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Malachi Chapter
Four
Malachi 4
Chapter Contents
The judgements on the wicked, and the happiness of the
righteous. (1-3) Regard to be had to the law; John the Baptist promised as the
forerunner of Messiah. (4-6)
Commentary on Malachi 4:1-3
(Read Malachi 4:1-3)
Here is a reference to the first and to the second coming
of Christ: God has fixed the day of both. Those who do wickedly, who do not
fear God's anger, shall feel it. It is certainly to be applied to the day of
judgment, when Christ shall be revealed in flaming fire; to execute judgment on
the proud, and all that do wickedly. In both, Christ is a rejoicing Light to
those who serve him faithfully. By the Sun of Righteousness we understand Jesus
Christ. Through him believers are justified and sanctified, and so are brought
to see light. His influences render the sinner holy, joyful, and fruitful. It
is applicable to the graces and comforts of the Holy Spirit, brought into the
souls of men. Christ gave the Spirit to those who are his, to shine in their
hearts, and to be a Comforter to them, a Sun and a Shield. That day which to the
wicked will burn as an oven, will to the righteous be bright as the morning; it
is what they wait for, more than those that wait for the morning. Christ came
as the Sun, to bring, not only light to a dark world, but health to a
distempered world. Souls shall increase in knowledge and spiritual strength.
Their growth is as that of calves of the stall, not as the flower of the field,
which is slender and weak, and soon withers. The saints' triumphs are all owing
to God's victories; it is not they that do this, but God who does it for them.
Behold another day is coming, far more dreadful to all that work wickedness
than any which is gone before. How great then the happiness of the believer,
when he goes from the darkness and misery of this world, to rejoice in the Lord
for evermore!
Commentary on Malachi 4:4-6
(Read Malachi 4:4-6)
Here is a solemn conclusion, not only of this prophecy,
but of the Old Testament. Conscience bids us remember the law. Though we have
not prophets, yet, as long as we have Bibles, we may keep up our communion with
God. Let others boast in their proud reasoning, and call it enlightening, but
let us keep near to that sacred word, through which this Sun of Righteousness
shines upon the souls of his people. They must keep up a believing expectation
of the gospel of Christ, and must look for the beginning of it. John the
Baptist preached repentance and reformation, as Elijah had done. The turning of
souls to God and their duty, is the best preparation of them for the great and
dreadful day of the Lord. John shall preach a doctrine that shall reach men's
hearts, and work a change in them. Thus he shall prepare the way for the
kingdom of heaven. The Jewish nation, by wickedness, laid themselves open to
the curse. God was ready to bring ruin upon them; but he will once more try
whether they will repent and return; therefore he sent John the Baptist to
preach repentance to them. Let the believer wait with patience for his release,
and cheerfully expect the great day, when Christ shall come the second time to
complete our salvation. But those must expect to be smitten with a sword, with
a curse, who turn not to Him that smites them with a rod. None can expect to
escape the curse of God's broken law, nor to enjoy the happiness of his chosen
and redeemed people, unless their hearts are turned from sin and the world, to
Christ and holiness. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with us all. Amen.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on Malachi》
Malachi 4
Verse 1
[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.
Cometh —
Tho' it be at a distance from you, yet it is coming and will overtake you and
overwhelm you too.
As an oven —
The refiner's fire, chap. 3:2, is now represented as a fire, burning more
dreadfully, as it did indeed when Jerusalem and the temple were on fire, when
the fire raged every where, but most fiercely where the arched roofs made it
double itself, and infold flames with flames. And this may well be an emblem of
the day of judgment.
Verse 2
[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.
The sun of righteousness — Christ, who is fitly compared to the sun, being the fountain of light,
and vital heat to his church. And of mercy and benignity; for the Hebrew word
imports both.
With healing —
His beams shall bring health and strength, with delight and joy, safety and
security.
Go forth — Go
out of Jerusalem, before the fatal siege.
Grow up — In
strength, vigour and spiritual stature.
Of the stall —
Where they are safe guarded and well ordered.
Verse 3
[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.
Tread down the wicked — When believers by faith overcome the world, when they suppress their
corrupt appetites and passions, and when the God of peace bruises Satan under
their feet, then they indeed tread down the wicked.
Verse 4
[4]
Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb
for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments.
Remember —
Now take leave of prophecy, for you shall have no more 'till the great prophet,
'till Shiloh come, but attend ye diligently to the law of Moses.
For all Israel — So
long as they should be a people and church.
Statutes and judgments — Be not partial; statutes and judgments, that is, the whole law must you
attend to, and remember it as God requires.
Verse 5
[5] Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great
and dreadful day of the LORD:
Behold I will send —
Though the spirit of prophecy cease for four hundred years, yet at the expiring
of those years, you shall have one sent, as great as Elijah.
Elijah —
Namely John the Baptist, who came in the spirit and power of Elijah, Luke 1:17, and therefore bears his name.
Before —
That is, immediately before; so he was born six months before Christ, and began
his preaching a few years before Christ began to exercise his publick office.
The great and dreadful day of the Lord — This literally refers to the times of vengeance upon the Jews, from the
death of Christ to the final desolation of the city and temple, and by
accommodation, to the end of the world.
Verse 6
[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.
And he —
John the Baptist.
Shall turn the heart — There were at this time many great and unnatural divisions among the
Jews, in which fathers studied mischief to their own children.
Of the children —
Undutiful children estranged from their fathers.
With a curse —
Which ends in utter destruction; leaving Jerusalem a desolate heap, and a
perpetual monument of God's displeasure. Some observe, that the last word of
the Old Testament is a curse: whereas the New Testament ends with a blessing,
yea, the choicest of blessings, The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with us
all! Amen. Dec. 24, 1766.
── John Wesley《Explanatory Notes on Malachi》
Elijah and John the Baptist
(4.5)
‘Behold I will send you Elijah the
prophet’ (4.5)
‘If ye will receive it, this is Elias
which was for to come’ (Matt. 11.14)
I. Each was empowered by the Spirit
of God for ministry (Luke 1.17)
II. Each had to do with a wicked
king and a more wicked queen (1 Kings 19.1~2; Mark 6.18~19)
III. Each received from God his
daily provision-food and raiment (1 Kings 21.20; Mark 6.18)
IV. Each was courageous in rebuking
sin in high places (1 Kings 21.20; Mark 6.18)
V. Each had a lapse into
despondency when his life was in danger (1 Kings 19.4; Matt. 11.2~3)
Contrast—Elijah was taken to Heaven
without dying; John was the last of the martyr prophets.
── Archibald Naismith《Outlines for Sermons》
04 Chapter 4
Verses 1-6
Verse 1
All that do wickedly shall be stubble.
The destruction of the wicked
It is matter of alarm and profound regret that this awful doctrine
is so seldom preached in these days, at least with plainness and fidelity. Why
is it? Surely not because the doctrine is not expressly and fully taught in the
Scriptures; not because it was not taught by Christ Himself during His
ministry; nor because it has not always held a prominent place in the creeds of
Christendom; nor yet because it is contrary to reason and the constitution of
the moral universe. There is no hope for the finally impenitent. Application--
1. Since the everlasting punishment of the finally impenitent is
clearly taught by Divine revelation, we are bound to accept it, reverently,
submissively, and without criticism, however severe and terrible the aspect it
wears toward the wicked.
2. Being an essential doctrine of the Scriptures, we are imperatively
called upon to give it its due place and importance in the ministrations of the
pulpit, The pulpit that dares to ignore it, or presumes to be more liberal and
merciful than God in handling it, incurs a tremendous responsibility.
3. Christians are bound to have respect to it in all their prayers,
and living, and intercourse with those who are unreconciled to God.
4. In view of a doom so certain, and so supremely dreadful to every
unforgiven sinner, how earnestly should every man “work out his salvation with
fear and trembling”! (J. M. Sherwood, D. D.)
Verse 2
Shall the Sun of Righteousness arise.
Sun-rising
There is only one sun in our system: and there is one Mediator
between God and man. The vastness of the sun is surprising, but Jesus is the
Lord of all. His greatness is unsearchable. The beauty and glory of the sun are
such that we cannot wonder at its being made the subject of adoration. But He
is fairer than the children of men. And all the angels of God worship Him.
Consider the inestimable usefulness of this luminary. How he enlightens, warms,
fructifies, adorns, blesses. What changes does he produce in garden, wood, and
meadow! The sun that ripened Isaac’s corn ripens ours, and though he has shone
for so many ages, he is undiminished, and as all-sufficient as ever. What an image
of Him who is the same yesterday, today, and for ever! He that seeth the Sun of
Righteousness, and believeth on Jesus, hath everlasting life. The rising of the
sun is the finest spectacle in the creation. But when and how does the Sun of
Righteousness arise? His coming was announced immediately after the Fall. His
approach obscurely appeared in the types and services of the ceremonial law. In
the clearer discoveries of the prophets, the morning was beginning to spread
upon the mountains. At length He actually arose--God sent forth His Son. He
rises in the dispensation of the Gospel--in spiritual illumination--in renewed
manifestations--in ordinances. But how will He arise in the irradiations of heaven!--in the
morning of immortality; making a day to be sullied with no cloud, and followed
with no evening shade! Then their sun shall no more go down. (William Jay.)
The Sun of Righteousness
As for the godly, He promises to send Christ unto them, bringing
illumination, righteousness, healing, protection, and increase of grace, and
joy in the Holy Ghost.
1. An infallible character of the truly godly is their reverence and
holy fear (presumption being very contrary unto piety), and that not only of
God’s justice and terrible judgments, which the wicked may tremble at, but also
of His name and
whatsoever He reveals Himself by; His word being enough to make them tremble,
and His goodness to make them fear.
2. Christ is the substance of the encouragement of the godly, as
being unto His Church and children in a super-excellent manner, what the sun is
to this inferior world, in enlightening all their darkness, illuminating all
the inferior lights that shine in any measure, making all hid things patent,
rejoicing, warning, cherishing, and ripening all fruits. “Unto you that fear My
name, shall the sun arise.”
3. Not only is every man by nature and without Christ, in a dark,
disconsolate condition till He come to them, but His manifestation of Himself
under the law was far inferior to that under the Gospel, which is far more
clear, glorious, and comfortable, than the legal shadows were: for where Christ comes,
“the sun ariseth” after a dark night; and this especially relates to His
incarnation, which is sunlight in comparison of the Old Testament, which had
but, as it were, moonlight.
4. That which makes Christ especially comfortable to the godly is,
that He brings glorious righteousness to them, whereby they who durst not
appear before God, become glorious and beautiful in the eyes of the Lord. He is
the “Sun of Righteousness”--glorious righteousness--to them.
5. As these who get good of Christ will have many sores, and be made
to feel the deadly wounds and diseases which every one by nature hath; so
Christ is the only Physician to cure such sores, and deliver His people from
all sickness of sin and misery. “He arises with healing.” (George Hutcheson.)
The Sun of Righteousness
From the most glorious creature, “the sun,” He expresses
the most glorious Creator, “Christ Jesus,” taking occasion to help our
understandings in grace by natural things, and teaching us thereby to make a
double use of the creatures, corporal and spiritual. Christ is compared to the
sun--
1. Because, as all light was gathered into the body of the sun, and
from it derived to us, so it pleased God that in Him should the fulness of all
excellency dwell.
2. As there is but one sun, so there is but one Sun of Righteousness.
3. As the sun is above the firmament, so Christ is exalted up on
high, to convey His graces and virtues to all His creatures here below.
4. As the sun works largely in all things here below, so doth Christ.
5. As the sun is the fountain of light, and the eye of the world, so
Christ is the fountain of all spiritual light.
6. As the sun directeth us whither to go and which way, so doth
Christ teach us to go to heaven, and by what means; what duties to perform,
what things to avoid, and what things to bear.
7. As the sun is pleasant, and darkness is terrible, so Christ is
comfortable; for He makes all at peace where He comes; and He sends the Spirit
the Comforter.
