Malachi 4: The Day is Coming

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Intro

Here we are, not just at the end of the book of Malachi but at the end of the Minor Prophets. We started into the Minor Prophets in 2018, hard to imagine 7 or so years working through these books together. I am so grateful personally for all that I have learned along the way and I hope that each of you, for how ever long you have been with us in these prophets can look to something that you have learned with thankfulness as well. It is hard to imagine that when we started these prophets I really didn't so much start the prophets as I simply picked a short OT book that I thought I could preach through without facing many theological challenges that I wasn't ready to tackle yet. I was personally at a place in 2018 where I was in the early stages of wrestling with significant areas of eschatology and other major biblical and theological themes and Jonah was the only relatively short book in the OT that I thought I could get through without getting myself into to much trouble.
Well, in God’s gracious providence each step of the way now as we have tackled book after book the Lord has helped me come to a general consensus of where I stand on some of those issues and He has even used the meandering path that we have take through these prophets to help me gain the needed clarity at each and every turn and I am grateful to Him for His providence as He has lead the way through these things. While there have been a few passage where I felt unable to take a solid position these have been few and far between and have mainly been historical questions not theological ones.
God is gracious to us and again, I am thankful for the grace that He has met me with at every turn along the way through these books.
And so now we come here to this final chapter and as we close it out we first need to dispel a bit of a misconception about Malachi’s place in the cannon of scripture and then we will do some general review of the book, starting with our most recent sermons as chapter 4 is really just the second half of Malachi’s 6th and final disputation speech and then we will dive into the actual content of this chapter.
Before we do so however lets take a moment to pray and then read our text.

PRAY & READ

Last Book

Now the first point that I want to make is just to correct what seems to be a common misconception. So common in fact that many commentators feel the need to right it as they approach this final chapter. There is a bot of a belief that Malachi, and prticularly this last chapter come right at the end of the Old Testament because they set the stage for Christ to come and so that is why this is the last book in the OT.
Now this might be true in our Bibles but this was not always so. In the Jewish scriptures, the Scriptures that Jesus would have read this book actually was placed in the middle section of the book. The Hebrew Scriptures order is often referred to as the TaNaKh, which stands for Tora or the Law, the Neviim or the prophets, and the Ketuvim or the writings. Malachi is the last book in the Neviim, actually the minor prophets are just called the book of the 12 but after that comes all of the writings including the history books and the Psalms which are quite long and thus place Malachi closer to the middle of the Hebrew Scriptures. The Jewish Scriptures actually end with 2 Chronicles.
Now I don’t have all of the history for why our Bibles are arranged the way that they are, actually having all of these books gathered together in one place and in one book that we can hold is a relatively modern invention. As such there is a mix of grouping and historical chronology that goes into our order. Similar books, history, writing, prophetic, etc… have been placed near each other and then a general historical chronology has been followed. As the prophetic books are grouped together and placed in a generally historic order with Malachi at the end as the last of the books of the 12 we wind up with Malachi falling right before the NT.
Now it would be correct to say that thematically Malachi does do much to prepare the way for the coming of the Messianic Christ. That is true, but to generically link Malachi to Christ simply because it comes right before the NT in our Bibles is an oversimplification and misses the actually thematic elements that connect this book with Christ. Historically speaking Malachi is very likely the last of the OT books to be written and it does do much to set the stage for the Messiah, however, its not the last book in the OT specifically for that reason and that is not how the Jews of Jesus day and likely even Christ Himself would have viewed things.

Overview

So now that we have traced down that little rabbit trail lets take a step back and see an overview of where we have come from to get here to this 4th chapter, the latter half of Malachi’s 6th and final disputation speech and lets start with that speech before we jump back to the beginning of the book.
If you will recall the major theme of this final disputation which started in 3:13 has been that there doesn't really seem to be, from the people’s wicked perspective, any true benefit for following YHWH. Actually from the assessment of the people some of the wicked nations around them seem to be doing pretty well while they struggle to get ahead in the world.

