Awaiting The Dawn

The book of Malachi ends with a wondrous vision after foretelling a lot of tough love.

We've seen God disciplining his beloved children, but the prophet's final word is full of mercy as God leaves hope ringing in their ears. Today we conclude a series on tough love and tender mercies with hope, hope that puts courage into our timid souls. From Chicago, welcome to The Moody Church Hour with Pastor Philip Miller. In a moment, a time of worship and teaching as we conclude a series on tough love and tender mercies taken from the book of Malachi, we'll see a people who at long last are awaiting the dawn. Here now is Pastor Philip along with worship leader Tim Stafford. Hey, we're so glad you're here. We are wrapping up our series in the book of Malachi today.

It ends with a bang and so I'm excited about that. We're going to talk about hope, the hope of the gospel in the world made right again in the end. Oh man, the gloriousness of all of that.

Would you stand where you are? Let's give this service to the Lord in prayer. Gracious Heavenly Father, we gather here for the glory of your name. We pray that you would lift high Jesus Christ among us this morning. He's the reason we gather because our lives have been ransomed and redeemed and forgiven and restored and one day you will pour out glory upon us and upon all creation and all things will be made new. And so it is in sure and certain hope of that resurrection reality that we gather this morning. Father, would you teach our hearts to sing your praise for you are worthy of all that we are.

We pray this in Jesus name and all God's people said, Amen. Who else commands all the hopes of heaven? Who else could make every king bow down? Who else can whisper and darkness drowns? Only our holy God. What other beauty meant such praises? What other splendor outshines the sun? What other majesty rules with justice?

Yeah, yeah. Uh huh Cry out, state holy, forever a holy God Come and worship the holy God What other glory consumes like fire? What other power can raise the dead?

What other name remains undefeated? Only a holy God Come and behold Him The one and the only Cry out, state holy, forever a holy God Come and worship the holy God Who else could rescue me from my failing? Who else would offer His only Son?

Who else advised me to call Him Father? Only a holy God Only my holy God Come and behold Him The one and the only Cry out, state holy, forever a holy God Come and worship the holy God Come and behold Him The one and the only Cry out, state holy, forever a holy God Come and worship the holy God Stand with us Do you feel the world is broken? Do you feel the shadows deepen?

Do you know that all the dark won't stop the light from getting through? Do you wish that you could see it all made new? Is all creation growing? Is a new creation coming? Is the glory of the Lord to be the light within our midst?

Is it good that we remind ourselves of this? Is anyone worthy? Is anyone whole?

Is anyone able to break the seal and open the scroll? The Lion of Judah who conquered the grave He is dead and true and will never die to ransom the slave Is He worthy? Is He worthy? Of our blessing and honor and glory Is He worthy of this? He is Does the Father truly love us? Does the Spirit move among us? Does Jesus our Messiah hold forever those He loves?

Does our God intend to dwell again with us? He loves Is anyone worthy? Is anyone whole?

Is anyone able to break the seal and open the scroll? The Lion of Judah who conquered the grave He is dead and true and will never die to ransom the slave From every people and tribe, every nation and tongue He has made us the kingdom and grace to God to reign with the Son Is He worthy? Is He worthy? Of our blessing and honor and glory Is He worthy? Is He worthy? Is He worthy of this? He is Is He worthy? Is He worthy?

He is He is It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end because how could the end be happy?

How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come.

And when the sun shines, it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you, that meant something even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand.

I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going because they were holding on to something. That there's some good in this world and it's worth fighting for. Samwise Gamgee, The Two Towers by J.R.R.

Tolkien. Titled this message this morning, Awaiting the Dawn. Awaiting the Dawn because it's all about hope. Hope is something we can't live without. Hope is what gets us up in the morning. Hope is what gives us reason to endure. Hope lifts our eyes beyond the shadows to the dawning of the light. And as the book of Malachi draws to a close, it ends with a wondrous vision of hope. There's been a whole lot of tough love in this book.

God hasn't pulled any of his punches as he disciplines his beloved children. But his final words are full of tender mercies. It is hope that God leaves ringing in the ears of his people. Because friends, hope breathes courage into our timid souls.

Amen? Hope breathes courage into our timid souls. Is there anybody here this morning who could use a little bit of hope?

