Our scripture this evening is Malachi chapter 4. Malachi chapter 4. We'll be focusing on verses 1 through 4, but I want to read the entire chapter. Malachi chapter 4, starting at verse 1. For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, and all the proud, yes, all who do wickedly will be stubble. And the day which is coming shall burn them up, says the Lord of hosts, that will leave them neither root nor branch. But to you who fear my name, the son of righteousness shall arise with healing in his wings, and you shall go out and grow fat like stall-fed calves. You shall trample the wicked, for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet. On the day that I do this, says the Lord of hosts, remember the law of Moses, my servant, which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel with the statutes and judgments. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. and he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse. Let us pray. O God of heaven, once again we have read your word, and we ask that as we approach it that we would live out what we have just sung. that you would indeed give us a heart that loves your will, and that you would free us from discontent and envy, but that we would be content in your word and all that you reveal in it. Lord, please guide us in your way of truth, and help us, O Lord, not to depart from it. It's in the name of Christ we ask. Amen. Disasters, we could say, strike out all sorts of different people in all different directions. They don't discriminate against who they hit. For example, the plague. Just think of yourself living in the medieval era, back in some town in England or some town in France. And the plague comes to your town. Now, does it matter who you are? Does it matter that you're a merchant or a magistrate or a farmer? Does it matter that you're young or old? Does it matter that you're a man or a woman? The answer is no. The plague hit everyone that it came into contact with. It didn't discriminate. It comes to all. Another event, a little more recent, in our own lifetime. Think back to December 27th, 2004. You just celebrated Christmas with your family a few days prior. And you wake up, and maybe you're still on spring break, and you wake up to the news that there was this dreadful tsunami. that hit Indonesia, various other islands in the Pacific, India, Sri Lanka, and even parts of Africa. And the news is that somewhere between 230,000 and 280,000 people are dead and more are missing. It's a dreadful event. I remember hearing a story about a family that was staying in Indonesia at this time for their Christmas vacation. They were there at the hotel, staying at their pool, just enjoying the day. And while they're sitting in the pool, they can hear the screams of people in the distance. They can't see what's happening. They can't see the wave coming, but they know something's up. And the screams get louder. And there's more and more screams coming forth. And then they see it. The tidal wave. The tsunami wave. It looks like if they move a bit in this direction that they might be able to get around it. There's no way they can outrun it. But perhaps if they can get around it, they'd be okay. And so this man and his wife and their children, they run as fast as they can to get to the side of it. The man and his children make it, but the tidal wave takes the woman. It broke a family. It splintered a family. In some ways, this is like the day that Malachi is talking about. The day of judgment is going to be a day that splits families. It's going to split churches in ways that we would not have expected. That's really what Malachi is trying to communicate to the church in his own day. You see, Malachi is writing to this mixed group of people. The church in his own day has mixed people. It has people that are believers and it has people that look like believers but aren't. Just like today. It hasn't changed. And so he writes about this coming day where the faithless, the wicked, the proud, will be judged and condemned. And he encourages the faithful. That's really what Malachi is doing here. He's warning the wicked, encouraging the faithful, and he's telling them also how to prepare for this day. That's really our three points. The day of the Lord comes for the faithless. The day of the Lord comes for the faithful. And until the day of the Lord comes, remember the word. So let's look again at our text, verse 1. The day of the Lord comes for the faithless. For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, and all the proud, yes, all who do wickedly will be stubble. And the day which is coming shall burn them up, says the Lord of hosts, that will leave them neither root nor branch. Now first, we have to ask the question, what is this day? What is this day? Is it future? Is it past? Has it already come? Is it yet to come? Because this is a key in understanding the passage and where we fit in it. Well, we have to remember that when Malachi is writing this, the nation of Israel had been in covenant with God as a nation for about a thousand years now. It's been about a thousand years since God had taken Israel out of the land of Egypt. And they were there as a nation waiting for the promised one, the one that would crush the head of the serpent. They were waiting for the Messiah to come. But as we turn the pages of the Old Testament, we find what? We find that the people of Israel were, for the most part, unfaithful. They worshipped other gods. And what does God do? He does exactly what he promised. He sent other nations to punish them, to bring the covenant curses upon them. He sends Assyria, and he sends Babylon, and he sends prophets to warn them that these nations are coming. These prophets were warning them that this day of judgment was on its way. When Assyria took Israel, and when Babylon took