Discovering Jesus in Malachi

This episode of Aliens on Earth examines the book of Malachi, the "Last Voice Before the Silence" of 400 years, which was addressed to a post-exilic community characterized by cold, cynical, and half-hearted faith. Malachi's message begins by confronting the people and corrupt priests for offering "blind, lame, and sick" sacrifices—their "leftovers"—instead of their whole heart, contrasting this with the perfect, self-sacrificial offering of Jesus. The book then delivers key messianic prophecies, announcing a forerunner (Elijah, identified as John the Baptist) who would prepare the way by healing broken relational bonds, and describing the Lord's arrival as a "refiner's fire and like fullers' soap," a process of patient purification. The entire Old Testament culminates in Malachi's final promise that for those who fear God's name, "the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings," a reference to the Messiah, Jesus, whose resurrection finally broke the silence and delivered on the ancient promise of shelter and unrestrained joy.

Transcript

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On the eve of his crucifixion, Jesus prays to his father. I have given them your word, and the world hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them from the world, but you keep them from the evil one. Hey everyone, welcome back to Aliens on Earth Season 2, Episode 36. And if you've been riding with us along this journey on this discovering Jesus in the Old Testament series, I want you to take a second and feel the weight of where we're at right now. This is the season finale. So we have finished 36 episodes where we started from Genesis, we walked through the law with Moses, we sang with David in the Psalms, we stood on the mountaintop with Isaiah, we wept with Jeremiah, we saw the valley of dry bones with Ezekiel, we watched Daniel survive the lion's den, and we heard Hosea love an unfaithful wife. We even felt Hagai bark orders in the construction zones. And last week with Zechariah, he showed us the donkey, the pierced king, the fountain that opened for our sins and our uncleanliness. But now here we are, finally in the last book, the last prophet, and really the last voice in the Old Testament canon. So we finally find ourselves in the book of Malachi, and after this, it's just silence for 400 years. So no prophet, no word from heaven, no burning bush, no still small voice, no scroll dropped from the clouds, just literally quiet for centuries. Malachi knew this thing was coming. So he was writing the last chapter before this kind of intermission, and he was doing it to a people who had grown cold, kind of cynical and exhausted in their faith. Does that kind of sound familiar? You know, that pattern that we've kind of been walking through and seeing here and there, but we actually don't really know much about Malachi himself personally, but his name means my messenger. Some ancient scholars even debate whether that's actually a proper name or if that was just simply kind of like his title. So what we do know though is the context of it. He was writing to this post-exile community in Jerusalem, probably around 450 to 430 BC, and the temple had been rebuilt, the walls of Jerusalem had been restored under Nehemiah, and the excitement of returning back home started to kind of feel normal. So it's it's faded out. Now they've kind of gotten into their routine of life, they've rebuilt their just living, and the people settled back into this mediocrity. And Malachi walks into this atmosphere with a word from God. It's a direct, sharp, and personal word, but the structure of Malachi isn't like most of the other prophets. So in Malachi, God speaks, the people talk back, and God responds, but he responds back six times in four chapters. So scholars would call this some kind of almost like a dispute style of writing. And think about like somebody or like a family sitting around a dinner table, and the conversation between parents andor like a father and his grown children who just stopped caring. You know, that sort of aloof cynicism and the accusation that God throws against his people here in Malachi, they're not really dramatic. So it's not the idol worship, not the child sacrifice or the bail altars, the sins of of of what we've seen in the past. The sins of Malachi's generation were quieter, they were more dangerous. These half-hearted worship or these corrupt priests, you know, cheating on tithes, this casual divorce, and this kind of just skepticism that spread through like a whisper. And it was almost like the theme of the day was a question: Does it even matter how I live my life? Does God even notice? So if Zechariah was the architect that had the blueprint, Malachi is kind of like the SOS, like this loud, blaring emergency broadcast. He's literally the last phone call from the father to a son who has stopped returning his text or calls. He's the urgent without being angry. He's like firm, he's he's he's tender with without being soft. And buried inside these four chapters are three huge messianic prophecies. If you take the time to let it sink in, it's kind of heartbreaking. So I want you to settle in, pour something warm, get your coffee, and listen to this last voice before this long silence. And it's going to point us straight to the one who finally breaks this silence. Hey guys, real quick, before we jump in, if you've been blessed by this podcast or find it impactful, I'd