A Distinct People

Kids Sermon

What book of the Bible have been preaching from? Malachi says Jesus will come and he will be like fire and..? Why? Jesus comes to make us clean through his blood when he dies for our sins. Today we will take about how God with make a distinction between those who fear/worship him and those who do not. Those who do what is right and those who do what is wicked. A distinction is when we tell one from another. Let’s see if you guys can make some distinctions? Raise your hand if you are boy, girl, brown eyes, light eyes, kid/adult. See you guys can tell one from another. Do you think God can make a distinction from those who worship him and do right from those who don’t love and do wrong? That’s what our passage is about today. God makes a distinction between those who belong to Him and those who do not. Listen for the outcome. What happens to those who worship God and what happens to those who do not.

Introduction

Good morning please open in your Bibles to Malachi chapter 3 verse 16. That is Malachi chapter 3:16 and we will finish the book of Malachi as we will go to chapter 4:6. That is on page 754 is you are using one of the Bible’s scattered throughout the chairs. I would encourage you to grab one of those if you don’t have a copy of God’s Word with you. Again that is page 754, we are looking at Malachi 3:16-4:6 as we consider what it means to be God’s distinct people.

Recently, I became a huge fan of the Red soccer team. Perhaps you have heard of them, they play in Bally Sports Soccer League, 3 and 4 year old division, on Thursday nights at the Galloway Sports Camp. Their leading scorer Simon Rosentreter has almost scored as many goals as bugs he has caught on the field. He is joined by all star goalie Vera Rosentreter, who some would say plays the position in such a way that it makes it seem like the goalie box extends to mid-field. In this league every match is a rivalry game since they always play against the Blue Team. You see the league boast 8 of Galloway’s finest pre-schoolers who are now masters of the penguin kick. At the end of each practice there is a scrimmage in which the Red Team plays against the Blue Team. We gather our teams to opposite goals and ask, which goal is the Red team trying to score in, that one the players yell and point, and which goal is the Blue Team trying to score in? That one the players scream and point. You see even in preschool soccer distinction is a necessity.

If we are to have a successful scrimmage in which own goals are minimal, our players must know what team they are on, and which goal they are trying to score in. There must be a distinction between the Red team and the Blue team. It determines what they are attempting to accomplish. The team they play for, dictates which goal they are trying to score in. If a Red team player tries to score in their goal, they will be told, you’re going the wrong way. Turn around and go the other way.

In the book of Malachi, in a sense, the people of Israel are being asked, What team do you play for? And if you are playing for God’s team, then why are you trying to score on the wrong goal? If you are really on God’s team, you must realize you are going the wrong way, and you must turn around and start going the right way. In today’s text, God is promising to make a distinction between those who fear Him and those who do not. Let’s Read Malachi 3:16-4:6.

A Distinction is Made v. 16-18

Malachi 3:16–18 “Then those who feared the Lord spoke with one another. The Lord paid attention and heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared the Lord and esteemed his name. “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. 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.”

Malachi has been preaching to the people and prophesying to them from the Lord throughout this book. And some of the people have heard his words and his words have sparked fear in them. They fear the Lord, that is they reverance Him, they stand in awe of God and so at hearing the words of Malachi they begin to speak to one another. We don’t know exactly what they say, but from the context it seems that their discussion is positive. The Lord pays attention to this talk and he hears them. As a result of what God hears a book of remembrance is written before him. Now, I believe this book of rememberance is best understood as figurative. God does not need a book to remember something, but it communicates the importance of what he has heard. It is so important God is going to have it written down. The writing down of importance events and people is not a new thing. In Exodus 32:32 “But now, if you will forgive their sin—but if not, please blot me out of your book that you have written.”” Moses was claiming he was written in a book, and is will to be blotted out if God did not forgive the people of their sin. Psalm 69:28 “Let them be blotted out of the book of the living; let them not be enrolled among the righteous.” We see again a blotting out of those who disobey God. And maybe the most popular reference to a book of the living in Revelation 21:27 “But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.” So God, hears the words of those who fear Him and he writes down the names of those who fear him and esteem his name. He is promising to remember them.

