Ron Dunn Podcast - Seven Sins Of Malachi Part 2

Episode Date: May 25, 2022

Ron Dunn contines his series from Malachi

I don't know whether I ought to be drinking water and wearing all this electricity at the same time. That's the reason I'm such a live wire. Everything I've got on is charged. It'll come to the rest of you later on. Not to worry. All right. I just know that the Apostle Paul didn't have to do all this before. All right, would you open your Bibles again this morning

to the book of Malachi? Malachi, or as Dr. Stedman said, the Italian prophet Malachi. The thing is, when he said the Italian prophet, I really perked up. I thought that was so, and I had no idea about it. Malachi chapter 1, we'll read the first five verses. Malachi chapter 1, verses 1 through 5. The burden of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi. I have loved you, saith the Lord, Yet ye say, wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacob's brother, saith the Lord? Yet I loved Jacob, and I hated Esau,

and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness. Whereas, Edom saith, we are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, They shall build, but I will throw down. And they shall call them the border of wickedness, and the people against whom the Lord hath indignation forever. And your eyes shall see, and ye shall say, The Lord will be magnified from the border

of Israel. I have loved you, saith the Lord, yet ye say, wherein hast thou loved us? During this year, the denomination that I'm a part of, the Southern Baptist Convention, has had a major evangelistic program called Good News America. And that is the slogan, Good News America, God loves you. And everywhere I've gone, conferences and conventions and such, they've had that big banner displayed,

Good News America, God loves you. I have a feeling if Malachi had said that to the citizens of Jerusalem around 450 BC, they would have said, so what? Prove it. Wherein has God loved us? I have an idea that sometimes a lost world doesn't care whether God loves us or not. That's not particularly good news to them. I think, first of all, they need to know that God hates them in the sense of their sinfulness. If I realize that the God of justice and righteousness and wrath and judgment is angry with me because of my sin, and then somebody tells me that he loves me, that's good news. When you watch a loved one as he goes behind those swinging doors in the

surgery theater, and you know that the news might be bad, you know that it might be death, and the doctor comes out, and taking off the mask, he smiles and says, it's going to be all right, that's good news. Because there exists a possibility of bad news. It's not good news until you realize that God is angry with your sins. That's understandable for non-Christians. But it's difficult to believe that God's people would say just a thing. I don't envy Malachi's congregation. That was a tough crowd.

Every time he said something, they questioned it. Every time he made a proclamation about the Lord, they stood up and interrupted him and said, Prove it. I hate to have to preach to that kind of congregation. But that's the kind of people they were. And Malachi's method is very easy to see. First of all, the Lord, and by the way,

no other book in all the Bible has as much direct dialogue between God and the people as does Malachi. And what this indicates is that this is a very intense and a very intimate confrontation that God is making with his people. God makes the statement, I have loved you, and then the people question it, they deny it, and then God proves it. First of all comes the charge, then the denial,

and then the evidence is put forth. Malachi says that the Lord says, I have loved you, saith the Lord. And they say, wherein hast thou loved us? Hard to believe that after thousands and thousands of years of seeing God manifest his love in so many ways, delivering them, choosing them, providing for them, they come at this late stage to say, does God really love us? If they cannot understand that, how can they understand anything? And they say, wherein hast thou loved us? And so the Lord

gives them the evidence, and this is what he says. Was not Esau Jacob's brother, saith the Lord, yet I loved Jacob and I hated Esau. Now those are familiar words to us. They appear a number of times in the scripture. I have loved Jacob and I have hated Esau. What does he mean by this? How is this the answer? They say, prove to us that you love us. How have you loved us?

His answer is, was not Esau Jacob's brother? But yet I love Jacob and hated Esau. And so I want us just to look at this word love today. This Hebrew word for love is very rich. The trouble with English sometimes is that you just have one word for love, and we use it in so many ways, from the love of a soup to a love of a father to a love of a poodle to a love of an automobile. And you use the word love so frequently that it loses any real meaning. But the Hebrews and the Greeks had different words to express different kind of love. For instance, the love of which Hosea speaks is not the same kind of which God speaks here. Those are two different words. And so I want us just to walk around this word this morning and to see its four sides.

