to the book of Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament. We're going to consider another Old Testament prophecy concerning the birth and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. This passage is obviously a reference to that, as the opening verses of chapter 3 point out. First of all, verses 1 and 2 of chapter 3, giving us the context that points to the coming of Christ, and then we'll continue from verse 16 of chapter 3 and read through the end of chapter 4. Malachi 3, verses 1 and 2, Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple. even the messenger of the covenant whom ye delight in. Behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts. But who may abide the day of his coming? And who shall stand when he appeareth? For he is like a refiner's fire, and like fuller's soap. 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. And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in the day when I make up my jewels, and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him. Then shall ye return and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God, and him that serveth him not. 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 Son of Righteousness arise with healing in his wings, and ye shall go forth and grow up as calves of the stall. And ye shall tread down the wicked, for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet. In the day that I shall do this, saith the Lord of hosts. Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments. Behold, I will send Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children. heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse. A verse that we consider our text is verse 2 of chapter 4. I'll read that again. But unto you that fear my name shall the son of righteousness arise with healing in his wings, and he shall go forth and grow up as calves of the stall. Prophecy of our text, beloved in Christ, came at the close of the Old Testament era, the Old Testament period, after Judah had returned from captivity. And during captivity, the nation of Judah, through the chastisement of God, had been cured, you could say, from the sin of idolatry that they had fallen into prior to the captivity, which led up to God bringing them from the land of Canaan and into Babylon. They had been cured of the sin of idolatry, but they had now fallen into other evils and other sins. The majority were openly defiant of God and of the ways of God. You read of that in chapter three. Verse seven, even from the days of your fathers ye have gone away from mine ordinances and have not kept them. And then again in verse eight, Will a man rob God? Yea, ye have robbed me. But wherein have we robbed thee? But ye say, wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings. And then again in verse 13, 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 that we have walked mournfully before the Lord of hosts. Other sins had become evident and were now the characteristics of the returned captives in the nation of Judah. And their worship of God was characterized by mere formal worship, not true, sincere, genuine worship of God from the heart. All this indicates that it was really hopeless for the Old Testament church, the Old Testament people of God. They kept returning to sin. and they needed to be saved and turned back to the Lord again and again and again. And it's in that context that the Lord directs the prophet Malachi, as the last prophet to speak in the Old Testament, to prophesy concerning him who would save them. who would turn them back to the Lord and who would be their righteousness before God. And that's our text. That would not be true. He would not be that for everyone. We see in verse 1 of chapter 4 that there would still be judgments of God that would come, judgments upon the wicked, judgments upon the ungodly, but for those who fear the Lord, There is this promise of the son of righteousness who would come. Those who fear the Lord are beautifully described in the previous chapter in verse 16. They that fear 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 thought upon his name. for them, for them. The promise was that a new day would dawn, and that day would dawn with the rising of the son of righteousness who would come for them, the faithful remnant, with healing in his wings. That's what they needed, and that's what gave them hope. as they struggled yet as returned captives with the sins of the nation of Judah and the sins in the church. One more thing, beloved, to help us in our understanding of this text, as well as our understanding of its fulfillment, is that we have to keep in mind that the Old Testament prophets, and that's true of this prophecy too, viewed the coming of Christ as one event. We know from our perspective that Christ came once and he is going to come also a second time at the end of time. But for the Old Testament prophets, when they spoke of the coming of Christ, they viewed His coming as being just one coming. They did not distinguish between His first and His second coming into this world. Therefore, our text is speaking, as we consider To what it refers, our text is speaking not only of Christ's birth, His first coming, but our text is also speaking of His return at the end of history. He came once, He will come again. And this is what the text is telling us, that both times, when He came through His birth And when He will come again at the end of the ages, both times He comes as the Son of Righteousness with healing in His wings. And that's what we consider then as we look at this text under the theme of the rising of the Son of Righteousness, noting the promised Son, His healing power, and the blessed result. As you know well, beloved, the Old Testament Scriptures are full of figurative