like you to hit the follow button. Be a partaker of spreading God's truth by sharing this with your friends, coworkers, family, or even strangers. Let's spread the truth of Christ together. Now, back to this episode. So we open Malachi chapter one, and God opens with three of the most important words, or very crucial words. And he opens opens up with, I have loved you, says the Lord, but you say, How have you loved us? And this is Malachi 1, verse 2. So let's not speed past this for a second. God opens his last prophetic word before centuries of silence with a declaration of love. And honestly, immediately the people push back. So God says, I have loved you. And then the people push back saying, How? Show me the evidence. What do you mean? Where have you loved me? How? What have you done? Show me that you've loved us. So they've been through the exile, they've rebuilt the temple, and life is still hard. And in the absence of these dramatic miracles and all these things and signs and wonders, they've concluded that maybe God's love isn't quite as he claimed it to be. So God's response is to point them to history, to the choice of Jacob over Esau, to the preservation of their nation, to the very fact that they're standing in Jerusalem at all. Like when empires that crushed them no longer even exist, but they can't see it. The spiritual sort of cataracts have set in, and God returns to the priests. Chapter 1, verses 6 through 14. And what he says is it's kind of devastating. Listen to this. He says, A son honors his father and a servant his master. If I am a father, then where is my honor? And if I'm a master, where is my fear? says the Lord of hosts. To you, priests, who despise my name. But you say, How have we despised your name? By offering polluted food on my altar. And this is found in Malachi 1 from 6 through 7. So what were the priests doing? They were offering the blind, the lame, and the sick as sacrifices. So pretty much the rejects or the animals that nobody wanted. They were cleaning out the barn. They were finding the ones too weak to sell or to eat. And they're putting that on God's altar. And in their minds, God should be grateful for this. Like, at least I'm giving anything at all. You know, think about that for a second. So God responds and he says something brutally sarcastic in this verse. In verse 8, he says, try presenting that to your governor and see if he's pleased with you. Would he receive you? Kind of cuts to the point, right? He cuts to the heart. So we would never ever give a gift to an important person that we had already determined wasn't good enough for anyone else. That's exactly what the priests are doing with God. And if we think about this, this passage sets up one of the most profound themes in the entire New Testament. The difference between performance and presence. The priests in Malachi's days had religion without relationship. They had this ritual, but not the reality. They were going through the motions, checking the boxes, altar sacrifice, priest ceremony, but their hearts were a thousand miles away. They were giving God their leftovers. And then Jesus comes along. And in the Sermon on the Mount, he says, You have heard it said, but I say to you. He takes those external requirements of the law and he plunges them down into the interior of the human soul. You haven't just sinned if you commit adultery. You've sinned if you've desired it. You haven't just murdered if you killed someone. You've murdered if you nursed that hatred or that thought in your mind. Jesus isn't interested with some lame sacrifice on the altar. He wants the entire heart. He wants all of you. Then he does something the priests in Malachi's day could have never imagined. He offers himself as the perfect sacrifice. Not the blind, not the lame, not the sick, but the blemish-free sacrifice. No defects whatsoever. Hebrews chapter 9, verse 14 says, He offered himself without blemish to God, the Lamb of God, the one sacrifice that was finally worthy, given freely, completely, and holding nothing back. So the contrast in Malachi draws this contrast, Jesus resolves. The priests gave God their worst, but Jesus gives God and us his everything. So what does this mean for us? And let's be honest for a second. Let me ask you, and just kind of sit with this for a minute before you answer or even think about it. Just kind of let it sink in. What are we bringing to God right now? Not what are we saying we're bringing, but what are we actually bringing to God? Because the priests in Malachi, they weren't announcing to the congregation that they were cutting corners. Nobody stood up on the altar and said, Oh yeah, this sheep, by the way, he's sick, but you know, God, here you go. No, they dressed the ritual up, they went through every motion from the outside, you know, just from spectators looking, it looked fine. The temple was functioning, the calendar was followed, and God looked at all of this and he said, This is offensive to me. Some of us have church attendance that looks like faithfulness, but it's actually avoidance. And let that sink in for a little bit. We show up, check the box, and we go home. And we haven't engaged with God for a single honest moment. Some of us have this prayer life that's really just a list of requests. We're firing off like to some ATM in the sky, right? Some of us serve in ministry, we sing on the worship team, we teach Sunday school class, and our hearts are somewhere else entirely. The