Anybody? Anybody can use a bit of hope this morning? Friends, with all that we're facing in this dark and broken world, you and I need a little bit of hope this morning. Because we too are Awaiting the Dawn. We're Awaiting the Dawn. Grab your Bibles. Malachi chapter 4 verses 1 through 6. For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all the evildoers will be stubble. The day is coming, shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that they will leave them with neither root nor branch. But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings. You shall go forth leaping like calves from the stall, and you shall tread down the wicked. They shall be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when I act, says the Lord of hosts.

Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and rules that I commanded him at Horeb for all of Israel. Behold, I will send you Elijah, the prophet, before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he 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 land with a decree of utter destruction.

Thanks be to the Lord for the reading of his word. Right in the middle, don't you just love it, this poetic imagery? The sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. So here you've got the sun peering over the dawning horizon with beams of righteousness piercing the shadows, darkness fleeing over the edge of the world, rays of light spreading like wings out over the horizon, bringing healing warmth wherever the light falls, greening and brightening and nourishing and enlivening, making all the world whole and healed and good and beautiful in the light of the risen sun. Oh, don't you just want to go there now?

Oh, could we go? Oh, friends, that soul-stirring image, it inspired me a little this week to give a bit of a creative outline for this text. We're going to see the sun of hope, the soil of hope, and the seed of hope this morning. Very imagery-rich because, listen, hope is not something you get with your head, it's something you feel in your heart. And we've got to have a visceral encounter with hope this morning. So the sun of hope, the soil of hope, the seed of hope, there's our outline.

Would you bow your heads? Let's pray. Oh, Father, would you teach us to hope in the glories to come? Father, help us not to put our hope in the temporary things of this world but in the glories of all of what you will do one day in the dawning of the new creation. Draw our hearts upward, we pray, further up and further in. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. The sun of hope, the sun of hope, let's start.

So we've got to remember who this text is written to. Israel has been in exile under foreign oppression up until very recently. Now they're back in the land, but it's not like it was before.

The temple is small, it's diminished. The government is weak and almost powerless. The economy is struggling, barely getting by. The boot of their enemies, their foreign oppressive enemies, is still pressed down upon their necks. And they've grown weary of waiting for God to intervene, to act.

How long? Oh, Lord, they keep crying. Now let's reread these verses in light of where they're coming from. Chapter 4, verse 1. For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and the evildoers will be stubble. The day is coming that is coming, so set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts.

It will leave them neither root nor branch. Remember back in chapter 3, verse 15, the people were complaining that the arrogant were experiencing blessing and the evildoers were getting away with everything. They had tested God and were escaping. And God here says, in chapter 4, he says, not for long.

Not for long. Oh, a day is coming and is burning like an oven, like a kiln, when all the arrogance, those who defy the Lord, all the evildoers who perpetrate injustice, they'll be stubble, like the worthless stalks that are burned in the fire after the grain is harvested off the end. They shall be set to blaze, consumed, root to branch, everything in between, all of them. One day, friends, Malachi is saying, evil will be vanquished forever. One day, justice will roll down like a mighty river. One day, righteousness will come like a never-ending stream.

2 Peter 3, verse 7 says, the heaven and the earth are being stored up for the day of fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. In this day, Malachi is saying, the Lord is saying, the wicked will not stand. Evil will come to an end. Hallelujah.

Right? Hallelujah. Verse 2, but for you who fear my name, the son of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings.

You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. If you fear my name, if your name is written in my book of remembrance, remember that? Chapter 3, verse 16, that day will be a different day. For you, the son of righteousness will rise. It'll be a new dawn. It'll be a new day. The sun will rise with healing in its wings and everywhere the light falls, the world shall be healed and warmed and green and new. And you, you will go leaping like a calf that's been pent up in the stall all winter and finally the stable doors are flung wide and the light pours in and the scent of the fresh verdant spring reaches your nose and you will rush out with all the vibrancy of youth, skipping and frolicking and dancing, leaping into the vast sunlit lands for which you were made.

And you will be home finally at long last. Verse 3, you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet. So notice, the Lord has judged them and they're just ashes, but now the righteous are running over the ashes on the day when I act as the Lord of hosts. So the oppressors, the ones with the boot on the neck of the people of God, they shall now be under their feet. They shall tread on the ashes of the remains of the wicked. Who's on top now?