language. And that's the case here in our text, too, in more ways than one. Not only in reference to the Son of Righteousness, but as we'll see later also, it's referenced to Carl. But as regards the sun, the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ is compared to the rising of the sun in the heavens. The sun, as you know, is the source of light in the creation. God has also put within the creation many other planets and many stars. Some of them emit light, but none of them is the light source in God's creation. God, on the fourth day of His week of creating the heavens and the earth and everything in them, created the sun, and created the sun to be the source and to be the center of light for the whole universe. And as the source of light, the sun is also the source of life. Without the sun, there is darkness. And when there is darkness, that darkness leads to death. You leave a plant in the darkness so that it never sees light, it will die. But in contrast, in the sunlight, plants and animals and man receive the heat of the sun, the energy of the sun, the warmth that the sun gives them, and that enables them to have life and to live and to flourish as creatures. We even know that from the rising of the sun every morning. The sun rises in the heavens, the sun shines, and it dispels the darkness, and it brings a creation that was sleeping during the night, brings that creation back to life again. The life of man, the life of animals, and the life of plants is rejuvenated by the rising of the sun, and it would be impossible for anyone to live without the sun. So with the rising of the sun every day, darkness is dispelled, the light and life is given to the creature and to the creation. A new day begins, new hope arises, new purposes will be pursued in that day. New activities will occupy us in the new day. And the gloom of night is replaced by the joy that we have at the coming of a new day. The rising of the sun is very significant for us. And when the text speaks of Christ and applies that name to him, then it's obvious that it is referring to him and to his coming into this world. And that's confirmed even by other scriptures, other texts in the Word of God that ascribe to the Lord Jesus Christ the things that our text ascribes to Him. Other passages in God's Word that refer to Christ as the sun and as light and as the life source for us. Isaiah chapter 9 verse 2, which we read last Sunday, mentions this, the people that walked in darkness have seen a great light. That light is Christ. John chapter 8 verse 12, our Lord Jesus Christ Himself spoke of Himself as the light. I am the light of the world. I am the light of life, He said. And then in the book of Revelation, in its description of the new heavens and the new earth, the Word of God there tells us that in heaven, there'll be no more need for the sun to provide light because Christ will be the source of light and life in the new creation. Christ is the promised son. one who arises to give light and to give life to us. That's even the reason why God created the sun on the fourth day. Not only that the sun might be the source of life and light for this creation, but that the Son in the creation, as God has set it in this creation, is to us that part of God's creation in addition to many other parts of God's creation that points us to Christ. Every time the Son rises in the morning, it depicts for us Christ coming into this world, Christ coming to shine light upon us and to give life to us. Every time the sun arises, then it is a picture to us of not only the first coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but also the second coming of Christ when He will arise as the son of righteousness. He comes to shine light into this dark world. He comes to give life to us who are by nature dead. He dispels the darkness of sin in which we live. He brings about the dawn of a new day for us. New hope, new activities, new joy. and new gladness of heart, because Christ is the Son, the Son of Righteousness, who arises upon us. Specifically, he is, as the text says, the Son of Righteousness. And that expression is an expression that teaches us that He is the source of righteousness. All righteousness is in Him, and He pours forth that righteousness into our darkness. And His righteousness, therefore, is the reason why when He arises, when He comes into this world, and when He shines upon us, even as He still does, He brings about a new day for us. Son of righteousness, that's His name here. And certainly a very appropriate name for Him. An appropriate name for him, first of all, because he is eternally the righteous one, the only one who is right with God. Never once did he do anything that was unrighteous. He always lived in harmony with the will of God, his Father. He was righteous from all eternity, he was righteous when he was born into this world, and he lived a perfectly righteous life in this world, the righteous one. But he is also the son of righteousness and therefore the source of our righteousness because he earned righteousness for us. That, of course, is the most significant thing. His rising as the son of righteousness, therefore, refers especially not to his birth, but to his death, to what he accomplished by his death and resurrection. And that doesn't mean that the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ was unimportant. It was very important. die on the cross and earn our righteousness at that time unless he first was born into this world as the Son of Righteousness, that is, the righteous God and the righteous Son of God. But it was through his death and through his resurrection from the dead that He earned and attained righteousness for us by being our representative before the justice of God, by being punished for our sins, by His perfect