It is a refusal which is half-veiled and none the less real. There is
no unwillingness to obey professed, but it is concealed under a mask of
desiring a little more light as to how a return is to be accomplished.
There are not many of us who are rooted enough in evil as to be able to
blurt out a curt 'I will not' in answer to His call. Conscience often
bars the way to such a plain and unmannerly reply; but there are many
who try to cheat God, and who do to some extent cheat themselves, by
professing ignorance of the way which would lead them to His heart. Some
of us have learned only too well to raise questions about the method of
salvation instead of accepting it, and to dabble in theology instead of
making sure work of return. Some of us would fain substitute a host of
isolated actions, or apparent moral or religious observance, for the
return of will and heart to God; and all who in their consciences answer
God's call by saying, 'Wherein shall we return?' with such a meaning are
playing tricks with themselves, and trying to hoodwink God.
But the question of our text has often a nobler origin, and comes from
the depths of a troubled heart. Not seldom does God's loving invitation
rouse the dormant conscience to the sense of sin. The man, lying broken
at the foot of the cliff down which he has fallen, and seeing the
brightness of God far above, has his heart racked with the question: How
am I, with lame limbs, to struggle back to the heights above? 'How shall
man be just with God?' All the religions of the world, with their
offerings and penances and weary toils, are vain attempts to make a way
back to the God from whom men have wandered, and that question, 'Wherein
shall we return?' is really the meaning of the world's vain seeking and
profitless effort.
God has answered man's question; for Christ is at once the way back to
God, and the motive which draws us to walk in it. He draws us back by
the magnetism of His love and sacrifice. We return to God when we cling
to Jesus. He is the highest, the tenderest utterance of the divine
voice; and when we yield to His invitation to Himself we return to God.
He calls to each of us, 'Come unto Me, and I will give you rest.' What
can we reply but, 'I come; let me never wander from Thee'?
'STOUT WORDS,' AND THEIR CONFUTATION
'Your words have been stout against Me, saith the Lord: yet ye say,
What have we spoken so much against Thee? 14. Ye have said, It is
vain to serve God; and what profit is it that we have kept His
ordinance, and that we have walked mournfully before the Lord of
Hosts? 15. And now we call the proud happy; yea, they that work
wickedness are set up; yea, they that tempt God are even delivered.
16. Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another: and
the Lord hearkened, and heard it; and a book of remembrance was
written before Him for them that feared the Lord, and that thought
upon His name. 17. And they shall be Mine, saith the Lord of Hosts,
in that day when I make up My jewels; and I will spare them, as a
man spareth his own son that serveth him. 18. Then shall ye return,
and discern between the righteous and the wicked; between him that
serveth God and him that serveth Him not. IV. 1. For, behold, the
day cometh that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and
all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh
shall burn them up, saith the Lord of Hosts, that it shall leave
them neither root nor branch. 2. But unto you that fear My Name
shall the sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and
ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall. 3. And ye
shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the
soles of your feet, in the day that I shall do this, saith the Lord
of Hosts. 4. Remember ye the law of Moses My servant, which I
commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and
judgments. 5. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the
coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: 6. And he shall
turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the
children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a
curse.'--MALACHI iii. 13-18; iv. 1-6.
This passage falls into three parts,--the 'stout words' against God
which the Prophet sets himself to confute (verses 13-15); the prophecy
of the day which will show their falsehood (verse 16 to iv. 3); and the
closing exhortation and prediction (iv. 4-6).
I. The returning exiles had not had the prosperity which they had hoped.
So many of them, even of those who had served God, began to let doubts
darken their trust, and to listen to the whispers of their own hearts,
reinforced by the mutterings of others, and to ask: 'What is the use of
religion? Does it make any difference to a man's condition?' Here had
they been keeping God's charge, and going in black garments 'before the
Lord,' in token of penitence, and no good had come to them, while
arrogant neglect of His commandments did not seem to hinder happiness,
and 'they that work wickedness are built up.' Sinful lives appeared to
have a firm foundation, and to rise high and palace-like, while
righteous ones were like huts. Goodness seemed to spell ruin.
What was wrong in these 'stout words'? It was wrong to attach such worth
to external acts of devotion, as if these were deserving of reward. It
was wrong to suspend the duty of worship on the prosperity resulting
from it, and to seek 'profit' from 'keeping his charge.' Such religion
was shallow and selfish, and had the evils of the later Pharisaism in
germ in it. It was wrong to yield to the doubts which the apparently
unequal distribution of worldly prosperity stirred in their hearts. But
the doubts themselves were almost certain to press on Old Testament
believers, as well as on Old Testament scoffers, especially under the
circumstances of Malachi's time. The fuller light of Christianity has
eased their pressure, but not removed it, and we have all had to face
them, both when our own hearts have ached with sorrow and when pondering
on the perplexities of this confused world. We look around, and, like
the psalmist, see 'the prosperity of the wicked,' and, like him, have to
confess that our 'steps had wellnigh slipped' at the sight. The old, old
question is ever starting up. 'Doth God know?' The mystery of suffering
and the mystery of its distribution, the apparent utter want of
connection between righteousness and well-being, are still formidable
difficulties in the way of believing in a loving, all-knowing, and
all-powerful God, and are stock arguments of the unbeliever and
perplexities of humble faith. Never to have felt the force of the
difficulty is not so much the sign of steadfast faith as of scant
reflection. To yield to it, and still more, to let it drive us to cast
religion aside, is not merely folly, but sin. So thinks Malachi.