8. By the beams of the sun is conveyed influence to make things grow,
and to distinguish between times and seasons. Thus Christ, by His power, makes
all things cheerful, for He quickens the dead and dark soul.
9. The sun works these effects not by coming down to us, but by
influence.
10. As the sun doth work freely, drawing up vapours to dissolve them
into rain upon the earth, so doth Christ. He freely draws up our hearts to
heaven.
11. As the sun shines upon all, but doth not heat all, so Christ is
offered to all.
12. As the sun quickens and puts life into dead creatures, so shall
Christ, by His power, quicken our dead bodies, and raise them up again. How
shall we know whether Christ be to us a sun or not? If we find that we feel the
heat and comfort of a Christian, it is a sign that Christ hath effectually
shined on us. If Christ have shined upon any effectually, they will walk
comely, as children of the light. Uses of this doctrine--
The text describes this Sun as “with healing in His wings,” or
beams. In these beams there is a healing nature. Naturally, we are all sick and
wounded. We should take notice of our diseases in time, and go to the healing
God. Christ hath a medicine of His own, able to cure any disease, though never
so desperate, any person, though never so sick. Then why are we not healed?
What means this that we are subject to these infirmities of ours? Some of
Christ’s works are all at once perfected, and some by degrees, by little and
little. The text also promises, “Ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of
the stall.” “You shall leap forth.” Both expressions signify a cheerful moving.
We need to grow up. What are means thereunto?
1. Purge and cleanse the soul of weakening matter. Practise the duty
of repentance daily.
2. Come at good food. Digest comfortable truths.
3. Use exercise of holy duties.
Take heed not to lightly esteem God’s ordinance; but in reverence
use all means for the strengthening of our faith; by the Word, sacraments, and
prayer. How shall we know whether we are grown? If we relish the food of our
souls, the Word of God; are able to bear great burdens of the infirmities of
our brethren; able, like Samson, to break the green cords of pleasure and
profits. Our growth in grace is seen in our Performance of duties: if they be
strongly, readily, and cheerfully performed. Text says, “Ye shall tread down
the wicked.”
While the Jews obeyed God, they were a terror to the whole earth. The Church
treadeth, etc., in regard of true judgment and discerning of the estates of the
wicked. The Church tramples on all things that rule wicked men. The promise of
the text is finally accomplished at the day of judgment. (R. Sibbes.)
Sunrise
I. Who is this Sun
of Righteousness?
1. Jesus Christ, who is spoken of as “a light to lighten the
Gentiles.”
2. Light, a frequent Scrip ture symbol. The sun possesses some
excellent properties above other luminaries.
3. The sun possesses the property of communicating light to all the
other heavenly bodies. All men are indebted to the “light of the world “ for
everything that is good. Good men are called lights of the world. The Sun of
Righteousness is the great source of light and heat to the soul.
4. Similar effects are produced on the moral world on the rising of
the Sun of Righteousness, as are produced on the face of the earth by the
rising of the natural sun. Darkness is dispersed, and mists and vapour give way
before his powerful rays. When Christ, the true light, shines, moral darkness
is dissipated, and in proportion as the true light is received, superstition,
error, and ignorance die away.
II. When may this
“Sun of Righteousness” be said to “arise”?
1. When the prophet says “shall arise,” we are not to infer that He
had never arisen before, but that a more abundant outbeaming of His light
should be reflected upon the faithful.
2. “In the fulness of time, God sent forth His Son.”
3. He arose from the dead.
4. He may be said to arise when He visits any place by His Gospel.
5. When He visits the souls of the children of men by His Spirit.
III. The manner in
which He is said to arise. “With healing in His wings.”
1. Only upon those who fear the Lord: by penitents, and by His own
children.
2. Penitents fear God, and seek His face. They shall be made whole,
and saved from the guilt and power of sin.
3. The Lord’s children serve Him with reverence and godly fear, and
they too shall be saved from the pollution and indwelling of sin. (B.
Bailey.)
The Sun of Righteousness
Nature is replete with types, shadows, or symbols of spiritual
things. Our Lord is Himself called the Sun of Righteousness, because, in many
respects, He bears the same relation to the moral universe which the sun
sustains to the solar system. In this image, or symbol, there is a depth of
meaning which does not at once strike the mind; and which, from age to age,
continually deepens and expands, as science reveals more and more the intrinsic
grandeur and glory of the sun. Plato says, “Light is the shadow of God.”
Scripture says, “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.” An apostle
says, “God is love.” But yet is the brightness of this light and love so veiled
and obscured to mortal vision that blessing, not blasting, everywhere follows
in the track of their influence. The more we study the symbolism of Scripture
the more are we lost in admiration of its richness, its fulness, its grandeur,
and its beauty.
1. The sun is the central body of our system, by whose attractive
influence all the planetary worlds are held in their orbits, and so kept from
wandering into the outer darkness of infinite space. By Christ, the Sun of
Righteousness, all worlds are kept in society with God, the great central light
of the universe. For the Hebrew mind, this little earth of ours was the
universe, around which the sun, moon, and stars revolved as the appendages and
ornaments of its beauty.
2. The sun is the life of the natural world. Blot out the great
luminary and all the beautiful forms of nature, both in the vegetable and
animal kingdoms, would sink into one mass of universal decay and death The Sun
of Righteousness is the life of the spiritual world. “He lighteth every man
that cometh into
the world.”
3. The sun is the only self-luminous body in our system; from which
all others derive their light of life. So it is a symbol of Him who is “the light
of the world,” the moral world. It is given to Christ, and to Christ alone, to
have “light in Himself.”
4. The natural sun is, like the Sun of Righteousness, limited in the
beneficent effects of its influence. It is often made an objection to the religion
of Jesus, that it does not save all men. The same objection might be urged
against the natural sun. Behold the arid wastes and barren rocks, on which its
light-giving rays fall in vain. So the Sun of Righteousness shines in vain upon
all whose sins have rendered their hearts more than stony hard. But for all
this He is the life-giving power of the moral world.
5. The Sun of Righteousness is, like the natural sun, the source, or
rather the occasion, of many incidental evils. The natural sun, for example, in
acting on the corruptions of the earth, often breeds those noxious vapours, or
effluvia, which spread pestilence in the air we breathe. But is this the fault
of the sun, or of the corruptions on which it acts? It is only in relation to
Christ that men blame the physician for the disease He came to cure, and for
the evil and malignant passions He came to eradicate or subdue.
6. For many weary, countless ages men sought an answer to this
question: What is the foundation of the earth? After all their searching, it
was discovered that the earth rested on nothing: it was suspended from the sun.
Men have been seeking the foundation of society, but the everlasting, foolish
search is all in vain, for the foundation of the moral world is nowhere. It is
suspended from above. The Sun of Righteousness is its only point of support and
rest. All the planetary worlds are like a magnificent chandelier, suspended
from the sun; so are all social states, nay, all moral worlds, upheld and
sustained by the Sun of Righteousness.
7. The sun is, by virtue of its transforming power, a magnificent
type or symbol of Christ. The Divine power of Christ, working silently and
unseen through all the ages, is fitly symbolised only by those stupendous
agencies which, with such inconceivable grandeur, are ever at work on the
magnificent theatre of the material universe.
8. The power of the sun, by which all natural things are
progressively developed, symbolises the corresponding power or influence of Christ
in the development and progress of the moral world. The progress of
Christianity is the progress of man. All real progress has been confined to
Christian nations.
9. The Sun of Righteousness, like the natural sun, works silently,
but efficiently, in the depths of His dominion, and acts on the secret springs
or principles of its inner life. And a glance at the past is sufficient to
inspire us with hope for the future. The kingdom of Christ, though once the
least of all seeds, is now the greatest of all trees. Having its roots in
faith, its vital principle is love, its blossoms are immortal hopes, and its
fruit eternal life. (R. Bledsoe.)
The rising of the Sun of Righteousness
I. The persons to
whom the promise is made. Those that fear the name of the Lord. By the “name”
of God is meant the “character” of God. We have, in ourselves, no knowledge of
the nature and character of God, and therefore cannot fear His name until He
send forth the Spirit of truth into our hearts, to lead us into all truth. All
the notions which we form of Him, before the Spirit of truth is in us, are as
contrary to His true character as darkness is to light. While we are in this
state of blindness we can have no real fear of God according to His Word. The
true fear springs up with faith, and arises chiefly from the soul believing
some part of God’s Word, which the Holy Spirit carries home to the sinner’s
conscience to awaken him. This fear will be marked by a growing desire to know
the true character of God. And this is not a feeling which passes away. The
text does not speak of those that have feared the name of God, but of those
that do “fear it, i.e., continue to do so. It is not a passing
fright, but a holy abiding fear. The marks of it are an abiding sense of sin, a
desire to be taught of God, by searching the Word of God in order to know His
name, or true character, and by praying for the teaching of the Spirit of
truth.
II. The promise
itself. The “Sun of Righteousness” shall arise upon them “with healing in His
wings.” Jesus Christ is to the soul what the natural sun is to the earth. The sun gives
light and warmth to the earth, by which its various fruits are brought forth
and ripened. Jesus is especially the Sun of Righteousness, as being the
fountain of all righteousness; of that perfect righteousness by which believers
are testified in the sight of God. Jesus fulfilled all righteousness in His own
person when manifest in the flesh, and was perfectly obedient to the will of
God, even unto death. This perfect righteousness of Christ is imputed, or
reckoned to believers, through faith, as if they had entirely fulfilled it
themselves; and thus they are justified or made righteous in the sight of God.
Jesus is also the fountain of the righteousness of sanctification. The mode in
which the Sun of Righteousness arises upon the soul of His people is, by
pouring into them more and more of the light of the Holy Spirit strengthening
their faith, and enabling them to see that Christ, with all His blessings, and
all His promises, is theirs. He thus also rises with healing in His wings, to
heal the broken hearts of His people.
III. The happy
effect of the fulfilment of the promises. “They shall grow up, as calves in the
stall.” The believer is enabled to go forth with peace and joy on his way to
Zion. The blessed effect will be manifested both by the peace and shed into the
believer’s soul, and by his growth in holiness. The rising of the Son of
Righteousness will also greatly promote the believer’s growth in grace. The
growth in size of calves, when fed in the stall, is very great; so shall the
growth of believers be great. Apply subject to ourselves. Are there not too
many amongst you who are entirely strangers to the fear of the name or
character of God? Perhaps you have hitherto been brought only to fear God, and
you walk in dark ness. You should apply to yourselves this text: let the Sun of
Righteousness rise on your souls with healing in His wings. If He rises on your
soul you will have peace with God. (H. Gipps, LL. D.)
The Sun of Righteousness
This passage seems to refer principally to the second coming of
our Lord; the text itself may be safely understood of His first coming in the
flesh. It points out, primarily at least, the judgments to be brought upon the
unbelieving and impenitent Jews.
I. The coming of
Christ, as the Sun of Righteousness rising upon the world. The most glorious
object in creation is the fittest to represent the King of Glory. The sun is
the great source of heat and life and light; of everything that is beautiful
and beneficial. The Sun of Righteous ness here is the Lord and Saviour Christ;
the Lord and giver of life to His servants: a never-failing source of spiritual
health and comfort to His servants. Whatever the sun is in the material world,
that, and much more, in a spiritual sense, is the Lord to His Church. “Sun of
Righteousness” may mean that He is perfectly just and righteous in Himself, and
therefore discovers and rebukes sin, brings to light the hidden things of
darkness and vice, and affords in Him self a perfect example of light and
virtue, by which others may see and avoid their errors and failings. Or it may
mean that, by His own righteousness, “He justifies many.” This Sun arose when
our Lord came into the world. He again rose in His resurrection. He will again
rise when He comes in glory. And He may be said to rise upon each of us when by
faith we receive Him into our souls.
II. The salvation
which the Sun of Righteousness brings with him. “With healing in His wings.”