What is the profit of our keeping his charge or of walking as in mourning before the LORD of hosts? 15 And now we call the arrogant blessed. Evildoers not only prosper but they put God to the test and they escape.’ ”

“What is the profit of keeping His charge?”
This is a line that perfectly encapsulates the thinking of these people. They were interested in serving God, not because of His continued faithfulness to them by delivering them from their captivity in Babylon, not because of the covenant love that He had set upon them when He brought them out of Egypt and through the Red Sea in the Exodus to make them a nation, not because of the love that He had shown to their forefathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, no, they were only interested in what they perceived the financial benefit to be to following God now.
This final disputation speech has driven home and will drive home again this morning that though there may be times when the blessing of God on God’s people seems less than obvious, even at times seems to have inverted where the wicked seem to be those who are prospering, yet there will come a day when the distinction between God’s people and the wicked will be plainly evident!

They shall be mine, says the LORD of hosts, in the day when I make up my treasured possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him. 18 Then once more you shall see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve him.

This second part of this discourse is going to build on the sparing of the Sons and show us what is to be expected for those who are not the Sons of God in that day when the Sons are spared.
However, before we get there lets just jump back and survey this book one last time.
The book started off with the proclamation of God’s covenant love for Israel. “‘I have loved you,’ says the Lord” There was this focus on the unique covenant love of God that He had chosen of His own will to lavish on these people and that for no reason to be found in them as was made clear by the use of Issac’s two sons Jacob and Esau.
We then saw several discourses where the paltry worship and attitude of the people toward this covenant God and His love was made painfully clear.
Polluted offerings, injustice, failures of the priests to teach the people the law of God, unfaithfulness to their wives and a lusting after foreign women who were still clearly identified with and following after their false God’s and the danger of this to the aim of the Lord to bring up godly offspring amongst His people.
These people were in dire spiritual straits and the Lord we find in chapter 3 is preparing to send a messenger to them. Actually a pair of messengers. We saw that there was going to be a fire that accompanied the primary messenger but that because of God’s covenant love and grace that this fire would not be a consuming fire but rather a refining fire that would purify these people, refining them like silver and gold, making them righteous and causing their offerings an worship to be pleasing and acceptable to Him once more.
And yet we saw also that though some would be refined yet those who persist in their wicked ways would find that God would indeed draw near to them for judgement.
We saw the challenge to the people to put God to the test, that they were not bringing their right tithes and offerings and God challenges them to put faith into action. This was not faithless testing where the people would do a little bit and see if God would respond, the challenge here was to put faith into action, to live like God had called them to and to give like God had called them to give and trust that God would indeed be faithful to His end of the covenant promises.
If you remember we have talked several times about how important it is to read these passages through the lens of the covenant and as we seek to apply the principles and truths that we find in them that we have to be sure to apply them rightly within the framework of the covenant under which we are living. Therefore we can still put our faith into action today and we can still trust in our covenant God to bring to us the blessings and promises benefits of our Covenant, the one toward which this old covenant had pointed.
And so again we come now to the end of this book and the end of this 6th disputation and we pick up here where we now said we would see the continuation of the thought from 3:17 where God is described as sparing the son who serves Him. Well, what about those who refuse to serve him?
We read:

4  “For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the LORD of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. 2

God promises that there will be a day when all of the wicked and evil doers will be consumed. That day is burning like an oven. Now this word for oven can also be translated, and is often so, as a furnace. The picture here is one of destruction by being consumed by fire. Just as Nebuchadnezzar had tried to have the three Jewish men thrown into his furnace that had been heated extra hot and yet they had not burned, here the Lord will not be in the fire for deliverance but will be the one who is heating the furnace and casting the wicked in!
We see these people described as stubble. Now the word here also can be taken two ways, it can describe stubble which would have referred to the lower parts of the grain stalk that had been left in the field after the harvest or it can be translated as chaff which would have been the remains of the stalk and the husks of the grain that had been cut and harvested but was discarded after it had been separated from the grain. And so this picture is not only one of destruction but of delineation. The fact that there is chaff or stubble is a reminder that there has also been a harvest of grain.
Now the chaff and stubble are worthless and so these parts are burned. This day that is coming will reveal the distinction between the wheat and the chaff, between the righteous and the unrighteous because the righteous will be gathered and the wicked will be set ablaze!
We see this exact imagery picked up on the New Testament to describe the ministry of the one for whom John the Baptist was preparing the way. (IE the messenger from chapter 3)

