“On the day when I act, says the LORD of hosts. Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and rules that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel. “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.”
Malachi 4:3b-6, ESV
It’s our heart attitude that determines how we will receive “the day,” not our pedigree or ethnicity. However, it’s also a heart attitude that shows up in how we live. Intellectual assent or association with correct doctrine is not enough. As Abraham Kuyper well said:
“Bare intellectual knowledge of God, which is not applied by the will to our life, is a frozen ice-crust under which the steam has run dry.”
Or to say it differently, right ethics rooted in a right attitude toward God trumps correct theology disconnected from a heart for God. So how do wandering hearts get recaptured? And how does Malachi point to hope in the midst of impending judgment? It starts with remembering, but it’s a biblical kind of remembering. The call to “remember” in v.4 requires faithful obedience. Mere cognition or recall is not enough, but it starts there.
The return to obedience for wandering hearts often comes through remembering significant events that are connected to historical people and places. In this passage, the person recalled is “Moses,” and the place is Mount “Horeb” (4). Baker notes that “Horeb” is an “alternative name for Mount Sinai (Ex 33:6; Sir 48:7) . . . it is the place where Israel became a nation, since there they received their ‘constitution,’ the law of Moses (Ex 19–24), as well as various other instructions on how to live as a people under the authority of God (Ex 25–Num. 10:10).”[1] Thus, Israel has an amazing identity, but they have forgotten it. And this forgetfulness is part of what’s led to their wandering and disobedience. One might recall the “remembering” of Simba in Disney’s The Lion King. Influenced by the lies of his Uncle Scar, Simba left the paradisal existence associated with Pride Rock to wander the jungle and wastelands. Later confronted by the wise, albeit eccentric, baboon witch doctor named Rafiki (meaning “friend”), Simba comes to a riverbank where he looks down and sees both his and his late father, Mufasa’s, reflections in the water. He then looks up in the sky and sees a vision of his father. His father, who loved him dearly, says, “Remember, you are more than what you have become.” At this place of repentance, Simba turns from his shadow self, rejects the lies of his Uncle Scar, and returns to Pride Rock to embrace his destiny as the Lion King.
Joshua 1:13 is another place where Israel is similarly commanded to “remember.” The command is there associated with rest and land in a positive sense: “Remember the word that Moses the servant of the Lord commanded you, saying ‘The Lord your God is providing you a place of rest and will give you this land.’” (Josh 1:3 ESV). This same rest and land are threatened in Mal 4:6 if Israel does not return to covenant obedience. “Land” in both Josh 1:13 and Mal 4:6b is the territory of God’s covenant people (Gen 15:18–21). Land can also have a broader meaning and refer to the whole earth (Gen 1:1), a meaning that is certainly included in Mal 4:6b. There, at the conclusion of the English Old Testament and before Christ’s advent, as well as elsewhere in the book (1:11), the text is pregnant with eschatological warning and expectation.
When humanity (and especially God’s covenant people) wander from God’s law, it affects the earth (Gen 3:17–18; Rom 8:19–22). Sin spoiled Eden and continues to bring destruction to the “land.” In our day, concern for the environment—that is, “keeping the earth,”—is an undervalued priority among many Christians. But as Old Testament scholar Iain Provan noted:
“We are simply tenants, tasked with serving the garden (and its creatures) and keeping it—or, in more modern language, “conserving” it… I am to view myself as an earth keeper, working and taking care of God’s garden.”
Iain Provan, Seriously Dangerous Religion (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2014), 224-239.
Sin has been appropriately defined in Cornelius Plantinga Jr.’s work Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin as “vandalism”[2] of His Shalom (or “place of rest”). Our wandering hearts often make friends with the lie that God is detached and unconcerned about the details of our lives. Upon “remembering” the covenant, however, one sees the Father’s detailed instruction in His ways as an image of love for us to tattoo on our hearts, something that communicates His delight in us, as well as His protection and provision. That same “law” (4) also has the purpose of showing us our inability to please God. Indeed, it shows us our desperate need for a Savior.
The answer for all humanity is to “remember” (4) and look to God’s promise to help us “turn” (4:6a), which specifically meant Israel needed to “shift their allegiance back to Yahweh and the demands of his covenant.”[3] This meant “unconditional surrender” and “complete reorientation of their worldview.”[4]
Russell Moore gives us this helpful New Testament analogy related to the simplicity of this turning:
“A drowning Simon Peter did not need a nautical map or the foreknowledge of nuclear submarine technology. He needed to cry out ‘Lord, save me,” and to grab hold of the hand that could pull him up again (Matt. 14:30-31).”
“Integrity and the Future of the Church,” Plough Quarterly, Autumn 2021, 109.
The good news of the gospel and the real hope of this passage, however, does not come in the remembering of 4:4 or the turning of 4:6a, but in God’s initiative. It is He who sends the one that “will turn” and because of this “he will turn.” In other words, real Hope with a capital H arrives on the day that God acts (4:3b) through the coming of “Elijah the prophet” (4:5–6); that is, John the Baptist (Lk. 1:16-17) and in a greater way Christ (John 1:23) as John was only “the voice” preparing the way for “The Word.” Let the truth of what’s being said here sink in for a minute: The focus of the close of Malachi—indeed, the last words of the entire Old Testament—is on the initiative and sovereign love of God. And it’s only because of the amazing and intimate love of “Our Father” that the “utter destruction” of 4:6b that first came to Eden in the fall is reversed in Christ. It is Christ alone that can bring healing to the nations (Rev. 22:2) and reconcile hearts to the ultimate Father!
[1] Baker, The NIV Application Commentary, 206.
[2] Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin (Grand Rapids: MI, 1995), 16.
[3] Andrew Hill, The Anchor Yale Bible: Malachi (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 387.
[4] Ibid., 387.