Names of Jesus | Advent DevotionalSample

Thursday, December 5
Malachi 4 | Sun of Righteousness
Author: David Bibee

You’ve heard the phrase, “Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it.” Asking God to show up is something like that. You can be sure that when God shows up, things will get better. But that isn’t to say that things will be peaceful. When God shows up that means there’s nowhere to hide. And if God shows up and things aren’t in order, he’s known to throw the furniture around.

Consider other times that God came to check on his people. In the garden, he thundered for Adam and Eve to present themselves after they disobeyed, administering judgments and casting them from the garden. At the flood, God sees the wicked hearts of men and determines to consume the world in a watery deluge. At Babel, God comes down to cast the people into confusion. At Sodom and Gomorrah, God comes down to dine with Abraham before sending avenging angels to destroy the city. At Sinai, God appears with fire and flashes of lightning, and everyone who touched the mountain was to be killed for profaning holy ground. “When the Man comes around,” the wicked perish.

So, too, with the coming of the Messiah. Indeed, he was coming to bring peace, to establish his kingdom of eternal justice, and to bring redemption to the people of God—and “the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble.” These two things are held together in one. There would be salvation and judgment.

John the Baptist and the Lord Jesus came to God’s people like Noah did to his generation, warning that salvation is nigh to those who heed God’s warnings, but all those who reject God’s word would face judgment. As John the Baptist, the one who came in the Spirit of Elijah, had warned, “Even now the axe is laid to the root of the tree… He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire… he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire” (Matt. 3:10-12). Even as Jesus went to his crucifixion with women weeping over him, he told them to weep for themselves and their children for because they had rejected him, sure judgment was coming upon them.

As Malachi had warned, the coming of the Lord would mean salvation if they repented or destruction if they didn’t. Because they didn’t, Jesus said they were facing “the days of vengeance” when the Romans turned Jerusalem into rubble (Luke 21:20-24, 23:28-31). But for those who feared God’s name, Christ would be as “the sun of righteousness” rising “with healing in its wings,” and they would “go out leaping like calves from the stall.” Yet those who did not fear God on that day would be set “ablaze [leaving] neither root nor branch” as the old covenant ended forever.

When Christ comes to us, we are faced with the same options. To be in God’s presence is to have our hearts and minds opened, to have the penetrating gaze of the Holy One of Israel seeing even those dark thoughts and impulses we are unaware of. There is both salvation and judgment. Before God, we all stand condemned people of unclean lips, darkened hearts, and bloodstained hands. There is only one choice: flee to God in Christ, pleading his mercy upon us, and turn from the sin that darkens our lives.

As we meditate upon the coming of the Savior into the world, let us be frank with ourselves and with God. Do not shrink from his judgments. For those who are in Christ, God’s judgments are the judgments of a Father chastising his beloved child, to whom he plans to give the whole world. Repent, putting to death the old man—the desires of the flesh—knowing that God regards the contrite and uplifts the lowly. Upon all who humble themselves and acknowledge their sin, Christ is the Sun of Righteousness, rising with healing and mercy upon his wings.