May 12, 2024

Malachi 4:4-6: Turning Hearts

Preacher: Jeremy Caskey Series: Malachi Topic: Default Scripture: Malachi 4:4–6

Malachi 4:4-6: Turning Hearts

Our Scripture reading this morning comes from Malachi 4:4-6. It says,

4 “Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and rules that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel. 5 “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. 6 And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.”

May God bless the reading of his Word.

A while back I attended a work luncheon, at which we played a little thought provoking get-to-know-you game, asking and answering various questions.  And the question came up, “If you could cure one disease what would it be?”  And I answered almost without thinking.  I mean I thought I had the coup de grâce of all answers, settling that question once and for all.  “Cancer,” I said.  End of story.  Drop the mike.  Right?  But then someone more thoughtful spoke up and said that they would cure dementia.  For—she surmised—there’s nothing perhaps more hellish than to forget and be forgotten.  And I thought, “Perhaps she’s right.”  Who wants to forget or be forgotten? 

We see the consequences of forgetfulness repeatedly condemned in scripture, particularly when it comes to humanity’s inclination to forget God.  For example, throughout Jeremiah, as God prepared to judge the nation of Israel for its idolatry, for its abandonment, God repeatedly calls to mind the forgetful neglect of God’s people: my people have forgotten me days without number in 2:32, they have forgotten the Lord their God in 3:21, you have forgotten me and trusted in lies in 13:25, my people have forgotten me; they make offerings to false gods; they made them stumble in their ways in 18:15.  And this is just a sampling from one book of the manifest ways in which God’s people forget God: trusting in lies, paying heed to idols, and thereby stumbling as a result.  And though God will not forget his people, we often forget him.  Because of this spiritual amnesia, or God-forgetting dementia, God, throughout scripture, repeatedly calls his people to remembrance.  Today’s text proves no different.  As Old Testament scripture comes to an end, followed by 400 years of silence from God, God would have his people remember. 

Which brings us to the main idea of our text: Remember the word of God and behold his sign of coming deliverance, so that your heart would be turned to God and one another, or be destroyed.

Back in ch1, vv1-5, God reminded his people that he had sovereignly elected them to be his.  They had returned from Persian exile about 100 years before, still under Persian rule, with their land reduced to a mere fraction of its former glory.  As a result, they had forgotten God’s love, because their sinfulness had caused them to experience God’s judgment.  So, God called them in vv6-14 of ch1 to give him their best, for he is worthy.  Instead, they brought God their worst, offering sacrifices that were blind, lame, and sick.  And so, God cursed the priests in ch2, vv1-9 for allowing this, chastising them for their failure to give honor to God by guarding knowledge and seeking his instruction.  And as the priests had gone, so had gone the people.  One unfaithfulness led to another.  Which led to a practical outworking of unfaithfulness to God in ch 2, vv10-16, manifested in unfaithfulness in marriage.  Now the inevitability of this happening was no wonder, for God’s messengers had failed to honor God and lead the people in the way they should go.  So, God promised in ch 2, v17 through ch 3, v5 to send his own messenger to both purify his people through trial and vindicate his people through judgment of sinfulness.  Then in ch 3, vv6-12, God addressed another practical outworking of unfaithfulness.  Not only had they demonstrated unfaithfulness in what they offered God, and how they treated their marriages, but also in terms of how they both viewed and used their finances.  So, he cursed the self-indulgence of his people, but blessed those who faithfully used the resources entrusted to them in ways that honored him.  Then in ch 3, vv13-18, we saw where all this unfaithfulness ultimately originated: in a lack of fear, or reverence, for God.  Which resulted in judgment in ch 4, vv1-3, for those who did not fear—or reverence—God, but vindication for those who did.  Which brings us to our passage today, with two important exhortations at the book’s end—at the Old Testament’s end; two important exhortations followed by 400 years of silence.