Judah, those were days of the Lord. Those were days of judgment. And so the people of Israel were in captivity for 70 years. But out of the sheer grace and the compassion of God, he restores them to the land of Israel. And as he restores them back to the land, he calls them anew to faithfulness to God. And so they rebuild the wall, and they rebuild the temple, and sacrifices once again are being offered to God. But here's the problem. Here is the problem. We find that the Israelites are still, in a lot of ways, a lot of them are unfaithful to God. They offer defective sacrifices. They don't love their spouses like they ought to. Oh sure, it looks like they're good, temple-going, law-abiding Jews. But their hearts, their hearts are far from God. It's not real. It's all just a sham for many of them. And so what does God do? He sends the people the prophet Malachi. And he warns them, once again, another day of judgment is coming. It's on its way. And Jesus' ministry Jesus' ministry, His death on the cross and the resurrection, that was the judgment. I'll describe that further as we go through the text, but we see first that this day comes for the arrogant, the proud, the wicked. Now that's an interesting word there. We find it very frequently that God distinguishes between the good, the righteous, the faithful, and the unrighteous, and the unholy, and the unfaithful. That's very common. But God specifically calls them proud. He calls them arrogant, as some translations put it. Why does he call them proud? Why does he call them arrogant? Normally, when we think of the word arrogant, we think of someone that's pompous, don't we? We think of someone that looks down their nose at someone and has some sort of superiority complex and thinks that they're better than everyone else. That's what we think of when we think of arrogant. And while that may be included, that's not the point. You see, if you're going to be wicked, If you're going to live against the law of God, that requires that you be arrogant. That requires that you be proud. Because the law of God is this gracious thing that says, here is the best way to live. It is best to live in a way that is in conformity with the character of God. And it's very prideful. It's very arrogant to say, I don't need that Word of God. I can go my own way, thank you very much. I don't need the Lord's directions. I don't need His statutes and His judgments. It's just not necessary. That is why these people are proud and arrogant. And what is more, these sort of people typically ignore the problem. They ignore the issue of judgment. They ignore that Jesus is going to come and judge between the good and the evil. They tend to say, oh, it won't affect me. God's always promising judgment, but it never happens. It's kind of like if you remember watching Scooby-Doo as a kid. You watch Scooby-Doo, and there's this monster. There's never any real monsters, of course. They're just people dressing up as monsters. But Scooby-Doo is there, and he's covering his eyes and his face, and he's saying, The monster can't see me because I can't see the monster. That's the same sort of attitude that these people have. They're covering their eyes. Oh, the judgment won't come for me. I don't believe in it. It doesn't affect me. It's like when you're driving down the road and you hear that there's something wrong with your engine, something wrong with your car, and you know that there's something the matter. It needs to go to a mechanic. And instead of addressing the issue and realizing that the issue is there, you turn up the radio and you try to drown out and ignore the problem. A lot of people look at this. A lot of people in Malachi's day, a lot of people in our own day, looked at the promise of judgment and they said, it doesn't affect me. I don't believe this stuff. I don't need this. The God of the Bible isn't my God, so it doesn't apply to me. But Malachi says, no. All people, the wicked, the proud, the judgment comes for these people too. Like when Caiaphas found out that Jesus had risen from the dead. When he found out that everything that Jesus said in condemning the Pharisees was true. When God had vindicated Christ and not him, he realized that he had been judged, but only too late. Because at that point, his heart was too hard to listen. This day of judgment is coming for all. And if you think that it doesn't apply to you, it's coming for you as well. And if you are outside of Christ, how does it come? What will happen? Well, let's look again at our text. This day comes for the proud. It comes for those who do wickedly. And they will be stubble, our text says. Now, what is stubble? A lot of you children might not know what this is. What is stubble? Perhaps as you're driving from place to place, or as you drive from your home to your work, or you drive from home to church, you'd pass by a field. And as spring started, you saw that there were these little buds of crops starting to come out and peek through the dirt. And as the summer would go on, you would see them getting larger and larger and taller, and it would start bearing crops. Until fall came. And then one day you passed the field and there were no more crops. The farmer had harvested it all. But what was left? There are these little stalks sticking up out of the ground. Just left behind after the harvest. Those little stalks, those little branches, that is stubble. This day will leave those who are wicked and outside of Christ, it will leave them as stubble. It's a humiliating thing. What is it that the farmer cared about? He came for the fruit, he came for the crops, and he left the stubble behind. When Jesus Christ comes again, what is it that he's going to really come for? What is it that's going to matter to him? It's his people. It's the wheat, as he says in Matthew chapter 13. Not the