Malachi 4

4:1 For, behold, the day cometh,

Judgment Day is coming

There is a built in judgment to our sin, but there will be a day when God will take care of sinners EVERYTHING IS NOT MADE RIGHT YET, there are those that seem to get away with sin, that is what Malachi’s people were saying. Some of the innocence suffer, but on that day, all will be made right,

WHAT A CONTRAST OF the different groups of people and what will happen to them,, all along the people have been crying there is no justice no justice, and here he closes with, there will come a day when the same thing will be a blessing to one group the believers, and a curse to the other, the non believers.

The same heat that soften some substances and bakes others into hardness, a bit of wax, and a bit of clay put into the same fire one becomes a liquid and the other a solid,

Many try to impose on God the necessity of only being a God of love that never will punish or harm anyone.

Many Judgments are leading up to the great day of Judgment,
Adam and Eve, out of the garden,
Curse on Cain,
On the world, flood
Noah,
Sodom, etc

Isaiah 2:12 For the day of the LORD of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low:

The Impact of that Day on the Unrighteous

V1 it burns as a furnace; and all the proud, and all that work wickedness, shall be stubble; and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith Jehovah of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.

Universalism says all are saved, they want to leave out the justice of God,
Annihilationism, says all the evil will be consumed and no longer exist,
Both make moral living a joke, it takes away all responsibility,

What is highlighted in the punishment is not so much what God does against the sinner as what the sinner does to himself. Lewis C. S. Lewis says, ‘the doors of hell are locked on the inside’.

Mt 25:46 And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.

Rev 20:10 And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet [are], and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.

John 5:29 And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.

2Thess 1:8 In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: 2Th 1:9 Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power;

John Milton, Soren Kierkegaard and C. S. Lewis have shown us that it is just such a hell which is compellingly serious because it alone makes best sense of a moral universe.
Freedom, as Lewis puts it is, ‘the gift whereby ye most resemble your Maker and are yourselves parts of eternal reality’.

C. S. Lewis said, The damned soul is nearly nothing: it is shrunk, shut up in itself. Good beats upon the damned incessantly as sound waves beat on the ears of the deaf, but they cannot receive it.

Their fists are clenched, their teeth are clenched, their eyes are shut. First they will not, in the end they cannot, open their hands for gifts, or their mouths for food, or their eyes to see.

Matthew 25:41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels

The Impact of that Day Impact on the Righteous

4:2 But unto you that fear my name shall the sun of righteousness arise with healing in its wings; and ye shall go forth, and gambol as calves of the stall. 3And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I make, saith Jehovah of hosts.

John 8:12 Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have thelight of life.

He is to the spiritual world what the SUN is to the physical

PHOTOSYNTHESIS, the light is life, if there is none there is death, if the light of Jesus is not present we have darkness, He doesn’t have to take your life just stop giving life and it is all over,,

HE IS THE REAPPEARING LIGHT….                                                                                                         This evening when the sun goes down we take it for granted that it will come back up tomorrow, when it goes down it is dark

FOR THOSE THAT FEAR HIS APPEARING WILL BRING HEALING
He will turn our sickness to Health

A day of celebration and release

Mal 4:2 But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall.
As calves out of the stall there will be liberty,

Preparation for that Day

4Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, even statutes and ordinances.

The Decalogue declares God to be the one who shows his love “to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.” Yes, “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love,” (Psalm 103),

Jude 3Beloved, while I was giving all diligence to write unto you of our common salvation, I was constrained to write unto you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints. 4For there are certain men crept in privily, even they who were of old written of beforehand unto this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
5Now I desire to put you in remembrance, though ye know all things once for all, that the Lord, having saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not.

Jude 21: “Keep yourselves in the love of God.” Or again, Jesus says in John, 15, that as he remains in the Father’s love by constantly obeying him, so he says, “You also must remain in my love by obeying me.” The implication is, if we don’t obey him, we don’t remain in his love.

Jude can say, “Keep yourselves in the love of God,” which turns on obedience. Reread the Ten Commandments. The same sort of thing is said. “If you love me, you will keep my commandments, and then I will do such and such.” The alternative, instead, is for judgment or discipline to be poured out in one fashion or another.

Preparation for the Day

5Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of Jehovah come.

The hope is that Elijah will come during Passover is still present for the Jews who do not see Jesus as the Messiah. They are still waiting. A place is prepared at the seder table with a large cup of wine (Elijah’s cup) at his place setting. The front door is opened to welcome the spirit of the prophet. If Elijah were to visit the home, his coming is to prepare the way for Christ’s Second Coming,

Although John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus, he said, “I am not [Elijah]” (Jn. 1:21). True, Jesus claimed that John the Baptist was the Elijah who should come, but He qualified His remarks with “if ye will receive it” which they did not.

The expression in Mal 4:6 is literally “and he will return/restore the heart of fathers upon sons and the heart of sons upon their fathers.” The point is that fathers and sons would no longer live self-serving lives, but fathers will take their sons to heart and sons will take to heart their fathers, considering the effects of their actions on one another in the course of their lives. Ezekiel had vividly portrayed a nation under the horrors of divine condemnation when he prophesied a sight of cannibalism during the siege of Jerusalem in the words, “Fathers will eat their children, and children will eat their fathers (Ezek 5:10; cf. Lev 26:29; Deut 28:53; 2 Kgs 6:28–29).

Malachi’s portrayal, on the other hand, was of a nation that had returned to the Lord and so had rediscovered the way of peace. Malachi’s Israel was full of men committing acts of treachery and injustice against one another (2:10; 3:5), but Elijah’s Israel would be full of righteousness and peace; and his day would be one of revelation, repentance, and reconciliation.

6And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers; lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.

The warning that Malachi ends with is not of the Lord’s coming but of his curse.

God provided a way that they could escape the curse. God has provided a way that we as well can escape the curse. The way is Jesus. Jesus has always been the only way a person could escape the Judgment of God. By placing one’s faith in the sacrificial blood, in the OT, the animal, now that is fulfilled through the sacrificed blood of Jesus.

God loves man and has provided a way of escape.

Will you place your faith in Him and his provision of Jesus, and escape that final Judgment?