This word has four sides. This love has four flavors. This love has four sides to it. The first is this, God says, I prove to you that I love you in that I changed, I rejected Esau, and I loved Jacob. The first thing, this love, God says, is an elective love, an election love. It is a love that means I have chosen. You cannot read this word and understand it without seeing that there is an element in it, a very strong element in it, of election and predestination.

And what this word means is, I have loved you and I hated Esau. When God says, I love Jacob, that means I chose Jacob. And when it says that I have hated Esau, it means I have rejected Esau. It doesn't mean hate in the sense that we think of hate. It simply means that I chose you and I didn't choose Esau. That's what he means.

And these are the sons of Jacob. Israel, the sons of Jacob. They say, prove to us that you love us. He said, well, simply because I chose you. I could have chosen Esau. As a matter of fact, Esau probably would have been a better choice. Esau was a lot nicer guy than Jacob. The word means trickster or cheat. It literally means to catch by the heel and indicate somebody who slips up behind you and grabs you from behind unexpectedly. It's a crafty fellow, a fellow that is full of deceit and manipulation,

a trickster, a cheat, a deceiver. That's the way Jacob was, and he lived up to his name. But Esau had the advantage on him being the elder brother, even though he did give up his birthright for a bowl of chili. But still he was the elder brother, and there is nothing in the New Testament that indicates Jacob was any more lovable than Esau. But notice how God orders the words. It's a significant way he states it.

He doesn't say, first of all, I have chosen Jacob. He says, was not Esau Jacob's brother? In other words, he's saying, Jacob didn't have an advantage over Esau. They were brothers. They had equality. They had equal opportunity. They had equality.

As a matter of fact, Esau had a little age on him because he was the elder brother. And so God says, I prove to you that I love you because I have chosen you. Now, why did God choose Jacob? Try to think about that for a moment. Why did God choose Jacob? There is no reason. There is no reason. There is no explanation.

God chose Jacob simply because he wanted to. God chose Jacob simply because it pleased him. Over in Deuteronomy, there is a good commentary on this. In Deuteronomy chapter 7, verses 6 and 7 and so forth, he says, For thou art a holy people unto the Lord thy God.

The Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself above all people that are upon the face of the earth. The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you because you were more in number than any people for you were the fewest of all people, but because the Lord

loved you. He left you out of the mighty hand, so forth and so forth. God said, I didn't choose you because you were bigger than anybody else. I didn't choose you because you were better than anybody else. I didn't choose you because you were bigger than anybody else. I chose you simply because I loved you. That's the only reason. And you turn over to Ephesians where Paul talks a great deal about that election and predestination. And once in a while someone will come up to me and they'll say, are you a Calvinist? And earlier this year I was preaching in Louisiana

and a young man came up to me afterwards and he said, somebody told me you were a Calvinist. Is that so? And I talked to him a little bit. What I was trying to do was find out what he wanted me to be, you see. And I would be whatever he wanted me to be because after I preach I'm in no mood to argue with anybody. You know, I just preach it. I don't explain it. And so I tried to, you know, sort of feel him out and see what he wanted me to be. You know, I switch it or I can go either way. But I couldn't get anything out of him.

And so I said, well, I don't like to be the label. And I'm not, I wouldn't call myself a Calvinist. I'm not a five-point tulip Calvinist. I said, I do believe in the sovereignty of God. He said, well, you don't believe in predestination. I said, well, yes, I have no choice. The Bible teaches it. I have no choice.

I have to believe in it. The Bible teaches it. I don't understand it, but I don't understand all about electricity, and I don't sit around the dark. Just because I can't understand something doesn't mean I can't know it and can't believe it. And we've all tried to explain how this works. I don't know that there's any explanation that you and I would understand.