The Son of God came to earth as a Saviour. This character He maintained through
the course of His ministry upon earth, during which He went about doing good.
How did this Sun of Righteousness bring healing in His wings (or, as we should
rather say, in His beams and rays) at His rising?
1. The most natural interpretation is, of the cures which He wrought
upon the bodies of men.
2. The great act of salvation was bearing our sins in His own body on
the tree. “By His stripes we are healed.” This healing procured the pardon of
our sins, and the grace of the Spirit of God, to enable us to fulfil the
conditions required of us. Only by joining these two together can the salvation
be regarded as complete. Notice how great is His mercy in administering comfort
to the penitent.
III. The
qualifications required of those to whom the Son of God will prove a Saviour.
“You that fear My name.” Religious fear of God is necessary to qualify a man to
receive the healing grace of Christ. To the soul which has no fear Christ
brings no healing. This is the state of the true Christian; in which his terrors are
never so great as to extinguish his hopes, and his hopes never prevail so much
as to make him confident and secure. (T. Bowdler, A. M.)
Sun of Righteousness
I. Illustrate the
comparison of our Lord Jesus Christ to a sun.
1. His unapproachable pre-eminence.
2. His benign influence.
3. His relation to the whole world.
II. Describe His
restorative or remedial efficacy. In the world; in a country; in an individual.
III. Consider the persons to whom His
efficacy is confined. Who are they? And why are they the sole recipients of the
promised blessing? Consider Christ--as the centre of the spiritual world; as
the source of light; as the source of heat; as the object of attraction. (O.
Brooks.)
Parallel between Christ and the sun
A parallel is drawn between Jesus Christ and the natural sun.
1. Before the rising of the natural sun there is darkness; until
Jesus Christ arise or is apprehended there is darkness--moral and spiritual
darkness. Look to the world before the coming of Christ: the heathen; the
multitudes around us; any one of the unconverted; the place of outer darkness.
2. Jesus Christ, as the natural sun does, arose gradually.
3. Jesus Christ, like the natural sun, reveals or is the source of
light.
4. Jesus Christ, like the natural sun, is the centre of a system. Of
the material universe; and the moral and spiritual universe. Centre and sum of
revealed truth of the Church.
5. Jesus Christ, like the natural sun, has His image reflected, both
in the material and in the moral universe.
6. Is the source of enjoyment. He has all blessing; and admits to His
own joy.
7. Is often concealed by clouds.
8. He dispenses His influence freely. “Without money and without
price.”
9. He hastens the process of decay and corruption. “A stone of
stumbling and a rock of offence.” (James Stewart.)
The Messiah as the Sun of Righteousness
That the promised Messiah should be termed the Sun of
Righteousness may appear characteristic and appropriate. But what are we to understand by a sun
with wings? What by those wings being endowed with the powers of healing? what
mean we when we term the Messiah Sun of Righteousness, but that we, being by
nature the heirs of God’s curse, are through Christ reconciled to Him whom we
had offended? what mean we by the wings of the sun? In Egypt a sun with wings
was sculptured upon the gateways and monuments. Some regard the sign with a
reference to the rays or beams of the luminous body itself. Others interpret it
as representing that overhanging canopy of the heavens which bends, like a
protecting arch above this lower globe of ours, brooding over it, so to speak,
and sheltering it. Others explain the wings as betokening the swiftness with
which the light of the sun traverses illimitable space. Others appropriate the
term to the cooling breezes which in the East accompany the early sunrise.
Those who have experienced the glare and weariness of an Eastern day may be
better qualified than most of us to appreciate those first hours of cool and
refreshing daylight which are appropriated to health ful exercise and the
enjoyment of nature’s loveliness. The period at which we celebrate the rising
of the predicted Sun cannot convey real and fitting gladness to the hearts of
those who do not entertain this chastened and holy fear of God’s name. The
verse preceding the text is full of woe and alarm for them that despise His
loving-kindness and disobey His laws. Apt as is the image of the sun’s rising
and progress through the heavens, to represent the rising of the Sun of
Righteousness and His increasing influences as He goes on His way rejoicing, it
is when He has reached His height that the metaphor fails us altogether. Slowly
and surely the material orb sinks at last in the darkness. Herein we are taught
the infinite inferiority of the sign to that which is signified thereby. (T.
Ainger, M. A.)
The Sun of Righteousness
Why was it that God permitted His ancient people to be
overwhelmed with such unheard of calamities? We have reason to believe it was
simply because they rejected Christ, and the offers of mercy and salvation
through Him. If God, however, take vengeance on the wicked, He will be
favourable to the righteous, and spare them in the great day, as a father
spareth his own son that serveth him.
I. The Sun of
Righteousness. There is but one Sun from whom proceeds righteousness, and that
must be the Son of God. As Christ is the source of all spiritual life and light, so by His
sufferings and death He hath procured or merited righteous ness. He is
therefore the believer’s justifying righteousness.
II. His rising on
God’s people. Christ’s face shines on His people and disperses their sorrows,
but His face is dark towards sinners, for He is angry with the wicked every
day. In the spiritual world, when Christ took on Him our flesh and was born in
Bethlehem, then the light was come, and the glory of the Lord was risen upon
us! This Sun still shines; He is still shining, in His Gospel and in the power
of His Word.
III. The effect of
his rising. “With healing in His
wings.” Understanding this literally, we may see how Christ, as man, has arisen
with healing in His wings. How many; yea, what multitudes did His hands heal of
various maladies. This Sun is still shining. All our spiritual light is from
Him. All our spiritual healing comes from the merit of His works. (R. Horsfall.)
Our sun
I. The sun. Of all
the things the eye can see the most Christlike is the sun, for he is quite
alone in our world. Nor rival, nor helper, nor partner has he. We have many
stars, but only one sun. All light is in and from the sun. Yet even this
glorious image of the light of the world fails in some ways; for the sun has
its dark spots, but in Christ, our sun, is no darkness at all. The sun is the
centre of all the worlds. Every star is held in its place by the attractive power of the sun. The
sun is the grand river in this world. Our thoughts wax warm as we sum up all
the benefits with which he fills our earth. You cannot overstate them. Science
is every year finding fresh wonders in sunlight. All kinds of force come from
the sun. As the sun gives according to a never-changing law, so Christ blesses
only in a righteous way.
II. The sun-rising.
Sunrise is probably the grandest sight in the world. In the East it is so
magnificent as almost for the moment to make one a Parsee, a worshipper of the
rising sun. Malachi was in the twilight, and you are in the daylight. To him
the sun was beneath the horizon, sure harbinger of the wished for day. You live
in the Gospel-day.
III. The blessings
christ brings to men. As the sun destroys only darkness and its hateful brood,
so Christ destroys only our miseries, and brings us all blessings.
1. Healing. The Easterns often carved a winged sun above the gateways
of their temples. Malachi has a poet’s quick eye for the glories of nature, and
perhaps this also was in his mind,--the sun rises like a birch, with equal
wings wide enough to cover the world. Malachi’s meaning is, that as sunlight
brings health to a diseased, dying world, so Christ brings health to our
diseased, dying souls; and this healing comes to us with all the ease,
swiftness, gentleness, and freshness of morning sunshine. This healing brings
health, which shows itself in joyous activity. To healing and health Christ
adds victory. (James Wells, M. A.)
The blessings of the Sun of Righteousness
I. The promise
which is made.
1. The metaphor under which the coming of Christ is spoken of. The
rising of the Sun of Righteousness. Malachi assimilates Christ’s coming to that
of the sun rising upon the earth. Is He not well entitled to this appellation?
2. The manner in which Jesus is to come to His saints. “With healing
in His wings.” It is a bold poetical figure used by the prophet for the beams
or rays of the sun; and such bold painted figures are by no means uncommon with
Eastern writers.
II. The persons to
whom this promise is made. “To them who fear the name of the Lord.” This
expression is used in Scripture for religion in general. Without a certain
mixture of fear, taking the term in its most literal signification, no worship
can be accept able to Jehovah. Without a certain mixture of fear, no worship
can produce any deep or lasting impressions on the worshipper himself--no
sanctifying effects on his
heart and conscience. The term may, however, be limited and applied to some
particular classes of saints.
1. To them who are spiritual mourners.
2. To them persecuted for the sake of religion.
3. To them who sit in heathen darkness.
4. To the elect on the day of judgment.
To the righteous on that day Christ shall “arise with healing in
His wings.” To them shall He come with joy and songs of triumph. (James
Watson.)
Christ Jesus the Sun of Righteousness
The great light which the Almighty Maker of the world set up in
heaven to rule the day is the most glorious object in the whole visible
creation of God. The worship of the sun, as it was the first, so it was
assuredly the least degrading of all the idolatries by which men and nations
have since been enslaved. Does the sun exhibit the glory of God? What, then,
shall we say of Christ Jesus, in whom “dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead
bodily”? Seen as an absolute God, and by the flashes of the law from Sinai, our
God is a consuming fire; but we have the light of the knowledge of His saving
glory in the face of Jesus Christ. “In Him is light, and the light is the spiritual
and everlasting life of men.” By rising in the ancient promise He dispelled the
midnight ignorance and utter hopelessness of guilty creatures; by rising in His
own person, and glorious acts of grace, He chased away the dim shadows of the
ceremonial law; by rising in Gospel ordinances He abolished the night of error
and delusion; and by rising in His spiritual influences upon the believer’s
soul He says, “Let there be light, and there is light.” The sun rises gradually
over the earth; and so hath the Sun of Righteousness displayed His saving
light. His first ray was cast upon this fallen earth when the promise of
redemption was given to guilty man in paradise. The law and the prophets
reflected it with increasing brightness until His advent. But it is only when
that advent is spiritually and graciously made to a soul once darkened and dead
in trespasses and sins that the true and efficacious light of salvation reaches
him and renews him. Upon whom, then, will this bright and radiant Sun arise?
Upon those who “fear the name” of God. This fear of God is produced by that
work of regeneration which the Holy Spirit effects. The fear of the Lord is a
gracious and heavenly state; not meritorious of any good at the hand of God,
but a disposition which best subserves His great design of raising up and
glorifying the riches of His undeserved love. He who thus evangelically fears
the Lord is led to serious and solemn self-examination. If you fear God there
is a deep, earnest, ardent, unceasing breathing of the soul for Christ, a
constant application to His blood as its true Bethesda, its everlastingly
appointed house of mercy, where the soul may be made whole. Note the blessing
which shall attend those who fear the Lord. Sin is the cause of all spiritual
dark ness, because sin is the soul’s separation from God. Christ comes with
spiritual health, and with the abundance of spiritual peace: peace from the
guilt of sin rising up to condemn, peace from the accusations of conscience,
peace from the curse of the law, peace with the blessed Trinity, and peace with
all who are one with Him. The material sin is the source of earth’s fertility.
And how free, how common, how accessible is the sun of the natural world, for
all who live beneath it! (R. P. Buddicom, M. A.)
Christ as a sun
I. Of the
metaphorical representation of Christ. Metaphors are useful. They arrest the
attention: the imagination is engaged in discovering their beauty and admiring
their aptitude, while they rivet themselves in the memory by the force with
which they bring home to us the subject they are intended to illustrate. To
illustrate Christ as the “Sun of Righteousness,” consider the miserably
benighted state in which the human race were in the days anterior to the Gospel
dispensation. Jesus Christ, that “Sun of Righteousness,” pure and spotless, is
the author of all righteousness, whether imputed for justification or imparted
in sanctification. When Christ rises in the soul He enlightens, quickens, and
comforts.
II. What is meant
by “healing in His wings”? The beams of this heavenly luminary may indeed be
perceived by us, but do they pervade our hearts and lives? To fear the name is
to reverence Him as God and man; to participate by faith in His incarnate
sufferings; to accompany Him to the scene of His cruel death. It has its
foundation in a deep sense of the enormity of sins, and a humbling conviction
of our depravity. (Samuel Crowther.)