Who's on top now? And to those of you who are wondering back in 3 verse 14 if serving God mattered, if there was any profit in it for you, on this day you will see. You will see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked. You will see how the wicked are vanquished and the righteous delight in the dawn of the new creation.

Now there's a very interesting phrase all the way down at the end after we get the label, the great and awesome day of the Lord. It's down in verse 6. God says he's going to send Elijah to prepare the hearts of his people for the day of judgment.

We'll talk more about that in a minute. But this is what he says, verse 6. He, this is Elijah, will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the children to the fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction. This phrase here, the decree of utter destruction, is weird.

It's very odd. It's rarely used in the Bible. It literally means I will place a ban upon the earth. I will place a ban upon the earth. The earth will be forbidden, off limits, marked out for divine destruction.

So here's what you have as you look at this passage as a whole. He's talking about the great and awesome day of the Lord. And four things will happen on that day. Number one, evil will be vanquished forever. Secondly, the earth will be banned, purged with fire and destroyed. Third, then, upon the scorched ashes of the world that was, the sun will rise with righteousness and healing in its wings. And wherever the healing rays land, new life will spring into new creation. Everything ailing will be healed. Everything broken will be mended.

Everything marred will be beautiful. From the ashes will rise the dawn of a new creation. And number four, the righteous shall inherit the earth.

Set loose like bounding calves into the wide world of the new age. Friends, what Malachi and the Lord are telling us is one day, the darkness will give way to the dawn. One day, the darkness will give way to the dawn.

This is what the Bible, the story of the Bible is really all about. The world is good. God made it. The world has fallen.

We broke it. The world is being saved. Jesus is rescuing it. And the world will be redeemed and glorious in the end. This is the story God is writing. Oh, it's a story of hope. And friends, do you realize, secularism cannot give you this kind of hope. Secularism cannot give you this kind of hope. If you kick God out of the story, listen, if you are the product of a meaningless evolution with time and chance on your side, if the history of the world is the strong eating the weak, as Tennyson says, nature read in tooth and claw, and if all of creation you just puff up and build up a little story for yourself, you make whatever life you can, but in the end, the sun goes dark, the universe gets cold, everything freezes, spins out in entropy, and death wins in the end, there is no basis for hope. There's no basis for hope in the secular story.

But this is not the story that is real. This is the story that the Bible is giving us, that history is actually going somewhere, that we are not trapped in an endless cycle ad nauseum where we just have to do the same thing over and over again forever, nor are we stuck in a tragedy where everyone dies in the end, nor is it a cheap feel-good comedy that's just for laughs. No, the Bible tells us that the world is inherently good, fatally broken, divinely rescued, and one day gloriously redeemed story. The Bible helps us see the world as it really is, the profound depths of the darkness. There's no flinching in the Bible when it comes to evil and injustice and the pain of this world, and there's no denying of this, no denying, but it also isn't full of despair because the Bible also holds out the hope, the resplendent heights of hope of the dawning of the light.

See, the Bible helps us see the darkness of crucifixion in the light of resurrection. One day, the darkness will give way to the dawn. Healing will come to all creation with the rising of the sun of hope, the sun of hope.

All right, sun of hope. Now the soil of hope, the soil of hope. What difference does it make when this hope falls on the soil of your life? What difference does it make when hope rains down upon you and soaks in to the soil of your life and saturates who you are? How does this hope change you? Well, for one, it changes how we look back.

It changes how we look back. Look at verse 4. Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and rules I commanded him at Horeb for all of Israel. See, if you know that evil will be vanquished, if you know that this cursed earth will be destroyed, that a new creation will dawn and that the righteous will inherit the earth, you want to get on the right side of history.

And so you remember the law. You remember my servant Moses. This is language of the covenant. Remember Moses came down Mount Sinai at Horeb with the Ten Commandments. He's the one who inaugurated the covenant. He brokered the covenant between God and the people where they promised to obey God.

He promised to bless them for their obedience. And Malachi is saying, remember. The Lord is saying, remember. Remember who you are. Remember your relationship with me. You are my people. You are my sons. You are my daughters. You are members of my covenant and I am preparing glory upon glory for you.

And so I want you to live like it now. Remember who you are. Remember the covenant you're in.