tares. Not the weeds. Not the stubble. Not those that superficially got involved with the church, that superficially came to church and made it look like they were part of the fruit, part of the crop. This day will come and it will separate the wheat from the tares. the fruit from the stubble, the sheep from the goats. All will be revealed. All will be made plain. You may sit here and you think to yourselves, well, I think I'm okay. I don't need to worry about this. Everyone thinks that I'm a Christian. I'm just going to leave it at that, even if my conscience troubles me. I'm just going to not worry about it. The day is coming where that will not suffice. And it will be made plain who we all really are. Are we in Christ or are we not? And it will be a humiliating day for those outside of Christ. But not only is it humiliating, not only will they be left as stubble, but it also comes for their destruction. Look again at verse 1. that will leave them neither root nor branch. That branch that I told you about that was sticking out of the ground, that stalk and the roots that were still in the ground, not even that is going to be left when the Lord Jesus Christ comes again. This is a very common theme. It's very clear in the New Testament in the preachings of Christ. What happens to the tares that Jesus talks about in Matthew 13? He tells us that they're bound together and they're tossed into the fire. What happens to the goats at the Great Judgment? The Lord Jesus tells them to depart from Him and to go into eternal flames. It's not a secret. It's not something that's left unclear, uncertain. This day comes for the wicked's destruction. For those outside of Christ, it will be an awful day. Now, why do I bring this up? Perhaps you're sitting here and you realize that that's where you're going. That's your trajectory. That's where you're headed. I don't bring these things up out of hate, out of spite. I bring these things up to warn you. To tell you that this judgment is real and it's getting closer with every tick of that clock. It's coming. Even if you refuse to believe that it is. Even if you refuse to believe that you are part of it. It's coming. And I encourage you, I exhort you, I plead with you from the bottom of my heart. Repent. Come to Christ. Because not only is this day for the wicked, not only is this an awful day for the wicked, but it's going to be a glorious day for those that are faithful, for those that fear the Lord, that are in Christ. Look again at our text. But to you who fear my name, the son of righteousness shall arise with healing in his wings, and you shall go out and grow fat like stall-fed calves. You shall trample the wicked, for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day that I do this, says the Lord of hosts. If you're sitting here and you're in Christ and this day is sometimes a day that scares you, don't let it be one that scares you. It's not a doom and gloom day for you who are in Christ, brother or sister. This is a magnificent day. This is a wonderful day. Think about when Jesus came and had judged unbelieving Israel. The resurrection happened and Caiaphas realized that he was in the wrong. But think about people like Nicodemus, when he discovered that the Lord Jesus was risen again, how he must have been overjoyed. Or the disciples, the apostles, when they really grasped that Jesus had come back from the dead and everything happened just as he said it would, what a glorious thing that was. Or the women, when they saw Jesus at the tomb and saw that the tomb was empty, what joy. That day of judgment was joy for those who were in Christ, and it will be a joy for those of us that are in Christ when He comes again. It will be a wonderful day. And it's a day that we should think on often. This is something that we should meditate on day and night and be living towards and desiring. Because if we think on this often, if we have this fixed upon the horizon, if we feel that we are journeying towards this day and this end, it will help us to live a life of faithfulness to Christ. Well, how can I say that, you ask? Well, let me illustrate it to you. There was a ship, this is a real story, there was a ship that was charting Antarctica, that they were doing some cartography, they were making maps of the area, they were researching Antarctica. And like many ships did, they ran aground. They started taking on water, and they knew that the ship was lost. Now, thankfully, they had some time to gather their things, and they were able to send out an SOS, and they knew that help was on the way. They knew that a rescue boat would be there. They didn't know when. They're a long ways. They're in Antarctica. But someone's coming. Well, days pass on, and the rescue boat arrives, and you know what they found? When these rescuers came, they found the people that they were coming to rescue, all packed up, all ready to go, just ready to hop on board the ship and get out of there. The captain was astonished. He asked, how did you know that we would be here? How did you know to be ready? And they said, we didn't. We didn't know that you were coming today. But we have been packing every morning. We would unpack in the evening and make camp, but as soon as the day dawned, we unpacked or packed everything up and made sure that we were ready to go, should you show up. You see, when we have this understanding that Jesus is indeed coming to our rescue, that he will take us to himself. It will help us to live in a certain way, in a faithful way. Because we'll want to be ready when he comes again. We'll want to be ready to be received into the new heavens and the new earth. Just imagine, just imagine if these sailors had lived in Antarctica and they didn't know that Jesus was coming, or that the rescue was coming, excuse me. If they didn't know that the rescue was