The Day of the Lord is Coming

The Messenger, the Message, and the Mess

Allen Snapp

Grace Community Church

January 4, 2025

The Day of the Lord is Coming

We’re going to return to the book of Malachi and finish it up this morning and I believe it contains a timely word for the church as we enter a New Year.

¹³ “Your words have been hard against me, says the Lord. But you say, ‘How have we spoken against you?’ ¹⁴ You have said, ‘It is vain to serve God. What is the profit of our keeping his charge or of walking as in mourning before the Lord of hosts? ¹⁵ And now we call the arrogant blessed. Evildoers not only prosper but they put God to the test and they escape.’”

God says I’ve heard the harsh words you’ve been speaking against me. It’s vain to serve Me. There’s no upside to keeping My word. Worse, you’re saying there’s no downside to doing evil. Arrogant people are living blessed and evil people are testing God and getting away with it.

They’ve turned their relationship with God into a transactional thing. I tried serving God but wasn’t getting anything out of it. I tried keeping His word but then I saw people defying God and getting further ahead in life than I was. Transactional: what has God done for me lately?

That’s not how loving relationships talk. Love isn’t a “I’ll do this for you if you do that for me” equation. Love is more about giving than getting. God doesn’t offer transactional love, He offers us unconditional love. When God opens Malachi by saying to Israel, I have loved you in the Hebrew language He’s saying I have always loved you. Why does God love us? Legalism answers God loves us when we keep His rules. If we do the things that keep our side of the ledger, like praying and reading the Bible and going to church and stuff like that, then God will love us.

God says, I loved you before you had done anything good or bad. God’s love frees us from endlessly trying to be good enough to be worthy of love. The gospel frees us from legalism by declaring that God loves us because He has set His love upon us. We don’t deserve it! We didn’t earn it! We didn’t do something to attract His love and we can’t do something to lose His love. God’s love is the opposite of transactional. God loved us when we hated Him. Jesus died for us when we wanted nothing to do with him. The gospel isn’t based on legalism, it’s based on grace. Grace can’t be earned, it can’t be deserved. That’s what makes it grace!

The other charge God brings against them is they think evil people are getting away with testing Him. Their harsh words are implying that God isn’t just. That He doesn’t care about arrogant or evil people. So why not join them? God will soon make it very clear that He cares and they aren’t getting away with anything.

This will be the last prophetic rebuke God is going to give Israel for the next 400 years. For some it falls on deaf ears. They cross their arms and mock Malachi. They scoff at God’s rebuke. But for some a small miracle happens. Their eyes and ears are opened and they see and hear.
¹⁶ Then those who feared the Lord spoke with one another. Vs 16

It says “then” those who feared the Lord spoke with one another. They needed God’s rebuke as much as anyone, they were guilty of speaking harsh words against God, but they got the message! Then those who feared the Lord spoke with one another. We are messing up! We are guilty of all the charges that God has brought against us. We need to repent of giving God our left-over, half-hearted worship. We need to repent of violating our wedding vows. We need to repent of robbing God and trust His promise to bless our giving. We need to stop speaking harsh words against God.

Revival broke out in Israel that day! Not in everyone’s heart. There were plenty of people whose hearts were still hard. Plenty of people scoffing on the sidelines, arms folded, impervious to God’s word. Revival may not have broken out in all of Israel but it broke out in the hearts of those who feared the Lord. Then those who feared the Lord spoke to one another.

It’s a powerful thing when those who fear the Lord speak to one another. When spiritual momentum begins to gather in the church. This is what we need in the church today. Not better programs or bigger buildings or slicker marketing. I’m not against any of those things but that’s not what the church needs most today. We need to return to a healthy and sincere fear of the Lord and obedience to His word.

The Lord paid attention and heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared the Lord and esteemed his name. ¹⁷ “They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, in the day when I make up my treasured possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him. ¹⁸ Then once more you shall see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve him. Mal 3:16-18

God heard them. God paid attention to them. He wrote down in His book of remembrance the names of those who feared Him and He said, “these are mine! These belong to Me! These are My treasured possession!”

The Jews were saying, there’s no benefit in honoring God’s word cause God’s not paying attention. Wicked people poke at God and nothing happens. In fact they’re the ones who get ahead in life. God says, hold on. The day is coming. I will make a distinction. I will draw a line between the righteous and the wicked. We want to be on the righteous side but the problem is the Bible says there are none who are righteous, no not one. So there has to be another way for us to be on the righteous side of the line other than us living up to God’s perfect standard of righteousness. That way is faith in Christ.

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Cor. 5:21

Jesus became our sin so that we could become his righteousness. That’s not transactional, that’s grace. Malachi writes that God will spare His people like a father spares his son. I’m a father and if one of my kids were in danger I wouldn’t be half-hearted about trying to save them. I truly believe I would lay down my life if it meant sparing their lives. The NT tells us that God is our heavenly Father who loves us with a deeper love than any earthly father ever could and God the Son did lay down his life in order to save us.