I. Remember the Word of God, 4

“Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and rules that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel.”  Now it would seem that it would go without saying that God’s people need to remember God’s word.  But God called Malachi to prophesy in the first place precisely because they had forgotten God’s word.  Malachi speaks here of remembrance through repetition, not calling to mind some scrap of scripture you read a week ago, hoping it will somehow spiritually sustain you, but of a constant and consistent quest for daily bread.  Repeatedly going back to the word.  That’s how we remember.  We consume spiritual food with the same regularity that we consume physical food.  Have any of us ever gone a whole week on one meal?  Probably not.  Or at least, probably not often.  But do we go a whole week without the spiritually nourishing food of God’s word, spiritually starving from Sunday to Sunday waiting for others to feed us?  That can only lead to spiritual malnourishment, anxiety, depression, temptation, and a host of other challenges.  That can only lead to forgetfulness of God’s word and God’s ways.  

They had forgotten God’s law, laid down at Horeb, or Mount Sinai, during Israel’s time in the wilderness with Moses.  If you recall, it did not take long after Moses disappeared onto the mountain to receive the law for the Israelites to forget who brought them out of Egypt and why he brought them out.  Now to forget is to willfully neglect obedience to God’s word.  It’s a failure of both repetition and reflection.  What do I mean by that? —Repetition we have already explained: regular consumption. —Reflection means thinking on it and then doing what it says.  Now we forget unimportant things all the time.  It’s inevitable.  But we must never forget something so vital and life giving.  In fact, we should repeatedly reflect upon it.  Meaning, we consistently and continuously draw upon it.  

In the Air Force our Aircraft Maintainers—among others—follow a rulebook called a T.O., or technical order, to do their jobs: a set of clear and concise instructions for the safe and effective operation and maintenance of the system they work on.  As they do their job, law requires they keep this T.O. open, following it to the letter without deviation.  And should they fail to follow the T.O. and something bad happened, they would be liable.  In much the same way, God’s people have been called to follow the “T.O.” of God’s word, to remember it.  That requires an open book, an open Bible, that we draw upon continuously and consistently, just like those Maintainers who keep an open book to do their job.But in Malachi’s day, they had forgotten God’s word and thereby treated God’s word as trivial and nonessential.  Now I would venture to guess that none of us would be so bold as to suggest that God’s word is trivial.  Yet, we treat God’s word as nonessential when we treat it as an optional bonus we can occasionally consult or read, when we have the time.  And too often that time does not come as often as it should.  Days turn into weeks, and weeks into months, and we have hidden practically everything else in our hearts but God’s word.  We value the fallible words of a friend or family member or a fallible book, more than the infallibility of God’s word.  We value the time we take to endlessly scroll or watch something, more than we do the time in God’s word. We value the coping mechanisms of substances or leisure activities to give us that “needed” reprieve more than we value the life-giving sustenance of God’s word.

We know it should be important, but we have treated so many other things as more important, that we thereby trivialize God’s word.  We forget God’s word.  The truth be told, we almost always have time for what we need.  How many meals, how many showers have we skipped simply because we didn’t have the time.  One or two, maybe, if any, then we make the time, because if we don’t, we’re going to regret it sooner or later.  Or others will, if we neglect that shower.  Whether we feel our neglect for God’s word or not, spiritual malnourishment leads to spiritual lifelessness.  We become like what we worship as we read in Psalm 115: spiritually deaf, spiritually dumb, and spiritually blind.  So, I would encourage you, set a time each day, read a chapter to finish the Bible in 3 years, or read 3 chapters to finish the Bible in 1 year.  You cannot wrong if you prioritize this.  We must Remember the Word of God in v4.  Which leads us to the second exhortation…

