "Well, I'll go up and pray with you." He says, "No, you stay down here and pack up." May I say to you, I'm afraid that there are a great many that are like that.

Then the third, and this is really the one that I'd like to emphasize: the third great sin of the ministry is to be dull and boring, to be tedious and wearisome. And the reason for that is not to stay enough in the book, of course. A man doesn't have to have charisma. He may not have that. But there's no excuse today to be apathetic and very prosaic and colorless and lackluster.

I mentioned last time of going and seeing this Shakespearean play. Now to begin with, Shakespeare was a great writer, and I don't think he just dashed it off, you know, all of a sudden. We're told he spent hours writing these plays, and he was of course a genius. But I listened to these young men, one of them playing Richard the Second and the other playing the one that's supposed to have been his friend, finally dethroned him and sent him to the Tower in London. But the thing that impressed me about the play above everything else was the way that these young men who played those two parts, how they enunciated, how clearly they spoke, and how they had worked on their lines. I watched purposely because I have been in Shakespeare plays when I was very young. They didn't miss a cue. They didn't have a slip of the tongue. They went right through. You know why? They had worked and worked and rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed.

And I say this: if the actor in the world can spend all of that time working, why can't we spend time working to give out the Word of God today? God said here, He says, "You despise my name when you do that." Any preacher that'll go into the pulpit unprepared despises the name of the Lord, and he's causing people to say, "Boy, this is boring. This is wearisome. My, it's terrible." And that is one of the great sins of the ministry.

And now He mentions here in verse 14, as we've read it, He says, "Cursed be the deceiver, which hath in his flock a male, and voweth, and sacrificeth unto the Lord a corrupt thing." Now here is something else people do: make vows to God. Now when I was going through that section in Leviticus, you remember how I emphasized that, and then again in Proverbs. For some strange reason, God doesn't want you to tell Him something unless you mean it. If you promise to do something for God, you better go through with it because God means business. If you promise Him something you're going to give Him or something you're going to do, now He doesn't ask you to make the vow. That's voluntary. But when you make that vow, make sure you go with it.

Now there were people there that were making big protestations. They said, "It looks like we're going to have a bumper crop this year, and I am going to give the Lord not only a tenth, but I'm going to make some freewill offerings to Him." And then when the harvest came in and it was in abundance, they decided that they would keep it for themselves, you see. They decided that they would not turn it over to the Lord after all.

Now that brings us to the end of chapter one, and I have time enough to get our foot in the door here of chapter two. And probably I should give you what I have in my notes, and I would like to just read it concerning these last two verses of chapter one: "Ye said also, Behold, what a weariness is it!" This further aggravated their backslidden condition. People were actually saying that God bored them. In any endeavor, when the heart is not in it, it becomes an awful bore. Why do you think men adopted a ritual, wore robes, chanted and marched? They were tired of spiritual worship. The people thought that something was wrong with God. It never occurred to them that something was wrong with them. "Having a form of godliness, but denying the power of it."

And then in verse 14, this sorry condition caused them to offer to God the corrupt, the lame, and the sick. Now we come in chapter two here to another section, and actually it's still dealing with the priests, and they're reproved for profanity. They were profane. That is, profanity, "fanus" meant temple, "pro" before the temple or against the temple. Actually, instead of serving God, they were opposed to God, disgracing God in the very service that they had in the temple.

Now let me begin to read here: "And now, O ye priests, this commandment is for you. If ye will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart, to give glory unto my name, saith the Lord of hosts, I will even send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings: yea, I have cursed them already, because ye do not lay it to heart." In other words, they were not taking their office seriously. They are going to be judged actually more severely than the people. Why? Because of their place of responsibility, and they were permitting this sordid condition to exist, and they were shutting their eyes to the fact people were bringing these sacrifices of the lame and the sick to God. And God had given them the law of truth, and they were to serve in that way. They were to give out that message.

I'll be very frank with you, I would rather be any person on top side of this earth, and will you hear me now very carefully in closing, because this is going to be a strong statement. I would rather be the worst sinner on this earth, whoever he might be, whether he's a gangster or a murderer or whatever he is. I'd rather be that sinner than to be a minister who goes into the pulpit and does not believe the Word of God and gives a pretense and puts on a performance and gives a few little pious platitudes. I would rather be the greatest sinner than to be that man because God is certainly going to hold that man responsible. May I say to you, someone's going to say that's too strong. Well, my friend, somebody needs to say that today, and I just happen to be the fellow that doesn't mind saying it. Until next time, may God richly bless you, my beloved.

Steve Schwetz: If you're looking for a resource to deepen your study of God's Word, you can get our app or you can visit TTB.org, or just give us a call at 1-800-65-BIBLE. Well, our study of Malachi continues next time, so stay aboard the Bible bus as we keep on going through the whole Word of God.

Steve Schwetz: Thru the Bible exists to take God's whole Word to the whole world, and we invite you to stand with us with your faithful prayer and financial support. Where will God's Word go today?