He then states, “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.” Those who fear God are his, they are his treasured possession, they are like sons who serve him. Psalm 149:4 “For the Lord takes pleasure in his people; he adorns the humble with salvation.” Listen to this verse, those who fear the Lord belong to him. They are not disregarded possessions. They are not like your mowing shoes, yes you own them, but they are left in the garage, you probably just jam of your feet instead of untying them before putting them on. You have no concern for the heel. You own your mowing shoes, but you don’t treasure them, you don’t treat them like your sons. God says of those who fear him, they belong to him and they are a treasured possession they will spared like a son who serves his father. He sees them not just as his kids, but the good kids who serve him. God loves those who are his, he takes pleasure in them. And we must remember though that in this book God has already told His people he loves them. He told them this to open the book, he loves them and not because of what they have done. Rather he loves them because he has promised to love them. And so to with you, dear Christian, must remember 1 John 4:19 “We love because he first loved us.” And the result of His love is the fear of the Lord. God loves his people and therefore, his people love and serve him.

This is direct contrast to those in Malachi 3:14 who said it was vain to serve God. That there was not profit to walking in the ways of the Lord. These who fear him are like a son who serves his Father. And so God makes clear that he will remember those who fear him. And he will distinguish between the righteous and the wicked, between the one who serves God and who does not serve him. Malachi 3:18 “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.”

He is drawing a line in the sand, there are those who serve me and there are those who do not. There are those who are on my team and those who are not on my team. This distinguishing this is a call to all of us who are hear. It is a call to repentance and belief for those who are not Christian. For those of you here who do know follow Jesus, who do not fear and worship the God of the Bible, it is a call to repentance and fear the Lord. It is a reminder that God knows who are his. For those who are putting on show, who are say with their lips that they fear God, but do not believe in their hearts that God is God. Those who refuse to serve the Lord, it is a call to turn from your sin and follow Jesus. Worship the Lord. It is a call to return to those who are wayward. The Christian who knows in their heart that Jesus is Lord, but has allowed their affections to be draw toward sin and unrighteous living. God is reminding you that he will remember who belongs to him, and those who belong to him are those who serve him. Forsake your sin and return to the Lord, He will return to you. Make it clear who’s team you are on. Put on the “team jersey” of serving the Lord and living a righteous life, and start heading to the right goal. And this is a call to of comfort to the weary Christian. For the Christian who feels the temption to see service to the Lord as vanity, to the Christian who is tired and weary. Know that the Lord sees your faithfulness, he is paying attention to you, he hears you speaking to the other faithful Christians. He hears those who are faithful and he is promising, I will not forget you. You are written in my book, and when the day of the Lord comes you will not be forgotten.

T/S- There are outcomes as a result of this distinction the Lord will make, he will divide between the righteous and the wicked between those who serve God and those who do not.

A Distinction in Outcome v. 1-3

Malachi 4:1–3 ““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. But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. 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.”

The day that is coming is the day of the Lord when Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead. There is an appointed day for the judgement of all mankind and when that day comes it will be like a burning oven which will burn the arrogant and evildoers. Those who say it is vain to serve the Lord, who scoff and the worship of God’s treasured people, those who do evil and call it good, they will be burnt like stubble. This judgement day will set them ablaze and leave them neither root nor branch. This verse is referring to Hell. And there are 3 things I want us to see about hell in this verse. Three things every person in this room needs to know. One, Hell is torment. Fire is a common theme used throughout all of the Bible when discussing Hell. Fire burns away impurities in the Christian and leaves the precious metal. But were not precious metal exists, when all a person is, is the dross, the evil of unrepentance, then the fire consumes this person. Fire hurts, we all know it. Hell will be painful, Hell is torment. Two, Hell is forever. There is no escape from Hell there will be no more second chances. Hebrews 9:27 “And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment,” The judgement of God will leave neither root nor branch. There is no chance for regrowth. This is written to a people who were exiled, but then returned and rebuilt the temple. There was still a branch and root of Israel left to rebuild. However, at the day of the Lord, the evildoers will have no more chances. Once you are in Hell, Hell is forever. And third, Hell is meant to motivate us. Hell is a necessity. It is God’s way to deal with evil in this world. His holy justice will be on full display when he judges the wicked for their sin, and this truth needs to change you and me. The reality of Hell is meant to deter you from sin. You don’t want to go to Hell, so make your calling and election sure! Don’t try to play for both teams, the righteous and wicked. You need to join Jesus’ team and work to achieve His goals. It is a motivator for us as we talk with our lost family and friends. We need to tell them of Jesus and the judgement that is coming. We need to live in a way that removes all barriers to the Gospel. Your hypocrisy can disenchant the non-believer to the concept of God. May it never be so! Hell is torment, Hell is forever, Hell should motivate us. But that isn’t all this text has to say.

