Malachi Chapter Four, The Sun Of Righteousness

 

Here we find the fruit of human works merging into the fruit of the womb, and the traditions the Canaanites passed on to their children, including sorcery (witchcraft), phallic idolatry and sexual practices, and child sacrifice. Believers are commanded to, “have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them,” Ephesians 5:11. On a smaller scale judgment had come to Canaan, and all the proud, yes, all who did wickedly, were stubble before the day that burned them up. Canaan’s conquest revealed not only God’s judgment upon man’s iniquity and our unwillingness to surrender our sinful pleasures, it concurrently exposed human inadequacy for doling out divine judgment. Judges 1:27-35 demonstrate human bias and partiality for a variety of reasons, leading to compromise. First God’s command is compromised, followed by the people being compromised as they mingle God’s truth with human error. The result of the remainder of Judges was summarized in the verse: “everyone did what was right in his own eyes,” Judges 17:6. Malachi 4:1 is God’s answer to the question of “Where is the God of justice?” asked in 2:17, and His remedy to sinful men seeming to escape said justice in 3:15 can be found here. “[God] has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained,” Acts 17:31.

The foundation, works and posterity of the wicked will be removed, 2 Peter 3:10. Verse 2 begins with “But to you who fear My name.” The tone shifts as the verse changes. The proud will suffer destruction from the Almighty, “but” to those who fear His name a different destiny awaits. The book of remembrance was written on account of those who feared the Lord, Malachi 3:16. These ones, His faithful remnant, are also His jewels, His children that serve Him. So what becomes of those who fear God’s name? The Sun of righteousness shall arise, with healing in His wings. The same Sun that burned the wicked to ashes in verse 1 becomes the Sun rising on the saints to heal them. “Arise, shine; for your light has come! And the glory of the Lord is risen upon you. For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and deep darkness the people; but the Lord will arise over you, and His glory will be seen upon you,” Isaiah 60:1, 2. We find a similar passage in Daniel. “I was watching; and the same horn was making war against the saints, and prevailing against them, until the Ancient of Days came, and a judgment was made in favor of the saints of the Most High, and the time came for the saints to possess the kingdom,” Daniel 7:21, 22. Though this passage is cited by some to reference Antiochus Epiphanes and the Maccabean revolt the context doesn’t make sense, since the Jews did not receive the kingdom around 164 B.C. Rather, this passage looks ahead to the Great Tribulation and the Antichrist’s persecution of the Jewish people, all a part of what the Old Testament prophets knew as the Day of the Lord. Those who fear God’s name would be preserved physically by His appearance to intercede on Israel’s behalf, and on behalf of the saints saved during this traumatic and dramatic seven year period, Revelation 19:11, 20, 21, Zechariah 14:4-7, Acts 1:11.

 

The result is national salvation for Israel. They shall, having been reunited with the Messiah they had been waiting for and in fact passed over, rejoice over the deliverance His coming brought. They will trample the wicked under the soloes of their feet, but make no mistake; the saints do not battle. They trample the wicked under the soles of their feet for they are already ashes, because the Sun of Righteousness to the proud was as a burning oven to stubble, Malachi 4:1, 3. Salvation is of the Lord, and the saints need only rejoice in the deliverance that God has wrought. God delivered Israel out of Egypt under a mighty hand, Exodus 14:13, 14. In Jeremiah’s day the Holy Spirit promised that He would again deliver His people out of the north and every land they scattered to, to people the land He gave them as an inheritance, Jeremiah 16:14, 15. Yahweh told His people in no uncertain terms that on that day He would deliver them again, “on the day that I do this.”