“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. 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 4:6)
The Jews of Malachi’s day were quite cynical, much like many of our modern day contemporaries both here in the US as well as across the globe. The ancient Jews showed great disrespect to the Lord by questioning and ignoring His Word. In response, He gave them a prophecy of the future, of the coming of His messenger, and of the Day of Judgment. This was good news but it also was bad news for the Jews. It is also good news and bad news for we who live in the 21st Century.
The good news for the Jews then and for us now, is that the Lord is coming. For those Jews, it was a prophecy of the first advent of the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus, as our perfect High Priest, would cleanse the people of all their sin and wickedness. Yet this was bad news as well for the disobedient both then and now for all those who would endure the purification of the coming day of the Lord. It is a painful process, one which crushes self and ego. The Lord desires to rid His people of all their idols so that He could rule over their hearts and enable them to walk in obedience to His will. For the faithful this process is difficult, but for those who refuse to surrender to the Lord, it will be a pain without ceasing as they will endure eternity estranged from the Lord and His Saints.
Malachi’s message, then as now, is that now is the time to get right with God. The Lord will surely carry out all He has promised just as He has done in the past. This is a warning for us not to get complacent in the midst of material prosperity. Many have and will, like the ancient Jews, turn from God because they think they are self-sufficient, that they have no need of God. They have it all: money, clothes, possessions, electronic and scientific advancements that they often overlook as God’s blessings, preferring to think of them as mankind’s noblest achievements. Therefore, the good and bad news we believers are called to announce is the same as it was for the Jews in Malachi’s day: the refiner’s fire will come and burn the rotten attitude out of our world. In fact the very economic hardships and social chaos we are now enduring are designed by the Lord to bring us, His people, as well as the lost, to Him by faith in the Lord Jesus.