Malachi 4:1-6 (Message #8 in Malachi Series)
INTRODUCTION:
I have lived in some ridiculously hot places in my lifetime. When I was a
kid we lived in Guam for several years. For those of you who may not know,
Guam is a US Territory out in the far Pacific, located close to the
Philippines. It makes up part of the Marianas Island chain, which also
includes the little islands of Saipan, Rota, and Tinian. It is a lush
green little island (32 miles long, 4-8 miles wide), unbelievably beautiful,
densely covered with jungle. I loved living there because of the
easy-going laid-back Chamorro culture, the gorgeous white-sandy beaches, and
the incredible variety of sea life. However, most people that go there
complain of the heat. Indeed, it gets unbearably hot, and on top of that
they have close to 100% humidity all year around. You sort of get used to
the heat but not completely. Some days you just have to find a place in
the shade and spend the day fanning yourself and drinking iced tea.
Then when we ministered in Brazil as missionaries, our second term was spent in
an interior city of the State of São Paulo known as Ribeirão Preto. It is
known all over the country for its hot climate. Sometimes when I would be
downtown walking around and going about my business the cobblestone streets and
footpaths would get so hot that I could not stand to walk on them. After
several days of scorching weather, the basalt cobbles would heat up so much
that you could literally cook an egg on them.
And some of you have been to Arizona during the hot season. You know what
that is like—hotter than the hinges of Hades. Folks who live in Phoenix
all have central air conditioning because without it you can hardly
survive. It gets ridiculously hot there!
TRANSITION:
In our text for today the LORD talks about a day that will be even hotter than
Arizona, or Guam, or Ribeirão Preto. You thought Phoenix was hot, but you
haven’t seen anything yet!
MAIN BODY:
Verse 1: “For behold, the day is coming, burning like a furnace; and all the arrogant and every evildoer will be
chaff; and the day that is coming will set them ablaze,” says the LORD of
hosts, “so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.”
·
What day is the LORD
referring to here? You have probably guessed that He is talking about the
Day of Judgment, sometimes called in Scripture “The Day of the LORD.” In
the NT it is called “The Great Tribulation.” This is a common theme in the
OT. For example, in Zephaniah 3:8 we hear the LORD say, “Therefore
wait for Me,” declares the LORD, “for the day when I rise up as a witness. Indeed, My decision
is to gather nations, to assemble kingdoms, to pour out on them My indignation, all My burning anger; for all the earth will be
devoured by the fire of My zeal.”
·
He says here that on that day the heat will be like a furnace and
will utterly burn up the wicked as though they were chaff. They will be
set ablaze and will be completely destroyed—from the tip of their deepest root
to the tip of their longest branch. There will be nothing left of them but
ashes. Absolute annihilation!
·
This idea of a day of fire and burning has already been introduced
up in 3:2-3 where the LORD said “the day of
His [Messiah’s] coming” would be like
a “refiner’s fire” and a “smelter’s furnace.” In both cases, anything that
is not the pure precious metal is burned away to nothing. Here in 4:2 the picture
is a little different. It is the useless chaff that will get burned away
leaving only the pure, precious grain.
Verse 2: “But for you who fear My name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings; and you will
go forth and skip about like calves from the stall.”
·
This verse stands in stark contrast to verse 1. The Day of
the LORD will put an end to the seemingly endless night of the wicked in which
they appear to prosper and to get away with all their ungodliness. When
the Day of the LORD comes the wicked will be destroyed, and their time will be
cut off.
·
“But for you
who fear My name…” He is, of course, speaking to the righteous remnant that continued
to hold God in wonder and awe, who responded to Him in obedience, and who lived
for Him with constant faith. The Day of the LORD will be very different
for them.
·
On that Day, He says, “the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in
its wings.” He is saying that on that day the righteous will be blessed,
and healed, and filled with joy. There are those who want to say that
this phrase, “the sun of righteousness,” refers to Jesus Christ, that it is a
veiled reference to Him. I do not believe this. I believe that it is
a word picture showing the rise of the day of righteousness and the victory of
godliness over evil. This is in line with Isaiah 60 where God and His
glory are likened to the sun. Certainly the Lord Jesus will be the active
agent on the Day of Judgment because He will be seated on the throne as the
Judge, but I do not believe that this phrase in verse two is referring to Him specifically.
·
In the same way that in the night of wickedness the administration
of evil touched every corner, when the day of righteousness comes, the beams of
the sun will reach every nook and cranny and will root out and destroy every
vestige of wickedness. The sun of righteousness will rise like a majestic
eagle upon its strong wings. As the sun rises and its penetrating rays
dispel the darkness, sin and all that sin produces will vanish away in an
instant.
·
“…And you will
go forth and skip about like calves from the stall.” A young
calf is one of the cutest things you will ever see. Their big brown eyes
can melt the hardest heart. When a calf is born it is pretty unsteady on its
feet but after a day or so, it is ready to run and play. When the farmer
opens the stall door and lets the little guy loose, he will jump and run and
gambol all over the place out of pure joy. That is the picture here. On
that Day the righteous will be filled with pure joy and will skip around like
little calves, unable to contain their happiness. No longer downtrodden
and oppressed by the schemes of the wicked, the righteous will finally have
their day! What a beautiful picture!
Verse 3: “You will tread down the wicked,
for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day which I am
preparing,” says the LORD of hosts.
