Second Sunday in Advent
12/4/10
Malachi 4:1-6
Bror Erickson
[4:1] "For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. [2] But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. [3] And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act, says the Lord of hosts.
[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." Malachi 4:1-6 (ESV)
Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes.
The great and awesome day of the Lord, the day in which you who fear the name of the Lord will go out leaping like calves from the stall. For us it will be a joyful day. A day which we look forward to. Yet perhaps it is a day we look forward to with a bit of apprehension when we read the first verse of this chapter where it describes the day as burning like an oven, when the arrogant and the evil doers will be stubble that will be set ablaze by that coming day.
Maybe there is some fear for friends, family, and the countless faces of those we know do not fear the name of the Lord, those who the text says are arrogant and evildoers. We know so many of them. Perhaps some of them are particularly evil, I don’t know. Most of them will be people in whom we could see ourselves. People who lived lives like ours. Lives racked with sins that sucked marrow out of life even as they pretended to offer excitement. But people who have lived lives very much the same as ours, people who grew up in this the world we live in, who fell in love, married, had children, people who would work and made honest livings. So we look on this day perhaps with a sense of horror, the same horror with which the prophet Amos who warns:
[18] Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord!
Why would you have the day of the Lord?
It is darkness, and not light, Amos 5:18 (ESV)
It is darkness and not light, It is a day that deserves a bit of apprehension, apprehension we rightly fear, perhaps even as we look at our own lives and begin to wonder if we really fear the name of the Lord ourselves. There is so little to distinguish our lives from the lives of the arrogant and evildoers who will become stubble on that great day of the Lord. Perhaps we want to be good people, but then so often so do they. We walk around telling each other that we are good people. And sometimes we look at those labeled as arrogant and evil doers and from every human perspective they seem like good people, maybe they even seem to live better lives than we do. It may cause us to wonder if we will survive that great and awesome day of the Lord, which is darkness and not light.
But then Elijah is come as Jesus tells us about John the Baptist, and with him has come the Son whose heart was turned to the Father, whose Father bellowed from the heavens this is my so with whom I am well pleased, listen to him. And the Father's heart was turned to his son, and his son with his heart turned to the Father he went to the cross to die in the place of us, His children, so that forgiving you and I all our sins, our hearts might be turned to the Father’s also that we might all be spared the utter destruction of that great and awesome day of the Lord. So that when the sun of righteousness rises with healing its wings we might go leaping out like the calf from the stall to enjoy its warmth, and bask in the peace of its light forevermore.
Now the peace of God that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord Amen.
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