Deo Gloria                                                                                                  November 13, 2022

Sermon for November 13, 2022

Pastor Martin Bentz

 

Text: Malachi 4:1-6

Theme: The Day of the LORD is Coming!

• A day of fire and destruction for the wicked
• A day of healing and joy for God’s people
• A day for which we urgently need to prepare

 

The warnings were everywhere—on the T.V., on the radio, on social media.  Police were going up and down every street in every neighborhood, warning people of the danger, urging them to evacuate while there still was time to do so.  Hurricane Ian was coming and it had its sights set on the southwest coast of Florida, especially places like Fort Myers Beach.  Many took the warnings to heart.  They boarded up their homes and businesses as best they could.  They packed whatever they could into their vehicles and headed inland where they would be safer from the fury of the storm.  Others chose to stay behind and ride it out.  In some cases it turned out to be a foolish and tragic decision, one that cost them their lives.

This morning we see a warning message flashing in the verses of text, a message warning us not that a hurricane is coming, but that the day of the LORD is coming.  It’s a message we would be foolish to ignore, for as Malachi makes clear in these verses, it will be a day of fire and destruction for the wicked, a day of healing and joy for God’s people, and therefore a day for which we urgently need to prepare.

 

The prophet Malachi lived about 400 years before Jesus.  He was the last of the Old Testament prophets, the last spokesman sent by God before the coming of the Savior himself.  So for 400 years this was the message God wanted his people to remember.  For 400 years this is the message God wanted his people to focus on and cling to as they waited for the coming of the promised Savior.  It was a message intended to prepare them not only for the coming of LORD as their Savior, but also to prepare them for his coming on the Last Day.  Let’s listen again to his message.  (Read text.)

There are several things that jump out at us as we listen to his words, several things Malachi emphasized about the coming day of the LORD.  One is that it will a dreadful day for the wicked, a day of fire and destruction.  “’Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace.  All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and that day that is coming will set them on fire,’ says the LORD Almighty,”(v. 1).  I guess we need to change that picture a bit.  Instead of a hurricane that is coming, it’s a firestorm, a horrific and devastating firestorm like the terrible wildfires that devastated parts of California a couple of years ago, consuming millions of acres of forest, destroying thousands of homes and in some cases wiping out entire towns.  The difference is that the fuel for this firestorm will not be trees and underbrush and houses.  It will be people, specifically the arrogant and those who do evil.  They will be the fuel for the fire.  They will be set on fire and reduced to ashes.  It doesn’t matter how strong they were.  It doesn’t matter how smart they were.  It doesn’t matter if they were rich and famous or poor and unknown.  They will be set on fire and burned to a crisp, with nothing left—not a root or a branch.

Sometimes that happens in a wildfire.  Sometimes the bottom part of a tree might be burnt but the top part might be spared.  Or maybe the entire tree above ground is burnt but the roots below are spared.  And as the years go by, some shoots spring up from the roots and the tree begins to regrow.  That will not be the case for the arrogant and the evildoers in this firestorm.  Nothing of them will be spared; and there will be no growing back in the future.  They will be completely destroyed.

But please don’t take that in the wrong way.  Their total destruction does not mean total annihilation.  It doesn’t mean they will cease to exist.  Unfortunately, Scripture teaches that their destruction is an ongoing and endless destruction, that their being consumed by fire is an endless burning, that they will suffer in the fires of hell forever.  Remember what Paul said in our Epistle lesson from 2 Thessalonians ch. 1?  “They will be punished with an everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord”(v. 9).  Or remember the story Jesus told about the rich man and Lazarus, where the rich man was in ongoing pain and suffering in the fires of hell?  The day of the LORD is coming, and it will be a dreadful day for the wicked, an awful day, a day of fire, a day of death and destruction that will never end.  Whatever you do, don’t ignore Malachi’s words of warning!

 

If I’m honest, there’s part of me that trembles at Malachi’s words, part of me that shakes in my shoes, because I recognize that I have been arrogant at times, times I was boastful and proud, times all I cared about or thought about was me and what I wanted.  I also recognize that I have done evil at times.  I have broken God’s commands and done what is evil in his sight.  So there’s part of me that recognizes that I should be stubble for the fire, that I should be set on fire in that firestorm on the Last Day and reduced to nothing but ashes.  But by the grace of God I won’t be, and you won’t either.  Why?  Because we revere his name.  You see, the name of the Lord means something to us.  We don’t despise his name or scoff at his name or want nothing to do with him.  We love his name.  We praise his name.  We trust in his name, because he is our refuge and strength, our Mighty Fortress, our helper in every time of trouble.  He is our gracious God and Savior, the one who came to rescue us from death and destruction and give us life, unending life.  And the Lord does not turn his back on those who trust in him, on those who take refuge in him.  So you and I—we don’t have to be afraid of the coming day of the LORD—just the opposite.  We can actually look forward to that day because for us it will be a day of healing and joy.