II. Behold the Sign of Deliverance, 5-6

A. What sign God sends, 5

“Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes.”  Now if you recall in 1 Kings, Elijah had come to Israel during the reign of the wicked king, Ahab.  He came abruptly and unannounced, bringing a word of judgment against Ahab and his people for abandoning the commandments of the LORD, instead following the idolatrous Baal cult.  Elijah came in power as the first in a series of Old Testament prophets, calling the nation to repentance, culminating in the ministry of John the Baptist, the last of the prophets.  Now prophets functioned both as foretellers, revealing God’s word about the future, and forthtellers, sharing God’s word about the present.  In this case, Malachi foretells of what will happen in his future, but our past.  But also, our future.  I will explain what I mean by that in a moment when I talk about prophetic foreshortening.  In the meantime, a type of Elijah has come again—namely, John the Baptist—and will come again once more at the end of days, abruptly and unannounced, bringing a word of judgment before the great and awesome day of the LORD.  In Malachi 3:1, Malachi had prophesied that God would send his messenger to prepare the way before him.  We had identified that individual as John the Baptist.  Here we see him yet again.  How do we know this? —Well, the next verse will clue us in.  

But before we get to that, let me say something about an idea we see here in this text, the idea of prophetic foreshortening.  The theologian Anthony Hoekema defines prophetic foreshortening as events far removed in time and events in the near future, spoken of as if they were very close together.  In other words, fulfillment of prophecy might come in installments: part of the prophecy being fulfilled at one time, and the other part being fulfilled at another much later time.  Let me illustrate.  Imagine looking out across the distance towards two mountain peaks.  From our vantage point they might appear right next to each other.  But as we get closer, we might find a great valley in between the two, with those two peaks separated by a large distance.  From our original position, we could see the peaks, but not the valleys.  In the same way, the prophets do not see the great valleys of time-difference between one event, or one peak, and another.  

For instance, in Isaiah 61:1-2, Isaiah describes events that happen in the first coming of Christ and in the second coming of Christ, without differentiating them happening at different times.  In his first coming, Jesus brings good news to the poor, binds up the brokenhearted, and proclaims liberty to the captives.  Jesus even tells us he fulfills this prophecy from Isaiah in his first coming in Luke 7:22.  But, Jesus makes no mention of his day of vengeance spoken of in that same passage in Isaiah until he prophesies later of his second coming.  Well, here we see this same device in Malachi where some of the prophecy finds fulfillment in John the Baptist’s first appearance, while other parts of the prophecy will not find fulfillment until a future date, the great and awesome day of the Lord, prophesied in Revelation.  Very few people see this as already fulfilled.  Most of us, no matter how we interpret prophecy, await this final fulfillment.  Until that day…

B. What this sign accomplishes, 6a

And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers.”  I can hear it now.  Some of you will tell your friends that you heard a sermon about fathers on Mother’s Day.  What a rip off, right?  But apparently, moms don’t need what dads do.  Dads need all the help we can get.  And God readily gives it.  In Luke 1:17, Gabriel foretells of John the Baptist’s birth to his father, Zechariah, saying, “And he will go before him”—meaning, John the Baptist will go before the Messiah, Jesus—“in the spirit and power of Elijah”—and listen to this—“to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children.”  Same phrase.  Jesus, in fact, describes John the Baptist as the Elijah who was to come in Matthew 11:14.  Again, he says, “Elijah does come, and he will restore all things…the disciples understood that he was speaking to them of John the Baptist” in Matthew 17:11-13. 

And the sign of John’s coming is that he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers.”  John the Baptist would inaugurate a new age of reconciliation, both to God and to one another.  What a beautiful and unexpected ending to the Old Testament, an ending, mind you, followed by 400 years of silence from God.  He calls us to remember his word; and if we truly want to see that fulfilled, we need to remember the word made flesh, Jesus himself—to be reconciled to him.  And he calls us to be reconciled to one another.  In essence, Malachi ends the Old Testament with the first and greatest commandment, and the second like it: loving God and loving neighbor, the closest neighbor: parents and children.

