I often joke that the length of my sermons seems to be inversely proportional to the length of the passage. So get comfortable and settle in because as we finish our study of the book of Malachi this morning, we’re only going to look at the final three verses of the book. But what an important three verses these are.
Before we get to that passage, let’s set the stage with a quick review of what we’ve learned so far in the Book of Malachi. We’re going to do that in more depth during the “Connections” Bible study today so I encourage you to stay and be part of that discussion.
As we’ve done every week in the series, we’ll begin with the overall theme of the book. For one last time I’ll ask you to help me fill in the blanks:
God desires for me to pursue Him
in the same way He has pursued me
After developing that main theme in the first five verses of the book, we next looked at the rest of chapter 1 where God admonished the people and the priests for their substandard sacrifices. We summarized the main idea of that passage like this:
Worship that requires little
is worth nothing
From the first part of chapter 2, which focused on the unfaithfulness of the priests, we developed this big idea:
When it comes to discipleship
I can’t lead anyone else
further than I have gone
In the middle part of chapter 2, Malachi focused on how the Israelites had violated their marriage covenants. But that was only one symptom of the large issue which we addressed like this:
Being a covenant keeping community
is essential to our relationship with a
covenant keeping God
The last part of chapter 2 and the first part of chapter 3 dealt with God’s refining work in the lives of His people and gave rise to this important implication for our lives:
God loves me too much to let me continue in my sin.
In the middle part of chapter 3, God accused the people of robbing Him and we used that passage to develop this theme:
God desires for me to give to Him
in the same way He has given to me
Last week, we saw that it is indeed worthwhile to serve God because:
God takes notice of
those who
take notice of Him
With those principles in mind, let’s read the concluding three verses of Malachi’s prophecy. Since this passage is so short, let’s read the passage out loud together.
“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 4:4-6 ESV)
Some commentators have claimed that these three verses are some kind of later addition to the Book of Malachi because they, incorrectly in my opinion, don’t see these verses as being consistent with the rest of the book. But after careful consideration of these words, I’m convinced they are indeed a very fitting conclusion. Here is how I’m going to summarize this passage:
We need to…
learn from the past
to live in the present
as we look to the future
The book of Malachi certainly serves as a bridge from the past to the future for the Israelites of Malachi’s day. And for them and for us, as the last book of the Old Testament it also serves as a bridge to the New Testament.
So let’s use our theme statement as an outline with which we can examine this passage.
1. We need to learn from the past – “remember”
In verse 4, God commands the people to remember the law of his servant Moses.
The entire book of Malachi shows us a covenant-keeping God who still loves and pursues His people even though they have not remained faithful to Him. So it’s not surprising that the final command in the book is a command to remember the law of Moses, which the people no longer observed. But the word “remember” conveys much more that just mental recognition:
“remember” (Hebrew “zakar”) =
“to bring to mind and act accordingly”
So when God commands his people to remember the law, He is calling them to once again become a covenant keeping people who not only know the law, but also put it into practice.
This idea of remembering is a common theme in the book of Deuteronomy. The command or admonition to remember is found 14 times in that book and in the majority of those uses, it is connected with the need to obey or keep God’s commands.
The book of Deuteronomy also uses some form of the same phrase that we find here in Malachi – “the statutes and rules” – 17 times in the book Deuteronomy, including this very relevant passage:
“Now this is the commandment—the statutes and the rules—that the LORD your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over, to possess it, that you may fear the LORD your God, you and your son and your son's son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be long. Hear therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the LORD, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey.
(Deuteronomy 6:1-3 ESV)
There is no mistaking here that the purpose of knowing and remembering the law is so that God’s people can put it into practice. That principle is certainly just as applicable to us today as New Testament Christians as it was to the Israelites of Malachi’s day. As we know, keeping God’s law is not a requirement for salvation – which cannot be earned but is completely an act of God’s grace – but it should be a result of that salvation.
As we read the Scriptures, we are not only exposed to God’s law so that we can know and understand what that law is, but we also read the historical accounts that demonstrate the blessings of obedience and the curse of disobedience. So we look back to learn from the past as we remember God. And once we do that we can move onto the next step…
2. We need to live in the present – “turn”
I spent a lot of time this week wrestling with the first part of verse 6 where Malachi describes how Elijah will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to the fathers. And frankly, I’m still not sure I have this all figured out completely. But with the help of a couple other passages that shed some light on that verse, I think we can at least develop some useful applications that we can implement in our lives.
There seem to be two major camps when it comes to this verse. Some commentators hold that the fathers here are the fathers of the faith like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Moses. And certainly the idea of the Israelites turning back to the faith of their spiritual ancestors would be consistent with the idea of remembering the commands given to Moses. But the difficulty with that position is that it really doesn’t explain how the hearts of the fathers are turned to the children.