The Sun of Righteousness arising with healing in His wings
I. The characters
spoken of. The “name of the Lord” signifies the perfections of the glorious God
of heaven--the great ness and goodness of the Lord--God Himself. It is the
peculiar character of the people of God that they “fear His name.” It is a fear
of offending God, the tenderness of the child that fears to offend its parent.
This fear is an abiding principle, and it is a practical principle; it operates
upon the life.
II. The blessed
privilege of those that fear the name of God. The Sun of Righteous ness is
Immanuel, God with us. And He arose at His birth, because more conspicuous in
His ministry; was eclipsed at His death, shone forth brighter after His
resurrection and ascension, and attained His meridian splendour when the Jewish
dispensation closed and the Christian dispensation was fully established. But the
promise of our text is daily receiving its fulfilment in the hearts of God’s
believing people. The promise of the text, however, still awaits the
consummation of its fulfilment. (Benjamin Maturin, B. A.)
The Sun of Righteousness
I. The persons.
Those that “fear the name of the Lord.” Fear is the passion of our nature
opposed to hope, and by it the author of our being guards us against danger.
The “fear of the Lord” is the sublimest principle which can influence a soul.
It casts out all other fear. Filial and godly fear is always accompanied with
love.
II. The blessings.
The Messiah should be, to the spiritual world, what the sun is to the natural
world. In this view we may regard Him as the source of light, fertility,
comfort, and health. (Peter Grant.)
Christ, the gun of Righteousness
Were I to adhere to the textual view of these words I should be
shut up to consider what Christ’s coming was to those who already had some true
light, to those who already feared God and thought upon His name, and thus I
should have mainly to set forth the superiority of Christianity to Judaism. But
I shall make no apology for giving to this title “Sun of Righteousness” a wider
application, and for considering not so much Christ’s rising then and there
upon Jewish cloudiness and dimness, as rather His arising from first to last
upon the total darkness of our fallen world.
I. The nature of
Christ’s light, or enlightening power.
1. This light is saving light. In many parts of the Old Testament
“righteousness” is used in nearly the same sense with “salvation.” The
salvation of God, resting on the perfect righteousness of God’s own Son as the
sinner’s substitute, applied to believers in Him for justification, and in its
gracious operation, terminated and completed by their willing return to
personal righteousness and holiness of life,--this is what is here meant under
the name of “righteousness” (Jeremiah 23:6). We speak in our own
language of the “sun of freedom” rising upon a country, or of the “sunshine of
peace” revisiting it. But the light which here bursts upon a lost and guilty
world is the saving light of righteousness. It announces to the condemned the
hope of pardon, and shows the way; and it discloses with equal clearness the
means of deliverance from the power and bondage of corruption. In Christ the
whole salvation is contained, even as the sun reveals himself. In Him the
guilty are righteous in law; in Him, and as subdued by His birth, they are righteous
in fact.
2. This light is original light. The light of the sun is unborrowed.
It is a mystery which our science has not yet solved, how this fountain is fed.
But relatively to all sources of light that we know, it is higher and
self-sustained. This images the nature of Christ s light, in contrast with all
the knowledge of Divine things which comes to us from other quarters.
3. This light is pre-eminent light. The most glorious object in
nature is the sun. The ancient world had its lights, we grant--its poets,
philosophers, moralists, law-givers. But what were they in regard to righteous
ness or salvation? How much did they diffuse of the light of life? Christ was
even pre-eminent above Jewish prophets, who had known and revealed God to men.
They were but secondary lights. Their use was to point to Him. It is needless
to assert Christ’s pre-eminence over His own apostles and ministers and people.
4. This light is a universal light. What a universal blessing is
sunshine! What an emblem of the Higher Light which is not less universal,
though, for reasons which we cannot fathom, it is still beneath the horizon in
many a wide region of the earth. Where it has shone, can the natural sun be
more unrestricted and free?
II. The nature of
Christ’s healing influence. By wings the prophet means the rays or influence of
the sun. In addition to the influence of light we are now to take into account
that of heat, of which, too, the sun is the centre.
1. Christ’s healing power in relation to sin. What is wanted to
moralise the whole community? Only one thing, the love of Christ in every man’s
heart.
2. Christ’s healing extends to sorrow. This follows from the healing
of sin. Every sin has its own sorrow, its remorse, its injuries to mind and
heart, and often also to body and estate.
3. The influence of Christ’s sun shine upon death. The natural sun
lights all generations to their grave. How is Christ risen from the dead, risen
with healing in His wings for all that sleep in Him! Oh, the glory of that
victory over death, the last enemy, which the light of Christ’s immortal
countenance shall achieve! (John Cairns, D. D.)
Christ the Sun of Righteousness
We with the early Fathers take our Lord to be “the Sun of
Righteousness.” The mass of the sun being so vastly greater than that of all
the planets and satellites taken together, constitutes it a suitable centre of
light, heat, and gravitation; and therefore a striking emblem of Christ. Of the
many points of resemblance we will examine two. The darkness which precedes the
dawn, and the gradual growth of the light. These are seen--
I. In the growth
of Christianity. At the dawn of Christianity there was a darkness like that of
Egypt, “that might be felt.” Darkness is the symbol of ignorance and sin. The
intellectual greatness of the Augustan age is seen in its poets, philosophers,
etc.; but the flowers grew on a marshy and rotten soil. Classical writers
confirm St. Paul’s testimony in Romans chap. 1. to the awful moral degradation of the
time. The “dayspring from on high” appears, and gradually asserts its power
over the darkness. Christian teachers penetrated where the Roman legions never
trod. Persecution did not arrest the wave. When the northern barbarians
overwhelmed the Roman Empire, they had to yield to a power greater than their
own--that of the Cross. The glory of the meridian sun must fill the earth.
II. In the growth
of the Christian. Before conversion our hearts were “dark, void and formless,”
like the original world. The spirit of man is illumined by the Sun of
Righteousness, and chaos becomes cosmos. This growth is gradual. Three stages
of Christian growth. God calls, touches, blesses; which corresponds in some
sort to assent, affiance, and assurance. Growth in religion is mainly
characterised by thought of ourselves at its beginning, by consideration for
others as we advance in holiness, and by a desire for the glory of God when
more matured. Is Christ growing in us? We must be advancing or receding. If
Christ be growing in us, certain effects will follow. His light will cleanse
and purify; and shining from us, it will give us influence on others. (J. S.
Pilkington, M. A.)
The rising of the Sun of Righteousness
All nature is laid under contribution to furnish emblems of Christ
in His Person and offices. Text refers to the second advent. But the glory of
the second will be the consummation of the grace of the first advent. It was
the rising of the Sun of Righteousness when Christ appeared as the Light of the
World revealing pardon, peace, liberty, and joy. It will be the rising in full
meridian splendour, when He shall appear the second time, to complete the
salvation of His saints and to be glorified in them.
1. What the sun is to the natural world, that Christ is in the
spiritual, the source and centre of its light and life.
2. Christ is the Sun of Righteousness. He is Righteousness embodied,
exhibited as a living reality. He fulfilled all righteousness. He makes His
people righteous. As their justification, and as their sanctification and
illumination. By His Spirit He imparts His own nature to them, creates them
anew in righteousness and true holiness.
3. Christ rises “with healing in His wings.” The figure admits of a
natural and beautiful interpretation. On certain coasts there sets in with the
rising sun a balmy breeze which, because of its soothing and salubrious
character, the residents call “the healer.” Regarding this with poetic fancy as
winged zephyrs of the rising sun, the prophet speaks of the coming Messiah as a
sun rising with healing in His wings.
4. “Grow up as calves” is better rendered, “bound as calves loosed
from the stall.” Liberty and enlargement of heart, exultation and lightness of
spirit, shall be to them on whom the Sun of Righteousness arises. The
expression “go forth” denotes release. We know the exuberance of a young animal
set free to range in the open pasturage. To them who “fear His name” the rising
is with “healing in His wings.” But the sun in the heavens can smite, and
scorch and slay. Oh, that terrible sunstroke, so fatal in the East! Christ’s coming
may he to some a revelation of flaming fire taking vengeance. (A. R.
Symonds.)
The Sun of Righteousness
I. The blessings
Christ imparts, like those of the sun, are of the utmost value. A sunless
landscape is less dismal than a Christless soul; whilst a Christly soul has on
it “a light that never shone on sea or land.” The blessings of the natural sun
and of the Christ are, in many respects, similar.
1. They are enlightening. Sunrise means daylight.
2. They are restorative. Healing,--for does not the sun’s influence
on drooping flower and faded face of human weakness but hint Christ’s influence
on men’s hearts and lives?
II. The blessings
Christ imparts, like those of the sun, come to men in a remarkable manner. The
sunrise and these “wings” combine to suggest--
III. The blessings
Christ imparts, like those of the sun, bring benefits that, in a large degree,
are universal. The sun shines on the evil and on the good. What spot of earth
does it not, directly or indirectly, reach and bless? So many of Christ’s
blessings bless all. Is there not through Him--
IV. The blessings
Christ imparts, like those of the sun, demand special conditions for their full
appropriation. The best cultivated soil will best utilise the heat and light of
the sun. So the soul that in steadfast faith and love turns to the Christ, and
with intense desires drinks in all His truth and grace, will be the soul on
which will be most evident the healing
influences of the great Sun of Righteousness. (Homilist.)
A message for the faithful
Changed, indeed, are our days from those in which the words of the
text were written. Since that time the Sun of Righteousness has arisen. Elias
the prophet has come already, and they have done to him all that they listed.
The law of Moses, commanded in Horeb for all Israel, has been exchanged for the voice of One who
speaks to us from heaven. And yet God’s last words, as here recorded, are still
substantially the same with those which He speaks to us to-day after the lapse
of more than two-and-twenty centuries.
1. What is the great basis, here set before us, of all revelation?
Behold, the day cometh. Everything is tending to one point; every act, every
word of ours, is running on before us to that great end, the day of final
reckoning. How difficult it is to believe this; how much more difficult still
to act upon it! How often does sin triumph! The day cometh; a day revealed by
fire; a fire not purifying but consuming to all the proud, yea, and all who do
wickedly. And need we remind you who these are? They are all who say in their
hearts,--not with their lips indeed, but in their hearts,--There is no God: all
who live, that is, as if there was none; live without intercourse with Him;
live without regard to His will and His approval. Take with you unto your new
life this one great principle, there is a day of judgment coming.
2. Then what force and interest will this first truth give to that
which follows. He who is expecting the coming judgment can alone rejoice to
hear of One who will enable him to meet it. “Unto you that fear My name shall
the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in His wings.” The prophet is
speaking of a time when those who have served God in their generation shall
find to their eternal comfort that they have not served Him in vain. This is
the great blessedness of God’s service, that all its difficulties and troubles
come first: they lie on the surface; they beset its first entrance; diminishing
commonly, or made by use lighter to bear, as life advances; and all ceasing
absolutely when this life ends. A true Christian is on the winning side in the
great battle. With what patience, then, should he who is called to suffer some
times for his Christian faithfulness regard those who thus deal with him.
3. This for every one of us is the great lesson, that we look well to
our hearts and lives, to the work which God has set us to do, and to the spirit
in which we may do it.
4. There remains yet one portion of these last words of God by His
prophets, which is scarcely less applicable to days when He has already spoken
to us by His Son. “Behold, I will send Elijah,” etc. The prophetical part of
these words has already been fulfilled. The mission of the Baptist accomplished
them. But the practical lesson which they contain is of unchangeable moment. You
all know how large a part of your duty is connected, by God’s wise appointment,
with your parents. God accepts through them an obedience which cannot yet be
paid consciously to Himself. God makes it one portion of your duty to Him to
honour and obey them. Their approval He would have you to regard as your
highest earthly reward; their comfort and happiness as your highest earthly
object. (Dean Vaughan.)