I just know it's so. And Paul says in Ephesians that he shows us according to what? His good pleasure. That's the only reason. You cannot dissect, you cannot perform an autopsy on anybody who's been chosen,

anyone who's been saved, and find the slightest thread of evidence why God would have chosen them. And some people say, well, whom God did foreknow, he also did predestinate. And they say, well, God looked down in the future.

He knew who would believe and who wouldestinate. And they say, well, God looked down in the future. He knew who would believe and who would not believe. And so he chose those that he knew would believe. All ain't wrong with that. It's not right. The word foreknow doesn't mean to know facts about people. It means to know them, period. As Joseph knew not his wife in the life of the firstborn. It means to know experientially.

That word doesn't mean that God looked down into the future and knew who would believe and who would not. And so since he foreknew who would believe, he chose those that believed. That's not what it means at all. It means that God foreknew some of us. He entered into a relationship with some of us. And those that he entered into that relationship, he called. You see, if you said, well, God knew he was going to believe, and so he chose those who would believe and those who wouldn't, then you've got a salvation not by grace but by

works. It would mean that belief is a work. It would mean then that God saw something in me he didn't see in another person, and he saw in me was belief and so he made that choice on the basis of the fact I was going to believe and that destroys grace. The only basis for which God

chose any of us is the fact that it pleased him. It delighted him. He wanted to. He wanted to choose Jacob. He didn't want to choose Esau. Why?

No reason. No reason. I just take pleasure in Jacob. Oh, I'm telling you, that relieves a burden from me. If God chose me before the foundation of the earth, if he set his love upon me and drew a circle around me before even I had ever lived,

and God knowing all of the things that I would do, all of the sin that I would accumulate in my life, all the blackness and the bitterness and the dirtiness of my life, and even knowing all of that, he still, in love, chose me. There's no reason why I should believe that now, after having trusted him, he should reject me. It gives me that feeling of security in his sovereignty. God says, I prove to you that I love you simply because I chose you. And there was nothing in you then that made

me choose you. There's not a thing in you now that makes me choose you or reject you. I, the Lord, change not. I love you. And that's the only reason I chose you. So it's an elective word. It's also a covenant word. You really can't discuss the love of God before Israel and Jacob without discussing the covenant. It is strictly a covenant love. God enters into a covenant with Jacob. And God pledges himself to Jacob. And Jacob pledges himself to Jacob.

And Jacob pledges himself to God. God swears an oath, as Deuteronomy says, and he errs into a covenant. And it means that God will use this people and will bless this people and will provide for this people and will give these people a land and give these people a name.

God will be faithful to his covenant. He is a covenant-keeping God, and it is a covenant love. God and I have entered into a covenant, and God will keep his side, and I'll keep my side, and whether I keep my side or not, God will keep his side. But the covenant means I am bound to be faithful to him regardless of what God does. The reason that the children of Jacob at this time, the Israelites, were sort of backsliding, growing cold in their heart and careless in their worship, was they thought God had let them down.

We talked about that last night. They thought that when they came back and rebuilt the temple, so they misunderstood all those prophecies. In the prophets, they make no distinction between the first coming and the second coming of the Lord. They saw it all as one great coming.

And that's the way the Jews saw it. And so they thought that when they came back and rebuilt the temple, God was going to come in glory and usher in the golden age, but he didn't do it. And as we said last night, they were facing poverty and adversity.

And so, you see, they felt like, well, God, he's forgotten about us. God forgot about that contract. God forgot about that covenant. And I'll tell you something, if he doesn't care, then I don't care. If he's not going to keep his, oh, I'm not going to keep mine.

And so Rachel tells us in the second chapter they had gone off and married the daughters of farmers, of pagans, and that they were even divorcing their own wives to marry these pagan daughters.

They were saying, well, since God hasn't kept his bargain, I don't have to keep mine. I want to tell you something. It's a covenant love. And you keep your faith whether God keeps his or not. You see, unless you and I strike that pose,

there are going to be times when it looks like God is not keeping his bargain. Now, folks, there's no other way around it. There are times in our life, those waiting periods in our life, when God seems to have abandoned us and everything we try to do seems not to work and we pray and pray and we get a busy signal from heaven

and there are times when it looks as though God doesn't care anymore and our response so often is, well, if God's not going to answer my prayer, I'm not even going to pray. If God's not going to deliver me, I'm not going to worry about being delivered. If he doesn't care, I don't care.