Remember the law you are to keep. Let this future hope remind you to walk before me right here and right now in purity and holiness. 1 John 3 verses 2 to 3 say something very similar to New Testament believers like you and me, members of the new covenant in Christ's blood. This is what John writes, Beloved, we are God's children now and what we will be has not yet appeared. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is.

Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself as he is pure. You see that. If you know you're going to be glorious when you see Jesus face to face and are transformed into his image, if you know that's coming, you start walking in purity right here and now.

You see that. Because one day, friends, the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father. Matthew 13, 43, words of Jesus. When hope like this, friends, sinks into the soil of our lives, it changes how we look back. It reminds us who we are. It reminds us to walk in purity and holiness before the Lord. But it also changes how we look ahead.

It changes how we look ahead. Look at verse 5. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest they come and strike the land with the decree of utter destruction. Before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes, you will get a final warning, a final grace, a final prophet. I will send you Elijah. And Elijah will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, the hearts of the children to the fathers.

What's with that phrase? If you do a quick study of that phrase in the Bible, you will always find it's connected with spiritual revival and renewal. When God's people get right with God, they get right with one another. Those things are intimately connected.

Love God, love people. Now, you'll recall that Elijah was a prophet from the ninth century BC, many years before this prophecy is given. But he never died.

It's an interesting story. You can read about it in 2 Kings chapter 2. He never died. He was taken up in a chariot of fire into heaven. God just snatched him up.

Why? Malachi chapter 4 is telling us why. Because God has more work for him to do. God's not done with him yet. He's going to send him back to prepare the way of the Lord. And when he comes, he's going to bring spiritual revival and renewal to the people of God.

God says, you'll return to me and you'll return to one another. And just as the expectation of Messiah's coming, Jesus, actually occurs in two phases, the first and second comings of our Lord Jesus Christ, Elijah's coming also takes place in two phases. So for example, we see the first stage of this fulfillment in John the Baptist. So if you read in Luke chapter 1 verse 17, Gabriel the angel announces the birth of John the Baptist and says, he will come in the spirit and power of Elijah and turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just and make ready a people prepared for the Lord.

And so Gabriel is saying, this is him. This is the Elijah we're talking about. Now it's interesting because John was not actually Elijah reincarnate, right?

And so when they pressed him and they said, are you Elijah? He said, no, that's in John 1 21. But later Jesus says in Matthew 11 verses 13 to 14, all the prophets in the law prophesied until John and if you're willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come.

So Jesus says John is. Then a couple chapters later at the Mount of Transfiguration when Jesus is glorified before his disciples, there are two individuals that stand atop the mountain with Jesus, Moses and Elijah. And the disciples go, wait a minute, I remember Malachi.

This is a big deal. And they asked Jesus about it. This is what Jesus, how he responds. Matthew 17 verses 11 to 13. Elijah does come and he will future tense, restore all things.

But I tell you Elijah has already come past tense and they did not recognize him. Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them of John the Baptist. So John the Baptist is the first stage of fulfillment of this promise of the coming of Elijah. He prepared the way for the coming of the Lord, the first coming of the Lord. And many scholars believe that the second stage of fulfillment of these promises of the coming of Elijah will take place as an individual Elijah comes to prepare the way for the second coming of the Lord. And we see a glimpse of this in Revelation chapter 11 verses 3 to 12 where we get the picture of these two witnesses at the end of the age making one last extraordinary call to Israel to repent, to prepare for the impending judgment that is coming. And one of those witnesses, almost certainly the final Elijah, is described as having the power to shut up the sky so that no rain may fall. Which is exactly what the 9th century Elijah did in his day.

So here's the whole point though. When this kind of hope soaks into your soul, into the soil of your life, it causes you to look back, to remember who you are, whose you are, to live in purity and holiness before Him. It causes you to look ahead, to wait with eager expectation, to prepare yourself for the glories that are coming, to be ready to not be caught off guard. And then the third thing it helps us do is it helps us look beyond. Look beyond. Look back, look ahead, look beyond. Remember, God's people were in a terrible scrape.

Lousy circumstances. They were oppressed, they were weak, they were trampled, they were battered. And with these promises, God is inviting them to look beyond their circumstances and lift their eyes to the horizon of everlasting hope. Because hope is the fuel of perseverance. And hope is the reason we keep going when all else seems lost.