obedience when He was punished for our sins, and by all of that, earning righteousness for us. That's why he is the son of righteousness, the source of our righteousness. And that, as you know well, was the ultimate purpose of Christ coming into this world. His coming into this world was not merely to be born here. The birth was necessary but not on its own. It was necessary with a view to his death. He could not be the son of righteousness by his birth alone. He must die to atone for sin and to earn righteousness for us. And that's the ultimate reason why we are interested in and why we rejoice at the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. We rejoice not simply because he was born. We rejoice not simply because he came humble and lowly and was laid in a manger and we are as it were, emotionally stirred and affected by that humility, which so many are only interested in with regard to the coming of Christ. No, he was born to suffer and to die, and thus to earn our righteousness. That's whom God gave. That's whom God sent. the Son of Righteousness. The text tells us that when He comes, as He has done, and as He will again do, He comes with healing in His way. The wings referred to in the text are obviously a reference to the rays of the sun. The rays of the sun give strength. The rays of the sun have healing power. As many of us know from experience, The rays of the sun help to heal all kinds of sickness, skin allergies, wounds. The rays of the sun strengthen one's immune system, even help to cure us of the common cold. And this too, the rays of the sun can affect our mood. How gloomy we can become, even depressed we can become, when the sun does not shine for a good time, for a good while. But then it shines, and our mood is changed. We're lifted up again. Jesus Christ is the Son of Righteousness that gives such healing to His people, to the faithful, so that we receive from Him spiritual health and spiritual strength. And you understand that His healing And the need of that healing and the benefit of that healing stands against the background of the night of darkness. That was true for the Old Testament church and people of God. They knew about darkness. They certainly did. The Old Testament was dark for them, first of all, because the Old Testament times were the days of the types and the shadows of Christ. They could only look at pictures of their Savior and hope that one day He would come to fulfill those pictures. His coming was far, far away for them. That contributed to the darkness of night that they experienced. But that Old Testament time was dark and was as night for them also, and especially because of Sid. Christ had not come, and as the New Testament Scriptures point out, sin reigned and death reigned from Adam to Christ. because sin had not yet been paid for. Sin had not yet been punished. The sins of God's people had not yet been atoned for by the sacrifice to end all sacrifices. It was all in the future yet for that. And so it became evident at this time that even Judah, after God had severely chastened them for their sin of idolatry and now brings them back to the promised land, it's not long and they have returned to sin and are hopelessly ensnared by sin again, as we mentioned earlier. And that points to what is also true of us by nature. By nature. By nature we are ensnared in the dark night of sin, and we cry out with the Apostle Paul, the good that I would, I do not, and the evil that I would not, that I do, with regard to our nature And on account of our sinful nature, we stumble in the darkness of sin. We stagger and grope around in that darkness, falling from one terrible transgression to another as far as our natural man is concerned. Our sin is pictured here as something that needs I'll say it's a disease. Not a disease that can be cured by a little medicine, like a cough or a cold or something small along those lines. and not a disease that can be remedied through a quick outpatient surgery and then you can go home again and in short order, things are normal again. That is sometimes how some describe sin, wrongfully, and say when it comes to sin, man is just a little sick and he just needs a little medicine and then he'll be fine again. That's not the kind of sickness that sin is, but sin is, to use the words of the New Testament concerning someone who is dying of a sickness, this is a sickness that is unto death. Sin is a disease for which there is no earthly cure. The Belgian Confession describes sin that way, when it says to us that it is a disease and that it is a hereditary disease. Sin kills, and sin kills everyone. because it is hereditary. Parents pass on sin to their children, and so we are by nature in this darkness as well, in need of the sun of righteousness, by nature totally depraved, dead in trespasses and sin, those who are by nature spiritually blind and deaf and dumb and lame. covered with the disease of leprosy, dying, born with sin and dying because of sin. And there's nothing we ourselves can do about it. That's the background. The darkness, the night of sin. And it's against that background that Christ arises as the Son of Righteousness with healing in His wings. He came and He earned righteousness for us. And with that righteousness, He heals as He alone can do. And so He was born in this world. And he earned righteousness for us not by his birth, but he earned righteousness through his death and by his resurrection from the dead. By that death and by that resurrection, he banished forever for us all night of sin and death as far as our standing before the righteous judgment of God is concerned. He is our righteousness, the only way in which we can be rescued from darkness, the only one through whom there is eternal light and eternal life. And God sent Him to