II. To the stout words of the doubters is opposed the conversation of
the godly. '_Then_ they that feared the Lord spake one with another,'
nourishing their faith by believing speech with like-minded. The more
the truths by which we believe are contradicted, the more should we
commune with fellow-believers. Attempts to rob us should make us hold
our treasure the faster. Bold avowal of the faith is especially called
for when many potent voices deny it. And, whoever does not hear, God
hears. Faithful words may seem lost, but they and every faithful act are
written in His remembrance and will be recompensed one day. If our names
and acts are written there, we may well be content to accept scanty
measures of earthly good, and not be 'envious of the foolish' in their
prosperity.
Malachi's answer to the doubters leaves all other considerations which
might remove the difficulty unmentioned, and fixes on the one, the
prophecy of a future which will show that it is not all the same whether
a man is good or bad. It was said of an English statesman that he called
a new world into existence to redress the balance of the old, and that
is what the Prophet does. Christianity has taught us many other ways of
meeting the doubters' difficulty, but the sheet anchor of faith in that
storm is the unconquerable assurance that a day comes when the
righteousness of providence will be vindicated, and the eternal
difference between good and evil manifested in the fates of men. The
Prophet is declaring what will be a fact one day, but he does not know
when. Probably he never asked himself whether 'the day of the Lord' was
near or far off, to dawn on earth or to lie beyond mortal life. But this
he knew--that God was righteous, and that sometime and somewhere
character would settle destiny, and even outwardly it would be good to
be good. He first declares this conviction in general terms, and then
passes on to a magnificent and terrible picture of that great day.
The promise, which lay at the foundation of Israel's national existence,
included the recognition of it as 'a peculiar treasure unto Me above all
people,' and Malachi looks forward to that day as the epoch when God
will show by His acts how precious the righteous are in His sight. Not
the whole Israel, but the righteous among them, are the heirs of the old
promise. It is an anticipation of the teaching that 'they are not all
Israel which are of Israel,' And it bids us look for the fulfilment of
every promise of God's to that great day of the Lord which lies still
before us all, when the gulf between the righteous and the wicked shall
be solemnly visible, wide, and profound. There have been many 'days
which I make' in the world's history, and in a measure each of them has
re-established the apparently tottering truth that there is a God who
judgeth in the earth, but the day of days is yet to come.
No grander vision of judgment exists than Malachi's picture of 'the
day,' lurid, on the one hand, with the fierce flame, before which the
wicked are as stubble that crackles for a moment and then is grey ashes,
or as a tree in a forest fire, which stands for a little while, a pillar
of flame, and then falls with a crash, shaking the woods; and on the
otherhand, radiant with the early beams of healing sunshine, in whose
sweet morning light the cattle, let out from their pent-up stalls,
gambol in glee. But let us not forget while we admire the noble poetry
of its form that this is God's oracle, nor that we have each to settle
for ourselves whether that day shall be for us a furnace to destroy or a
sun to cheer and enlighten.
We can only note in a sentence the recurrence in verse 1 of the phrases
'the proud' and they 'that work wickedness,' from verse 15 of chapter
iii. The end of those whom the world called happy, and who seemed stable
and elevated, is to be as stubble before the fire. We must also point
out that 'the sun of righteousness' means the sun which is
righteousness, and is not a designation of the Messiah. Nor can we dwell
on the picture of the righteous treading down the wicked, which seems to
prolong the previous metaphor of the leaping young cattle. Then shall
'the upright have dominion over them in the morning.'
III. The final exhortation and promise point backwards and forwards,
summing up duty in obedience to the law, and fixing hope on a future
reappearance of the leader of the prophets. Moses and Elijah are the two
giant figures which dominate the history of Israel. Law and prophecy are
the two forms in which God spoke to the fathers. The former is of
perpetual obligation, the latter will flash up again in power on the
threshold of the day. Jesus has interpreted this closing word for us.
John came 'in the spirit and power of Elijah,' and the purpose of his
coming was to 'turn the hearts of the fathers to the children' (Luke i.
16, 17); that is, to bring back the devout dispositions of the
patriarchs to the existing generations, and so to bring the 'hearts of
the children to their fathers,' as united with them in devout obedience.
If John's mission had succeeded, the 'curse' which smote Israel would
have been stayed. God has done all that He can do to keep us from being
consumed by the fire of that day. The Incarnation, Life, and Death of
Jesus Christ made a day of the Lord which has the twofold character of
that in Malachi's vision, for He is a 'saviour of life unto life' or
'of death unto death,' and must be one or other to us. But another day
of the Lord is still to come, and for each of us it will come burning as
a furnace or bright as sunrise. Then the universe shall 'discern between
the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that
serveth Him not.'