In Malachi’s day, a day characterized by priestly unfaithfulness in ch2, vv1-9, which led to marital unfaithfulness in ch 2, vv10-16, a day would come when a restored and right relationship with God would lead to a restored and right relationship with one another, particularly in the family.  And so, it’s fitting that Malachi ends here.  God will not only restore our relationship with him.  He will not only send Christ to pay for our sins, because we—like Israel—have repeatedly forgotten God, nor proved in any way obedient to God’s word.  But he will also restore our earthly relationships.  We need this so desperately.  How often do we hear fathers calling the mothers to abort the children they don’t want?  How often do we hear the horrible statistics of the negative consequences more prevalent in fatherless homes?  71 percent of all high school dropouts, 85 percent of all youth in prison, and 90 percent of all homeless and runaway children come from fatherless homes.  We live in an age between the already and the not yet.  By God’s grace we can already experience this reconciliation to one another.  But we do not yet see it perfectly.  

In our sin, we have not completely submitted ourselves to the sort of reconciliation of hearts turned to God and one another.  Now we could easily look outside the church and find this, but we should first look at our own hearts here.  I need God to turn my own heart towards my children with more regularity and more unmistakability than I would care to admit.  We seek our own will, at both our destruction and the destruction of others.  Because of priestly unfaithfulness, which led to marital unfaithfulness, we see selfishness run rampant.  And who does this effect more than anyone? —The children.  In their book, Whatever Happened to the Human Race? Francis Schaeffer and Surgeon General C. Everett Koop said, “It is children who have suffered the most from dehumanization.”  The poor choices of adults hurt children more than they hurt the adults.  Our sin towards God leads to sin towards our spouse—or our spouse’s sin towards us—which leads to sin towards children, which can result in children’s hearts turned away from parents, and perhaps, even God.  

We take a road already fraught with trial and difficulty—namely childhood and adolescence or the teenage years—and further imperil it by giving up on the most surefire means of these children’s success: namely, a stable home life.  Or, perhaps we do not go so far as to end our marriages, but we ignore, abuse, or disdain one another, breeding resentment, rebellion, and instability, resulting in hearts turned away.  Statistical data suggests as much.  I can quote you page after page of where broken relationships lead.  In fact, I already have, briefly.  But let me just say this much: two of the best things we can provide our children to mitigate a heart turned away from God and from us is (1) our right relationship with God, and (2) our right relationship with our spouse.  Do you want to know what moms might want most on Mother’s Day?  Not a fancy gift or an expensive lunch, so much as they want reconciled relationships in their families: hearts of fathers turned to children, and hearts of children turned to fathers.  Now, can we—in our own strength—give that to them?

Let us not forget the subject of this verse.  Who turns hearts?  Do fathers turn children’s hearts?  Do children turn father’s hearts?  As much as we love mothers, do they turn these hearts? —No.  Who turns hearts? —God does.  And what sign should we look for, that God will do this? —The coming of Elijah, or John the Baptist, according to this verse.  In other words, the one who came to proclaim the coming of Messiah.  John the Baptist serves as the signpost, pointing to a new reconciled reality, reconciliation with God which leads to reconciliation with one another.  1 John 1:6-7 says, “If we say we have fellowship with him”—with God—“while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light”—if we walk with God—“as he”—as God—“is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.”  We have to love those we can see—our children, our parents, our fellow human beings—in order to demonstrate that we love God whom we cannot see, 1 John 4:20.  

Do we stand willing to reconcile with others?  Do we harbor bitterness and unforgiveness for those who have mistreated us?  You see, God not only restores his relationship with us, but he gives us the willingness to restore our relationship with others.  Now that’s not to say that we will automatically be reconciled to that other person.  They get a vote too.  But we should be willing to reconcile with them if we have been reconciled to God.  If we’re not willing, the Bible questions whether we’ve been reconciled to God.  Please do not hear me suggest that sin does not have consequences.  If someone sinned against you grievously, or you have sinned against someone grievously, it may limit your relationship going forward.  But there should be reconciliation on some level.  Here in Malachi 4:6, we see the sign that God, through Christ, reconciles all things to himself, as Colossians 1:20 will later state.

