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[TITLE SLIDE]
This is our last week in Malachi and I think it is appropriate that Malachi’s prophesy ends where it does.
In this passage, Malachi alludes to a common illustration for the day, the separating of wheat from chaff.
Chaff is any part of the wheat berry that you don’t eat.
So, it can be parts of the plant that didn’t get separated well when they harvested the wheat.
But the chaff is primarily the bran, the outer hull of the wheat.
The ancient people cracked the wheat open on what they called a threshing floor and then when the wind blew they used a practice called winnowing to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Often, then, the chaff was burned in the fire to be disposed of.
In many ways the story of all time, all history, is the story of God separating wheat from chaff.
God is sifting through the people He created and He is collecting the wheat.
In chapter 3, we saw that the Lord uses fire to refine us, to make us holy, but today we see that same fire as a destructive fire.
It is a fire that consumes.
As I studied the passage, it seemed so real after listening to all the wild fire stories.
The fires burn so hot and fast that they burn up and destroy everything in their paths like they are dry grass.
They burn so hot and fast that firefighters can’t do much to stop them at times.
That’s the kind of intense heat we are talking about.
The Lord said through Malachi,
(CSB) — “For look, the day is coming, burning like a furnace, when all the arrogant and everyone who commits wickedness will become stubble.
The coming day will consume them,” says the Lord of Armies.”
The Day of the Lord is a reference to a future day of judgment.
Malachi compared that day of judgment to a furnace.
The word stubble literally means straw or dry grass.
And what happens when you put dry grass into a furnace?
It’s quickly consumed.
The day of the Lord results in the quick destruction of the wicked.
But, the point of God’s working through history is not the destruction of the wicked.
That’s a byproduct of God’s real purpose.
Malachi recorded,
(CSB) — At that time those who feared the Lord spoke to one another.
The Lord took notice and listened.
So a book of remembrance was written before him for those who feared the Lord and had high regard for his name.
“They will be mine,” says the Lord of Armies, “my own possession on the day I am preparing.
I will have compassion on them as a man has compassion on his son who serves him.
The Day of the Lord results in the destruction of the wicked, but the point is that God is gathering his own possession.
He is gathering His own people and he says, ‘They will be mine.’
[TITLE SLIDE]
I think the wording is so interesting in this passage.
Our tendency is to focus on ourselves when we talk about eternity.
Am I going to heaven or hell?
Will I spend eternity with God or separated from God?
Those sorts of questions focus on the self and certainly many passages of scripture demonstrate that God loves His people and His desire is that we would be saved from wrath on the day of judgment.
But, notice, this passage is not about what we get.
This passage is about what God gets.
‘They will be mine, my own possession.’
You see, you and I, we are not the protagonists in God’s story.
The Lord God is the protagonist in the story.
The grand narrative of all time and history culminates in the end with the Lord God, receiving the possession He is due.
And we are that possession.
The primary charachter in a story are the protagonist—the good guy, usually—and the antagonist—the one who works against the protagonist.
Then there are secondary characters.
In the Harry Potter films, Harry is the protagonist.
Ron and Hermione are secondary characters—very important to the story, but everyone knows the story isn’t really about them.
That’s the story of history.
We humans are extremely important to the biblical storyline.
But, God is the protagonist.
The story is about God gaining His possession in the end.
In this case, we need to look at the secondary characters to determine exactly what God’s possession consists of.
So let’s contrast,
Those who Fear the Lord and Those who Commit Wickedness
This is interesting because, in this passage, and really in the book of Malachi, the wicked are not totally wicked people.
They aren’t slave owners, mass murderers, or rapists.
They’re people who just don’t care much about God.
Malachi wrote,
(CSB) — You have said: “It is useless to serve God.
What have we gained by keeping his requirements and walking mournfully before the Lord of Armies?”
The wicked are those who simply don’t serve God because they don’t see the point.
Why don’t you go to church?
I don’t know.
Why would I? What’s the point?
That’s kind of where they were at.
To them, serving God seemed like a lot of work that they didn’t want to do.
So, it’s not that they intentionally wanted to work against God or that they hated God or the idea of God.
Here the wicked are those who just don’t care.
But, look what Malachi said about the righteous who fear the Lord,
(CSB) — At that time those who feared the Lord spoke to one another.
The Lord took notice and listened.
So a book of remembrance was written before him for those who feared the Lord and had high regard for his name.
Those who fear God get God’s attention.
How do you get God’s attention?
You fear God and have high regard for His name.
I want to talk about these ideas a bit.
[Those who Fear the Lord and Those who Commit Wickedness]
I think if you were to ask most people, Do you fear God?, if they understand what you are asking at all, they would probably respond by saying, ‘Sure, I try to be a good person.’
I rarely ask people if they believe in God.
If you want to talk to people about your faith, you only get so many words before the conversation moves somewhere else.
So, I don’t waste my time there.
God is obvious.
Very few people in our world believe there is no god of any kind.
But if you ask someone a different question, like, Friend, I was reading my Bible and it said I ought to fear God; what do you think that means?
Do you fear God? That’s a question that’s going to tell you a great deal about what a person believes.
And if you ask that question, you will find that most people have a certain amount of fear of God that they believe governs their moral choices.
It doesn’t make them a righteous person per se, but they probably believe that their fear of God is what keeps them a normal person and not a depraved murderer or something like that.
That’s my experience at least.
I think that this phrase, ‘high regard for his name,’ sheds some light on what it means to fear the Lord.
The Hebrew word that is translated in our English Bibles as ‘regard,’ literally means to weigh, count, or calculate.
The word is used euphemistically to mean discern or have discretion.
In other words, discern the name of the Lord, discern who the Lord really is.
We get some cues as English speaking people as to what this means.
A lord is someone who rules over other things, usually a house and maybe a plot of land or a small village.
So, you may discern that God being Lord means that you ought to follow the laws of God so that the land can prosper.
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