Malachi 3:6 Commentary and Bible Study

‘Therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed‘, which means, you are not utterly consumed; it fits in with the previous verses. There will be a remnant of you left. We can see that Malachi is predicting the New Testament age in a wonderful way.The assurance is that because God does not change, the status of the sons of Jacob is secure. If the one follows from the other, it sheds light on the nature of the original promises made to Jacob. What God originally promised to Jacob must come to pass. He was told that he would have an innumerable seed (Genesis 28:14), and yet Malachi has repeatedly spoken of severe judgments coming on the nation. Many of Jacob’s descendants are going to be discarded. Doesn’t that mean that the promise has failed after all, and that God does change, that the sons of Jacob are consumed? The solution is to see who was really included in the original promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Clearly there were earthly blessings promised to the physical descendants, but the spiritual blessings, the eternal blessings, were only ever for the elect. These are the sons of Jacob who are not consumed. They are fulfilled in the remnant gathered into the church of Christ. The Jewish order will come to an end; the physical temple will be replaced by a spiritual temple – Christ himself. The shadows will give way to the reality as the types are fulfilled, and yet God’s promises will not fail. Why not? Because he is not a God who changes his mind. He cannot make promises to Jacob and then forget he has made them. He cannot allow a situation in which it becomes impossible for them ever to be fulfilled. It is true that many could not see how this could be done, and the decline in Israel appeared to be so bad that recovery was impossible. But that was because they did not understand the spiritual nature of what God was doing. Many of them were consumed and many would die at the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. Yes, but the elect’s sake those day will be shortened so that some flesh is saved: the flesh of the elect living at the time and of their elect descendants, yet to be born. These are the true sons of Jacob, not everyone physically descended from him. God’s unchanging nature preserves these who were chosen before the foundation of the world.