lame sacrifice is anything we give God that costs us nothing. And that's the test Malachi is holding up. Does your worship actually cost you anything? If giving to God is always convenient, always comfortable, always left over as you've taken care of everything else, then it's a lame sacrifice. It's the sick goat. The action that we take this week is do one thing in our faith that's genuinely inconvenient. Pray for 30 minutes instead of three. Give something that you were planning to keep for yourself. Serve somewhere that that doesn't put your name on the title of the program, where you're not seen, where you're not broadcasted. Bring God something that costs you. Because the God who gave his son on a Roman cross deserves better than leftovers from your week. As we keep going, now we come to Malachi chapter 3 from verse 1. And this is where the book starts to really take off. God speaks through Malachi and says, Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. And the messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. And this is Malachi 3, verse 1. So there are actually two messengers in this verse. The first is the forerunner, the one who's set to prepare the way. And the second is the Lord Himself, who comes suddenly to his temple. So the forerunner precedes the Lord. God promises to send both. And then at the very end of the book, the last two verses of the entire Old Testament, God gives us the forerunner's identity. Listen to this. He says, 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, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction. And this is in Malachi 4 from verse 5 to 6. So the last word of the Old Testament before four centuries of silence is Elijah is coming. A prophet like Elijah will appear before the day of the Lord, and then nothing. For 400 years, heaven goes quiet. And then in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, a man appears in the wilderness of Judea. He was wearing camel's hair, eating locusts and wild honey, preaching with fire in his lungs. His name, as you could have guessed, is John the Baptist. And an angel had announced his birth to his father Zechariah. And he uses these words. He says, He will go before him in the spirit and the power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared. And you find that in Luke 1, verse 17. Isn't that amazing how we could just see the connection? So God leaves off in Malachi and then he picks right back up with John the Baptist. So Malachi's last prophecy walked directly out of the wilderness wearing that camels, that camel hair coat. The man who closed the Old Testament was echoed by the man who opened the new. And the religious leaders asked John directly. So they're not like unaware. They said, Are you Elijah? Because some of these, some of these guys that were following, they read, you know, the scripture, the Old Testament, they read the things, they know, they hear the stories. So it sounded there was like a familiar ring. There, they looked and they go, Wait a minute, this sounds kind of familiar. Are you Elijah? And he said, No, because he wasn't the literal reincarnation of Elijah. But Jesus later would make it clear for these people. He says, This is he of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you. Truly I say to you, Among those who are born of women, there has risen no one greater than John the Baptist. And this is in Matthew chapter 11, from 10 to 11. So Jesus was quoting Malachi chapter 3, verse 1 about his own forerunner. So it's it's insane how much God just gives us here in this confirmation of his prophecy. And honestly, like what hits me the most about this prophecy is the way it's so intimate. God doesn't just announce that this Messiah is coming and he announces it that he's sending someone to prepare our hearts first. So it's a touching and deep thing. He says the Father in his mercy doesn't show up without a warning. He sends a preparer, he sends someone to ready the people, he gives the people time and the preparation that Elijah or or John in this case was sent to do, it wasn't primarily like some geographic thing. It was a relational turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, the healing of broken family bonds, this restoration of severed relationships. Before the king arrives, the land needs to be cleared of all this relational rubble. Because here's what God understood about the human heart. We cannot receive what we haven't been prepared to receive. That I'm gonna say that again. We cannot receive what we haven't been prepared to receive. So the people who were ready for Jesus when he came were the ones who had sat under John's preaching, who had gone into the Jordan River, who had confessed their sins and they faced themselves honestly. The people who missed Jesus entirely were the ones who thought they were already prepared. They're the ones, the Pharisees, the chief priests, the experts of the law, the people who never stood in the river because they honestly didn't think they needed it. So think about that for a second. What does this mean for us? Let's let's ask ourselves this question. Have we let God prepare us for what he is about to do? Because I think a lot of times we pray for God to show up, you know, for the breakthrough, for the healing, for the open door, for the restoration. But we haven't let the John the Baptist into our life first. We haven't let the preparer do his work. We want to see the presence of God without the