But you see, the problem is that you have a covenant with God and you must keep your side whether God keeps his or not. I think the best way to illustrate this is in the marriage relationship. This is the way God illustrates it. My wife and I have been married

coming on 30 years. We were juniors when we married, 10, 11, 12, something like that. And my mother, I'm so sloppy. Around the house, my mother said God was going to punish me by giving me a wife that was as sloppy as I am. And God did punish me, but in a better way. He even had a greater punishment. He gave me a wife who is as neat as a pen. She makes up the bed while I'm still in it. I mean, you know, she can't go to sleep at night if there's a dirty fork somewhere in the house.

That's the way she is. My daughter-in-law said the other day that when she dies, we're going to put this epitaph on her tombstone, from end dust to end dust. We've been married coming up 30 years. Now, if my wife suddenly became unfaithful to me, or I became unfaithful to me, or I became unfaithful to her,

if I became unfaithful to her, she would not have any right to say, well, since he's not going to be faithful to me, I'm not going to be faithful to him. If my wife is unfaithful to me, that doesn't give me permission to be unfaithful to her, regardless of what my wife does. Whether she's faithful or not, I'm to remain faithful.

And whether it looks as though God is keeping His bargain or not, whether it looks as though God is hearing us or not, that doesn't make any difference. I am bound to keep my part of the covenant, to be faithful to Him, to love Him when He doesn't seem to love me, to be faithful to Him when He doesn't seem to be faithful to me, to serve Him when it seems as though it's for vain that we serve him.

And that's what they say in Malachi. They say, oh, what a weariness it is. All of this worship and ceremony is such a weariness and such a waste of time. It is a covenant love. I think that one of the great problems that you and I have is the fact that we live in a cause and effect world. And we believe that God is bound by the same law of cause and effect. You see, we believe if we cause something, there will be a recognizable,

predictable effect. And if we see an effect, we know that there has to be some cause from it. And so we're all the time causing. We pray, we plan, we schedule, we program. We do the causing. Now, God must do the affecting. God must respond to us in a predictable way. Now, so if I do this, if I'm good and I'm faithful and I pay my tithes and I pray, then

God is going to shower down upon me all sorts of blessings. I mean, there's no other way. Cause and effect. Cause and effect. The only problem is God doesn't operate that way. God doesn't need a cause to effect and he may have a cause that doesn't even have an effect. God doesn't live in that kind of world.

And so if I look at an effect and I see that there's trouble in my life or tragedy in my life, I know what the cause is. It's God. Why has God allowed this to happen to me? Why didn't God prevent this? Why doesn't God do this? Why does God allow this?

I see the effect. God must be the cause. But God doesn't have to have a cause. God doesn't have to have an effect. And so just because you and I do one, two, three, that doesn't mean God is going to respond by four, five, and six. You cannot predict God. But that doesn't matter.

That's why we have a covenant. We are to be faithful to him regardless. Number three, this is also a domestic love. There is a very definite domestic character to this kind of love, the way it's used over and over in the Old Testament. It is used very often for domestic relationships, husband and wife and parent and children. And this is the way Malachi uses it.

It is a domestic love. And that follows close on the idea of being a covenant love. Now notice over in the second chapter, and we'll begin reading in verse 11. Judah hath dealt treacherously, and an abomination is committed in Israel and in Jerusalem. For Judah hath profaned the holiness of the Lord, which he loved, and hath married the daughter of a strange God.

The Lord will cut off the man that does this, the master and the spyler, out of the temples of Jacob, and him that offers an offering unto the Lord of hosts. And this have ye done again, covering the eyes of the Lord with tears, with weeping, and with crying out insomuch that he regardeth not the offering any more, or receives it with goodwill at your hand. Yet ye say, Wherefore, because the Lord hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously, yet she is thy companion, the wife of thy covenant.