4 “For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. ² But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. ³ And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act, says the Lord of hosts.

God says just wait… the day is coming! Those who love arrogance, those who think they’re getting away with doing evil…the day is coming! Those who mock God and His people…the day is coming!

The Day of Judgment is coming. The Day of the Lord is coming. On that day the choice people have made about God will be locked in – there will be no changing that choice on that day. They will be like hay and stubble, disconnected from the author of life they have become dead and dry and dead and their lives will go up in flames.

But, God says, for you who fear My name, a different fire is coming! The sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. All the damage and destruction that the long years of cold and darkness have wreaked will go away as the sun of righteousness rises with healing in its wings. On that day there will be healing from all the PTSD of this life and all the wounds, whether self-inflicted or the result of people’s sins against us. I love the picture of a calf leaping out of the stall. God created young creatures to love to play. They have all this energy bound up in them and if they’re caged up a while and then let out – watch out! That will be us one day! Every tear wiped away. Every fear, every sin, every regret fade away as the rays of God’s perfect kingdom spread over the land and all we’ll be left with is perfect joy.

⁴ “Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and rules that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel. ⁵ “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. ⁶ And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.”

In the meantime, while you wait for that day, God says remember My commandments. As Christians we know we aren’t saved by keeping the law, but we also know that the Holy Spirit has taken the law that was written on tablets of stone and rewritten them on our hearts. The Spirit within us causes us to want to honor God, honor our parents, not steal or covet or murder or commit adultery. The law can’t give us the way to life – only Jesus is – but the law does give us a way to live.

Verses 5 and 6 offer incredible hope and what looks like an incredible downer of a warning. God says just before this great and awesome day comes, I will send Elijah. I am going to send one more powerful voice to turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers.

I don’t know but I tend to think this will actually be Elijah returning to earth. Remember, Elijah is one of

two men in history who never died. He was taken up in a chariot of fire. But just before judgment falls, God will send a powerful voice to turn hearts back to God and one of the practical expressions of that revival will be a revival of fathers loving their children and children loving their fathers (and of course mothers).

Paul writes that in the last days many will abandon their faith and follow demonic deceptions. One of the things that will lead to is children dishonoring and disobeying their parents. We are seeing this today. There’s a big thing happening today where many young people are relationally disassociating and disconnecting from their parents. It’s more than a social trend, it’s a demonic trend.

God cares about families. God the Father wants fathers to have a heart for their children and for children to have a heart for their parents and specifically their fathers. Of course if a parent is abusive that’s one thing, but we’re talking about disconnecting from loving parents.

I love that just before the return of Christ there will be a practical revival and it won’t look like people getting slain in the Spirit or being super-spiritual, it will look like hearts being turned back to one another in love. Elijah will usher in a very practical and very God-honoring revival so that hearts will be restored leading to families being restored, leading to the land being restored.

Malachi seems to end on a real downer: lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.” Couldn’t you have come up with something a little more positive? I mean, is this the way we want to end the first message in 2026? I want to end on an encouraging note! Let’s believe God for great things in 2026! Let’s pray for healings and for families to be restored and for believers who have strayed to recommit and reconsecrate their lives to Jesus. And for unbelievers or those who once professed faith in Christ to have a powerful change of heart and get saved!

That’s what God wants too, that’s why He’s sending Elijah. But He ends with a dire warning because the stakes are so high He wants to get our attention. He wants to cut through the dullness of our minds and hearts and the demonic blindness that keeps us from seeing the glory of Christ or the danger of sin.

When we need a warning, warnings can be the most positive and encouraging words possible. Let me close with a story about a 10 year old British girl named Tilly Smith. Tilly was with her parents enjoying a vacation on a beach in Phuket, Thailand on Dec. 26, 2004, when to everyone’s amazement the tide began to rush out. They watched as boats on the horizon began to bob up and down violently. It made for a fascinating spectacle on a beautiful day on a beautiful beach. But Tilly had just studied about tsunamis in her class two weeks earlier and she told her parents who told the other beachgoers and staff and the beach was evacuated in time and no one on that beach was killed.

There are a lot more fun and positive things that could have been said that day. Pass the suntan lotion!

Are there any chips left in the cooler? But Tilly’s warning was the best thing those beachgoers could have heard that day. It saved their lives.

God is warning of a coming tsunami – and for those who listen and hear, it’s the best thing we could ever hear. Escape the coming wrath by running to Jesus. And for His people, don’t be fooled into thinking it doesn’t matter if we obey God’s word or not. Let’s together as a church family and as individuals recommit to hearing God’s word and obeying it.