The other major position would be that this verse deals with God restoring relationships within the family – particularly the relationships between fathers and children. And there is certainly no shortage of Father’s Day sermons that use this passage in that way. But to me the weakness of that viewpoint is that it really doesn’t seem to be a fitting ending to Malachi’s prophecy which deals with the much larger issue of a whole nation’s rebellion against God and His law. Obviously that impacts relationships within the family, but it doesn’t seem to be the main point of the prophecy.
Since Scripture is always the best commentary on Scripture, let’s look at a couple of other passages which will give us some additional insight.
We’ve already looked at one of those passages – Deuteronomy 6. Notice in verse 2 that the purpose of observing the statutes and rules is to “fear God” – an idea that we’ve seen frequently in Malachi. And you’ll also notice there that “you and your sons and you son’s son” are to keep the law. So the idea there is that successive generations of Israelites will keep the law as the law is continually passed down from father to son. As most of you probably know the next part of Deuteronomy 6 goes on to give some guidelines on how fathers are supposed to do that. Now that is probably a great passage for a future Father’s Day sermon and since our time is limited this morning we’ll leave that for a future message.
The Hebrew in Malachi 4:6 is actually somewhat ambiguous. Most of the English translations tend to translate the verse similar to what we have in the ESV:
And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers…
But it is also possible to translate that phrase something more like this:
And he will turn the hearts of the fathers together with those of the children [to me], and the hearts of the children together with those of their fathers [to me].”
That would certainly be consistent with what we see in Deuteronomy 6 and consistent with what we saw earlier in the book of Malachi:
…Return to me, and I will return to you, says the LORD of hosts…
(Malachi 3:7 ESV)
The word “return” in that verse is the very same word that is translated “turn” in verse 6, another connection that seems to support the alternate translation which focuses on all the people turning their hearts toward God rather than toward each other.
We’ll also use a related New Testament passage to support this view. We’re going to come back to the sending of Elijah in a moment, but hopefully you’ll remember that when we first came across that idea earlier in Malachi 3:1 we determined that this is a prophecy that has multiple fulfillments. It was fulfilled at the first coming of Jesus by John the Baptist, which Jesus confirmed with these words:
For all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John, and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come.
(Matthew 11:13-14 ESV)
Jesus is clearly connecting John to both Malachi’s and Isaiah’s prophecies about a forerunner who would be like Elijah. During his days as a prophet, Elijah had turned the Israelites back to God at the time of their worst apostasy when Ahab and Jezebel had made Baal worship part of Israel’s worship and John had a similar ministry.
But you’ll notice that Jesus indicates here that since Israel wasn’t willing to accept Jesus as Messiah, they also refused to accept that John was the forerunner who had been prophesied in the Old Testament. So because of that there will be a second Elijah who will precede the second coming of Jesus and he is the one who will bring to its final fulfillment this prophecy about hearts being turned.
The angel who comes to Zechariah to inform him of the coming birth of his son John, almost certainly had Malachi’s prophesy in mind when he spoke these words about John:
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.”
(Luke 1:16-17 ESV)
Although the angel mentions the turning of the hearts of the father to the children, the main idea here is that John’s role is to turn all hearts – fathers and children – to the Lord their God. So even if Malachi is focusing on the relationship between fathers and children, the way that reconciliation and restoration occurs in the family is when all the hearts are turned back to God. Our horizontal relationships with other people will never surpass our vertical relationship with God. So regardless of our view of verse 6, the bottom line is that it all comes down to our hearts being turned to God.
What this passage teaches us is that the key to living in the present is to “turn our hearts”. We’ve already seen that the underlying Hebrew word can also be translated “return”. That Hebrew word, which is found over 1,000 times in the Old Testament, is frequently translated “repent”, which is not surprising given that repentance is the idea of turning our hearts away from evil and turning them back to God.
Repentance, or turning back to God, is not just something that we do once and then forget it. It is something that we must do every minute of every day. The people of Malachi’s day had forgotten that and look where they ended up.
It’s easy for us to sit here and criticize the Israelites who had descended into lukewarm worship in which they were merely giving God the leftovers, but the fact is that we are in danger of ending up there ourselves if we don’t actively guard our hearts and constantly turn them from evil and turn them back to God.
Again that is why our sermon series on the Holy Spirit was so important. We need to learn to walk in step with the Holy Spirit because when we do that He will reveal to us when our hearts have turned away from God so that we can repent and turn them back to Him. And when we get our hearts right with God like that, our actions will be consistent with our hearts, as Paul described in his discourse before King Agrippa:
…that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds in keeping with their repentance.
(Acts 26:20 ESV)
We learn from the past as we remember God’s law. We live in the present by turning our hearts to God. Finally…
3. We need to look to the future – “behold”
The word “behold” is used in the prophets to grab our attention. It is like God is shouting to the audience here to take notice of what He is about to say. And what follows is a message of God’s grace and mercy. Yes, the great and awesome day of the Lord is coming. And as we’ve seen that is not going to be a pleasant time for those who have rebelled against God and refused to turn back to Him. But before He does that, he is going to send his messenger, either Elijah himself or someone else like John the Baptist who will minister like Elijah to give the people one last chance to turn to Him.