“But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings.  And you will go out and leap like calves released from the stall”(v. 2).  As God’s people, we have seen the light.  The light of Jesus Christ has shined in our hearts and our lives.  We have come to know him as our gracious Lord and Savior.  And we’ve been anxiously waiting for his return.  We have seen the light on the horizon and have been waiting for the sun to rise in all its glory and brilliance.  And when it does, when Jesus, the Son, rises in all his glory on the Last Day, there will be healing in his wings—healing for our sick and sin-infested bodies, healing for our crippled hands and feet, healing for our loss of hearing and eyesight, healing for our diminished strength and our failing memories; and most of all healing for our hearts.  Our heartaches, our sorrows, our griefs, our tears, our regrets, our depression, our guilt—it will all be taken away.  And in its place there will be healing, perfect healing for our bodies, perfect healing for our minds, perfect healing for our hearts.  We will be better than we ever were because Jesus will heal us and make us perfectly whole.  Can you imagine how excited we will be?  Can you imagine the feeling of joy, the overwhelming joy?

God gives us a little glimpse in these verses.  He says we will be like calves released from the stall.  Have you ever seen calves released from the stall in the spring time?  After being cooped up in the barn all winter long, when the farmer opens the door and lets them run free again in the pasture, they go bananas.  They run around the pasture as fast as they can, from one side to the other.  They jump and kick their back legs up in the air.  They’re just so excited to be outside again, so excited that they aren’t confined to the cramped quarters of the musty, old barn, that they can hardly contain themselves.

That’s what we be like on the Last Day, on the day of the LORD.  We will be so glad not to have to walk with a cane or walker anymore.  We will be so glad not to have to wear a hearing aid anymore.  We will be so glad not to have arthritis in our hands or our joints anymore.  We will be so glad that we can think clearly again and not forgot what we were trying to say.  We will be so glad to be free from pain and free from suffering and have our health restored, that we won’t be able to contain ourselves.  We’ll run and jump and leap for joy like a bunch of young calves.  Yes, the message is flashing on the screen of our text: the day of the LORD is coming, but don’t be afraid.  Look forward to that day.  Find great comfort in that day, because it will be a day of healing and joy for you.

 

But don’t forget to prepare for that day either.  People prepared for Hurricane Ian by boarding up the windows of their houses and buying extra supplies of food and water.  They prepared by packing up their vehicles and taking their family many miles inland where they would be much safer.  God wants us to be ready for the coming day of the LORD so we too will be safe.  And he tells us how to prepare in the last three verses:

Remember the law of my servant Moses, the decrees and laws I gave him at Horeb for all Israel.

See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes.  He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse.(vv. 4-6)

When we remember the law of Moses and the commands God gave him, we see our sins, don’t we?  We see how often we have broken God’s commands and done what is wrong in our sight; and it leads us to repent, to confess our sins to God and ask for his forgiveness.  But that isn’t all we see.  The law of Moses, remember, refers to the first 5 books of the Bible.  Those books contain numerous prophecies about the coming Savior; the Savior who was promised to Adam and Eve; the Savior who was promised to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob; the Savior who was promised to Moses and to the people of Israel; the one who would deliver them from slavery to sin and death and lead them to the promised land of heaven.  So when we remember the law of Moses, it prepares our hearts for the coming of the Lord on the Last Day by leading us to humbly repent of our sins and to look forward to the coming of our Savior.

The same is true when we listen to the prophet Elijah.  The prophet Elijah mentioned here is not the prophet Elijah from the Old Testament, but rather someone who would come in the spirit and power of Elijah, someone who would prepare God’s people for the coming of the LORD.  Yes, by now you may have guessed that this Elijah was John the Baptist.  And Jesus himself confirmed that for us in Matthew ch. 17.  So how did John the Baptist prepare people for the coming of the Lord?  By preaching repentance, by calling people to repent of their sins and then pointing to Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

So what sins should we repent of?  All of them, all the sins we commit on a daily basis.  But it’s interesting that here God says John would turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers.  As the world draws to a close, Jesus said that the love of most would grow cold.  And that includes the love among family members.  He said that children would turn against their parents and that parents would turn against their children.  We see plenty of that now days, don’t we, parents who neglect and abuse their children, children who dishonor and disobey their parents and often neglect them too, especially when they get older?  And perhaps the greatest and most serious neglect of all is spiritual.  Parents neglect their children by failing to take care of their most important need: their need for Jesus and his love and forgiveness, their need for faithful instruction in God’s Word.  May God have mercy on us and forgive us for such sins!  May he forgive us as parents for our shameful neglect of our children!  And may he forgive children for their shameful neglect and disrespect toward their parents!

How thankful we can be for Jesus, the one who came to be the Lamb of God and take away all our sins, the one who gave his life on Calvary’s cross to rescue us from sin and death so that we might not be consumed by fire on the day of the LORD but might rejoice in the sun of righteousness and the healing that he brings us.  Out of thanks for your Savior be good and godly parents, mom and dad.  Show your children the love of your Savior in your words and actions.  Teach them about your Savior and his love at home and be sure to bring them to church, where they can have that faith reinforced and strengthened.  And children, be loving and respectful to your parents too.  Show them the love of your Savior in your words and actions, in your love and your respect.  Together let’s do everything we can as families, and as a church family, to encourage one another in our faith and to keep our eyes on Jesus, so that we might always be prepared for his coming, because make no mistake: The warning message is flashing.  The day of the LORD is coming!  Amen.