Part Six

Every family needs a faithful Dad who loves God and loves them!

Malachi 4

Malachi 4:1 “For behold, the day is coming, burning like a furnace; and all the arrogant and every evildoer will be chaff;

Malachi 4:1 and the day that is coming will set them ablaze,” says the Lord of hosts, “so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.”

Malachi 4:2 “But for you who fear My name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings;

Malachi 4:2 and you will go forth and skip about like calves from the stall.”

Malachi 4:3 “You will tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day which I am preparing,” says the Lord of hosts.

Malachi 4:4 “Remember the law of Moses My servant, even the statutes and ordinances which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel.”

Malachi 4:5 “Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord.”

Malachi 4:6 “He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite

Malachi 4:6 the land with a curse.”

Every family needs a faithful Dad who loves God and loves them!

I love the phrase from verse six:

“He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers.”

What is the heart?

H3820 לב labe Feelings, the will and even the intellect; the core of who you are: to care for, consider, kind, mindful.

What does it mean to restore?

H7725 שׁוּב shoob To turn back or turn again: (break, build, make) to call to mind, convert, deliver, fetch home, recover, refresh, repent, rescue, restore, retrieve.

Who will restore the heart?

How will the heart be restored?

We automatically think of the surface level, but there’s more there than that.

It is speaking on every level.

Total Restoration!

When we’re restored to our Heavenly Father, then other forms of restoration become available.

When our heart is changed, then we want everybody’s heart to experience the same thing.

Notice which hearts turn first and which turn in response.

I’m reminded of several scriptures!

Joshua 24:14 Now, therefore, fear the Lord and serve Him in sincerity and truth; and put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the River

Joshua 24:14 and in Egypt, and serve the Lord.

Joshua 24:15 If it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve; whether the gods which your

Joshua 24:15 fathers served which were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my house, we

Joshua 24:15 will serve the Lord.”

Joshua 24:16 The people answered and said, “Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods;

Joshua 24:17 for the Lord our God is He who brought us and our fathers up out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage, and who did these great

Joshua 24:17 signs in our sight and preserved us through all the way in which we went and among all the peoples through whose midst we passed.

Joshua 24:18 The Lord drove out from before us all the peoples, even the Amorites who lived in the land.

Joshua 24:18 We also will serve the Lord, for He is our God.”

Proverbs 22:6 Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it.

Deuteronomy 6:4 Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!

Deuteronomy 6:5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

Deuteronomy 6:6 These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart.

Deuteronomy 6:7 You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and

Deuteronomy 6:7 when you lie down and when you rise up.

Deuteronomy 6:8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead.

Deuteronomy 6:9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Ephesians 6:1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.

Ephesians 6:2 Honor your father and mother (which is the first commandment with a promise),

Ephesians 6:3 so that it may be well with you, and that you may live long on the earth.

Ephesians 6:4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

I John 2:15 Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

I John 2:16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from

I John 2:16-17 the world. The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever.

Hebrews 12:9 Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of

Hebrews 12:9-10 spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may

Hebrews 12:10-11 share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful, yet to those who have been trained by it,

Hebrews 12:11 afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.

Hebrews 12:4 You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin;

Hebrews 12:5 and you have forgotten the exhortation which is aggressed to you as sons, “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,

Hebrews 12:5 nor faint when you are reproved by Him;

Hebrews 12:6 For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives.”

Hebrews 12:7 It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?

Hebrews 12:8 But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.

So what are the characteristics of a good father?

Galatians 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,

Galatians 5:23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

I Corinthians 13:4 Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant,

I Corinthians 13:5 does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered,

I Corinthians 13:6 does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;

I Corinthians 13:7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

I Corinthians 13:8a Love never fails…

Every family needs a faithful Dad who loves God and loves them!

Deuteronomy 30:1 So it will be when all of these have come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I have set before you, and you

Deuteronomy 30:1 call them to mind in all nations where the Lord your God has banished you, and you return to the Lord your God and

Deuteronomy 30:2 obey Him with all your heart and soul according to all that I command you today, you and your sons,

Deuteronomy 30:3 then the Lord your God will restore you from captivity, and have compassion on you, and will gather you again

Deuteronomy 30:3 from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you.

Now that’s a Dad that never gives up and keeps fighting for His family.

Let’s be like our Daddy!

Let’s love our Daddy’s instructions and obey Him with a whole heart.

Let’s teach others to love our Daddy and obey Him.