God has answered man’s question; for Christ is at once the way back to God, and the motive which draws us to walk in it.  He draws us back by the magnetism of His love and sacrifice.  We return to God when we cling to Jesus.  He is the highest, the tenderest utterance of the divine voice; and when we yield to His invitation to Himself we return to God.  He calls to each of us, ‘Come unto Me, and I will give you rest.’  What can we reply but, ‘I come; let me never wander from Thee’?

‘STOUT WORDS,’ AND THEIR CONFUTATION

’Your words have been stout against Me, saith the Lord:  yet ye say, What have we spoken so much against Thee? 14.  Ye have said, It is vain to serve God; and what profit is it that we have kept His ordinance, and that we have walked mournfully before the Lord of Hosts? 15.  And now we call the proud happy; yea, they that work wickedness are set up; yea, they that tempt God are even delivered. 16.  Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another:  and the Lord hearkened, and heard it; and a book of remembrance was written before Him for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon His name. 17.  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. 18.  Then shall ye return, and discern between the righteous and the wicked; between him that serveth God and him that serveth Him not.  IV. 1.  For, behold, the day cometh that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble:  and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of Hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. 2.  But unto you that fear My Name shall the sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall. 3.  And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet, in the day that I shall do this, saith the Lord of Hosts. 4.  Remember ye the law of Moses My servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments. 5.  Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord:  6.  And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.’—­MALACHI iii. 13-18; iv. 1-6.

This passage falls into three parts,—­the ‘stout words’ against God which the Prophet sets himself to confute (verses 13-15); the prophecy of the day which will show their falsehood (verse 16 to iv. 3); and the closing exhortation and prediction (iv. 4-6).