Christ’s first coming
There is a touch of sadness about the Book of Malachi. His are
parting words, and they show how God’s people had degenerated, had lost their
fervour, and become content with a mere outward service. Malachi revealed the
spiritual state of the people to themselves, denounced their sins, and warned
them of judgment to come. But he does not leave them without hope. It is the
manner of Hebrew prophecy to blend together different events which have
relation to one another, and here we have words which belong to both comings of
Christ.
I. Christ’s first
coming. Described under the image of the rising of the sun. This implies that
the world was in a state of darkness before the Incarnation. The title which
the prophet gives to Christ, “the Sun of Righteousness,” marks one great
purpose of His advent illumination. “Healing in His wings,” applies to the work
of Christ, in body and soul. As the rays of the sun look like wings when they
stretch out across the heavens, so this healing work of Christ extends, by
means of His mystic body, the Church, far and wide over the nations.
II. Who profit by
it?
1. Light is diffusive.
2. But we may close our eyes against it, or hide from it.
3. Christ is the sun to those who fear His name.
4. Christ’s light was convictive, as well as attractive.
5. Even our Lord’s first coming was, in some sense, an act of judgment.
Lessons--
1. Realise the need of spiritual illumination.
2. Question ourselves how far the light and healing effects of
Christ’s coming have reached us, and how far our daily life is influenced by
His presence.
3. To be clear about the fact whether He is a “swift witness” against
us, or the “Sun of Righteousness,” depends upon ourselves and our use of the
grace which is given to us. (The Thinker.)
What Christ is made to believers
Jesus Christ is made unto us of God, a soul-heating, soul-warming
sun.
I. What need have
we of these warming influences from christ, the sun of righteousness? It is
upon the account of the coldness we are subject to in spiritual things. Some
are key cold, stone cold; dead in trespasses and sins. Even such as are
spiritually alive, are subject to their cold fits. The causes of this spiritual
coldness are--
1. Some inward distemper prevailing in the soul.
2. From the season; night-time, and winter-time, are cooling times.
When God withdraws, it is both night and winter to the soul.
3. From cooling circumstances, such as want of ordinances, engage
ment with carnal relations. The effects of spiritual coldness are--
II. How is heat and
warmth communicated by christ to those that fear His name? In general, it is by
His wings. In particular, He is a warming sun to us--
1. By the immediate motions and comforts of His Holy Spirit.
2. By His Word and ordinances, though not without the Spirit.
3. By good society. And Jesus Christ is made a heavenly sun, with
“healing” in His wings. Ours is a sick and wounded condition. Sick of the
disease of natural corruption; sick of the wounds of actual sin. This is--
And Jesus Christ is made a growth-furthering sun to us. “Grow up
as calves.” Can a tree or plant grow without warmth? And, finally, the Lord Jesus
is a fruit-furthering sun. (Philip Henry.)
The inner world of the good
The “name of the Lord” means Himself, and to fear Him with a
loving, filial reverence, is genuine godliness. We have here, in fact, a
picture of their inner world.
I. It is a world
of solar brightness. The “Sun of Righteousness” rises on the horizon of their
souls. There are souls that are lighted by sparks of their own kindling, and by
the gaseous blaze springing from the bogs of inner depravity. All such lights,
whether in the forms of philosophic theories or religious creeds, are dim,
partial, transitory. The soul of a good man is lighted by the sun. The sun--
II. It is a world
of Divine rectitude. “Sun of Righteousness.” “The kingdom of God is within.”
Eternal right is enthroned. God’s will is the supreme law. The meat and drink
of the godly soul are to do the will of their Father, who is in heaven. Such a
soul is right--
III. It is a world
of remedial influence. “With healing in His wings.” The sun’s beams are in
Scripture called His wings. “The wings of the morning” (Psalms 139:1-24.). The soul through sin
is diseased. Its eyes are dim, its ears are heavy, its limbs are feeble, its
very blood is poisoned. The godly man is under remedial influences. The beams
of the “Sun of Righteousness” work off the disease, repair the constitution,
and enable it to run without being weary, and to walk without being faint.
There is a proverb among the Jews that as “the sun arises, the infirmities
decrease.” The flowers which drooped and languished all night, revive in the
morning. The late Mr. Robinson, of Cambridge, called upon a friend just as he
had received a letter from his son, who was surgeon on a vessel then lying off
Smyrna. The son mentioned to his father, that every morning about sunrise a
fresh gale of air blew from the sea across the land, and from its wholesomeness
and utility in clearing the infected air, this wind was called the doctor.
Christ is the Physician of souls.
IV. It is a world
of buoyant energy. “Ye shall go forth and grow up as calves of the stall.” See
the calf, which from its birth has been shut up in the stall, let forth for the
first time into the green fields in May, how full of buoyant energy, it leaps
and frolics and frisks. This is the figure employed here to represent the
gladsomeness with which the godly soul disports its faculties under the genial
beams of the “Sun of Righteousness.” Conclusion--What a transcendent good is
religion! How blessed the soul that has come under its bright, benign, and
heavenly influence. (Homilist.)
Progress in the religious life
They were before in darkness and disease; both of which confine.
But the Sun of Righteousness arises, and with healing in His wings; and thus,
the true light now shining, and health being restored, they become free and
active--they go forth and grow up as calves of the stall. For even now they
have not attained, they are not already perfect. Nor are they to remain what
they are, but to increase with all the increase of God. We are not to deny what
God has done for our souls. But though we must not despise the day of small
things, we are not to be satisfied with it. A day of greater things is
attainable: and if we do not aspire after it, we have reason to suspect even
the reality of our religion. Spiritual principles may be weak, but if they are
Divine, they will evince it by a tendency to growth. The sacred writers express
this progression by every kind of growth. By human growth; vegetable growth;
and here we have animal growth. No creatures, perhaps, increase so rapidly and
observably as calves, especially when they are well attended and fed, and for
the very purpose of growth. We have been reminded, sometimes, of the truth of
this image, by the spiritual reality. We have seen those who, in a little time,
have surprised all around them, by their progress in the Divine life. But many
of us have reason to exclaim, “My leanness, my leanness!” How little progress
have we made in religious knowledge, experience, practice, and usefulness,
though we have possessed every advantage, and long enjoyed the means of grace.
At present the comparison reproves us. But let it also excite and encourage. It
not only reminds us of our duty, but of our privilege. This growth is not only
commanded, but promised. It is therefore attainable--and we know the way to our
resources. Jesus came, not only that we might have life, but have it more
abundantly. (William Jay.)
“The Sun has risen”
The natives of the now thoroughly Christianised Samoa Islands have
commemorated the coming of the Gospel among them, and the remembrance of their
friend, John Williams, who laid down his life on their behalf, by erecting a
church on the spot where the missionary first landed. The motto chosen for
inscription on the walls is simple and expressive, “The Sun has risen.” (Missionary
News.)
Hopeful view of the future of the world
I do not know whether any of my hearers have ever gone up from
Riffelburg to Gorner Grat, in the High Alps, to behold the sun rise. Every
mountain catches the light according to the height which the upheaving forces
that God set in motion have given it. First, the point of Monte Rosa is kissed
by the morning beams, blushes for a moment, and forthwith stands clear in the
light. Then the Bretthorn, and the dome of Misehabel, and the Matterhorn, and
twenty other grand mountains, embracing the distant Jung Frau, receive each in
its turn the gladdening rays, bask each for a brief space, and then remain
bathed in sunlight. Meanwhile the valleys between lie down dark and dismal as
death. But the light which has risen is the light of the morning; and these
shadows are even now lessening, and we are sure they will soon altogether
vanish. Such is the hopeful view I take of our world. “Darkness covered the
earth, and gross darkness the people; but God’s light hath broken forth in the
morning, and to them who sat in darkness a great light has arisen.” Already I
see favoured spots illumined by it; Great Britain and her spreading colonies,
and Prussia extending her influence, and the United States, with her broad
territory and her rapidly increasing population, stand in the light; and I see,
not twenty, but a hundred points of light, striking up in our scattered mission
stations, in old continents and secluded isles and barren deserts, according as
God’s grace and man’s heaven-kindled love have favoured them. And much as I was
enraptured with that grand Alpine scene, and shouted irrepressibly as I
surveyed it, I am still more elevated, and I feel as if I could cry aloud for
joy, when I hear of
light advancing from point to point, and penetrating deeper and deeper into the
darkness which we are sure is at last to be dispelled, to allow our earth to
stand clear in the light of the Sun of Righteousness. (J. M’Cosh.)
Properties of light
Light is purifying; let sunshine into a dark cellar, and it soon
becomes pure. Light is vivifying; expose a withered plant from a dark room to
the sun, and it colours up. Light is power; all sources of fuel are directly
from the sun, coming in rays of light. Light is joyous; nothing contributes so
much to making a brilliant assembly as a flood of light upon it. Light is
comforting; a dark day is always a gloomy day, but a burst of sunshine brings a
cheer. Light is strengthening; a puny child may grow strong if he can play in
the sunshine. So you should get into the light that streams from the Sun of
Righteousness. His presence purifies the heart, energises the mind, brightens
the life, cheers the spirits, and strengthens the whole man. (Sunday
Companion.)
The Sun of Righteousness
I. His oneness. In
the universe there is infinite variety and abundant repetition. In our world
many rivers roll their waters into many seas; many mountains attract the many
clouds which are born out of many deeps. Above and around us are many worlds;
many stars twinkle over many watchers. But there is for m only one Sun, unique
in splendour and in power. There is but one Jesus, the only begotten Son of
God. There is no other name given under heaven, or among men; only one
all-meritorious Saviour.
II. Centralness.
Our solar system holds its place in the mechanism of the heavens by revolving
in silent grandeur round the central sun. That sun is the pivot and point round
which, in smooth, unbroken harmony, the mighty worlds are ever moving in their
courses, linked and ordered by the law of gravitation; so is Jesus the true
centre of the soul. Apart from Him, the soul, like an erratic meteor, a
wandering star, flies ever away from the central point of bliss, to be finally
lost and shattered in awful night. The true believer is bound to Jesus by the
mightier law of love. Round Him, in the orbit of light and duty, he revolves
for ever, subject to the law of righteousness, and brightened with the
beatific beams of grace.
III. Light. The
moon, bright though her beams are, and radiant her beauty, has no inherent
illuminating power. The stars that make obeisance to their fiery lord borrow
their glory from this central source, and shed a reflected lustre on the world
below. The coal dug out of its subterranean bed, and all other sources of
artificial light, have drawn their resources from this central reservoir. So
with Jesus. “It pleased the Father, that in Him should all fulness dwell.” “I
am the light of the world.” As the sun chases the gloom, scatters the clouds,
conquers the night, and floods the worlds with day, so He banishes the night of
nature, the darkness of ignorance, the clouds of doubt and fear, the gloomy
shades of death.
IV. Life. The sun
is the great quickener. Winter, made by its absence, is the time of death; bird
and beast are sluggish, and comparatively inert; tree and plant and flower are
paralysed by an icy grasp. With the returning sun comes the germinating seed,
the bursting bud, the swiftly circulating sap, and a marvellous activity
pervades creation. So Jesus raises dead souls to life, and quickens the soul of
man into hale and thriving resurrection. “I am the Life,” He says.
V. Beauty. The sun
is the greatest artist. His magic pencil gives the sky its peerless blue, robes
nature in emerald vestments, silvers every lake and stream, and paints in
fairest hues the flowers that gem the earth. Spring-tide’s green, summer s
flush, autumn’s gold, and winter’s white, “all are the offspring of his magic,
pencil, while the sun itself is more glorious than they all. So Jesus Christ is
Himself the fairest among ten thousand, and altogether, lovely.” He invests
with moral excellence and spiritual beauty all that His love shines down upon.
He invests the believing soul with the garment of praise and the beauty of
holiness.
VI. Gladness. “The
sun,” says the Psalmist, “rejoices as a strong man to run a race.” It is a type
of perfect happiness. A happy face is said to be a “sunny” countenance;
gladness is oft called “sunshine.” All nature breaks into song under the sun’s
influence; the tiniest insect dances in his beams; the weary invalid welcomes
the first rosy salutation of the morning. Jesus is the joy-giver.
