Intro Are you ravenous? Do you hunger to receive the Lord where He promises to come to you? Or, are we on the other end: full, stuffed, thinking we don’t need what our Lord wants to give us? God does unmask this hard truth for us: We often don’t want to receive what He wants to give us.
Main Body Our Old-Testament reading from Malachi is a prime example. He ends his book speaking of “destruction,” ending with a curse (Malachi 4:6). The Day of the Lord is coming with His wrath and retribution, burning hot like a brick oven. Who wants that message burning in our ears? Not me, but the Lord doesn’t ask us for our approval. The Day is coming, whether we like it or not. Do we gag on His words, on the curse ending the book of Malachi? Stare into the mirror, the mirror of God’s Law. “Remember the Law of Moses, my servant, both the decrees and laws I gave him at Horeb for all Israel” (Malachi 4:4). Start with the first and most important command, which demands us to fear, love, and trust in God above all else. How are we doing? Well, we’re not doing so well on that commandment. Need we go on? Malachi wanted life, with all its ugly warts intact, to stand, stark naked before them, not what they romanticized life to be. Some years now passed since the Lord sent His prophets, Haggai and Zechariah. In those intervening years, the people turned cynical, jaded, and arrogant toward the Lord. They brought their half-hearted sacrifices to Him, but still bellowed in pride, demanding why God didn’t delight in them. They strove to wear God down with their words, while they distrusted His Word. But God remained faithful. They even grumbled aloud whether it mattered for them to be God’s people. Can we spot ourselves in them? Times and circumstances are different, but the underlying problem, which Malachi identified, still afflicts us. We may not regard not being hungry for God as a cursed sin, but in many ways, it tells the real story. So, the Lord speaks the story once more, proclaiming His Law as He did through His prophet. He announced an unbending “no” to arrogance and faithlessness during Malachi’s time. He also answers “no” to our faithlessness, as well. God ended the book of Malachi on a sharp, sour note: A curse. He did this, not for the people to gag on His Word, although many did so. No, the Lord wants to fill us with hunger, a wholesome, yearning hunger. He wants us to crave something better, something only He can give. Malachi told of three prophets. The first? Moses. After God had given His Law to His people through Moses, they sinned. They wanted to worship God based on what they liked and understood. They lived in Egypt for 400 years and knew their gods. So, they put a new twist in it: They decided to worship God through Egyptian worship forms. Aaron described their planned worship as “a feast to Yahweh” (Exodus 32:5). Israel shaping their worship as they wanted did not please God. So, Moses interceded. He prayed, and while he prayed, he cried out to God: “Please show me your glorious presence” (Exodus 33:18). What was God’s response? “You may not look at my face, for no one can see me and live” (Exodus 33:20). So, the Lord put Moses in the crevice of a rock on the mountain. God let all His goodness pass before Moses as He proclaimed His name and His undeserved love. The Lord let Moses glimpse Him—His back, not His face (Exodus 33:18-23)—and he received a marvelous revelation of God. This revelation did not destroy Moses and wipe him out. No, Moses received God’s mercy, instead. The Lord promised a prophet like Moses would one day come—but He did not mean Elijah. Yes, during a time of terrible rebellion and unbelief, God did use Elijah to stoke the fire and strengthen hope in the Prophet, the Messiah, who would one day arrive. Elijah fled for his life, running from Queen Jezebel, exhausted, nearing collapse. He fled to the same mountain where Moses went, crawling into some cave. Elijah sat, tired and spent, when God chose to give him a marvelous revelation. A strong wind blew past, an earthquake rumbled the rocks, and a fire scorched his eyebrows—but the Lord did not place Himself in those expressions of power. No, God came to Elijah in the sound of a quiet whisper, reminding Elijah of His faithfulness and love (1 Kings 19). Years later, Moses and Elijah appeared with Jesus on another mountain, the Mount of Transfiguration, but only for a short time. They visited with Jesus and soon left. The disciples gazed into the sky, and only Jesus remained (Matthew 17:1-8). Jesus came to do what Moses and Elijah could only foreshadow, not do. Jesus succeeded where they failed because He is God—God in human flesh. He told His