And did not he make one, yet had he the residue of the Spirit, and were for one, that he might seek a godly seed. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth. It is a domestic love. And I recall Paul in Ephesians 5 talking about husband and wife. For this call shall a man leave his mother and father, and be joined unto his wife, and they too shall be one. And he said, this is a mystery that I speak concerning Christ and the church.

God hates divorce. God hates it. He always has. He always will. Even if there is cause, justifiable cause for divorce, God hates divorce. God is never pleased with divorce. That doesn't mean God hates the divorced person.

That doesn't mean that God is angry with us because perhaps on very biblical, justifiable grounds, if you believe there are, that you've done this, that doesn't mean that God hates you. What it means is God hates the whole idea of divorce. He hates divorce.

Why? Because it violates one of the basic laws of God, one of the basic laws of nature. I don't... Liberated theologians like Harvey Cox can come along and say,

well, the family is a recent development in society, and right now it may be the best way to operate, husband and wife. But he said that doesn't necessarily mean that it's always the right way to do it, and that they will come probably when we won't be monogamous. We won't just have one wife or one husband. Total foolishness. God says here he speaks of the wife of thy youth. The wife of thy youth.

He's talking about the one you started out with. And you still have. And she is the wife of my youth. And I cannot deal exceptionally with her wife because I violate the covenant. She's also the wife of my covenant. She and I have a covenant which is the way we understand the covenant between She's also the wife of my covenant. She and I have a covenant, which is the way we

understand the covenant between God and man. You see, when God wants to say something to us, when he wants to reveal himself to us, he can't talk his language. We can't understand. You don't talk to a first grader the same way you talk to a college graduate. You have to accommodate yourself. So they're understanding how in the world can man ever comprehend the idea that God and I have a covenant. What does that mean? What does that involve? God said,

I'm going to give you a picture. I'm going to give you a constant object. Listen, man shall leave his father and mother and to be joined unto a wife and they shall be one. That's what a covenant is.

Leaving everyone else, forsaking everyone else and joining yourself to this wife and they shall be one. That's what a covenant is. Leaving everyone else, forsaking everyone else, and joining yourself to this wife and loving her until death do you part. That is what covenant is. Forsaking all others, being faithful, loving in good times and bad times. That's what it is. You see, God gave marriage in order for we could comprehend covenant between God and man. And that's why when the covenant between man and wife becomes so easily broken as it is now, we don't take the covenant between God and ourselves seriously. You can't have one without having the other. You cannot have one without having the other. I don't know which comes first. I don't know if the covenant of the Lord or the covenant of the wife breaking comes first,

but they are there. You'll find them both. It's a covenant, love. And that's why God hates divorce, because the easier it is to divorce, the less lightly and seriously we take our vows. Harold Kushner, who wrote that book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, has written another book called When Everything You've Always Wanted is Not Enough. But he says that one day a couple came to him and said to him,

we want you to marry us, but we would like you to make a change in the marriage ceremony. He said, what change would you like me to make? They said, where it says that we will be faithful until death do us part, we would like you to put in that we will love one another or be faithful to one another as long as our love shall last.

Because we do not feel that we ought to be trapped into a relationship just because we're married and just because that, you know, remember, they may come when our love will no longer be there. And so we ought to, and that's what we want you to do. And bless God, the rabbi said, I will not do it. Won't do that and he said exactly what i have said what i felt so many times what i've told couples as they've come to me he said if you go into this deal with a thought in your mind that if it doesn't work out you can always get out of it he said i guarantee you you're going to get out of it sooner or later i'll tell you right now my

wife and i would have been divorced 30 years ago. Six months after we were married, I wanted to divorce her. And she wanted to murder me. But I'll tell you something. I knew something. I knew one thing, and she knew it too. I was old-fashioned. I knew that marriage was for life.

And I knew, especially for a preacher, marriage was for life. I knew that if my wife divorced me I could not be a minister as in the old days. That's what kept us married. You say, well, that's terrible. Listen, low motive is better than none at all. So I want to tell you something.