11 “I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12 His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

The wheat, the righteous, gathered and kept secure in the barn and the wicked, the unrighteous burned and consumed in the fire. This is the heart of this text, the answer to the faithless questioning of the people, that there is coming a day when the lines will be made clear and you want to be sure that you are on the right side of that line when that day comes because when the fire is set to the chaff it is too late.
We also see this final judgment will leave those judged with neither root nor branch. There is a mixture of similar metaphors here now as roots and branches speak not of plants that would have chaff and stubble but of trees and bushes. This statement is a merism which is a figure of speech that uses contrasting parts of an object to represent the whole. Here the roots and branches represent the whole of the plant, there is nothing left!
In many of Israel’s prophecies of judgement there are always little bits of hope, a remnant left, a promise that if they turn there will be grace available, a way made for repentance, we have even see that in this book. However, here is a statement that shows us that there will come a time when there is an end to the offer of grace and mercy, if these wicked persist in their rebellion and callousness to their covenant God they will find this consuming day to be all that is left and in that day all will be lost.
I think though that we also need to see the specific covenant imagery at play here as well. While root and branch is most certainly a merism these are also two terms that are significant hopes in Israel. That a root will shoot up or that a branch will grow, specifically we see these terms in relation to the covenant of David and the hopes for a future dravidic king. This may be one of the reasons for the slight shift in metaphor from crops to trees, this particular merism highlights the fact that for these covenant people if they persist in covenant rebellion then God will remove from them any future covenant hope.

Day

Lastly here we need to consider the term day here. When we see this term in the prophetic literature it is rarely if ever signifying a singular 24 hour period but rather a new period of time in which the promises made will be fulfilled. We saw this with Joel chapter two and his great and awesome day of the Lord. We noted that Joel is talking about the day of the Messiah, the time when the Messiah will come and reign and will bring to completion the hopes long promised. This day is marked by both grace and judgement. A time when repentance is made possible and a time when judgement will fall. And that while typically the beginning is marked by grace and the end by judgement that this doesn't preclude periods of judgement interspersed in the midst of this time that are meant to point us forward to that ultimate day of judgement when God will once an for all time judge the wicked.
This is one of the reasons that I think it is significant that Malachi transitions to that that imagery of root and branch. You see when Jesus came He was the fulfillment of the root and branch promises that we find for David and the return of a Davidic king to the throne for all time. As such when unrepentant Israel rejected Christ they were cut off from that root and from that branch, their covenant promise was removed and they were Judged. Jake showed us how the book of Revelation speaks so significantly of the bringing to a close the period of the Old Covenant, that unrepentant Israel was cut off and the Old Covenant, put away as its Temple was destroyed never to be rebuilt again making way for the Church, the people of God to be built up into a living Temple in fulfilment of the Temple imagery we see in Ezekiel and Micah and others.
As such that destruction in AD 70 serves as a stark reminder to any who would reject the offer of grace held out in the gospel. If God was willing to cut off and consume these covenant breakers who for a time had been permitted admission into the Old Covenant community how much more so will those who are outside the covenant and reject the offer of the gospel to be reconciled to God through the Cross of Jesus Christ which can cleans them from their sin and unrighteousness and make them by faith children of God and members of the New Covenant community, how much more so will these be liable to judgement! To reject the gospel of grace is to leave yourself nothing but this promise of a coming day of consuming fire.