disciples that when someone sees Him, he finds God the Father (John 14:9). The Apostle John wrote: “The only Son, who is at the Father’s side” is God’s revelation to us (John 1:18). Jesus shows us, you and me, the loving heart of God the Father! He put this love into action, God’s faithfulness in the flesh, on the cross. Only this love of God and this work of Christ can satisfy our genuine need and hunger. Through God’s only Son, we learn to stare into the face of God. When we gaze into God’s face, everything inside us withers and dies. We realize sin blinds us and leads us down wayward paths. Our only hope is in Christ Jesus. Centuries before Malachi’s day, God moved the sorcerer Balaam to speak of the Messiah as the Star out of Jacob (Numbers 24:17). Later, Prophet Isaiah called him a “Bright Light” and a “Light for the Gentiles” (Isaiah 9:2, 49:6). Malachi also revealed a remarkable prophecy: He painted a word-picture of Jesus as the Sun of Righteousness rising with healing in His wings. Malachi’s task was to present the Messiah as the Sun (s u n), the Light to rule the day of God’s New Covenant. The sun shines its light on the earth from beyond the planet, so also does Jesus shine His righteousness on us from outside of ourselves. This righteousness from the outside of us is valuable beyond compare. Our righteousness, within ourselves, would only curse us on the terrifying and dread-filled Day of the Lord, curse us for all eternity. The righteousness of Christ covering you is different. His righteousness brings life. In Christ, you can speak to God’s Law and the holiness it demands. “I didn’t do everything I’m supposed to—and messed up when I did them. Still, I live, for Christ did everything for me, and His righteousness covers me. His victory is mine as sure as He rose from death.” What does this mean? We wait in eagerness, anticipating Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come. John the Baptizer pointed to Him before His birth, leaping in his mother’s womb (Luke 1:41). John is the last of God’s prophets, whom Malachi mentions. John was not the prophet Elijah resurrected from death; no, he went forward with Elijah’s spirit and power to call people to repent (Luke 1:17). “[Jesus] is the Elijah who is to come” (Matthew 11:4), of whom Malachi prophesied. But John did something no previous prophet did: With his finger, he pointed to the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). Our Old-Testament reading points back to the first prophecy of the Messiah. God promised the Seed of the woman, Eve, would come and break the old and universal curse, which loomed over the fallen, human race. The promised Messiah would deal the decisive blow to the devil, crushing his head (Genesis 3:15). Malachi described this using different imagery: “‘You will go out and leap like calves released from their stalls. You will trample the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the Day I do this,’ says the Lord Almighty” (Malachi 4:2-3). Jesus not only wins the victory; He also gives His triumph to us. In Malachi’s day, people realized something: They still were lacking, for not all was complete. For when the Old Testament ended, God’s people still waited, waited for the promised Messiah to arrive. And what of Malachi? He ended his book with a curse! The curse remained, like a festering sore, refusing to leave you alone. At length, when the time was right, God acted. He kept His promises in the Old Testament, which Jesus fulfilled, dealing with our sin and the curse. God did not choose to reveal Himself in His unveiled and glorious majesty. No, considering us as weak and fallen mortals, God hides His glory in human flesh. For who can endure God’s pure, undiluted, full-strength splendor? No one! So, some 2,000 years ago, God sent His Son, Jesus Christ. But God still acts in the present, not just the past. Today, as Luther wrote, God works through a man who will “speak to us, preach, lay his hands on us, remit sin, baptize, [and] give us bread and wine to eat and to drink” (LW, vol. 41, pg. 171). Why would we gag on them, for in them is life and salvation? Conclusion Jesus—who came here once and will, one day, return—does not leave us gagging. No, in the faith He gives us, we stay hungry, in the right way. Like newborn infants, we are eager to keep drinking in the pure, spiritual milk of God’s Word and grow in our salvation (1 Peter 2:2). Because of our Savior, we do not gag on God’s Law. For His Law causes us to hunger for more, more of His life-giving Word. Amen. _______________________________________________ Sermons mailing list Sermons@cat41.org https://cat41.org/mailman/listinfo/sermons
