Malachi 4:6 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Malachi 4:6

Comments

All the old writers used to love to apply this. The day is coming when your forebears will be back again, Abraham and Jacob have been particularly mentioned here, and Levi in this book in different places. The piety and godliness of your fathers will come to you and it will instruct you and you will delight in the faith that they had, and you will cherish them and their example. The fathers referred to here are the forebears, the ancestors, the heroes of faith, and their spirit will descend upon the new generation, people who are saved in the time of Jesus Christ. The heart of the children will be to emulate the fathers and to appreciate them, and to see them as friends of God, and those who proved him. That is the spirit that will be abroad when people are saved, and the old faith of the fathers is rediscovered. The great characteristic of true Christians in the New Testament age will be that they will be like Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, the patriarchs, all the way down to Moses, the ultimate fathers. John the Baptist shall turn the heart of the fathers, in a Biblical sense, the patriarchs of old. He will do so by a call to repentance, for the Lord in the gospel age will no longer tolerate the mixed multitude of the past, but Christ’s church will be a regenerate church. Abraham was wealthy: he had flocks and herds. But he didn't care for it. He always lived in a tent. He could have had a splendid place built somewhere. He could have occupied a palace. He could have enjoyed all the trappings of wealth, but he wasn't interested in material gain, because he looked for a city which is to come, ‘whose builder and maker is God.’ That heart is in all true believers, and you can tell them. They're not adding riches to riches; they're not living for the here and now; their minds are on higher things and better things. We love the Abrahams, the patriarchs, the apostle Pauls, all the apostles: we love them, the dedicated, the true, the loyal to Christ. Those are the people we want to emulate and be like.'And he,' that is John the Baptist, '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.' Matthew Henry says of this, ‘They [the land of Israel] by their impiety and impenitence in it had laid themselves open to the curse of God, which is a separation to all evil. God was ready to smite them with that curse, to bring utter ruin upon them, to strike home, to strike dead, with the curse; but he will yet once more try them, whether they will repent and return, and so prevent it; and therefore he sent John the Baptist to preach repentance to them … so unwilling is God that any should perish, so willing to have his anger turned away.’

Application

If there were not here in London, and spread throughout the world, people like this, who had the heart of Abraham, and the apostles, who were all for Christ; if there were not genuine Christians, however few they might be, the Lord would end the world and bring it into judgement. It is on account of the elect who are being called in, and transformed by Christ, and given this kind of heart that God keeps this sinful world going until Christ finally comes. That's what the final sentiment of the book means. In a sense, we are vastly more significant than we realise. And yet this is how we want to be: all for him.

The prophet Malachi is constantly speaking about the coming of Christ, the age of the gospel, John the Baptist, the nature of the gospel age, its imputed righteousness, its glories, its embracing of the Gentiles. You could not have a more logical, and a more simple book, always working to formula, like Zephaniah: judgement, blessing, judgement, blessing. There will be a judgement, but there will be a remnant and this is how it will be, and the great age is the age of the Jewish, Gentile church before the final judgement. It could not be more straightforward really. Never be afraid of the minor prophets, they are glorious. May God help us in all our thinking along these lines.

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Malachi 4:6 Commentary and Bible Study