C. What rejection of this sign destines, 6b

He will turn the hearts of both fathers and children, one to another.  But we ignore that reconciliation to our peril.  If we will not be reconciled to God and reconciled to one another, we should anticipate a fearful expectation of judgment.  He says, “lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.”  If we will not be reconciled to God, and in turn, be willing to be reconciled to one another, we can expect God’s judgment upon us.  A decree of utter destruction.  In 2 Timothy 3, Paul warns, “But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty.  For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive”—and get this—“disobedient to their parents,” and on and on, “having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power.”  No wonder our world is in the state it’s in. We have sown the wind, and we will reap the whirlwind.  Failure to remember God and his word ends in not only a broken relationship with him, but a broken relationship with others: loving self so much that we even reject the most basic human relationship, that of a parent to a child, or a child to a parent.

After living in Utah, I took a greater interest in understanding my Mormon neighbors.  Every year Mormons gather in Temple Square in Salt Lake City for General Conference.  And it just so happened that while I lived there, one of the Quorum of the Seventy, a high office-member in the LDS Priesthood, gave a talk on this very passage, of turning the hearts of fathers and children to one another.  And I can say that the speaker accurately identified the problem: the problem of rampant abortion of 2 million lives a year, the problem of ignoring elderly parents, leaving them to die alone in nursing homes, and the problem of a general attack on the family as some would redefine who and what constitutes a family.  But the speaker of this Mormon talk lost his way in accurately identifying the solution.  Rather than looking to God to find fulfillment, as this very verse advises, he quotes the Mormon scripture Doctrines and Covenants, Section 98, v16, saying that it’s our job to turn hearts.  Well, good luck with that.  

 For those who don’t know, Mormons believe in eternal families, that they will be together in eternity in the same family structure that they have here on earth.  And everywhere you go in Utah you can find decorative signs that say, “Families are Forever.”  But if you cover up the first part of that sign, it also says that “Lies are Forever.”  I happened to notice this very sign in a furniture store in Utah, with the first part of the word ‘families’ covered up.  Brothers and sisters, we get no indication from scripture that families are forever.  In fact, we get the opposite indication in Matthew 22:30.  But I can say with certainty that lies are forever.  For believing lies will cost us an eternity in hell.  And one of the greatest lies we could believe is that we can turn hearts.  We can no more turn the hearts of others than we can turn our own heart to God.  The Old Testament ends—not with a call to try harder—but to see our need for the coming Messiah, Jesus Christ.Malachi ends his prophecy—and thereby ends the Old Testament—by calling us to Remember the word of God and behold his sign of coming deliverance so that our hearts would be turned to God and one another, or be destroyed.  Let us never forget who made us, or why he made us.  God created us to worship him, to be in right relationship with him, and thereby be in right relationship with one another.  Outside of a work of God in our lives, outside of Christ’s grace and mercy, in paying for our sins by his atoning death on the cross, and his resurrection to new life, none of us has the ability in and of ourselves to be in right relationship with God, or in right relationship with one another.  But God, through Christ, reconciles all things to himself.  

To whom do you need to be reconciled? —God? —Your child or children? —Your parent?  First and foremost, we implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.  Remember him.  Behold him.  Be reconciled unto him.  And thereby be, reconciled to one another.  God loves to give good gifts to his children.  And I know that sometimes we can pray for years, and do everything in our power to be blameless, and God allows that relationship to go unreconciled for reasons we cannot control, usually because of sin on someone’s part, even if it’s not ours.  Won’t we trust him with them.  If he can overcome the world by dying a criminal’s death, he can reconcile all things to himself in his own good time.

other sermons in this series

Feb 18

2024

Malachi 4:1-3: Rising Sun

Preacher: Jeremy Caskey Scripture: Malachi 4:1–3 Series: Malachi

Aug 21

2023

Malachi 3:13-18: Fearing God

Preacher: Jeremy Caskey Scripture: Malachi 3:13–18 Series: Malachi

Jul 2

2023

Malachi 3:6-12: Robbing God

Preacher: Jeremy Caskey Scripture: Malachi 3:6–12 Series: Malachi