VII. Perfectness.
The sun is the great ripener. It brings all the processes of nature to
perfection. It finds the leaf an imprisoned embryo in russet husk and shell,
and continues to expand and beautify it until it flutters in perfect growth on
plant or tree. It touches the green bud, and never rests until it shines upon-
the perfect flower. It nurses the fruit till it drops ripe and mellow into
October s lap. It undertakes charge of the green corn-blade, and never ceases
until the golden harvest bends to
the reaper’s scythe. So Jesus is the Great Perfecter; and in the believer’s
nature the good seed of the kingdom is nursed and nurtured until, as Job has
it, he becomes a “shock of corn ripe for the garner.” He that pardons and He
that sanctifies is all of one.
VIII. Fulness. The
sun’s resources never fail. What liberal largess he has conferred on the world!
What harvests he has ripened! What mountain snows he has melted into crystal
streams! What flowers he has
painted! What spirits he has gladdened since first his mission was begun! and yet
his eye is not dim nor his natural strength abated! So with Jesus. “It pleased
the Father that in Him should all fulness dwell!”
IX. Universalness.
“His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends
of the earth: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.” It bronzes the
brow of the rude Fijian, reddens the skin of the Indian warrior, blackens the
negro’s swarthy face, and wraps the world in its benevolent embrace. “I am the
light of the world,” says Jesus. His saving beams have blest humanity in all
its tribes, from shivering Esquimaux to sweltering Ethiopian. He tasted death
for every man.
X. Impartialness.
The sun makes no selection. Where it can shine it will. It beautifies the
garden, and smiles upon the desert. It glorifies the rose, and flings a halo
round the thistle. It flashes on the crystal lakes, and shimmers on the
stagnant pool. It gleams on the topmost oak leaf, and shines on the humblest
violet. It burnishes silk and rags alike. “Whosoever” is the widespread word of
Jesus too. “If any man thirst,’ etc. Wealthy Nicodemus or Joseph, poor
Bartimeus or the woman by the well. This Sun of Righteousness, does He shine on
you? He is your one centre of life and light; the one source of gladness,
beauty, and perfection. (J. Jackson Wray.)
Verses 4-6
Verse 4
Remember ye the law of Moses.
Moses defended
Of all the books of the Old Testament, the first five books are
the most vital. The Pentateuch is not a branch of the tree of revelation; it is
one of the very roots. If objectors must attack some portion of the Old
Testament, let them assail the Book of Kings, the writings of Solomon, the
prophecies of Daniel, the glories of Ezekiel, the sublimities of the Book of
Job, for these, though inspired, are not of such vital importance; but of the
foundation truths of Genesis, we say, “Touch not, handle not.” If the writings
of Moses are not authentic; if the facts therein recorded are untrue; if, in
fact, Moses in his offices and character, be a mere fiction of the brain, then
the most tremendous results must necessarily follow. If such be the case, then
the whole of revelation must be blotted out. If the Pentateuch suffer an
eclipse, the New Testament suffers the same. You cannot have a partial eclipse.
The Pentateuch and New Testament are woven together in one seamless robe. If
you make a rend, you destroy the whole. The Epistles of St. Paul are full of
Moses. If Moses falls, St. Paul falls with him, and all the glorious apostles.
He that rejects the law must reject the Gospel also: for the law is our
schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. Moses spake of Christ, and testified of
Christ. The man who rejects Moses must reject the Lord Himself. We have other
witnesses to the authenticity of the Pentateuch than the inspired Word of God.
The testimony of the rocks of Sinai, etc. (Alfred Cay, A. K. C.)
The law, its place and power
In our text Malachi, the last of the Old Testament
prophets, shows that the fear of the Lord necessarily involves reverential
regard for His law. This law is described as that which was given to Moses in
Horeb, and the charge is given: “Remember ye the law.” These words seal up the
Old Testament revelation. Our text expresses a necessary, universal, and
perpetual obligation: “Remember ye the law of Moses My servant, which I
commanded unto him in Horeb.” In very many minds there are very hazy notions in
reference to the relation of the Old Testament to the New, of the Mosaic to the
Christian dispensation, of the law to the Gospel. It is quite true that there
are statements in the New Testament which indicate that some old things had
passed away, and that some new things had come. There is a sense in which the
revelation of the Gospel is in contrast to that of the Old Testament--not,
however, the contrast of contradiction, but rather of fuller and clearer
development. We must remember that the term “law of Moses” is used in two
senses--the one covering the whole Mosaic legislation, the other having special
reference to what are called the “Ten Commandments.” There were things in the
legislation of Moses which were purely civil--which could apply only to the
Jews as a nation. There were other things which were ceremonial--belonging to a
dispensation which was symbolical, typical, and preparatory. All these things,
national and ceremonial, passed away with the dawn of the new dispensation. But
there was one part of the revelation given by Moses--and this the central and
most important part--called distinctively “the law,” the moral law, the ten
commandments, which is of universal and perpetual obligation.
I. The law is a
glorious revelation of the character and will of god. God is the Creator and
Governor of the universe. He hath made all beings and things by His almighty
power. He governs them according to His own infinite wisdom. Over material
things and irrational creatures His control is a matter of forceful operation;
but over all orders of rational, responsible beings His control is a moral
government. This renders an intelligible revelation necessary. His moral nature
is at once the source and the standard of all purity and beauty. The moral law
reveals Him as the just and holy God, pointing out the way of duty and
demanding obedience. This law is perfect. It reveals God s character, declares
His will, and discloses the fundamental, unalterable principles of His moral
government.
II. The law is
suited to the nature of man, and is fitted to secure his highest development
and happiness. Man is a moral, responsible being, who was crested in the image, and intended
for the service and glory of God.
1. Likeness to the Divine character is essential to man’s true
development. The moral law revealing the purity and beauty of God, or declaring
His holy and righteous will, sets before men the original pattern of their own
character and the standard of their intended development.
2. Thus we may say also that obedience to the law of God is the
necessary justification of man’s existence. The holy and righteous God could
not create a race of rebels intending that they should exist to be disloyal and
disobedient. Man, coming under the power of sin, through rebellion and
disobedience, forfeited his right to existence in the sight of God and among
His creatures. The law declaring man’s duty justifies his Divine sentence of
condemnation and death upon transgressors.
3. Still more, it is absolutely certain that harmony with the will of
God is essential to man’s happiness. Holiness and happiness are in their very
nature closely and inseparably linked together.
III. The law came
straight from God to man. Man was not left to discover or reason it out for
himself. The law is not a constitution agreed upon among men for
self-government. This same law was given of God to Moses in Horeb.
IV. The law is
enforced by the most powerful sanctions. To it are attached promises of
blessing and reward, and threatenings of curse and punishment.
V. The law has
necessary, universal, and perpetual authority.
1. Necessary. Man’s obligation to keep the law does not depend upon
his own profession or resolution. Some people excuse themselves in reference to
a certain looseness of conduct by saying that they make no profession of
religion, or that they have very liberal views. They say that it is quite
proper and necessary that professing Christians should recognise the authority
of the law, but they contend that every man has the right to judge for himself.
This is all wrong; no man has the right to set his judgment or opinion or prejudice
or wilfulness against the plain, positive precepts of the Divine law. The
authority of the law is due to its Divine authorship.
2. Thus it must be evident that obligation to the moral law is
universal. Wherever you find the moral faculty, the moral law has authority.
3. Thus also the authority of the law is perpetual. God cannot
change.
VI. The law is the
basis, and shall be the crown and glory of the gospel. The Gospel did not
destroy the law. It did not lower its standards. It was not intended as an
apology for its severity. The Gospel honours and maternities the law, declaring
that it is holy, just, and good. The law could not pardon a transgression,
therefore it could not give life and salvation to guilty sinners. It gave the
knowledge of sin, measured the extent of man’s weakness and the depth of his
fall; thus it prepared for the exhibition of pardoning mercy and saving grace
by showing the necessity for it. Then again, the law determined the plan of
salvation and the provisions necessary, so that in the exercise of mercy the
Divine righteousness might be preserved and declared, so that God might be just
in justifying every one that believeth. Still further, the condition of pardon
and salvation under the Gospel--which is faith--is determined by the law. What
is faith but the recognition and acceptance of the truth that Christ in our
behalf made a full satisfaction to the law, and took away our guilt and
cancelled the sentence of condemnation by the sacrifice of Himself? Thus we
must see that the law is the basis of the Gospel--determining its plan and
provisions and conditions of salvation. But there is more to be told. Through
Christ Jesus come the renewal of man’s nature and the gift of life and power,
so that men who were dead in trespasses and sins, and under the carnal mind,
and led captive by the devil at his will, are caused to love and delight in,
and are enabled to obey the law. The law is always the same. The motives to
obedience are higher and the power stronger, because of full satisfaction and
reconciliation, and the free gift of life and salvation through the redemption
of Christ. The crown and glory of the Gospel come to each man when the law of
God is enthroned in his heart and manifested in his life and conduct. It is
said that in ancient times some laws were put into verse, so that the people
might learn to sing them. Through the grace and Spirit of Christ, God’s law
becomes poetry to us and His statutes a song. (J. K. Wright, B. D.)
Verse 5-6
Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet.
Malachi’s predictions
Of the prophecies
relating to the Messias some were so obscure, and had such an appearance of
inconsistency, if applied to one and the same person, that they could not well
be understood, till the event reconciled and unfolded them; for which obscurity
many good reasons have been assigned. But it is reasonable to suppose, that as
the time of Christ’s coming drew nearer, the later predictions concerning Him
should be more distinct and plain than the former.
I. Explain the
prophecies of Malachi relating to the Messias. The Jews, after their
deliverance from Babylon, were free from idolatry, but in other respects they
were base and wicked; and as unsettled people go from one extreme to another,
they had exchanged a pagan superstition for a kinder religious libertinism and
cold indifference; and this nation, which had once adored any and every idol,
was become remiss in the worship of the true God. Malachi reproaches the Jews
for their ingratitude to God, who had so lately showed them so much favour and
mercy. He accuses them of irreligion and profaneness; he tells them that God
abhorred their offerings, and would raise up to Himself better worshippers
amongst the Gentiles. Then the prophet proceeds to declare the coming of a very
considerable person. The passage indeed describes two persons. The messenger,
and another person who, being called the Lord, and having a prophet to go
before Him, must be one of the highest dignity. This same person is also called
the “Angel of the Covenant.” He is to come suddenly, and to come to His temple.
He should make and confirm a covenant between God and men. Who may abide the
day of His coining? How few will be found fit to appear before Him! He may be
compared to fire which tries metals and purges them from dross, and to soap
which cleanses garments; for He shall pass a just and impartial judgment upon
the lives and doctrines of His people, distinguishing false opinions from the
Word of God, and false appearances of holiness from true piety. He shall find
religion greatly corrupted, and the priests and Levites as bad as those whom
they should instruct; but He shall correct all that is faulty, and so reform
the worship of God that it shall be again acceptable to Him. The day of His
coming shall be destructive to the wicked. A new Elijah was to prepare His way.
He was to make converts by his ministry, but not to produce a general
messenger.
II. The completion
of these predictions. Jesus fulfils these predictions. He came suddenly; came
to His temple; was the messenger of the covenant; was a refiner s fire;
purified the sons of Levi; freed the law and the worship of God from all
defects and innovations, from all that was superfluous, burdensome, and
temporary. Jesus Christ arose as a Sun of Righteousness with healing in His
wings. His coming was truly the great and terrible day of the Lord. The
prophecy of Elijah’s coming was fulfilled in John the Baptist. He might be, not
improperly, said to turn the hearts of the people, and to restore all things,
as he did all that was requisite for that purpose. Elias in Malachi was to
prepare the way of the Lord: to turn the hearts of men, and to call the Jews to
amendment: not to cause a general conversion of the Jews; to convert several
and thereby to save them from destruction. John the Baptist was like Elias in
his prophetic office; in living in a corrupted age; in fervent zeal; in
restoring decayed religion; in rebuking vice; in suffering persecution for
righteousness’ sake; in offending wicked princes by reproving them for their
sins; in austerity of life, in habit, and in dwelling in retired places. By the
ministry of our Lord and His apostles is that remarkable passage in Malachi fulfilled.
