Malachi 4

The arrogance of the lost should make us weep. How sad it is when people are so sure that they are right, so very sure that they need not receive the gift of salvation that is freely offered in the preaching of the kingdom of God. Those who would rightly expound the Scriptures and proclaim the story of the coming resurrection have urged all men everywhere to repent and believe the gospel. Christ, our Redeemer has been patiently presented as crucified and risen. The words of the prophets and apostles have been read and explained, so that people everywhere would know that all who call upon the Name of the Lord shall be saved. Yet many stubbornly refuse. They reject the only Savior of sinners for no good reason. This is very sad. The Old Testament closes with the announcement again that a day is coming when they will face the burning wrath of God.

They may have amassed great fortunes on earth. They may have even been considered men and women of unusual and wonderful qualities in so many ways. Yet this will not protect them on that awful day. All that they hold dear in the present age may be consumed in a moment by the power of the victorious Son of God when He comes again to judge. They will be left with less than nothing, and with no defense against the righteous accusation of the King of kings.

There is an alternative. They could humble themselves before the Almighty. For those who will fear His Name, who will believe and repent, the great Sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. Have you ever considered why Jesus healed so many people when He came to proclaim the kingdom of God? He was displaying to us the greatness of His resurrection power. None of His beloved children will have bodily or emotional difficulties in the present heaven or in the age to come. He has shown us His great capacity to heal. When He comes again with such glory that the only thing that we can compare Him to is the rising sun, He will surely come with healing in His wings.

In that day, the people of the Lord will be so full of vitality that we could be compared to calves that come leaping out of their stalls. In the present age, however well-meaning we may be, our bodies cannot keep up with our best intentions. We get tired, and we get cranky. Different parts of us wear down or break. We become less and less functional as we move past our best years. But when He comes, we will have perfected desires, glorious bodies, and entirely sound minds.

The Lord will even use His people to judge men and angels in that great day. Are we alright with that? Are we aware of the brokenness of the world all around us? Do we hear of those who abuse the poor, and who slaughter the innocent? Do we know of many who have destroyed the reputations of people they unjustly accused? Have we heard of those in civil or religious authority who have used their positions to take advantage of the ignorant or the young? Isn't it right that God would judge the wicked? When we have had all of our sins removed far from us, the Lord will use us in some way to bring His justice upon those who have loved wickedness and have spurned the Messiah's free offers of full redemption.

Consider the people of God back in the day of Malachi a few hundred years before the birth of Christ in Bethlehem. While they waited for the revelation of their Messiah, what were they to do? What was God's instruction to the faithful? First, they were to attend to the Law of Moses, that great system of commandments designed to protect the Lord's beloved during the era of preparation. They were the church under age, and they needed to stay close to the Law, which was a schoolmaster guiding them away from danger in the midst of a world of trouble and sin.

Eventually the Lord would send forth a prophet in the spirit of Elijah to prepare a later generation for the arrival of the Messiah. With the preaching of John the Baptist, and then with the coming of Jesus, the age of the Law would be completed, and the beginnings of the age of resurrection would come. That new age would first shine forth in the personal ministry of the Messiah and then in the proclamation of His good news of the coming fullness of His kingdom.

The best thing that the leading people of God could have done in the first century would have been to listen to John the Baptist. Most did not. His message would have clearly told them what to do in order to restore right relationships within families and within the entire covenant community of the nation of Israel. Yet when that day came hundreds of years after the preaching of Malachi, the leaders of the people were so fully corrupt, that those who responded to his message were not the priests or the teachers of the Law, but the prostitutes and the tax collectors. The Old Covenant age came to a close as the Lord brought His decree of utter destruction not only on the Sinai Covenant way of worship and life, but upon the person of His own Son, who died to plant the seeds of an entirely new life even beyond the borders of Israel.

Beyond the brutal story of the death of Jesus of Nazareth, we are presented with something powerfully new. We hear the accounts of the fact of His rising again as the firstfuits of a whole new world; a world that first shined forth from the light of an empty tomb. In the resurrection of Christ the disciples of the Lord were made to see something of the wonder of a new creation that would be preached among the nations, and would one day be seen and heard by all God's elect.

Those who heard Malachi with obedient hearts would have to wait many decades for the Lord of glory to come in humility. As always, the just needed to live by faith. This is how we still live today as we wait for the resurrection of the dead coming at the shining of the great Sun of Righteousness who will surely come with the fullest measure of divine healing for those who trust in Him.

Here we are today, at the close of this chapter at the end of the Old Testament. We have seen the message of Christ and the resurrection age clearly in the words of the prophets. If there is some answer to the mysteries of the Old Testament other the story of the love of God through the cross of His Son I am unaware of it.

Yes, the arrogance of the lost should make us weep. So what can we do? We must preach Christ and Him crucified and nourish souls in the hope of the resurrection while it is still today, until that moment when the trumpet sounds, and the dead in Christ are raised. On that day, the time for preaching will be over, and the time for the final judgment that the prophet Malachi wrote about so long ago will be here. Then it will be too late for the lost to be found, and too late for the condemned to be saved.