Viktor Frankl, who was the Austrian psychologist, Holocaust survivor, wrote a famous book called Man's Search for Meaning. And he described the power of hope as he saw it functioning in the concentration camps that he was in. And he said those who had no reason to hope, no reason to live, they quickly broke down.

They succumbed to disease more rapidly than anybody else and they withered away long before they died. He said, but those who had hope, those who had a reason to live, they had family, friends, they had faith, they showed higher levels across the board of resilience, perseverance, and endurance. And Frankl said this, he said, he who has a why to live can bear almost anyhow.

He who has a why to live can bear almost anyhow. Friends, because endurance grows in the soil watered with hope. Endurance grows in the soil watered with hope.

I've long found it fascinating that the blues and the spirituals came out of the same soil of oppression. One of them hopeless, another one saturated with gospel hope. What makes the difference? Hope makes the difference. Hope makes us look back and remember who we are. Hope helps us look ahead to remember all that God has promised. And hope helps us look beyond our circumstances to the glories that are awaiting us. 2 Corinthians 4, 16 and 17.

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light and momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. Romans 8, 18.

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth being compared with the glory that will be revealed to us. At the risk of quoting too much from my favorite book, The Lord of the Rings, there's another scene in The Return of the King where Sam is losing heart. In the first scene I quoted from Frodo's losing heart. This time Sam's losing heart and Frodo can't help him. And he's lying there exhausted on the slag heaps of Mount Doom.

And this is what we read. There peeping among the cloud rack above a dark tour high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart as he looked up out of the forsaken land and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the shadow was only a small and passing thing.

There was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach. Don't you see, friends, endurance grows in the soil watered with hope when you know there's light and high beauty forever beyond the reach of the small and passing shadow. It gives you courage, courage to endure because hope has soaked into the soil of your life. The sun of hope, the soil of hope, and finally the seed of hope, the seed of hope. Don't you see in these verses God is planting a seed, a seed of hope that all things will one day be set to rights.

And God is sowing this seed of hope all throughout His Scriptures. Let me just read a couple of these to you. There's so many I couldn't even prune it down. This is a long list.

But there's more. Psalm 9 verses 7 to 8. The Lord abides forever. He's established His throne for judgment. He will judge the world in righteousness. He will execute judgment for the peoples with equity. Isaiah 2, 2 to 4. In the last days, the Lord will judge between the nations.

He will render decisions for many peoples. They will hammer their swords into plowshares, their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not ever again lift up a sword against another nation.

Never again will they study war. Isaiah 11 verses 6 to 9. The wolf shall dwell with the lamb. The lion shall eat straw like the ox.

The nursing child shall play over the whole of the cobra. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the seas. Daniel 2 verse 44. The God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed.

It itself will endure forever. Zechariah 14, 9. And the Lord will be king over all the earth. In that day, the Lord will be the only one and His name the only one. Daniel 7 verse 14. To Him, to the Son of Man, was given dominion and glory and a kingdom that all the peoples, all the nations, and all the men of every language might serve Him.

His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away and His kingdom one that shall not be destroyed. Titus 2 verse 13. For we are waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. Philippians 3 verses 20 and 21.

For our citizenship is in heaven and from there we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ who will transform our lowly bodies to be like His glorious body by the power that enables Him to subject all things to Himself. Colossians 3 verse 4. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. Revelation 22 verses 1 to 5. Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb, through the middle of the street of the city and on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month.

The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it and His servants will worship Him. They will see His face. His name will be on their foreheads and night will be no more.

They will need no lamp or sun for the Lord God will be their light and they will reign forever and ever. Friends, these promises are sown in hope all over the Scriptures. But the greatest seed of hope ever sown is sown in Jesus Himself. Because in Jesus' death and resurrection, what you and I are getting is a preview of what will one day happen to us and what will one day happen to all of creation. Because when Jesus died and rose again, He actually blazed the trail from the old creation into the new creation. He became one of us, part of the old creation, under the curse, frail, mortal, killable, and He died. He took the old world down into the grave with Him and He rose again into resurrection life and came out on the other side immortal, indestructible, glorious forever. See, the new creation is already started in Jesus.