You know what it made us do? And my wife was brought up the same way. She was taught that divorce was never the thing to do. So I want to tell you something. You know what it made us do? And my wife was brought up the same way. She was taught that divorce was never the thing to do. And so, you know what they did? That forced us to work through problems. That forced us to hang in there. And regardless of the misunderstandings and the hurts and the injustices,

and regardless of what happened, we hung in there because we knew this was it. We had to. I mean, I'm stuck with her. I've got to make the best of it. And she's stuck with me. She's had to make the best of it. I want to tell you something.

We made it through all those hard times. And you know what? I don't even understand the love I had for her 30 years ago. It's nothing to compare it that I have for her now. I thank God that he locked us in, forced us to work it out and to work through it. God, we could never have what we have now any other way. God says that's the way it is between you and me. And I guarantee you, friends, when you break your covenant with God, you cannot keep your covenant with man. And the reason that we cannot keep faith with our neighbors

and we sin against our fellow man is because we have not kept faith with our God. The heavenly relationship affects the human relationship. It is a domestic love. I am to love him as a wife loves her husband. Christ is the bridegroom and I am the bride. Lastly, it is also a very pragmatic word.

As you study this word, you see that it always involves loving that does something. Loving that does something. It is a pragmatic word. You cannot use this word in isolation. The Hebrews didn't. You cannot use this word in isolation. Proverbs 27.5 says, an open rebuke is better than a silent love. Love that is silent, love that is secret, love that does not manifest itself is not worth anything.

Or an open rebuke. I'd rather be open and rebuked than to be loved without knowing it. What do you say? It's a pragmatic love. It's a love that manifests itself in your actions and in your deeds. You love God.

And it's strange, this word is also used that when you love Jerusalem, you love God. And when you love God's sanctuary, Zion, you love God. It's interesting how those two things interchange. Loving God is the same thing as loving Jerusalem. Loving Zion is the same thing as loving God. If you love God, you love God's city.

If you love God, you love God's sanctuary. If you love God, you love God's city. If you love God, you love God's sanctuary. If you love God, you love God's people. If you love God, you love God's word. And it's manifested in the way you and I behave. Several years ago, I was in Alabama with a pastor, and he had been invited to speak at the state evangelism conference on how to learn to love the lost. And while I was there with him that week,

he said, I want you to help me find a text in the Bible, how to learn to love the lost. So we began looking and looked and looked and looked. I found a lot of verses that told me how to love them. I found a lot of verses

that told me what I would do if I did love them. But I couldn't find a single verse that told me how to learn to love the lost. And I had to admit that sometimes the lost are very unlovable. And it's hard for me always to love the lost. It's hard for me to love the saved sometimes, much less the lost. And I begin to pray and ask the Lord, how do you do this?

How do you learn to love lost people? One day I was studying in John 21, and I believe the Lord gave me my answer. That's the story when Jesus had breakfast with the disciples, you remember? And he was on the shore, and when they realized that it was Jesus, Simon Peter jumped in the water and swam to the...

And when he got there, there was a charcoal fire prepared by the Lord. That's very interesting. There's only one other place in the Bible where a charcoal fire is mentioned, and that's in John 18, 18, the fire at which Peter warmed his hands the night he denied knowing the Lord.

I think the Lord prepared a charcoal fire just to stir up Peter's memory. And so after breakfast, Peter, Jesus said, let's take a little walk. And Jesus said to Peter, Peter, lovest thou me? Peter said, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee. Jesus said, Peter, lovest thou me more than these? I think he meant that you love me more than these other disciples love me. Because earlier Jesus had said, though everyone else forsakes you, I'll not forsake you. I love you more than they do.