·
“You will tread
down the wicked.” The wicked will be just so much dust under the feet of the
righteous as they dance in the streets, rejoicing in what the LORD has
accomplished.
·
“…on the day
which I am preparing.” This phrase looks directly back to 3:17
where the LORD promised: “And they will be Mine,” says the LORD of hosts, “on
the day that I prepare My own possession, and I will spare them as a man
spares his own son who serves him.”
Verse 4: “Remember the law of Moses, My servant, even the
statutes and ordinances which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel.”
·
In these last three verses we have the concluding remarks to the
book. Here the LORD gives a closing exhortation to the children of Israel
to obey the Scriptures. He says, “Remember!” This
means more than to merely recall something. It means to act upon the teaching
that God had given them. In the NT we are exhorted to be “doers of the
Word and not hearers only.” Earlier we saw that the LORD’S indictment of
the Jews was that they had gone away from God’s ordinances (3:7) and had
deliberately “forgotten” His statutes. That is “spiritual drift.”
·
This exhortation is really addressed to sinners and saints
alike. The Law, with all its statutes and ordinances, was given by God to
Moses at Mount Sinai and was “for all Israel.” No one was above it or
excluded.
Verse 5: “Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet
before the coming of the great and terrible day of the LORD.”
·
Elijah was arguably the most revered and beloved of all the
prophets of Israel. You can read about his ministry in 1 Kings 17 – 2
Kings 2. His ministry lasted many years and during that time he performed
many jaw-dropping miracles. He was fearless in preaching the Word. He took
no guff from anyone. I believe he exemplified the truth found in Daniel
11:32-33 which says, “…but the people that do know their God shall be strong
and do exploits. And they that understand among the people shall instruct
many.”
·
Here we see the promise of “Elijah’s coming” in verses 5-6. God
says He will send a prophet to prepare the moral and spiritual soil to get
things ready for Messiah’s coming. The appearing of this person was first
spoken of up in 3:1 where the LORD refers to him as “My messenger” [literally,
angel], saying that he would “clear the way before Me.” In other words,
this ministry of this human messenger
would prepare the way for a divine Messenger, referred to in the same verse as “the Messenger of the
Covenant,” who is, of course, Jesus Christ himself.
·
So, here in 4:5 the LORD says that this human messenger is
“Elijah.” However, we know that Elijah was long since dead, so is the LORD
saying here that He is going to resurrect Elijah, or is there some other
explanation? What we have here is a form of parallelism in which the
messenger who will make his appearance before the arrival of the Messiah will
be Elijah-like. In
fact, we learn from the NT that this prophecy is really speaking about the
ministry of John the Baptist, who came “in the spirit and power of Elijah,” so
it is not about Elijah himself (cf. Matt. 11:13-14; 17:12-13; Mark 9:11-13;
Luke 1:15-17). Luke 1:15-17 is in the story about the birth of John the
Baptist. Here we hear the angel Gabriel telling Zacharias about his son
who was soon to be born: “For he will be great in the sight of the Lord;
and he will drink no wine or liquor, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit
while yet in his mother’s womb. And he will turn many of the sons of
Israel back to the Lord their God. It is he who will go as a forerunner before
Him in the spirit and power of Elijah, TO TURN THE HEARTS OF THE FATHERS
BACK TO THE CHILDREN, and the disobedient to the attitude of the righteous, so
as to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” So, we
do not have to guess what the LORD was talking about back in Malachi
4:5-6. The NT lays it out for us. John the Baptist is the “Elijah”
spoken of in Malachi.
Verse 6: “He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their
children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not
come and smite the land with a curse.”
·
“He will
restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the
children to their fathers.” Luke 1:16-17
quotes from this verse, but what does it mean? The LORD says that through the
ministry of John the Baptist many people would be brought to the LORD through
repentance and conversion, and once again Israel would be brought back to
obeying God’s Law.
·
Malachi ends with both a promise and a warning. You will
notice that this verse is conditional. The LORD is saying that He “will not come
and smite the land with a curse” IF the people’s hearts are turned back away from wickedness towards
righteousness. We see this again and again in Scripture. Whenever God
announces judgment there is also always an offer of His mercy. Jonah 4:2
is a good example: He
[Jonah] prayed to the LORD and said, “Please LORD, was not this what I said
while I was still in my own country? Therefore, in order to forestall this
I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that
You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in
lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity. Here in Malachi God is holding
out an olive branch, a promise of a different outcome if they will turn away
from their sin and return to Him. However, if they refuse to repent, God
will deal with them the same way He did with Edom (cf. Isaiah 34 5; Malachi
1:3-4).
CONCLUSION:
So, although the OT closes with a conditional curse, the NT begins with the
story of how this “Elijah,” John the Baptist, did come and did make ready a
people prepared for the LORD. He preached a message of repentance and many
responded. He preached about turning away from sin and many heard and
obeyed. He preached about the coming of the Messiah and many believed and
rejoiced at His appearing. John’s prophetic ministry “in the spirit and
power of Elijah” produced a revival in Israel and prepared the way for the
coming of Jesus, the Christ.
God’s offer of salvation is still in force today. The Bible says, “Whoever
calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Have you done that? If
not, what are you waiting for? Do it today, while you can. “Behold, today is the day of salvation.”
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