It's already started like a seed that has dropped down into the broken decay of this world, the seed of the gospel, of what Jesus incarnates and lives through His death and resurrection into newness of life, the beginning, the dawn of the new creation has begun. And like Him, we will go through death into resurrection life. These old bodies will die, but in the resurrection, we will be given a new body. To use Paul's language, we will be clothed with immortality. We will be revealed as the sons and daughters of God forever. And this same thing is true of all creation. The old world will pass away through fire. It will perish only to be raised in the dawn of the new creation.

You see that? Jesus is a microcosm of new creation hope. Jesus is a microcosm, a mini cosmos of what will one day happen to all of creation. He's the firstborn of all creation, the beginning, the first creation. And He's the firstborn from the dead. He's the firstborn of the new creation, you see. The seed of new creation hope has dropped down into this world.

The new creation's coming, friends. We can see it in Jesus. Jesus Himself blazed the only trail there is from the old world to the new, from the old creation to the new creation. And the path runs through death to resurrection.

It's the only way. So our only hope is to follow Him through death into resurrection hope. And the only hope for the cosmos is to be taken by Jesus through death into resurrection hope as well. And so you see, the seed of Christian hope is founded on more than just a whole bunch of promises. The seed of Christian hope is founded upon the crucified and risen Son of God who blazed the trail through death into everlasting life.

And He beckons us, come, come, follow Me, further up and further in. Some of you know that line. It's from C.S. Lewis' The Last Battle. The final book in the Chronicles of Narnia where Narnia is unmade. When the stars fall and the world is destroyed, it descends back into the chaos from which it was born. And the people of Narnia finally reach Aslan's country.

And this is what Lewis writes. It is hard to explain how this sunlit land was different from the old Narnia. As it would be to tell you how the fruits of that country taste.

The new one was a deeper country. Every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more. I can't describe it any better than that.

If you ever get there, you will know what I mean. It was the unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his ripe forehoof to the ground and neighed and then cried, I have come home at last. This is my real country. I belong here. This is the land I've been looking for all my life, though I never knew it until now. The reason why we love the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this. Reee!

Come further up and further in. And the things that began to happen after that were so great and so beautiful, I cannot write them. And for us, this is the end. This is the end of all the stories. And we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them, it was only the beginning of the real story.

All their life in this world, all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and title page. Now at last, at last, they were beginning chapter 1 of the greatest story which no one on earth has read which goes on forever in which every chapter is better than the one before. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth.

For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with men. He will dwell with them and they will be His people.

And God Himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore for the former things have passed away.

And He who was seated on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new. Friends, all shall be well and all shall be well. And all manner of thing shall be well. Behold, I am coming soon.

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. Maranatha, come, Lord Jesus.

Would you say that with me? Maranatha, come, Lord Jesus. Let us pray. Father, it is in sure and certain hope of these resurrection realities that we cling to You. Father, I don't know how I would ever live in a world without this kind of hope.

I think I'd go nuts trying to invent the hope that I could invent knowing it was all my creative invention. Father, all of our hopes fade in the light of the glory that is coming. Help us to hope in the glory of God. Thank you for sending Jesus so that by grace through faith in Him we might be tethered to His life forever. So that the seed of immortality might be planted in our souls. So that we might never be separated from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Even death itself cannot take that from us. Father, we give you worship because you have triumphed over darkness and death and we hold fast to you into the resurrection hope of the new creation. Come quickly, Lord Jesus, we pray. Maranatha, in Jesus' name, Amen. On today's Moody Church Hour we heard Pastor Philip Miller preaching on Awaiting the Dawn Words of Hope from Malachi chapter 4.

This concludes the series on tough love and tender mercies. One of the great privileges a believer has is to come to God in prayer anytime, anywhere, with anything. But even so, many of us don't know where to start. Next time we'll listen with the early disciples when they ask Jesus, Lord, teach us to pray. The Moody Church Hour is a listener-supported ministry. We count on the ongoing financial support of listeners like you. Together we share solid biblical teaching that transforms lives across America and around the world. You can call us at 1-800-215-5001.

That's 1-800-215-5001. Online you'll find us at moodychurchhour.com. That's moodychurchhour.com. Or write to us at Moody Church Media, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60614. This broadcast is a ministry of The Moody Church.