Although there is certainly not enough in the Scriptures to definitively identify this forerunner with one of the two witnesses in Revelation 11, that is certainly one possibility. There in Revelation those two witnesses preach God’s Word for 3-1/2 years prior to the second coming of Jesus.
But regardless of the identify of that forerunner, God’s purpose is clear. His aim is to spare people from being cursed. So before Jesus returns to this earth one more time to mete out swift justice to those who have rejected Him, He is going to give people one last chance to turn to Him. And the good news is that at least some people are going to have their hearts turned toward God as a result of his ministry.
What Malachi makes clear here is that how we view the future is dependent on how well we’ve remembered the past and turned in the present.
If you remember God’s law by seeking to understand it and do it and if your heart is turned toward God, then you can look to the future with great hope and anticipation, knowing that you are part of God’s faithful remnant who will be spared from God’s wrath and who will live for eternity in the presence of God.
But if you fail to remember God’s law and if you fail to turn your heart to God, then if you’re not fearful of the future, you certainly should be. Because God is holy and just, He must judge those who have chosen to rebel against Him and that judgment is going to be swift, horrible and everlasting. It truly will be the utter destruction that Malachi writes about at the end of his prophecy.
We need to…
learn from the past
to live in the present
as we look to the future
So what does that mean for us? What are some practical applications for our lives?
Some practical applications:
1. We must turn our hearts to God through faith in Jesus
As we’ve seen, it is God’s desire for us to turn our hearts to Him. But that is not something that we can do on our own. Although the word Messiah or the name of Jesus is never mentioned in the Book of Malachi, the idea of a Messiah who would come first to save God’s people and then return a second time to judge those who refuse to turn their hearts to Him is a central theme.
Because God is holy and we are not, the only way that we can truly turn our hearts toward Him is by placing our trust in that Messiah, Jesus. By taking our sins upon Himself and dying on the cross to pay the penalty for those sins, He has made it possible for us to have a relationship with God in which we are able to turn our hearts to Him.
If you’ve never turned your heart to God through faith in Jesus, then we invite you to make that decision today. I understand that since it is impossible to completely explain what it means to place your faith in Jesus in the short time I have with this message that you may still have some questions about exactly how to do that. And we would like nothing more than to discuss that with you some more. So if that is something you feel God is leading you to do, please let me or one of the elders know or fill out the information on the flap of the bulletin and give it to me or one of the elders or greeters.
2. We must consistently spend time in God’s Word
The only way that we can obey God’s Word is to first know what it says. That means that we have to be spending consistent time in God’s Word, reading and studying it on a consistent basis. And obviously a half hour once a week on Sunday morning will never be adequate to really know and understand the Bible.
And as we’ve seen from Malachi it is absolutely essential that we do that not only just on our own, which is necessary and valuable, but that we also spend time in God’s Word with other believers. All of us, including me, need to have some time each week, where we can dig into the Bible with other believers and benefit from their insights into the Scriptures.
3. We must be intentional, living, vocal witnesses for Jesus
In light of the possible two destinies faced by every human being – eternal life for those who have placed their faith in Jesus and eternal punishment for those who have not, our witness for Jesus is essential. It is quite likely that God has brought some people into your life that have no one else in their lives that is going to tell them about God’s love for them that He has demonstrated through the sacrificial death of His Son, Jesus.
You’ll notice that I’ve included three adjectives to describe what that witness is to be like and all three are required if we are going to be effective.
First our witness must be intentional. We must strategically pray for the people that God brings into our lives and then, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, prepare, as Peter urges in 1 Peter 3, “…to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you…” That means being able to share my own testimony about my relationship with Jesus and to be able to use the Bible to explain how the other person can enter into their own relationship with Him.
Second, our witness has to be lived out. There is nothing that will turn a person off when it comes to their relationship with God than someone whose life is not consistent with their words.
But, at the same time, it’s not enough to just live for Jesus and hope that someone else is going to figure out why your life is different. That’s a great start, but at some point, we also have to vocalize our faith.
After the first of the year, we’re going to provide some very practical training that will equip all of us to be more effective in being a witness for Jesus and if you’re really serious about applying what we’ve learned in Malachi, you really need to take part in that training.
As we close our time in Malachi, the most important thing we can take away is to understand just how much God loves us. He is a covenant-keeping God who loves us so much that He continues to pursue us even when we fail Him. And if we’ll take and apply the things we’ve learned over the past nine weeks, then we’ll certainly be in a much better position to pursue Him in that same way remembering that…
God desires for me to pursue Him
in the same way He has pursued me
