It’s What He Does :: Malachi 4

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Malachi 4

Behold, the day is coming! 

This is our word for the day because it is the message of Advent. 

1.

Advent literally means coming. So in the first season of the church year called Advent, we prepare for the coming of the Lord ... our Savior ... Jesus the Christ ... the Son of the living God ... who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is one. 

He is coming. 

Immanuel came once to take away the sins of the world through his life, death, and resurrection on the day of the Lord. But he is coming again ... to you ... for you ... with healing in his wings ... and you, who fear his name, who bask in the light of faith in Christ, will leap for joy on the great day of our salvation.

God came once from heaven to earth in order to confirm all the promises given to the patriarchs since the dawn of time, and the day is surely drawing near when Jesus, God’s anointed, in all his power will appear in order that we all might glorify him for his mercy into the unending ages. 

It will be something to behold.


Last week we heard the prophet Jeremiah tell us to, Behold, the days are coming ... when I will gather a remnant ... when I will raise up a righteous branch ... when I will save ... and when you will say ... the Lord is our righteousness. 

While the Gospel of Matthew had us, behold our king coming to us mounted on a donkey so that we could recognize him in his humility ... today ... the Gospel of Luke reminds us that behold, “The Day” is coming, and when it does ... the Lord who is our righteousness ... will do so with power and great glory and we will see him like never before. 

2.

The messenger of God who we might call Mal-a-key, which is literally God’s Hebrew word for “my messenger,” tells us this day will be very divisive. 

For those who refuse to repent or believe in Jesus, it will be a day of destruction. 

For those who confess with their mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in their heart that God raised him from the dead, it will be a day of redemption. 

For behold, the day is coming ... burning like an oven (or a furnace), when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble (or chaff). The coming day will set them ablaze, says the LORD of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. 

But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You will go out leaping like calves from the stall. And you will tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act, says the LORD of hosts.


You know ... the sun is a raging inferno that would incinerate us if we were not in the proper relationship to it. The temperature at the core of the sun is about 27 million degrees Fahrenheit. Yet here on earth, 92,955,807.3 miles away, God has placed us in perfect relationship to the heat the Sun generates. Here, we are able to thrive. In fact, here without the heat and light of the sun we would freeze to death.

To be in the proper place in relationship to the Lord, we must be in the proper relationship of faith that lives in the forgiveness of Christ as a repentant sinner ... confessing our sin as the most HEINOUS sin before God ... confessing our sin as the ONLY EVIL AND WICKEDNESS that separates us from His love and places us in the wrath of His righteous anger. 

3.

Do you recognize this barrier in your life?

Do you recognize how distant you really are from God? Sin is the barrier between you and God. God is not the author of sin, we are. We erect all kinds of barriers, some more than others. As Luther would remind us, consider your place in life. Have you been disobedient, unfaithful, or lazy? Have you been hot-tempered, rude, or quarrelsome? Have you hurt someone by your words and deeds?

Do you recognize how you despise his word and sacrament, when we think that we can receive the forgiveness of sins too often? Do you pay only lip service to these words, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins (2:17)?

Do you recognize how you profane the Lord’s table with second-class offerings (1:7), how you give to the poor but don’t take care of your own (3:8-9)? 

Brothers and sisters in Christ, sin is destroying you. And it is heinous.


So hear the message of repentance from God’s messenger. 

Behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble, because sin cannot stand the heat of God’s wrath. Behold, I will send the prophet Elijah  before the great and awesome day of the Lord and he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers.


Sadly, much of Christianity would have you believe that once you have heard the good news and accepted Jesus as your personal savior who lives in your heart, sin is no longer an issue for you. God’s messenger Malachi says that’s not true. 

Sadly, much of Christianity would have you believe that church is more about entertainment and making me feel good ... as we seek to sing only the songs that delight our heart. God’s messenger Malachi says beware.

4.

This precisely why we have Advent ... because the sinner in us always gravitates to our earthly ways ... to the tangible ... to the things we can see, taste, touch, and feel. 

So behold, the day is coming. Therefore watch yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life. ... And remember the Torah of my servant Moses, the statutes and rules that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel. 

Then in the name of Jesus, repent every one of you! 

5.

For those of you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings.

We take this oracle of God’s messenger to be fulfilled in our Lord Jesus Christ, who we identify as the sun of righteousness. Not only is he God’s only son, the son of righteousness, he is the light of the world. Not only has the bright beams of his gospel shone forth, he is risen. And now he is speaking to you who have faith in him. Do you hear the Lord’s voice now?

In contrast to the burning fire of judgment, the heat of the sun of righteousness warms the believer with the healing message of God’s righteousness in Christ. God has called you here to hear this message. Those whom he called he also justified. And those whom he justified, he will also glorify. 

This is God’s work for you in Christ. 


In Christ, we can see clearly now all the living proof we need of how God has come to us to overcame sin, death, and the devil for us. 

Though evil tried to have its day when evil men nailed our Lord Jesus to the cross, God has raised him from the dead so that in him we will have the living hope of eternal days with him. Then you will go leaping like calves from the stall. 

This is the image of joy we all experience every Lord’s day when we thank the Lord and sing his praise and tell everyone what he has done. You have been telling everyone, haven’t you? 


For those of us who have faith in Christ, the coming day will be a day of salvation because we will behold the glory of the Lord now in a very different way ... in the light of the sun of righteousness. As Paul writes today ...

For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God’s truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles ... that is you ...  might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written. Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles and sing your name. And again it is said, Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people. And again, Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples extol him. 

6.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, what is more uplifting and more glorious than to be rescued from the depths of darkness and lifted up into the very presence of the Light of the World? 

What is more joyful than being reminded that we have eternal life today ... all on account of Christ who is now leading us in our exodus from sin and death through the waters of baptism to the living bread and cup of salvation?

What is more uplifting and more glorious than joining the angels and archangels and all the company of heaven as we laud and magnify his glorious name in the feast of forgiveness, where the Lord nourishes us with his life-giving body and blood? 

Behold, we this is the day. 


Thank God for Advent ... 

It is why Jesus came. 

It is why he continues to come. 

It is why he is still to come.

That is what a Savior does. 

That is what our Savior does. 

That is what The Savior does.


And he did it all for you. Thank God ...

HE COMES FOR YOU ... IT'S WHAT HE DOES!

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.

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