Biblical Text: Malachi 3:13-16 and 4:1-2 (KJV)
“Your words have been stout against me, saith the Lord. Yet ye say, What have we spoken so much against thee? Ye have said, It is vain to serve God: and what profit is it that we have kept his ordinance, and that we have walked mournfully before the Lord of hosts? And now we call the proud happy; yea, they that work wickedness are set up; yea, they that tempt God are even delivered. Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another: and the Lord hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon his name.”
Malachi 4:1-2 (KJV)
“For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. 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.”
There is a familiar hymn written by W. B. Stevens, which we all know. The first verse goes like this:
Tempted and tried we’re oft made to wonder,
Why it should be thus, all the day long;
While there are others living about us,
Never molested, though in the wrong.
Farther along, we’ll know all about it,
Farther along, we’ll understand why;
Cheer up, my brother, live in the sunshine,
We’ll understand it all, by and by.
This hymn was a favorite among our fore-parents who suffered so much at the hand of slavery and Jim Crow-ism. But there is even still today no one who can claim they haven’t wondered, at one time or another, why the wicked seem to prosper while the Saints of God suffer. Some have even become so discouraged that they have asked, “What’s the use of religion? Does it make any difference to a man’s condition?”
It’s man’s age-old question…a question that can be traced back to the days of the Israelites who returned from exile in Babylon. Even they had not had the prosperity they had hoped for. So many of them, even those who had served God faithfully, began to let doubts darken their trust as they listened to the whispers of their own carnal hearts, reinforced by the mutterings of others. Here they had been keeping God’s laws, and going in black garments “before the Lord” in demonstration of penitence, and no good had come to them. Yet those with arrogant neglect for the commandments of God seemed to prosper. The Israelites cried, “They that work wickedness are built up!” Sinful lives appeared to have a firm foundation and rise up like palaces, while the lives of the righteous were like huts. Goodness seemed to spell ruin.
There is something wrong with a religion that promises a reward system for external acts of devotion. It is wrong to hinge the duty of our worship on the prosperity that results from it. It is wrong to seek profit for keeping God’s laws. That kind of religion is shallow and selfish, and displays the clear marks of a Pharisaic germ in it. It is wrong to yield to the doubts that an unequal distribution of worldly possessions stirs in our hearts.
But these doubts pressed certain upon the circumstances of Malachi’s time, as they still do today. We have all had to face those times when our hearts ached with sorrow and we found ourselves pondering the perplexities of this confused world. We look around, and like the psalmist, see ‘the prosperity of the wicked,’ and like him, we have to confess that our ‘steps have well-nigh slipped” at the sight of such disparity. That age-old question is always being raised, “Does God know my grief?”
The mystery of suffering and its distribution…the connection between righteousness and well being have always been formidable difficulties for those who believe, as they should, in an all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful God.
But Malachi thinks differently. He says that to yield to the force of this calamity, and still worse, to cause it to cast your religion aside, is not only folly, but also sin.
Look at the contrast between the bold words of the doubters and the conversation of the godly. The doubters said, It is vain to serve God. But the faithful took another direction. Verse 16 says, “Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another.” The faithful nourished their faith in the midst of tribulation by sharing their faith with the like-minded. The more the truths we believe are contradicted by others, the more we should commune with fellow-believers. When someone tries to rob your treasure, you hold it closer to you. And when you are surrounded by a sea of potent voices that condemn Almighty God, that’s the time for your BOLD affirmation of faith. Testify with fervor…and don’t fret about those who will not hear... GOD HEARS! Faithful words may sometimes seem lost, but be assured that every word we speak on His behalf, and every faithful act we commit for His cause are written in His memory, and will one day be recompensed.
Malachi answers the doubters with prophecy of the future. That’s what a prophet does. He calls a new world into existence to redress the balance of the old. Christianity has taught us many other ways of confronting doubters, but the best argument in any storm is the unconquerable assurance that a day is coming when the righteous will be vindicated, and the eternal difference between good and evil will be manifested in the fates of all men.
The Prophet Malachi is declaring what will be FACT one day…but he knows not when. He probably never asked himself WHEN the Lord would appear, but THIS he knew – that God was righteous, and someday His character would settle destiny and prove that it IS good to BE good.
The promise of God lay at the foundation of Israel’s national existence. God declared them to be a ‘peculiar treasure unto Me above all people’. Malachi was looking forward to the day when God will show by His acts just how precious the righteous are in His sight. Not all of Israel would be heirs to the promise – just those who are precious in His sight. “They are not all Israel, which are of Israel!”
Malachi speaks still – to those of us who remain faithful to the end. He bids us to look for the fulfillment of every promise of God – to forward to the great day of the Lord, which lies still ahead, when the gulf between the righteous and the wicked shall not just be visible, but WIDE and PROFOUND. There have been many days in history, past and present, when God’s intervention has proven that He does judge this earth, but the day of days is yet to come!
There is no grander vision of judgment day than Malachi’s recorded description. It’s a lurid account, with fierce flames that consumes the wicked and turn them to stubble before they fall in gray ashes, while the faithful watch like cattle dancing in the glee of its beaming light. But while we admire the poetry of its grand form and recognize that this is an oracle of God to be admired, it would be wise for each of us to pause and consider whether that day will be for each of us a furnace to destroy or a sun to cheer and enlighten.
Will you be found under His healing wing, or will you be found in the fire of judgment? God has done all that He can do to keep us from being consumed by the fire of that day. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the completion of His promise to deliver us from evil. But another day is coming – the Day of the Lord – and it will come as a furnace or as sunshine. Then all the world will be able to discern between the wicked and the righteous – ‘between him that serveth God, and him that serveth Him not.” On that day, the faithful will exchange there:
Earthly toils for heavenly thrills,
Earthly discord for heavenly harmony,
Earthly problems for heavenly peace,
Earthly labors for heavenly pleasures,
Earthly suffering for heavenly safety,
Earthly pain for heavenly perfection,
And earthly tribulation for heavenly jubilation!
