Malachi 4:1-6

Intro: Greeting

Themes of anticipation, remembering, obedience, restoration, Elijah

We are almost at the end of the year. I wonder what you are looking for in the New Year. This time of the year is often about anticipation, is it not?

Looking forward to Christmas, to rest, to relaxation, to refresh.

Anticipation is often about good things. Anticipation of course can come with a sense of dread. For example people often dread exams. Or of failing exams. Or perhaps more seriously a dread a looming court case where we are guilty. Or maybe the death of someone you love.

If you are visiting today, we have been going through the book of Malachi. And just to orient you, Malachi was God’s messenger (that’s what his name means) to the people of Israel. Israel had gone into exile in 586 BC, on account of their persistent rebellion against God, and after 70 years, as promised, they gradually returned to the land in at least 3 distinct waves.

The city had likely been rebuilt, as had the temple. But the people - yes the people, priests, everyone - were pretty apathetic about their faith. Their perception of God was seriously flawed. In a series of imagined accusations of God, Malachi brings God’s reply.

They did not comprehend his love and attention to them Ch1. Their worship was polluted and not genuine. The priests were corrupt. The nation had become faithless and idolatrous. They had abandoned their part of the covenant with God and were carelessly abandoning their wives and marrying those that served other gods Ch 2. They had wearied God with their accusations and had completely misunderstood God’s justice which would come with a suddeness and severity and with fierce refining and purifying energy Ch 3. God, the unchanging God, is a God of generous grace and calls for his people to return to Him, but it is they who are fickle and stingy and effectively they are robbing God and each other. They had come to the conclusion that serving God was worthless.

Malachi has one final addition to this expose of Israel’s failing, and his rebuttal of their arguments. He is going to shock them with a big reality check of God’s final assessment and judgement and it makes for sobering reading - but it comes with a more than a hint of an incredible blessing. Lets pray and then read from Mal 4:1-6.

I am going to do a lot of explaining as we read and then I would like to draw some simple lessons from what we read for us to think about as we go into the new year.

Main points - explain as we read...

“the day is coming”. What is this day that is coming? In the bible and particularly in the OT this term is used of a coming day of God’s judgement. The Israelites typically looked forward to the day of the Lord because they imagined this would be a day when God would finally deliver them from their enemies.

Several centuries earlier, the prophet Amos also brought a stinging rebuke to Israel and in Amos 5:18 he says:

“Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord! Why would you have the day of the Lord? It is darkness, and not light,”

and in Amos 5:20

“Is not the day of the Lord darkness, and not light, and gloom with no brightness in it?”

3. Here God by way of metaphor promises that the day is coming when all the arrogant and all evildoers will perish. He uses the metaphor of an oven which simply burns up stubble - and that’s what the arrogant and evildoers are like, absolutely worthless and they will be destroyed with no branch or root left.

I am not a gardener, but I am learning. Over the last 6 weeks I have been weeding out our front garden of weeds and replacing plants. We had a huge infestation of dandelions in our garden. I got them all out, but every 3-4 days I would look out on the garden and “behold” there was another dandelion leaf or two or three poking up again. I would go in and dig deeper - and sure enough I would come across a huge root, often with several new shoots and leaves forming and ready to spring into action.

Do you understand what Malachi is saying - there is a day coming when all that is unrighteousness will no longer be present, and those that are evil will be finally and fully judged.

4. But remember, he is talking to Israel, wicked and faithless and covenant breaking Israel. So is there any hope for anyone. Well yes there is. In one of the big “buts” of scripture in v.2 we have those who fear his name. So obviously there are some that are different.

To fear God’s name in this context is not so much to be frightened, but rather it has the idea of firstly reverence and awe and secondly of righteous behaviour. (TWOT)

5. The contrast is immense. Whilst the day of the Lord is anguish for those that are evil, here these people feel a sense of liberation and are able to flourish in Gods kingdom. Malachi uses another visual image - that of calves newly let out from being in the stall all night.

6. v. 3 The OT often talks in terms of conquest when pitching 2 opposing ideas. Here the righteous are seen as treading down the wicked. The meaning is that righteousness will finally have its day, its permanent day.

7. Notice that it is on the day when I act - God acts. It is not to do with the Israelites conquering anyone. God speaks and acts and it is done.

8. v.4 Next Malachi instructs the people to remember the law of Moses. The idea of remembrance here is always tied to obedience. They knew the law of Moses alright, it is just that they did not obey it.

9. v5. When was the great and awesome day of the Lord to come? Well, we are told that first Elijah the prophet would need to come first. So has this day already happened or is it still in the future. After all Israel was completely destroyed and Jerusalem flattened in 70 AD and again was invaded destroyed in the 2nd century AD.

And Jesus

In between times it is true, Israel did come under a huge judgement. They went into exile. They lamented their loss. Lamentations 2:1–2 says:

“How the Lord in his anger has set the daughter of Zion under a cloud! He has cast down from heaven to earth the splendor of Israel; he has not remembered his footstool in the day of his anger.

The Lord has swallowed up without mercy all the habitations of Jacob; in his wrath he has broken down the strongholds of the daughter of Judah; he has brought down to the ground in dishonor the kingdom and its rulers.”

4. So this day of the Lord is in the past. But Malachi is still talking about a day of the Lord - in other words there is more to come. More about this in a moment.

5.

Conclusions