Bible Studies
The Day Is Coming (Mal. 4:1-6)
Series: Additional StudiesIntroduction:
1. My dad was an effective communicator. He could choose a strategic moment and inserta brief statement designed to change the course of your life. 2. He said, “When you get married don’t plan on coming back here to live. One house is just not big enough for two families.” 3. God placed a strategic statement at the end of the Book of Malachi and then fell silent for 400 years. 4. This is what He said, (reading of Mal. 4:1-6). 5. Will this statement turn the course of events in your life?Discussion:
I. There is a day of burning coming (v. 1).A. This is not a TV evangelist dangling us over the fires of hell to manipulate us to buy our way out of hell by sending him money.
B. This is not some dooms-dayer telling us to get ready for a nuclear holocaust.
C. It is not an evolutionist telling us how the world is going to end.
D. It is the Lord of hosts speaking of His coming in judgment against evildoers.
E. He speaks with certainty: “There IS a day coming.”
F. He speaks of calamity: It is a day of consuming fire.
G. He identifies the fuel: “All the arrogant and every evildoer.”
1. Those who dishonor and disrespect the Lord (Mal. 1:6ff).
2. Those who deal treacherously (Mal. 2:10ff).
3. Sorcerers, adulterers, those who swear falsely, those who oppress the wage earner, those who oppress the widow and orphan, and those who turn aside the alien (Mal. 3:5).
4. Those who rob God (Mal. 3:8ff).
5. Those who have turned aside from His statutes (Mal. 3:7).
H. The passage speaks to the justice of God against sinners.
1. While we may like soft sentimentality this statement of God leaves none.
2. The fire is so consuming that neither root nor branch is left.
II. “BUT for you who fear My name . . . (v. 2).A. Two things for those who fear the Lord . . .
1. “The sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings; and you will go forth and skip about like calves from the stall.”
2. “You will tread down the wicked, for they will be like ashes under the soles of your feet.”
B. Those of “fear My name” stand in contrast to those who are “arrogant and evil-doers.”
1. There is a sense in which they are defined by what they are not!
2. But they were among those classed as evildoers. God has called His own from among the evildoers (3:16-17). They are spared not because they have been good, but because they have feared the Lord, repented and begun to serve Him.
C. It is for this reason that “the sun of righteousness rises with healing in its wings.” It is for this reason that they “skip like calves from the stall.”
III. What do they need to do? (v. 4).A. “Remember the Law of Moses My servant, even the statues and ordinances which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel.”
B. We need to first remember ourselves and then we need to call on others to remember.
1. There is on-going need for restoration. Restoration comes when we remember what God has communicated.
2. Verse 16 speaks of those who fear the Lord “speaking to one another.” We may think of the book of remembrance as a help for God to remember us, but perhaps the better understanding is that we are the ones remembering. This may very well be a book of repentance! Cf. 4:5ff; Rev. 2:5.
IV. God will send Elijah before the great day of the Lord. His mission will be a mission of restoration (vs. 5-6).A. Jesus identified John the Baptist as the Elijah of promise (Matt. 17:11-13).
1. He was sent to prepare the way for the Christ.
2. His mission was to turn the people back to God and His divine law.
3. He used the same imagery as Mal. 4—see Matt. 3:7-12.
B. An interesting phrase is used in Mal. 4:6: “He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children.”
1. The passage is quoted in Lk. 1:17 of John the Baptist. It gives some insight into the meaning defining it as turning the disobedient to the attitude of the righteous.
2. To restore the hearts of the fathers to the children = Fathers being devoted to communicating the message of God to their children. See Deut. 6:1-9.When fathers hearts are turned toward their children this is what those fathers do.
3. Deut. 6:10-15 identifies hearts turned to materialistic kinds of things: cities, houses full of good things, vineyards, olive trees, etc.
C. The rest of the phrase is that the hearts of the children will be turned to their fathers. I take that to mean that their hearts will be turned to the ancestral religion of their fathers, the religion of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
D. It is interesting, in light of our present studies (Our Spiritual Heritage), the way this passage dove-tails with what we have been studying.
1. I do not think these phrases are talking about fathers and children and the closeness of their personal relationships although that will be affected.
2. I believe it is talking about their mutual relationship to God.
E. When we have turned our hearts toward the Lord we have turned our hearts toward one another. Failure to turn to the Lord is equivalent to sacrificing our children on the altars of idolatry.
Conclusion:
1. My dad used strategic moments to get his message across. 2. God used a strategic moment in Mal. 4. 3. God used strategic moment with the preaching of John the Baptist. 4. This is a strategic moment for you. 5. Will you change the course of your direction? Will you turn your heart toward your children? Will you turn your heart toward the spiritual heritage of your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?