preparation that makes us able to actually bear the presence of God. And the work of John and what he did honestly was uncomfortable. He called people to confess, he named their sins, he told the Pharisees to bear fruit in keeping with repentance. Don't just say you've changed. Show it. He told the soldiers to stop extorting, he told the tax collectors to stop overcharging. He even told Herod to stop sleeping with his brother's wife. Preparation isn't soft. Preparation, it's surgical. It removes, it cuts, it hurts sometimes. But here's the real question. What is the Holy Spirit trying to prepare in you right now? What have you been resisting? Is there a relationship that needs to be mended? Are there hearts that need to be turned before God can do what you're asking him to do? Is there a confession that's been sitting in the back of your throat for months, maybe years, that just needs to come out before you can even move forward? The voice that's crying in your wilderness isn't telling you bad news. It's telling you the king is coming and the preparation is the mercy. So let John do his work, let the Holy Spirit do his work. So right after the announcement that the Lord will come suddenly to his temple, Malachi asks the question that honestly would stop us dead in our tracks. He says, But who can endure the day of his coming? And who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and like a fuller's soap. So this is Malachi chapter 3, verse 2. This isn't like some rhetorical question that he's asking with some, you know, basic Sunday school or easy answer. He's literally, this is a challenge. He's saying, who can actually stand when he comes back, when he appears, who is able to withstand the presence of God? Malachi is being honest about something that most of us would rather not even think about. The coming of the holy God is not really automatically a comfortable thing for us, you know? The presence of his perfect holiness next to this imperfect humanity. It's not like a warm hug, you know? It's a fire, it's soap, it cleanses, it's soap. Like, you know, back in the days, that old scrubbing process where clothes were beaten and scrubbed until all the dirt and impurities can't come out of it. This arrival of God is a refining moment. But here's what makes this mercy and not judgment. It's it's a verb. Malachi says he will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver. He sits. This is patient. It's intentional work. A refiner doesn't toss the silver in some bucket, in some fire, and just walk away. He sits beside the furnace, he watches it, he knows when to turn up the heat, when to ease the heat down. He knows when the silver is ready, when he can see his own reflection in the surface. The refiner's goal it isn't to destroy the silver, it isn't to destroy us. It's for clarity. And the fuller soap, it's the same picture. Just from a different perspective. That soap was an extremely strong alkaline substance that was used to clean wool and clothes before it could be used at all. This process it was kind of violent. Like they would beat the clothes, they would stomp on it, they would scrub it, and they would use the soap until literally everything that was contaminated in the clothes was removed. And the end product was this like pure white usable fabric. So the process was not gentle. That's the point. The result though, however, it was spotless. This passage is actually the theological like point. This is the heartbeat of what Jesus does to the human soul. When Jesus comes into a life, like really comes in, not just like as a background figure in some decorated Christmas scene or or you know some fairy tale story, but as a living Lord, as the the king of our hearts. He doesn't leave us the way he found us. Think of just for example, think of Peter. Jesus found him fishing, right? And for three years, Peter walked on water, he denied Christ three times in his worst moment, he wept bitterly, he got restored over breakfast by the fire with Jesus, and he preached to 3,000 people in one afternoon and was eventually crucified upside down because he didn't consider himself worthy to die the same way his Lord did. Think about that. That was a refined man, that was a changed man, that was a man that's life went through a disruption. He went through the fire. The Peter at Pentecost is unrecognizable from the Peter who was mending nets on the shore, the fisherman Peter. And it isn't because he changed himself, but because he sat with the refiner for three years and let the heat do its work. Think about that. Notice that the refiner's fire, it produces. Malachi chapter 3, verse 3 says that after the refining, the sons of Levi will bring offerings to God in righteousness. The fire produces worship. The soap produces that purity. The painful process has a beautiful destination. So John the Apostle in Revelation 1 sees the risen Jesus and he says, and his eyes are like flames of fire in Revelation chapter 1, verse 14. The same fire that Malachi described, not this consuming, but searching, seeing through the truth of things. Nothing false survives those eyes. But for those who've been refined, there's no fear in that gaze. It's only recognition. So think about that. What does that mean for us? I wanna I wanna speak to someone who's in that fire right now. You didn't expect this season. You didn't ask for this. The loss, the betrayal, the diagnosis, the failure, the failed business, the broken marriage, the child who