coming, they would have camped a little different. They would have been filled with all this timidity and all this fear and all this concern. They wouldn't have been ready when the rescuers came. That's really how it is for the Christian life, too, if we don't realize that Jesus is going to come for us. It's so easy to live in fear and timidity, to be focused on the wrong things, and to not live as faithfully as we ought to Christ. So remember this. Remember that this day comes for those that fear his name. And it's a glorious, magnificent day. Why? Because this day comes when the Son of Righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings. This day comes for our healing. Who is this Son of Righteousness? It's none other than Jesus Christ. When Jesus Christ came, he died on the cross, he rose again from the dead, he lived that perfect life, and yes, he condemned the Pharisaical sect that claimed to have a monopoly on the truth. But he also brought salvation, just as surely as he brought condemnation. He brought spiritual healing. He brought reconciliation between the sinner and God the Father. He brought life. He brought abundant life. He brought eternal abundant life. Maybe you recognize this line, this phrase. We so often sing it at around Christmas time. It's in Hark the Herald Angels Sing. Hark the heaven-born Prince of Peace, hail the Son of Righteousness. light and life to all he brings, risen with healing in his wings. When Jesus came, he showed that he was there to save us from our sins, to restore us to God. And we rejoice in that, don't we? We rejoice at Christmastime, at the coming of Christ. We rejoice at Easter for His resurrection. We rejoice in these things, that He's given us spiritual life, because without Christ, there is no spiritual life. And we rejoice for the things of the past. But we can just as surely rejoice in what is to come in the future. When the Son of Righteousness comes again, He will have healing in His wings, and it won't be just spiritual healing. When He comes again, it will be complete and total healing. Every semblance, every shred of the fall will be ripped away and deleted and destroyed. And these bodies that suffer with so many mortal issues, with infirmities and with all these different aches and pains, all those things will be erased. when the Son of Righteousness returns with healing in his wings. Look forward to this day, brothers and sisters. Look forward to it, because the Son of Righteousness shall come with healing in his wings. It comes for our healing. Not only does this day come for the faithful, not only does it come for their healing, but it also comes for their joy. Look again at the text. And you shall go out and grow like fat, stall-fed calves. Now, how does this work? How am I seeing joy in this passage, in this little phrase here? How do we get that? Well, it's a difficult phrase to translate. Normally, we think of fat as being something good, and normally it is. You know, Isaiah 55, let your soul delight in abundance, let it delight in fatness. Normally, we think that fatness in the Bible is a good thing, but in this case, that's not so much the case. You see, these stall-fed calves are calves that have been kept in the stalls. They're there for one reason or another. They're stuck there. You know, maybe the calf was born, and he was born a little too early. Maybe he was a little too small. Maybe he was sick. And so what has to happen? He has to stay in the stalls, and he gets to be fed there. Or maybe, as it is the case for us in Michigan, the calves, they have to stay inside because there's no grass on the ground, and it's too cold. But once they go out, once they go out, they are overjoyed. That's why the ESV translates this a little differently. They try to get the idea across. They say this, you shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. You know, just recently I saw this video, maybe a lot of you teenagers or 20-somethings or so saw it. There was this video where there were all these calves being let loose from the barn for the first time in six months. And they weren't just walking out into the pasture. They weren't just running and charging out into the pasture. They were leaping up and down. I'd never seen the calves and the cows leap so much. There was a calf that came out, too, no doubt born in the stable. And needless to say, he was happy about the whole thing, too. You see, this day comes for our joy, where we will no longer be bound to this form, where we have to commune with God as in an echo, but we'll get to see Him face to face. This day comes for our joy. So this day comes for the faithful, it comes for their healing, it comes for their joy, and it also comes for their vindication. Look again at the text. Verse 3. We find here, quite plainly, that God Almighty, righteous, holy, perfect, He is the one that triumphs. He is the one that wins the day, that wins against the arrogant and the boastful, the prideful, the wicked. Because the wicked shall be as dust under the soles of our feet, they'll be as dirt. This is to say that the arrogant and the prideful, they won't have the last say. You know, so often we go through life and we see people living wicked lifestyles and it seems like the world lifts them up and says that they're great people and blesses them and they have all these great things and that can be discouraging. The Lord says, no. These people will be as ashes, as dust, tread under the soles of your feet. They don't get the last say. Now, let's be careful here. Let's be very careful. This word does not excuse us from praying for our enemies. This word does not excuse us from being meek. It doesn't excuse us in any way. We shouldn't delight in the destruction of the wicked. We shouldn't look forward to it and relish it. That's not the point of the text. The point is that