God tells of the outcome for those who fear him and he also tells of the outcome for those who do fear the Lord (v.2). But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. This is a reference to the Messiah who would come to heal us from our sin. In Revelation 21 it tells us that in in the new heavens and new earth that there will be no sun, but God will be out light. God will be so near us that he will light our way and provide our warmth. Charles Wesley captured this in his Christmas Hymn Hark the Herald Angels Sing! When we wrote “Hail the Sun of Righteousness, Life and light to all He brings, Risen with healing in His wings.” He will will heal our broken hearts through the death and resurrection of Jesus. And in heaven there will be no more sin. We will be totally healed. You see Heaven is the opposite of Hell in that instead of torment it will be a place of blessing and joy. We will be like young calves leaping from the stall. Happy and thankful to be free to roam. We don’t have many calves in our church, but we have all see a dog overjoyed when their owner comes home. It is total bliss. This is a picture of our state in heaven. Overjoyed, jumping up and down, thankful to be home with our Master.

Heaven is also forever. CS Lewis famously said that heaven is like Christmas with no day after. There will be no disappointment that the anticipated day is over. It will last forever and ever. And we will tread down the wicked as ashes under our feet… Evil will be no more. I don’t know that we really grasp just how great that will be… A place where there is no more evil. We don’t have a notion of what that is, because a place with evil is all we have ever known. It is hard to imagine a place in which there is no more failed politicians, no more assassinations, no more hate, not racism, no more disability, no more financial stress, no more family conflict, no more persecution, no more injustice, no more sin. Did you catch that last one… no more sin. And not just the sins of others… but you will sin no more. That might be the part I look forward to most… sin, my sin, causes so much trouble in my life. I hate it… And I work hard to not commit sin, and yet sinful man that I am I do the very thing that do not long to do. But the sun of righteousness will have healing in his wings and in the new heavens and new earth I will finally sin no more. That will be a great and awesome day!

T/S- We must have a right understanding of our future if we are to live righteously in the present. Heaven, also motivates. We are motivated by the surety of future promises to live like a piece of heaven is hear now. In a sense it is, when the people of God gather together and live as they ought to live and worship and fear the Lord together we get a small foretaste of heavenly bliss. When those who fear the Lord speak to each other the Lord hears us, he pays attention and blesses us with his tangible presence. And therfore with the future in our sight, we must live in the here and now.

Live Distinctly v. 4-6

Malachi 4:4–6 ““Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and rules that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel. “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 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.””

Malachi ends his book with two final statements. The first is to Remember the Law of Moses which was given at Mt. Horeb. This is was the law given to Israel by God that the people in the original audience we to follow. There were to follow these laws because in Deuteronomy 4:6–8 “Keep them and do them, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’ For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is to us, whenever we call upon him? And what great nation is there, that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law that I set before you today?” The Law and the keeping of God’s was meant to show the rest of the world that God was the most wise God. His people would be seen as a wise people who had a God who was near to them. In keeping the law the people of God would be distinguishing their God from all other gods. God would be distinct from all other gods because of the impact of His obeyed law. The people were to live in a way that made them distinct from the rest of the world. We too have a similar law with similiar purpose. We are not under the law of Moses and all of its ceremonial requirements, but God’s moral law still stands. We are under the law of Christ. Jesus makes his law clearest in Mark 12:28–31 “And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”” When we live in such a way as to love the Lord our God with all of our hearts, mind, and strength and we resolve to love our neighbor as ourselves we put on display the wisdom of God. In Jesus’ great sermon called the sermon on the mount in Matthew 5 he says this in Matthew 5:14–16 ““You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”