He said, Peter, lovest thou me more than these? And Peter said, Lord, thou knowest I love thee. Then a third time Jesus says, Peter, lovest thou me? And Peter was grieved because for the third time Jesus asked him Jesus says Peter lovest thou me and Peter was grieved because for the third time Jesus asked him Peter lovest thou me and he said

Lord thou knowest all things thou knowest that I love thee interesting after every question and answer when Jesus would say lovest thou me and Peter said yes Jesus would say

feed my sheep feed my sheep feed my sheep do you Feed my sheep. Do you love me, Peter? Yes, Lord, I love you. Then feed my sheep. Do you love me? Yes, Lord, I love you. Feed my sheep. And all of a sudden I realized, I'm surprised Peter didn't say, but Lord, I don't like sheep. I don't love sheep. They're messy. They stink. They ba-ba-ba all during the night. And I don't like sheep. I think Jesus would have said, Peter, I didn't ask you if you like sheep. I asked if you love me. Well, yes, Lord, I do. Then he said, feed my sheep. If you love me, you'll love who I love. My mother died in 1974.

I can't remember when, as family, we didn't have a cat, at least one cat. Always had a cat. None of the fancy stuff, you know, just the alley cat that'd wander home. We always called them Thomas Edison. That was their name. Thomas Edison, the first, the second, third, on down, all the way called them Thomas Edison. That was their name. Thomas Edison, the first, the second, third, on down all the way through, Thomas Edison. And

I loved pets and my mom loved pets, but my dad, he wasn't into pets. He wasn't mean to them. He just ignored them. He didn't care. I don't remember ever seeing my dad pet a dog or pet a cat. He didn't care for them. I don't remember ever seeing my dad pet a dog or pet a cat.

I could say he didn't kick them around. He just didn't care for them. He had no affection for them. The last cat my mother ever had was a solid black cat named Spook. It wore a little red collar around its neck with a little bell on it so he could hear her coming. My mom loved that cat. She had said she would never have another cat, but when she found Spook, she couldn't get him up.

She loved Spook. The only thing is, she was the only one that could touch the cat. If you tried to pet Spook, he'd scratch your eyes out. Run from it. But mom could take that cat and stroke it and hold it in her lap, and you could just tell. Shortly after my mother died, a few months later, we were back visiting my dad. One night we were sitting in the den talking

and suddenly out of some dark room in the back comes Spook. Circles around the room to avoid everybody else. Then comes up to my dad and begins rubbing against his leg, that tail sticking straight up in the air like a flagpole, and I could hear her purr all the way across the room, rubbing against my dad's leg. And then my dad, I saw him reach down and pick up that cat and put it in his lap and begin to stroke that cat and put it in his lap and begin to spook that cat. Later that night, I said to Kate, did you see what my dad did? Did you see that?

He picked that cat up. He picked Spook up. Listen, my dad loved that cat. When the cat got sick, he took it to the vet. When we were kids, he wouldn't take us to the doctor. I mean, that's true none of us we were you know

bleeding from every pore and had a dislocated body but that wasn't in the days where you ran to the doctor every time you coughed or had a sniffle

but I tell you when Salute got sick he took her to the vet and when she died he missed her but he's never replaced her. One cat man. I've tried to figure that out, and I think I know. The reason my dad loved that cat is because my mom loved it. I want to tell you something. When you love somebody, you love what they

love. When you love somebody, what is precious to them is precious to you. When you love somebody, you love what they love. When you love somebody, what is precious to them is precious to you. When you love somebody, what is important to them is important to you. Do you love me? Yes, Lord, I love you. Feed my seed. Lord, I don't love sheep. Not necessary. Do you love me? Yes, Lord. I love you. Feed my sheep. Well, then hast thou loved me? He said, I have loved you. I chose you.

I entered into covenant. I've done everything for you. I love you. I've shown it. And now I want you to feed my sheep. Thank you. The Ron Dunn Podcast is available only for personal edification, not to be duplicated, uploaded to the web, or resold without prior written consent.

It is managed and operated by Sherwood Baptist Church. If you would like to listen to additional Ron Dunn messages, visit sherwoodbaptist.net slash bookstore and search Ron Dunn. For more Ron Dunn materials, including sermon outlines, devotions, and scanned pages from a study Bible, please visit rondunn.com.