we would not be discouraged. The point is that we would see that the righteousness of Christ will indeed triumph over everything that talks back and talks against the Lord Jesus Christ. And that really is affirmed by what he says. It says that this is on the day that I do this. This is the Lord's decision. This is in the Lord's timing. So we read this so that we would not be discouraged in doing good and seeing evil lifted up. That's what it's there for. So be encouraged by that. This day comes for the faithful. It comes for their healing. It comes for their joy, and it comes for their vindication. Now, what have we found out? We've found that this day is coming. With every tick of the clock, it's getting closer. We have found that it is coming for the faithless. We found that it is coming for the faithful. And you're sitting here, no doubt, and you think that you're part of one group or the other. And regardless of what group you think you're a part of, we need to ask the question, how then do we prepare for this day? If this day is indeed on its way, and if it is going to be the most important day that is yet to come, then it is wise that we ask how we prepare for it. Our text gives us the answer. When I first read this passage, when I first worked on this passage, I had a hard time with this verse. I wasn't sure how it fit in. Because I was reading this, and I looked at this like, remember the Law of Moses. Well, it doesn't go with what goes after it. It has to somehow go with these verses, verses 1 through 3. And then you read it in its context, and you get it. These are some of the last words. These are the last words of the Old Testament era. These are the last words that God is going to speak for 400 years until the Lord Jesus Christ comes again. These are the last directions, the last commands that he gives. And what does he say? What is his final command? Remember the law of Moses. He just told them that this day was coming where the Messiah would come, and He would condemn those that are unrighteous and wicked, and He would heal those that feared His name. How are they supposed to prepare for the coming of this Messiah? The Word of God. The Word of God would tell the Jews in those 400 years what to look for. What is this Messiah going to look like? What is he going to do? And how do I make sure I'm ready for when he comes? How do I prepare? The Word tells us. The Word told the Jews who this Messiah would be, what he would look like, and what he would do. And we can plug this into our own day very easily. You know, we as believers in the New Testament era, we don't just have the Old Testament, we have the New Testament now, too. Until the day of the Lord comes, until Jesus Christ returns, remember the Word of God. Remember all of it. And in so doing, it will help you to prepare for when this day inevitably comes. And so, if this Word has pierced your heart this evening, If you have come to the realization that you are part of this wicked doing and proud group, and you realize that this day is coming for your humiliation and your destruction, you know what the word says? Repent, believe on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved. And you will not have this day be a day of destruction, but it will be a day of healing. It will be a day of delight. will be a day to enjoy and to remember for all of eternity. And for those of us Christians living day to day that may be struggling with the Christian life, that maybe struggle to see the point of living the Christian life, that sometimes see the Christian life as a drudgery, when you look at the Word of God, And when you see the end, the destination that we are all heading towards, it gets rid of that drudgery. It helps you to live a life of faithfulness to Christ. And the Word tells us how to live that life of faithfulness to Christ. And so, as you live the Christian life, do it with an eye fixated on Christ. Do everything in light of his future coming. Live like the sailors in Antarctica did, looking forward to their rescue, living and making every decision in accordance with that truth, in accordance with that day. And once you do that, you'll see the purpose and the end goal. Live towards this. So my final appeal, this day is coming. It's on its way. And like the tsunami, it's going to split families. There's going to be people that you thought were saved that ended up, it was just all an external act. It's going to split churches. It's going to split friends. Just like the tsunami did. Unlike the tsunami, this day comes with warnings and it comes with directions. It tells you how you may be saved from this destruction and receive life in Christ. Will you heed the Word of God? Will you listen to it? Will you prepare for this day? Or will you ignore it and succumb to condemnation and destruction? Let us pray. O Lord, our God, we confess that we too frequently forget this truth, that Jesus is indeed coming again, and he's coming for all, whether they believe in him or not. Lord, we ask that we would have this truth, this reality in our minds always, that you would help us to live a life of faithfulness to you in light of it. And Lord, we ask for those here that may not know you, that they would be drawn to you and that they would see that there is a way. to be saved from the destruction that they indeed merit. You are entirely righteous in promising this condemnation and destruction, but even so, Lord, you offer a way of escape. Oh, Lord, help them to find that solace, that refuge in Jesus Christ. Lord, we ask that as we go this evening, that as we think on these things, that you would apply them to our hearts, and that you would equip us to serve you in every capacity, in every circumstance, whether at home, in the marketplace, or at the workplace. It's in the name of Christ we ask all these things. Amen.