Malachi is the last prophet of the Old Testament, and in his book there are glimpses of the hour in which we are living. In Malachi’s day there had ceased to be any real worship of the Lord. The people had profaned His altars and had given unto the Lord the lame of the flock in sacrifice.
They had displeased Him so much that the burden of Malachi (though he was one of the restoration prophets) seems like the drawing of a black curtain on the scene of Israel. As far as the Holy Scriptures are concerned, only after four hundred years did John the Baptist appear on the scene with a message to repent.
The prophets foresaw not only darkness for the people of God who had failed, but off in the distance they could perceive that the sun was still shining on a mountain peak of the future. They could always see a better day coming, a day in which the requirements of the Lord would be met. When a prophet saw that the people were to be taken into captivity because they were not obeying the law, he also saw a day in the future when God would write His law upon the tablets of men’s hearts, and they would keep the Word because God had written it there.
Malachi is one of those prophets. In chapter 1, verse 11, he writes: For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering: for my name shall be great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of hosts.
The prophet foresaw a day of continuous worship. From the rising of the sun until the going down of the same, there would be a continual flow of praise. This worship was not found among the Jewish people. Malachi writes that it will come from among the Gentiles and will extend to the ends of the earth.
His prophecy reveals further: And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels; and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him. Then shall ye return, and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not. Malachi 3:17–18. He goes on to say that this day will be like a fire that burns in the oven, and the wicked will be consumed.
It is true that the righteous have not always prevailed, but in this day the best insurance policy you can have is to be addicted to the worship of God. God has been seeking worshipers, and in this hour there is no immunity and no protection as great as that which belongs to a worshiper of God.
In this day you will be able to discern the difference between him that fears the Lord and him that fears Him not. The Lord will make the difference. The man who fears and worships God will have a protection.
God says, “In the day that I make” (verse 17). Do not be confused. Satan is not creating this day; God is. The Scriptures are very implicit in calling this “the day of the Lord” which comes like a day of dark clouds and foreboding, a day of judgment upon the earth.
But in the midst of all the judgments that are upon the earth, God says He will take care of those people who are His own possession. Then you will discern the difference between the man who serves God and the man who serves Him not.
Worship will become very important to us. I am convinced that a worshiper of the Lord will not perish until he has performed everything God has ordained for his life. I am persuaded that he will have an immortality temporarily given to him if God has appointed a work for him to do, provided he continues as a worshiper. The effectiveness of his work will depend upon his dedication to worship.
God is beginning to lay out before us basic principles about worship which will continue to have a great deal of emphasis. We will point out seven of these principles.
1 When we worship God, Satan’s purpose is defeated, for the very thing he has tried to prevent is thereby accomplished. Does Satan try to keep people from passing out tracts or witnessing in the neighborhood? He may give them a little static, but he does not really fight them to any degree. However, he does hate worship.
Notice carefully: Satan’s purpose is defeated in the very act of worship. Satan hates God. He does not want this human race to produce worship to God. Because he does not want that to take place, the devil is defeated the minute you begin to worship God.
What has the Father been seeking according to John 4:23? “For such the Father seeketh to worship Him, those who will worship Him in spirit and in truth.”
The Father has many zealous people who work, but He does not have many worshipers. The most difficult exercise in a walk in the Spirit is to wait on the Lord and to worship. Have you ever noticed how much satanic conflict you encounter when you start worshiping and waiting on the Lord and learning the voice of God? This is the one activity that Satan hates, for when you have worshiped, you have basically accomplished the will of God.
Movements based on works seem to flourish and then fail; whereas, a movement that is based on the worship of God will be slow coming forth, but it will endure. Nothing will stop it. God must have worshipers.
2. When we worship God for the inspired utterances and the promises God has given us, we are expressing the highest form of faith of which an individual is capable. Give that some serious thought. We are expressing a faith that is coming forth from our spirits because we worship with our spirits. Faith which is manifested by our spirits is so great that it will bypass the level of conflict in our conscious minds and will eliminate much struggling with doubts, for our spirits merely accept the promises and worship God for them.
When you come with an open spirit and have someone lay hands on you and speak inspired words to you, those words or promises of God will go directly to your spirit.
If you do not have an open spirit, it all goes to your conscious mind. You may finally receive a typewritten copy of it; and after studying it and praying over it for a while, it may follow the route from the conscious mind to the subconscious mind to the human spirit, where you finally come to believe it. But when a message from the Lord passes through the subconscious level, it passes through the great areas of doubt and conflict. Many Christians have had this experience at one time or another.
When you receive a word from the Lord, you start to believe it and pray over it; but perhaps over a period of months, while that word is going through the subconscious level, you battle doubt and fear.
On the other hand, if you can instantly accept the word with your spirit, you will bypass all the conflict on the level of the conscious mind and all the areas of doubt. You will bypass it like a no-man’s-land and find that the faith in your spirit will be very strong.