There is to be a distinction between the people of God and the people of this world. Our good works shine bright against the darkness of this world. It is a beacon to all who seek the one true God. And those you are far off, but by God’s grace are trying to make their way to shore should be able to look to the light of God’s church and find their way home. Because heaven and hell are real, because God knows who are his and who are not, we are to live distinctly. Our good works adorn or ornament the Gospel of Jesus Christ which saves men from their sin. Our changed lives made the Gospel beautiful, attractive, to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. The world should look to Christian communities, that is churches, and say who else has a god like their God? We are to distinct from the world.

And as we do this we also live expectantly. Malachi tells once again of the coming of Christ and how God will first send Elijah the prophet who will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and hearts of children to their fathers. It is a corporate repentance at the most basic level, family. God would send a man who would pave the way to Christ through preaching the repentance of sins. This is what John the Baptist did. His father is told this by an angel, Luke 1:16–17 “And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and 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.”” So, in part John the Baptist fulfills this prophecy. However, our prophecy here seems to indicating a little more. The great and awesome day of the Lord seems to indicate a time in which God will come to make all things right in their totality. Yes, Jesus inaugurated the great and awesome day of the Lord through his life, death, and resurrection. His first coming makes the second coming possible. We needed his sacrifice before we could enjoy the consummation of his kingdom at the end of days. Jesus’ first coming enables us to be saved from the judgement of his second coming. But the finality that is described here in today’s text just doesn’t quite seem to be what we have today. We are still waiting for Jesus to return and finally destroy all evil, to have all evil under the soles of our feet. Evil is not yet stubble, it still has root and branch, much more!

Old Testament prophecy often mixes the advents of Christ. His first advent or coming is what we celebrate at Christmas, his second advent we look forward to. It is possible that another Elijah figure is coming some suggest this is what is be suggested by the two witnesses in Revelation 11:3. I honestly don’t know, and I am very wary to speculate what the future holds. Because, I highly doubt Malachi’s audience would have guessed that Jesus wold appear as he did. I believe the first advent, though prophesied, was still a surprise to many. The way God works often stuns us, it isn’t the way we would do it. And my suspicion is that His second coming will be similar. The specific way that God prepares the way for the second coming might not be what we expect. So, let us seek to obey in the same kind of way these people would told to obey. The point is to live like you are ready for the return of Christ. Live distinct from the world and in the fear of the Lord.

Conclusion

That is the whole point of the book of Malachi. We started this series asking what does the unchanging God want from me? What does God expect from me? And the answer is shocking in some ways and so very humbling in others. You see God wants you, he wants all of you. It is shocking because we must grapple with the cost of following Jesus. He wants my best not the leftovers, he wants my morality, he wants my marriage, he wants my money, he wants my time and service, he wants me to admit that I am wrong and repent, he wants me to worship Him as the one and only true God. He wants every part of me, and that is shocking in one sense. And it also so very humbling… Jesus wants me. God loves me and he does not change. I am foolish and He wants me, I am stubborn and he wants me, I am spoiled and he wants me, I am selfish and he wants me, I am idolatrous and he wants me, I am sexually immoral and he wants me, I am anxious and he wants me, I am bitter and he wants me, I am jealous, irritable, worrisome, adulterous.. I am a sinner and he wants me.

Those who fear the Lord know that they are sinful. It is the knowledge of our sinfulness and of God’s great grace for us that makes all of the cost of following Jesus seem so very small. He is our very life, he is worthy of all glory and honor and praise. He can have my service, my time, my money, my obedience because in Christ I get something so much better than all of that. Through the fear of the Lord we get Jesus.