walked away from their faith. This wasn't on your calendar. And you've been asking God to take it away. And he isn't or hasn't taken it away. Whatever it is you're going through, whatever it seems, and you're starting to wonder if he's even listening, if he even cares. But let me let me remind you of Malachi 3:3. He sits, the refiner sits beside the furnace. He hasn't walked away from you in the fire. He's not distracted. He's watching you with the attention of a craftsman who knows exactly what he's making, who knows the precise temperature required to remove what would have destroyed you, and who will not leave his seat until he can see his reflection on your surface. So the fire is not punishment. The fire is preparation. And the silver that comes out of the fire, that's not the same silver that went in. It's better, it's purer, it's beautiful, it's more useful to the refiner than it was before. So the real step that we need to take in our lives, in our journals, as we write or as we think through is think about or write down the hardest thing that we're going through right now. Just think about that. And then with honesty, with just be brutally honest. Write down what you think God might be refining through you in that moment or through this experience. What draws or what junk is he trying to remove? What impurity, what dependency, what false idol might this fire be targeting? And you don't have to be happy about the fire. The silver isn't happy when it's it's it's in that heat, but you could trust that the refiner sits and watches, he knows when it's done. So as we move on, we've come through all of the accusations, we've come through the forerunner, through the refining fire. And now Malachi, in one of kind of the more clearer verses in the Old Testament, he gives us the sunrise. He says it like this. Listen to this. He says, 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. And this is in Malachi chapter 4, verse 2. Son of righteousness, healing in his wings. This is the Messiah. He's talking about Jesus, and the image is honestly beautiful. It's breathtaking. Think about that. In the ancient East, wings of the sun was a well-known symbol. So most of the time you could find it seen on Egyptian and Persian royal imagery. And it represented power, it represented protection and divine favor. So Malachi takes that image and he fills it with something that the pagan world honestly never imagined: healing, not conquest or like conquering, taking over, not dominance, but healing. So the word translated wings here is kanaf in Hebrew. And it's the same word that's used in Ruth chapter 2, verse 12, when Boaz blesses Ruth. He says, May the Lord repay you for what you have done and a full reward be given to you by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come and taken refuge. It's the wing of a mother bird spread over her cheeks. It's a shelter, it's a warmth, it's a safety for those who fear the name of the Lord, for those who have been through the refiner's fire, for those who have been brought their whole hearts instead of just some lame sacrifice, for those who let the voice in the wilderness prepare them, the sun rises. And when it rises, they go out leaping like calves, calves from the stall. In the ancient world, young cattle were often kept in stalls during the winter. So they were confined and restrained. They were really just claustrophobic for that period of time. And so when spring came, you could imagine the relief. The stalls were open. So the calves would be leaping for joy. They would be kicking and running, just pure unrestrained joy. And Malachi says this is what the coming of the Son of Righteousness will look like for those who've been waiting in the darkness. Not dignified, not composed, not like, oh yay, you know, like the Son of Righteousness is here. No, not, but they'll be leaping with joy. And the son of righteousness is Jesus Himself. Some of the early church fathers identified Malachi 4-2 as the clearest pre-incarnate portrait of the Messiah. And in the Hebrew scriptures, and when you see Jesus through this lens, everything he does glows with this kind of imagery of this verse. The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised. He is healing in his wings. In Luke chapter 8, 43, verse 44, a woman who had been bleeding for 12 years, ceremonially unclean, untouchable, invisible by law, reaches out and touches the fringe of the canaf, the hem of his garment. And she is healed. She touched the wings of the Son of Righteousness. And the 12 years of suffering ended just in that moment. And then there's that transfiguration. Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up on a high mountain. And in Matthew chapter 17, verse 2, it says, His face shone like the sun. The sun of righteousness was shining in full, unveiled glory, and they fell on their faces. The same sun that Malachi promised rose for a moment on that mountaintop. And he showed those three fishermen what the whole cosmos was moving towards. Think about that for a second. And on resurrection morning at dawn, at the rising of the sun, the women came to the tomb and the stone was rolled away. He was gone. The sun of righteousness had risen, and Mary Magdalene went leaping, running to tell the disciples. Think about that. The calves from the stall, the last prophet promised a sunrise. The first Sunday morning delivered that sunrise. So think through this. What does this mean for us? And I want to close this