Your spirit can dictate to the subconscious mind what it is to believe, for the mind operates almost entirely from suggestion, from ideas and thoughts that are given to it in force.
I do not think the subconscious mind reasons in itself, but it accepts the suggestions that are made to it. If you have given your subconscious mind many doubts and fears in the past and then you consciously try to feed something else through to your spirit, it has a difficult time getting through all the battles in the thoughts and attitudes that you have planted there throughout the past years. Come into the realm of the human spirit and receive as a worshiper the promises and the revelation, and begin to worship God over every promise and every direction. In that way you will bypass the level of conflict.
You know this will work. You can read the Scriptures and see what people did when they received a word from God. When God spoke a word, they bowed down and worshiped the Lord. They probably did not understand the principles of it, but they were certainly eliminating a great deal of conflict. Whenever a man in the Bible received a word from God and bowed down and worshiped, he never wavered or failed.
The only man who came close to wavering was Job when he received word that everything had been destroyed. Family, property, possession—all were swept away. What did he do? He bowed down and worshiped, saying, “The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). That was what was in him. He had an open spirit to God. God Himself said that Job was perfect in all his ways before the Lord (Job 1:8); his spirit was absolutely right.
3. As we stand in God’s throne room, worshiping Him, we choose the area of conflict. We do not have to accept Satan on his terms. Some may not believe this is true because Satan seems to have his way, hitting us whenever he wants to do so. But we must remember we have been translated from the dominion of darkness into the Kingdom of the Son of His love (Colossians 1:13). Therefore, Satan can only accomplish certain things in the will of God, and we must learn to overcome him.
The will of God is very simple. God does not intend to defeat Satan directly. Because Satan comes against the human race to get at the sons of God who are to be God’s inheritance forever, God has ordained, in His deep sense of justice, that Satan is to be bruised and destroyed by the very people who are raised up out of the fallen race—those whose destruction Satan had engineered. “It shall please God” (God becomes hilarious over this) “to bruise Satan under your feet shortly” (Romans 16:20).
God has arranged it that you will not bypass completely a meeting with Satan, but because you have such a oneness and such an access to God, if Satan does meet you, it will be as he met Joshua.
As Joshua was standing before the angel of the Lord, the devil was at his right hand to accuse him. The Lord said to Satan, “The Lord of hosts who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you, Satan.”
I love that arrangement. God is first, and He who has chosen Jerusalem rebukes Satan, sending him right down to the end of the line (Zechariah 3:2). That is just what you can do if you are a worshiper of the Lord.
Satan came into the presence of the Lord to accuse Job. Actually, the devil did not have much to say. He never has much to say in the presence of God. So God nudged him and goaded him: “Have you considered My servant Job?” Satan complained that God had hedges all about Job (Job 1:10). So God took down the hedges for the trial of Job. He may do that for you also, but if you stand in the presence of the Lord as a worshiper, you will prevail for the glory of God. Do you comprehend this? You can stand in God’s throne room and thus choose the area of conflict. If Satan wants to battle you, he must come right into the presence of God to get to you, and that is a good place for you to battle.
4. It is by worship that we prevail and possess the promises of God. I do not understand this nor the reason for it, but I do know that it is a true statement. I know that when we worship God, we are in tune with one of the greatest methods of appropriation we have. It is the worshipers, standing in the presence of the Lord, who can draw from Him. We will learn to apply this principle in intercession. When we stand in the presence of the Lord, we can receive a witness that we have received from God what we requested. There is a deep awareness of what we have appropriated. When we return from His presence, we are aware that we possess it. Through the process of worship, we prevail and possess more effectively than in any other way. A worshiper perfects the process of appropriation more than any other person.
5. I have noticed that when we try to cast out devils, we sometimes have a struggle. But I have never seen it fail that when we begin to worship the Lord, the demons seem to flee. They do not like that atmosphere or environment. They flee from the worship of the Lord. When a godly person, harassed and beset by people who are not serving God, begins to worship, it turns the tide. It works as it did with Daniel. His persecutors seem to land in the lion’s den instead of him (Daniel 6:24).
Worship is one of the most effective methods of seeing the devils defeated and cast out of the situation. Many times we have worshiped the Lord and watched the devils flee without even casting them out. Whenever we come into the presence of the enemy, we should start worshiping God.
6. Through worship an individual can come into the control of his moods in a way that he would not be able to accomplish in himself. I am persuaded that when we begin to worship God, the moods, the restraints, the pressures, the circumstances can be miraculously changed because of the leverage that a worshiper has with God. We cannot first change the circumstance to create the situation for God. We must first prove to God that we will worship Him. As we seem to rise in the spirit, these other things fall off. To state it very simply, we sing or sink.
7. The worship of God is directly related to effective work, to victorious warfare, to appropriating faith, and to effective ministry.