Leaping Calves

We see then in verse 2 and 3 a promise of blessing built on this promise of judgement. This blessing is for those who fear the name of the Lord. We have seen this idea already in Malachi. It was a lack of the fear and reverence for God that had lead to the pathetic worship that Israel offered. No individual with a right fear of the Lord would ever even think to bring a blind or lame sacrifice to lay on the alter. No individual with a right fear of the Lord would ever think to be faithless to their wife or neglect the call to bring about Godly offspring. All sin flows from a lack of the fear of the Lord. Those who fear the Lord will not sin and when we do sin we show that we are able to, even for a time, suppress or dull that fear so that we can pursue the sinful desires of our hearts. The fear of the Lord and sin are like oil and water, they can not be mixed together.
The promise is that for those who fear the Lord:

the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. 3 And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act, says the LORD of hosts.

Again there is significant imagery that is mixed together here. We see this idea of the sun of righteousness. This couples several images together. David had said in 2 Samuel 23:3-4
2 Samuel 23:3–4 ESV
The God of Israel has spoken; the Rock of Israel has said to me: When one rules justly over men, ruling in the fear of God, he dawns on them like the morning light, like the sun shining forth on a cloudless morning, like rain that makes grass to sprout from the earth.
And so this sun of righteousness is a just ruler who will dawn on the people like the light of dawn.
There are also the promises of God sending His light, Isaiah 9:2 those who live in darkness have seen a great light. Jesus Himself claimed to be the light of the world. And the prophets had promised a coming day of light that would never see darkness again. Isaiah 60:19-20
Isaiah 60:19–20 ESV
The sun shall be no more your light by day, nor for brightness shall the moon give you light; but the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory. Your sun shall no more go down, nor your moon withdraw itself; for the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your days of mourning shall be ended.
The coming of these promises would bring everlasting light to the people but we also see healing. Isaiah 53:5 tells us:
Isaiah 53:5 ESV
But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.
Wings are often associated with protection but here we see that the protection we desperately need which we will find in the wings of this righteous sun is that we would be healed a healing that, as Isaiah tells us, delivers us from our transgressions and iniquities as the wounds of the Righteous One of Isaiah bring healing to those whom He came to save!
This healing results in rejoicing and celebration. Leaping like calves from the stall. If you have ever seen those videos on the internet of cute young animals, horses, calves, sheep, being let out of a pen and leaping and bounding through the pasture in a carefree and celebratory way then you can picture the imagery here. Freedom! These have been healed and set free and they frolic in joy!
How dearly we miss the point of it all when we think that the Christian life should be all solemnness and seriousness. When we gather together to celebrate the freedom that we have in Christ and the healing and restoration that we have been granted through His precious blood we ought to feel the great joy and freedom that we have been given in Christ! There are solemn moments of remembrance for sure but our hearts ought also to be lifted up in great joy as we consider the freedom that is ours in Christ.
And look at the wicked here. We tread them down. Now at first that might seem like some sort of victory we are winning over them but look at what it says. We tread them down:

for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet,

We tread them down because they have been consumed. They are ashes. The leaping calf has no need to fear the wicked because they have as much power over it as ashes laying on the ground over which he leaps.
And then we see that this all takes place on the day when the Lord of armies acts.
We need to understand as we take in these metaphors and consider these promises that there are some that we see clearly now and some that have yet to come. For example we can see clearly the consuming that took place in AD 70 and the metaphorical ability of the believers in that day to leap over the ashes of those who had been consumed. The unrepentant jews had persecuted those early believers for decades, putting them to death and persecuting them in many ways and then God’s hammer of judgement fell and those unrighteous jews were left as ashes in the wake of the destruction of Jerusalem. We see in Revelation that there was to be a joy for those who had long been persecuted as they saw this judgement fall.
Now for us we don’t see the wicked consumed yet and yet their power over us is truly no greater than the ash. Yes they may rail and fight against us, persecuting us like the jews persecuted those who had been joined to christ in the 1st century, yet the judgement of the wicked in our day is just as sure and fixed as was the judgement of those covenant breaking jews.
The Lord will act and the wicked will be consumed and the righteous will be vindicated!

Remember the Law

And now we see Malachi’s final exhortation:

4 “Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and rules that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel.