“From the rising of the sun, unto the going down of the same, My name shall be
great among the Gentiles.” (J. Jortin, D. D.)
The herald of the day of the Lord
The last of prophets, who heralds the day of the Lord, is to
restore the spiritual continuity between the generations of God’s people; he is
to bring the spiritual fathers of the race to recognise in the men of his own
age their spiritual sons; he is to make the men of his own age welcome with the
affection of sons their spiritual progenitors. He is to restore spiritual
continuity, “lest God come and smite the earth with a curse.” For breaches of
spiritual continuity, that is, religious revolutions, are almost always
disastrous. There are times, indeed, when God has willed nations to break with
the past. But such exceptional moments we need not now consider. Breaches of
religious continuity are not always permanent. The incoming of some flood of
new knowledge may antiquate received statements of the current religious
teaching, and the men of the “new learning” may revolt from what seems like
intellectual bondage, and yet after all it may appear that what they revolted
against was rather the parody of their faith than their faith in its true
character, and a harmony between the combatants may yet be arrived at again,
which is a victory of the faith, but not a victory to either side. There are
reformations and counter-reformations; these are revolts and reactions. There
are “blindnesses in part” which happen to our Israels, which may be necessary
to let loose new and suppressed forces, and which may lead at last to
reconciliation. There are revolts which are not apostasies. But so it is not
always. There are breaches which are never healed, at least in this world. And
in any case such losses of spiritual continuity are terrible evils. More and
more, as we go on in life, we feel our responsibility for making the best of
the heritage which the past has bequeathed to us--the heritage of Christian
creed and character. Verily, we have entered into the labours of other men. How
are we to get the old religion to recognise the men of our day? How are we to
“turn” them from the one to the other! Let a man get at all into the heart the
Christian religion, and he becomes conscious at once that what that religion
corresponds to is nothing which is changeable in human nature. Knowledge grows
and past knowledge is outgrown; criticism develops, and its method alters, and
a past criticism is a bygone criticism. But underneath all these developments
there does lie a humanity that is permanent. The dress, the circumstances of a
particular epoch fall easily off the Christ, and He stands disclosed the
spiritual Lord of all the ages. The consciousness to which He appeals, the need
of God, the desire for the Divine Fatherhood, the sense of sin, the cry for
redemption, the experience of strength which is given in response to the self
surrender of faith, the union of men of all sorts and classes in the fellowship
of the Holy Ghost--this consciousness, this experience, does not belong to any
one age or class. It belongs to us now as much as to the men of old. The pledge
that a Catholic religion is possible lies in the recognition (in the moral and
spiritual departments only) of a Catholic humanity, which may be dormant in superficial
ages and men, but can everywhere be awakened by life’s deeper experiences or
the profounder appeals of the men of God. How then are we to play our part, in
keeping unimpaired, or in restoring, the spiritual continuity of our age with
the past?
1. The task is to be wrought out in the character by spiritual
discipline. Christianity finds its chief witness in life, in character. All
down the ages it is character which has been the chief instrument in
propagating the truth. The Christian character is sonship; something which is
peculiar to Christianity; much more than mere morality, or abstinence from sin.
It is the direct product of a conscious relation to the Divine Father, a
fellowship with the Divine Son, a freedom in the Spirit. Christian sonship is the
direct outcome of Christian motives, and its chief evidence lies in itself.
Certainly the chief witness for Christ in the world is the witness of Christian
sonship. Here then is your first vocation--realise and exhibit the temper of
sonship. It is developed by generous correspondence with the movement of God’s
Spirit within us, by constant ventures of faith and acts of obedience: it comes
of the deliberate and regular exercise of those faculties of the spirit to
which Christ most appeals, of prayer, of self discipline, of faith, of
self-knowledge, of penitence. The obligation of keeping up the spiritual
continuity of the generations, presses with especial force on the Church’s
teachers. The prophetic office of the Church consists in the permanent function
of maintaining an old and unchanging faith, by showing its power of adapting
itself to constantly new conditions; it is to interpret the old faith to the
new generation, with fidelity to the old, and with confidence in the new. The
old dogmas are to many men, and to many of the best men, as an unknown tongue.
The prophetic office of the Church is to interpret the unknown tongue of old
doctrine till they speak in the intelligible language of felt human wants. How
is this to be done? By knowing the wants. By being in touch with the movements.
There is a special sense in which the task of maintaining spiritual continuity
down the generations belongs to the Christian student. Two things are
necessary, as for the pastor: the knowledge of the old, and the appreciation of
the new. The Christian student will study with reverent care, irrespective of
modern wants, the genius of historical Christianity: making himself at one with
the religion of Christ in that form in which it has shown itself in experience
most catholic, most capable of persistence through radical changes, least the
product of any particular age, or state of feeling. So with frankness and
freedom he will study the conditions of the present. Mostly the same person
does not do both these things. There is much work before us to emancipate
Christianity from the shackles of mediaeval absolutism, of Calvinism, of mere
Protestant reaction, and to reassert it in its largeness, in its freshness, and
in its adaptability to new knowledge and new movements. We live in an age of
profound transition, socially and intellectually. What is wanted is for the
same people to take measure of the ancient faith, and to discern the signs of
the times. (Canon C. Gore, M. A.)
The gilt of prophecy the supreme need of our age
A strange and weird figure is this of the prophet Elijah, the Tishbite. A unique
person, with a unique mission. John the Baptist was one of his spiritual
successors, and the greatest. Athanasius, perhaps, was another, and Martin
Luther, and perhaps John Wesley; or, at least, these latter have been like Eliseus, catching up
his mantle, baptised with a potion of his spirit. They have been the men who
have accomplished the great social and spiritual revelations of the world.
Rough, earnest, strong-willed men most of them, not given to mince their words
or to stand upon courtesies; but they have been the men to keep alive the flame
of religion, and to prevent its dying out. Mark their ages, and then compare
the work of the man with the needs of his age. There were giants in the earth
in those days, and people say we shall never see giants again. The individual
grows less as the world grows more. Knowledge has got to be so diffused, and
the elements of life so manifold, society so vast and complicated, that an Elijah
whom all would recognise as a messenger from God seems impossible. The age of
prophets, at least of Elijahs of the old type, has passed away. Yet, though no
Elijah, there may be an Elisha; though no Isaiah, yet a Malachi. St. Paul tells
us that prophecy is the highest gift bestowed by Christ upon His Church; and it
is certain that all who feel that our call is to proclaim God’s truth to men
may well pray to be endowed with a portion of it. Whatever spiritual gifts may
have been necessary or profitable to the Church at other times, I am persuaded
that the gift of prophecy is the most necessary and profitable now. Men felt
the difference between a Paul and
a Philetus, for Paul spoke “in demonstration of the Spirit and of
power.” A man may well pray for a portion of this power, and for grace to use
it in the noblest cause. It is not eloquence, it is not popularity, it is not
the power of attracting the crowd; it is something impalpable, but most real,
when men bend their wills and hearts and consciences before the uttered truth.
It is strange how even educated men misread the signs of the times. This age
wants, and is prepared
to receive, not the priest, but the prophet: not the man who claims to stand
between them and God, and says, “No access to the Heavenly Father but by me”;
but the man who can teach the truth, and help them, in their blindness, and
waywardness, and ignorance, to discern the way of peace and righteousness. The
prophet must be in earnest, or men will not receive him as a prophet; must
himself believe his message, or he will carry no conviction to his hearers. We
have a message able to stir the most phlegmatic feeling, and to arouse the
dullest conscience, if only we knew how to deliver it. If our own hearts have
found out the secret, we can speak of present peace and joy in believing, of
the kingdom of God standing in righteousness, of the nearness of a Father to us
in our dangers, difficulties, troubles. There are those who can speak of these
things with a strange and moving power, and their arguments will rise high
above the clouds of doubt and speculation, till they seem to bring us almost
face to face with God. Such men are in very truth the Lord’s prophets; such
teachers build on immovable ground the fabric of faith. They are sure and trustworthy
guides; for they are leading men to God through grace by the ways of holiness:
they have themselves travelled, or are now travelling the road; they are
testifying to us out of their own experience; they speak that which they know.
It is a faith thus quickened, and faith cometh by hearing,” that vitalises
sacraments and prayers and worship. Without such faith, all these things are
dead; with it they become living, quickening powers. It is the spirit of the
prophet, before all other gifts, that the Churches need to enable them to
evangelise the world. (Bishop Fraser.)
And He shall turn the
heart of the fathers to the children.
The reconciliation of the old and young
I. The prophet was
thinking of what may fairly be called a time of transition. The passing from
one dispensation, or order of things, to another. Such a period was that under
Moses, when the people passed from a patriarchal to a national life. The
bringing in of the only begotten Son was the greatest event of the sacred
history. All that had gone before seems trivial in comparison with it. It was a
change from law to grace, from a religion limited to one nation to a universal
faith, from a system of rite and ceremony to one of inward spirit, But all
times of great change are full of danger. They give great anxiety to all
thoughtful minds. Ours is a time of transition, and the grave danger of our
times is, the possibility of estrangement between the fathers and the children,
i.e., between the old and the young. The fathers are disposed to be conservative;
the older we get the harder we find it to receive new thoughts, or accustom
ourselves to new ways. So when the fathers see the children entering on new
ways, adopting new methods, forming new parties, there is a danger that their
hearts should be turned away from them and on the other hand, the young are
disposed to that which is new; their minds are receptive and plastic. They are
tempted to think their fathers’ ways and thoughts are old-fashioned, to
underrate the good of the past, and to leave their fathers behind.
II. Our duty in
such a time of transition.
There is a duty peculiar to such an age. To fulfil it was part of the mission
of John the Baptist. He did much to break the abruptness of the transition from
the one dispensation to the other.
1. The duty of the fathers to the children. That “the fathers should
recognise the new needs, and the new powers of the children.”
2. The duty of the children to the fathers, the young to the old.
“The children should recognise the value of the institutions and traditions
which they inherit from their fathers.” The opinions of the fathers are
certainly entitled to respectful consideration. Age should prejudice you not
against them, but in their favour. Be not swift to remove the ancient
landmarks.
III. Our safe guard
in such a time of transition. There is a certain deep interest in this as the
last word of the Old Testament. It is filled with the hope of one who should be
the messenger of the Highest; but lying close behind it is the thought and hope
of Him whose way should be thus prepared. We think not of the herald, but of
the King before whose face he went. The true safeguard amid the perils of our
day is in Christ. The young may outgrow the special forms in which His doctrine
has been cast, but they cannot outgrow the Christ. Christ, rightly regarded,
meets the needs of old and young. It is absurd to talk of outgrowing Jesus
Christ. He is the true gathering point for the old and the young. (W.
Garrett Horder.)
Religion in the Family
The family is a radical and fundamental organisation and agency in
human society. It is the original source of authority, government, morality,
and religion. Without family ties, family government and discipline, family
virtue and piety, the Church could not exist, and society would quickly relapse
into anarchy and barbarism, and fall to pieces. Here are the roots of
godliness, of self-government, of right development. Is it any marvel, then,
that God guards the family sanctity and life with such jealousy, and lays upon
the marital and parental relations such solemn sanctions and obligations? There
is no more alarming sign of the times than the decay of family religion. And
the decay is not superficial but radical, and the effects are far reaching,
disastrous, and permanent. Family government is fearfully relaxed, family
religious instruction is almost a thing of the past, parental restraints have
come to be obnoxious, children have lost reverence for their parents, the home
altar, in ten thousand households, is broken down, and the children even of
Christian parents grow up without the fear of God, without Christian training
and restraint, and go forth into the world, wholly unprepared to resist
temptation, or to meet the responsibilities of life. We must have a speedy and
grand revival of family religion, or we are doomed. Nothing else can stay the
tide of religions declension, in faith and in practice, the tide of
demoralisation that threatens to make a clean sweep of social integrity, of law
and order, and self-government. We must heed the Divine warning uttered by
Malachi, or God will smite us with a still more fearful curse. (J. M.
