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Things weren’t going well for the Chosen People in the time of Malachi. It seems that an unusual amount of tragedies were occurring. The harvests were bad. Pests were attacking the crops. Maybe the weather was bad. Maybe we were being attacked by enemies. Maybe there was an unusual amount of sickness and death.
When things are going well for you, it’s natural to enjoy your life on Earth and want a lot more of it. When things are not going well; if you are undergoing physical pain, mental or emotion trauma, the suffering caused by a lost or damaged relationship, or a major financial setback, it’s natural to want to leave this world.
In the case of the Jewish people of Malachi’s generation, they were unhappy and wanted their problems to end. Instead of wanting to leave this world, they wanted the Lord to come to Earth in very special and powerful way, and radically change their lives for the better.
They wanted the Day of the Lord to come, that unique time when God intervenes in this world in a personal and powerful way. They thought the Day of the Lord would end their problems and bring them peace and prosperity, but they were underestimating the Lord’s holiness, and their lack of holiness. They didn’t understand that before peace and prosperity can come, judgment will come – judgment for the nations and judgment for the Chosen People.
You’ve heard the expression: be careful what you wish for? Malachi warned them that they should be careful what they wanted. The Day of the Lord would not be what they expected. If they really wanted the Day of the Lord to come and fulfill their hopes, they needed to turn to the Lord and become righteous, holy people. “Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and the day that is coming will set them on fire,” says the Lord of Hosts. “Not a root or a branch will be left to them. But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays. And you will go out and frolic like well-fed calves. Then you will trample on the wicked; they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when I act,” says the Lord of Hosts.
Surely the day is coming – the day meaning the Day of the Lord. Divine intervention will happen one day in a very real and powerful way. The Lord Himself, in the person of the Son of God, will return to Earth.
Surely the day is coming; and the world will immediately be transformed into the Garden of Eden. No. Not at all. Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace. I have a lot of experience with a furnace. I have a wood-burning stove at home. It’s like a small furnace. To start a fire, first I put in some stubble and kindling – dry grass, leaves and small sticks. Then when that’s burning, I put in larger sticks, and then when those are burning, I put in the larger logs. Eventually, everything turns into ash, which I use as fertilizer for my plants and trees.
That’s what it’s going to be like for a lot of people when Messiah returns to this world. “All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and the day that is coming will set them on fire,” says the Lord of Hosts. “Not a root or a branch will be left to them.” The arrogant; those who ignore God; those who live their lives with an attitude of independence from God; and every evildoer, everyone whose life is characterized by doing what the Lord disapproves of, will be completely destroyed – like stubble that’s put into a furnace and set on fire and turned to ash; like tress that aren’t just cut down so that the stump might regrow, but like trees that are uprooted so that nothing remains and they can never grow again. The proud and the wicked will be totally destroyed. Shum davar. Finished. Done. Gone.
That’s the first group. You don’t want to be part of that evil, arrogant group and receive what’s coming to it. If you are arrogant, you want to become humble. You want to change your attitude toward your Creator. You want to become deeply aware that He is God and you are not; that He is the center of everything; that He has the right to make the rules and you have the duty to obey. If you are living in a way that is characterized by evil, by doing things that are wrong, you want to turn to the Lord and stop doing those things. You want to stop opposing Him. You want to learn to do what is right and then consistently do what is right.
Today we do that by coming to God on His terms, by understanding that Yeshua is the Messiah, and the Son of God, and the one and only Savior; and by transferring our loyalties to Him. When we do that, the Father and the Son send us the Spirit They share, and we receive a new nature, and a new desire to do what is right, and new power to do what is right.
The first group are the arrogant and the evildoers. They will be totally destroyed. Then there’s the second group. They are characterized by revering God’s name. That means they know God, respect God, honor God, obey God, serve God. You want to do everything you can to be part of that second group: But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays. And you will go out and frolic like well-fed calves. Then you will trample on the wicked; they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when I act,” says the Lord of Hosts.
Three wonderful promises are given to the revere-God’s-name group:
Those who revere God will be healed. The sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays. They may have lived in spiritual cold and darkness; they may have wounded in many ways, but when the Lord comes their experience will be like that of those things that experience the light of the rising sun – light that brings healing; light that creates warmth that makes plants grow. They will flourish. They will be successful. They will be blessed. While the Day of the Lord will be like a furnace for the first group – like heat that destroys, the Day of the Lord will be like the warming light of the sun that heals this second group.