be the Son of Righteousness for us with healing in His wings for us. What is the blessed result? It is that we are given righteousness and that we are made righteous, right with God. The Lord Jesus Christ, you have to remember, as we mentioned and indicated earlier, did not arise only once as the Son of Righteousness. when he was born, nor did our Lord Jesus Christ simply arise twice as the Son of Righteousness by his birth and then through his death and resurrection when he earned righteousness for us, but he continues to arise for us as the Son of Righteousness. Just as the Son in the heavens every day arises to give us light and life, it is a picture to us of our Lord Jesus Christ giving us righteousness. He still arises now as the Son of righteousness. He arises as such in our hearts. He arises as the Son of Righteousness in our hearts and in our lives when He comes into everyone who is His, everyone who belongs to those who fear the Lord, everyone that is part of the faithful remnant of God in Christ and comes into them by His Spirit. arising in us through the Spirit to bring to every one of us personally the realities of the salvation that He has earned for us and that is promised us here in the text, specifically as that is all summarized in that one word, righteousness. Through the Spirit, we are given the righteousness of Christ. We are justified. And that means that God does not see us as we are in ourselves, and God does not treat us as we are in ourselves, but he sees and he treats us as we are in Christ, and as we are clothed in his righteousness, because all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags before God. There is none that doeth good, none ought what? There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. We need the righteousness of Christ, and that's what we receive by the Spirit, because Christ continues to arise for us as the son of righteousness. And by that Spirit, he not only bestows upon us that righteousness, but he assures us that we are righteous. The darkness of sin and of the guilt and shame of sin and of the punishment we deserve for our sin is removed in our hearts and in our souls and in our consciousness from us. That's the blessed result of him arising still now as the son of righteousness. And he replaces that darkness with light, the light of the favor of God upon us, shining on us now and shining upon us forever. Is there anything more precious than that light, which is ours because of Christ, the son of righteousness, who has arisen upon us with healing in His ways. But that's not all. He will arise one more time as the Son of Righteousness at the end of time. What the Old Testament prophets did in viewing the coming of Christ as one, really we should do by not separating those two comings of Christ, but viewing them really as inseparable as one. And that's what we look forward to. He will return. on the clouds of glory and once more as the sun of righteousness. We realize that we need that because we live yet in the midst of the darkness of this world, surrounded by temptation and surrounded by sin. We realize that we need that because the darkness still dwells within us. We're far from perfect. It's a daily reality. We look for the day, therefore, when he will return and he will drive away forever all darkness and all the night of sin. That's what he will do when he returns at the end of the ages. And then eternity will dawn, the new and the perfect day when we will forever be done with the darkness of this life and live forever in the light of the Son of God, who is the Son of righteousness for us. Note, therefore, this beloved in conclusion, another result mentioned in the text. You shall go forth and grow up as calves of the stall. That expression makes me think of the rejoicing, the gladness that you can observe when calves are newly released out into a field or a yard. Perhaps those calves have been tied up or penned up for a while. Maybe they've been kept indoors all winter. And then comes the springtime And you can release them out into a field or a yard and they spring about, those young calves. They frolic, they leap for joy at the freedom they have. The text says that's the joy, the righteousness of Christ gives to the children of God. A joy because we have freedom. We have freedom already now. We're no longer in bondage to sin. We're no longer controlled by sin. Through Christ and His righteousness, we have been free. Free. That's the joy that we have and that we ought to have on account of the coming of Christ into this world. because he has healed us, because he has delivered us from sin's dominion, because he has given us true freedom. And we rejoice like young, recently released calves who frolic with joy at the freedom that they've been given. another picture to us in this text. And so may we rejoice in that way, beloved, and be truly and sincerely glad for God's sending of the Son of Righteousness and for the fact that He is coming again as the Son of Righteousness. We live in the hope and we can live in the hope of His final return. Then a new day will dawn for us like never before, a new eternal day of eternal light and eternal life. And we made forever new and able then to rejoice fully and to rejoice like never before. Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly. Amen. Father in heaven, we thank Thee for Thy gift of Thy Son, who is the Son of righteousness, who has come with healing in His wing. which healing we have received and we experienced by faith in Him. We're thankful that He is coming again. We look forward to that day when our joy will be made full and we will be able to rejoice in the blessedness of the full experience of being right with thee, our God, through Christ thy Son. In Jesus' name, and for his sake we pray, Amen.