Sherwood, D. D.)
Our debt to childhood
There are encouraging hints that the study of the young is not to
be always undervalued. One is, the careful observation of child-life which men
of science are beginning to make simply in the interests of science.
Legislators also are beginning to see that in order to have good citizens we
must educate the young. The Church needs to establish an early tutelage of her
children. In the old New England meeting-house all was stately and sterile,
rigid and unattractive, to the children. Notice some of the advantages of the
modern method of youthful Sabbath instruction.
1. Children learn more in company than alone. It is good to see truth
through the eyes of others.
2. There are elements in the Church which are brought out by the
effort to discharge our debt to the young. Here is a field for lay activity. It
is an inexplicable fact, that a teacher, or some one outside the family, will
sometimes get nearer the child’s heart than the dearest home-friend. How can we all co-operate? As
this enlarging interest in childhood is the hope of the world, so the growth of
this spirit of helpfulness in individual lives is the guarantee of the healthful and
happy development of Christian character. (Jesse B. Thomas, D. D.)
Parental responsibilities
Malachi, in his last chapter, prepares the people for the long
silence of revelation by two words, of which one is a promise, and the other a
precept. The command is, to walk by the law of Moses. The promise is, that in
due time the Messiah’s forerunner, coming in the spirit and power of Elijah,
shall usher in the solemn yet glorious day of Christ, by his preparatory
ministry. This was to be the next prophet whom the Church was entitled to
expect. But his work was to be prominently a revival of parental fidelity and
domestic piety. The work upon fathers and mothers was to be far more than the
removal of domestic alienations. It was to embrace a great revival of parental
and filial piety, an awakening of parents’ hearts to the salvation of their
children, and the docile seeking and reception of parental instruction by the
children. This revival of domestic piety and parental fidelity is necessary to
prevent the coming of the Divine Messiah from being a woe instead of a blessing
to men. God’s way of promoting revival is, not to increase” the activity of any
public, and outward means only, but to “turn the hearts of the parents to the
children. The duty of parental fidelity is equally prominent in both
dispensations.
1.The old terminates with it, the new opens wire it. This is the
connecting link between both. The fidelity of the parents ought to imply the
docility of the children. The duties are mutual.
I. The urgency of
parental responsibility appears in a solemn manner from the nature of the
parental relation itself. Wherever human society is, there a parent is. Every
human existence begins in a parental relation. The glory of the Divine beneficence
towards the human race appears in this, that the parents, without alienating
anything of their own immortality, are able to multiply immortalities in
ever-widening and progressive numbers. Here are the two facts which give so
unspeakable a solemnity to the parent’s relation to his children. He has
conferred on them, unasked, the endowment of an endless, responsible existence.
He has also been the instrument of conveying to this new existence the taint of
original sin and guilt. Can the human mind conceive a motive more tender, more
urgent, prompting a parent to seek the aid of the great Physician, for dealing
with the spiritual disease which they have conveyed?
II. From the unique
and extensive character of parental authority. Men win be held accountable
according to the extent of the powers intrusted to them. The trust is that of
immortal souls. Let the extent of the parent’s legitimate or unavoidable power
over his children be pondered. Neither Divine nor human law gives the parent a
right to force the tender mind of the child, by persecutions, or corporeal
pains or penalties; or to abuse it, by sophistries, or falsehoods, into the
adoption of his opinions. But this power the providential law does confer: the
parent may and ought to avail himself of all the influences of opportunity and
example, of filial reverence and affection, of his superior age, knowledge, and
sagacity, to reinforce the power of truth over the child’s mind, and in this
good sense to prejudice him in favour of the parental creed.
III. But this power
has suitable checks and guards. One is found in the strict responsibility to
which God holds the domestic ruler. Another is found in the affection which
nature binds up with the parental relation.
IV. The parent’s
influence for good and evil will be more effectual than any other. As parents
perform or neglect their duties, the children usually end in grace or impiety.
The parent has the first and all-important opportunity. Application--
1. The education of children for God is the most important business
done on earth.
2. The Church-membership of the children of believers may be
reasonable and scriptural. (R. S. Dabney, D. D.)
Family government
True family government is instituted for the sole benefit of the
governed. “The true end of government is to make the pathway to virtue and
morality easy, and the pathway of crime difficult and full of peril.”
I. The vast
importance of family government. Of Abraham it was said, “He will command his
children.” Neglect of commanding is seen in the failure of Eli. By “turning the
hearts of the fathers to the children,” the text means that the chief duty of
every father is to bring his children to God. In every ease where family
government has been enforced the pious parents have fully realised the truth of
the glorious promise, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is
old he will not depart from it.” We may learn the importance of family
government from the teachings of all the greatest philosophers and statesmen,
of all ages and climes. The Greeks and the Romans, the rulers of the world, and our
grander Old English and Puritan fathers, all taught and practised family
government. Every pastor knows that young converts who have had no family
government make as a general thing worthless Church members. The last argument
on the importance family government, is the happiness of the child. An
ungoverned child is a bundle of bad passions, a seething volcano of untamed and
ungovernable passions, hating everybody, and hateful to everybody.
II. How shall i
govern my child? Lay down seven golden rules.
1. Begin, continue, and end in prayer.
2. Begin early.
3. Be tender.
4. Be firm.
5. Have no partiality among your children.
6. Let father and mother be united.
7. Imbue the soul of your child with reverence for God and right.
A strong wall, and safe quarantine, may be made of four great
laws. No bad company; no idle time; no fine clothes; and make home happy. (Rufus
C. Beveleson, D. D.)
The home school
With this verse the Old Testament ends. So far down had Malachi
come towards the Messiah, that the East was already growing bright with His
coming. He predicts the end of sacrifices, and the coming of a more glorious
era. What were the words that, when the last record was ended, were to come
with blessed undulations down to our time? See the text. The institution
nearest to the heart of society is the family. The most important office in
society is the parental office. The sphere of each family is small, but the
number of these spheres is incalculable. As each drop is small, but the sea is
vast, so is it in society. Families are the springs of society. Declension in
religion will be found to be accompanied with carelessness in the family; and
the earliest steps of religious reformation ought to take place in the family.
If all the families of a nation were to reform, the nation would be reformed.
All preparation for God’s work should begin in the household. Many persons are
for ever running round for revivals, careless of home, neglectful of children,
and seeking their own pleasurable excitement, frequently in a kind of religious
carnival. Any conception of religious culture and life that leaves the family
out, or that is at the expense of the family, is fundamentally wrong, and in
the end cannot but be mischievous. The divinity of revivals may be tested by
their effect on the family. If religious excitements make home dull, and
parental and filial duties and religions tame and tasteless, they may be
suspected of being spurious, carnal, worldly.
I. Parents are
responsible to God and to human society for their children. It is a
responsibility assumed by every parent, to look after the welfare, temporal and
eternal, of his child.
II. This
responsibility is just. Because God has framed the family so that nothing can
exceed the advantage which parents have in rearing their children. They take
the child before all other influences. None gains ascendency over the child
before the parent. The parent receives the child in a condition perfectly
fitted to be moulded and stamped. The child comes to us with all natural
adaptations for taking impressions. It is sympathetic, trustful, and imitative.
The hardest work we have to do in this world is to correct the mistakes of
parents in the education of their children. The parent receives the child into
an involuntary atmosphere of love, which is that summer in which all good
dispositions must grow. Justice, and all other feelings, in the family, act in
the sphere, and under the control, of parental love. Nowhere else is love so
much the predominating element. Love is the atmospheric condition in which we
are to mould and teach the child. Besides, the family is sheltered from contact
and temptation and interruption. The family is the” only institution in which
one can repel all invasion and all despotism from state and from meddling
priests. God has nut our children into our hands with the declaration that they
are His; that they have in them the germ of immortality, and that He commits
them to our charge that we may fit them for the future life that is prepared
for them.
III. The destiny of
a child renders it worthy of a parent’s whole heart, thought, and time. Your
child is given to you to be brought up in the manner best calculated to qualify
it for the life to come. Your supremacy over it is absolute. With such a charge
it is worth while to stay at home. Sometimes mothers think it is bard to be
shut up at home with the care of little children. But she who takes care of
little children takes care of great eternities.
IV. When a child
has gone forth from parental care, parental neglect cannot be made up to it.
Some alleviation there may be, and some after-refuge, but there can be no
complete remedy. There is no way of compensating for neglect to sow the seed at
the proper time. The most precious legacy that a parent can give to a child is that
throughout all its after life it should in connection with everything that a
wise and true and just and pure and spiritual call to mind father and mother. (H.
Ward Beecher.)
Decay of family power
The text is in the form of a prediction. The object and effect of
Elijah s coming mission shall be what is set forth in the text, namely, to reform mankind
and bring the world back to those elementary principles or institutes ordered
of old for human improvement and salvation. The special mission of John the
Baptist was that of a reformer. He come to preach repentance. Degeneracy and
corruption were so deep-seated and universal that it was necessary to begin at
the beginning; not with the church or the state or society, but with the
family, the fountain of moral influence; and build up again the family
constitution which irreligion and vice had overthrown. We have here, then, the
Divine plan of reforming and saving mankind. This prophetic utterance has
application to all ages and nations. Christianity is God’s ordained instrument
to plant and extend His kingdom on earth; and, contrary to the teachings of the
schools and the expectations of the wise, it shall not do this by the power of
the state, by the force of law, by ecclesiastical organisms, by the influence
of fraternities, or by means of patronage, learning, and wealth, but by simply
recognising and working the original elemental principles of society; by simply
“turning the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the
children to their fathers.” The Gospel seeks to accomplish the mission of life
by the power of family religion--by invigorating and purifying the family
constitution, by drawing close and sanctifying the bonds of domestic affection
and life, and if it fails to do this it fails of its end. Affection is the
great family bond and the chief element of power in domestic life. And
Christianity appeals powerfully to the affections of our nature. There is a
mighty force in it to excite and purify, to strengthen and exalt our nature. A
family not under a religious training and influence is a fountain of social
corruption. Here are the sources of infidelity and vice and disorder, of
social, political, and religious declension and overthrow. Is there a
widespread corruption of morals pervading society? Depend upon it, the main and
primary cause of it all may be traced up to the family. This fundamental,
elementary justification is not honoured, but abused and perverted. There are
three fundamental agencies by which Divine wisdom seeks to reform and save the
world--the family, the state, and the Church. They sustain most intimate
relations to each other. They underlie all goodness, all prosperity, all order.
The family is more radical than the others, and they cannot exist without it.
It is a wonderful arrangement, this division of the whole human family into
little separate communities, each community a little government, a miniature
world by itself--marriage the foundation, love the bond, and Divine authority
the governing power. Such an arrangement, simple as it is, touches all the
elementary and radical principles of human nature. The family power is the fountain
of all moral power in the world. Without such an agency we cannot see how
religion could ever have gained a footing in it. During all the patriarch ages
the family alone preserved the knowledge and worship of God. We cannot estimate
the full value of such an agency. We cannot tell all its vital bearings on the
kingdom of Christ, on the world at large. Where the family power is neglected
or perverted religion has nothing to build upon. The only way to build up
Christ’s kingdom is to make the family what it should be. The household must be
sanctified. There is no agency that can be substituted for the family. It is a
shallow and miserable philosophy which would set it aside, or endeavour to
improve upon it. It belongs to all time, to universal humanity. (J. M. Sherwood.)
──《The Biblical Illustrator》