The second promise is that those who revere God will be happy. You will go out and frolic like well-fed calves. I haven’t seen a well-fed calf frolicking, but I have seen my dogs frolicking, and seeing their obvious joy makes me happy. Those who revere God will be overjoyed. All their needs will be taken care of. No worries. No anxieties. No problems. No cares. Just health and prosperity and joy.
The third promise for those who revere God is that they will be victorious. You will trample on the wicked; they will be ashes under the soles of your feet. All the people who have opposed God and made their lives difficult will be vanquished, conquered, defeated, rendered powerless. Instead of being like an impenetrable forest that prevents the righteous from going where they want to go, and doing what they want to do, and having a good life – those who oppose God will be like a forest that has burned down so that those who honor God can trample on their ashes. Those who oppose God will not be able to prevent those who revere God from living the way they want to and enjoying the blessings of their good and almighty God.
The people wanted the Day of the Lord to end their troubles? They wanted the Lord to bless them? They needed to observe the laws that were part of the divinely inspired teaching that God gave to Moses at Sinai – something the majority had not been doing. Remember the law of my servant Moses, the decrees and laws I gave him at Horeb for all Israel.
Note carefully that the Lord stated here that Moses was His servant; that Moses didn’t act on his own; that the Lord gave Moses the Torah, including all its decrees and laws. There is no Documentary Hypothesis here; no JEPD nonsense; no multiple authorship of the Torah over centuries here – as the theological liberal apostates teach. The five books of Moses, and everything in them, were given by God to Moses for Israel at Sinai.
Remember the law of my servant Moses. Was it possible for the Chosen People to ignore the Torah, the divinely inspired teaching that Moses gave us, so that it was like forgetting it? Yes. Human beings are prone to forget the most important things, the most basic truths, even something as important as the Word of God.
Moses was a very great prophet. Until the prophet greater than Moses arrived, the Lord Messiah, we were to do everything Moses commanded us. Then, before the Lord Messiah returns, He would send another great prophet, Elijah, to prepare the Jewish people for His arrival. When the prophet who never died returns, we must listen to him. See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction.
The Day of the Lord, that special day when God intervenes in this world in a personal and powerful way, is coming. It will happen. It will take place.
The Day of the Lord is not a day that can be ignored. Some days, like a day dedicated to a saint, can be ignored. Not the Day of the Lord. The Day of the Lord is gadol – great. It is so great, so significant, so overwhelming that it will affect everyone on Earth. It will be impossible for anyone to ignore that great day.
The Day of the Lord is norah – awesome, dreadful, scary, terrible. It is not nice, pleasant, enjoyable.
Before that great and dreadful day arrives, the Lord will send Elijah to prepare Israel so that we will be ready for Messiah’s return. Elijah will prepare us by telling us about God; and that Yeshua is the Messiah; and by bringing us a message of repentance – that we need to need to turn away from our wrong thinking about God and our bad attitudes and behaviors. Those who respond to his message, their hearts will be turned to their parents, and the hearts of the parents will be turned to them. Those who respond to Elijah’s message will have the kind of faith that our fathers had, men like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David and Daniel. And the fathers will acknowledge them as their true children.
But, not all may respond the way they should. The final message from the Lord through Malachi is a very strong warning. Or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction. Those who don’t listen to Elijah, who reject him and his message will not be ready for the Lord; and when the Son of God arrives, He will destroy everyone in the Land who rejected Elijah and was not ready for Him.
Be ready. Help others be ready.
Let’s pray:
Lord, help us to be Your Malachis, Your messengers in our generation. Help us know You the way we should, know Your message the way we should, and boldly communicate it to those we should.
Lord, just as You told Israel to remember the Torah of Moses, help us remember the law of Moses and the words of the prophets and everything the Son of God and His representatives gave to us. If we have forgotten, help us remember.
Lord, in one sense, it doesn’t really matter whether we are alive when You return and we experience the Day of the Lord, or whether we have died before Messiah’s second coming. Each one of us, in our own way, will have our own personal Day of the Lord. We will appear before You and be judged. Help us to be ready for that day. Help us make the changes we need to make – now, so that we will be ready for that day. Turn our hearts to the fathers, to men like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, so that they acknowledge us as their true children.
Lord, what we believe about the future is important. What we believe about the future will affect our attitudes and our behaviors today. If we believe that when we die, we will cease to exist; or if we believe that all people go to Heaven, no matter what they believe or how they act – we will live in a different way than if we believe that Yeshua is the Messiah and the Savior and that we will experience our own personal Day of the Lord, which will be characterized by judgment –
and our sins will be punished and good deeds, our sacrifices, our efforts to turn from our sins and our perverse desires will be rewarded. Help us believe the truth that You have revealed to us about the future and live in a way that honors You – even now. Amen.