section off by just let's speaking to the person who might be going through that long night. Maybe it's you. Maybe you've been in a winter season. You've been, it's been so long that you've forgotten what that warmth feels like. The depression's been with you for years, or that loneliness is so familiar, you've stopped calling it loneliness. The faith that used to come so easily for you, now it starts to feel like you're starting a car in the cold. You turn the key and nothing happens. You've prayed, you've read, you've tried, and the sun hasn't risen yet. But Malachi was writing to people who knew what the long night felt like. The exile happened, the temple had been destroyed. They'd been slaves in a foreign country. They'd rebuilt, and life was still hard. And God's word to them, it wasn't you're not trying hard enough. God's word was the sun is coming. Healing is in his wings. When he arrives, you won't walk out of the winter, you will leap with joy. And I'll tell you this: I don't know your timeline. I don't know when your sunrise is. But I do know this much. The sun of righteousness has already risen from the dead. That's the guarantee. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is God's sunrise over human history. If he can roll away that stone, he can roll away whatever is blocking your light. The resurrection, it isn't a past event, it's a present promise. Healing is in his wings. He is alive right now. So while you wait, do this. Turn your face towards him, even in the dark, even when you can't feel the warmth, turn towards him because the sunrise is always coming for those who are looking for it. So Malachi ends with these three commands, almost like some final set of instructions before he closes the doors. He says, 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. So remember the law. Wait for Elijah and stand ready for the day of the Lord. And then silence, no vision, no word, no burning bush. 400 years. A generation is born that never heard a prophet. Then their children, their grandchildren, and their great-grandchildren. The scroll of Malachi sits on the shelf, and the promise of Elijah and the son of righteousness just gathers dust. And most of the people, they just stop looking. Think about that. 400 years. So the promise comes, people may be excited for a while, but then you see generation after generation after generation, and it doesn't happen. But guess what? The remnant kept reading. A remnant kept watching the horizon. Simeon was in the temple, waiting for the consolation of Israel. Luke chapter 2, verse 25. Anna the prophetess never left the temple, worshipping with fasting and prayer night and day. Luke chapter 2, verse 37. The shepherds in the field were awake at midnight. The wise men of the east had been watching the stars. These were the ones who were ready in the silence. And when the silence finally broke, and when it did, it didn't break with a thunderclap or an earthquake. It broke with a baby's cry in a stable, in a manger in Bethlehem. While Caesar had no idea that the axis of human history just shifted underneath his throne, the son of righteousness had risen with healing in his wings. So to you, aliens on earth family, I just want to step back for a second and honor what we've done together here in this season. We've walked from Genesis to Malachi. We've found Jesus in the Passover lamb, in the bronze serpent, in the rock, in the wilderness, in the suffering servant of Isaiah, in the valley of dry bones, in the signet ring restored to Zerubbabel, in the donkey king, in the pierced one, and the fountain of Zechariah. But now we're here at the end. We're here with Malachi. And the final revelation is this the entire Old Testament, it's it's like a it's a pregnancy from Genesis to Malachi, from the first promise in the garden to the seed of the woman will crush the serpent's head to the last promise in the minor prophets. The whole entire Old Testament canon is a body in labor, waiting for the birth of the one who would change everything. The prophets they didn't fully understand what they were writing. But Peter tells us that the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. This is 1 Peter 1:10 through 11. They were writing better than they knew. The spirit was moving through their pens and pointing across centuries to a face that none of them had seen. But we have seen it on this side of Calvary, on the side of the empty tomb, we have the full picture, and it's more beautiful than Malachi could have ever imagined. The healing is in his wings, and we have touched them, the hem of his garment. With that, season season three of Aliens on Earth, we're moving into the words of Jesus Himself. 41 parables, 41 stories. He told them in the fields, in the temples, and the synagogues, and the upper rooms, stories about lost coins, about prodigal sons, workers in a vineyard, a father who runs towards his child. Every parable that Jesus told, it wasn't a moral lesson, but it was a window into the kingdom of God. And we're gonna spend an entire season looking through every single one of them. In I want you to stay with us in July. Tell a friend, leave some some comments, some reviews, and remember whether you're in a long winter or just feeling the first warmth of a sunrise, the sun of righteousness has risen. Just as Malachi said he would. And God always keeps his word. And with that, this is Aliens on Earth, and I'm your host, Nate Gazau. See you in season three. Peace.