This is a final call to faithfulness and as we consider this exhortation we must understand that we need to contextualize this within the proper covenantal contexts. Malachi’s people were to remember and by extension to seek to keep the law, in other words to be faithful to their covenant!
For us who now live in the midst of the fulfilment of these things the admonition is no less serious. Firstly, as Jake has been showing us there is much about the Law of God that is good and right for us and we ought to use it as a guide to steer our lives in the paths of righteousness even as we understand that it is not the keeping of the law that makes us right before God.
One commentator says it well:
Haggai, Malachi 5. Second Command: Remember the Law (4:4–6[Hb. 3:22–24])

Malachi was calling Judah to a lifestyle guided at all times not by human wisdom, ambition, or societal expectations but by the thoughtful application of God’s Word. Only this divine lighthouse can guide God’s people to avoid destruction on “that great and dreadful day.” The summons in Malachi to “remember the law” is a message of hope for people in mortal danger, whose enemy has wormed its way into their very hearts, people “prone to wander.” As Ortlund explains, “The law calls Israel both to deny what may seem right and expedient to oneself and to obey Yahweh even when the final outcome cannot be foreseen and assessed from a merely human perspective. Israel must trust Yahweh to be wiser than Israel in all the decrees of his law.”

Live a life guided by the Word of God and seek to follow the law as rightly applied to our current covenant. This is an admonition that is certainly still applicable to us today! Be faithful, even when it seems like the unrighteous prosper and there is no blessing for faithfulness, yet remain faithful to God because we know that one day the lines will be clearly drawn.
The second point that I want us to remember is that the Law of Moses was centered on worship. Everything that we find in the law of God as delivered by Moses to God’s people there at Sinai center on right worship of God and radiates out from that center to guide all relationships and interactions with God and our fellow man.
As such the call to remember the law is also a command to attend ourselves to the right and proper worship of God. We ought not be trivial then in our approach to coming before the Lord in worship. We must make certain that our worship is guided by and bounded by the Word of God especially as we realize as we mentioned earlier that we are being built up together as living stones into a holy and living temple of God. Worship is at the center of all we are and all we do as God’s covenant people!

Elijah

Lastly now we read as we close out the book:

5 “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes. 6 And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.”

We are nearly out of time but this statement really serves as a time stamp and one final redemptive promise.
Firstly we see that this prophet will come before the great and awesome day of the Lord. This harkens back to chapter 3 where the messenger was sent to prepare the way for the coming Messiah. Just as we saw that messenger was John the Baptist so also we also know from the New Testament and the texts surrounding John, one of which we saw this morning already, that this reference is a reference to John and his ministry of calling the people of Israel to repentance to prepare the way for Christ.
In short this is what the phrase “turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers” means. As opposed to a people who are self serving and focused only on their own wants and desires the repentance brought by this prophet will restore the right and proper love of neighbor that out to have defined the people of God.
The we read:

lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.”

And there is is. Apart from this divine intervention of Grace, apart from the work of this prophet and the one who was to follow him there would be nothing left but an expectation of divine judgement. However, we can give praise to God that these messengers did come and that we now live in a time where there is has gone out the call of the Gospel that those who by faith trust in this long promised covenant messenger and Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, that they, through His work on the Cross can be made righteous and set free from their bondage to sin to joyfully worship Him and to live their lives for His glory.
However, for those who reject this promise or who fail to persist in their profession of faith as the book of Hebrews tells us in 10:27, similarly to Malachi, there yet remains a fearful expectation of Judgement.
As we close this morning I would like to close us with the prayer that John Calvin ends his commentary on Malachi chapter 4 with:

Grant, Almighty God, that as nothing is omitted by thee to help us onward in the course of our faith, and as our sloth is such that we hardly advance one step though stimulated by thee,—O grant, that we may strive to profit more by the various helps which thou hast provided for us, so that the Law, the Prophets, the voice of John the Baptist, and especially the doctrine of thine only-begotten Son, may more fully awaken us, that we may not only hasten to him, but also proceed constantly in our course, and persevere in it until we shall at length obtain the victory and the crown of our calling, as thou hast promised an eternal inheritance in heaven to all who faint not but wait for the coming of the great Redeemer.—Amen.

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