PAGDATING NG KANYANG PAGBABALIK

MALACHI 4:1-6

1 “Surely the day is coming; it will

burn like a furnace. All the

arrogant and every evildoer will be

stubble, and the day that is coming

will set them on fire,”

MALACHI 4:1-6

1 says the LORD Almighty. “Not a

root or a branch will be left to them.

MALACHI 4:1-6

2 But for you who revere my

name, the sun of righteousness will

rise with healing in its rays. And you

will go out and frolic like well-fed

calves.

MALACHI 4:1-6

3 Then you will trample on the

wicked; they will be ashes under the

soles of your feet on the day when I

act,” says the LORD Almighty.

MALACHI 4:1-6

4 “Remember the law of my servant

Moses, the decrees and laws I gave

him at Horeb for all Israel.

MALACHI 4:1-6

5 See, I will send the prophet

Elijah to you before that great and

dreadful day of the LORD comes.

MALACHI 4:1-6

6 He will turn the hearts of the

parents to their children, and the

hearts of the children to their

parents; or else I will come and

strike the land with total

destruction.”

God’s got four things on his mind,

heaven and hell, the Bible,

repentance and men.

The Last Day is the Day of

Judgment.

It’s ultimately regarding the second

coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, the

resurrection of the dead, the

judgment of all people into their

eternal fate, reward in God’s

presence or punishment in the

presence of Jesus

Everyone will give an account to the

Lord Jesus Christ.

Everyone will bow their head and

bend their knee to the Lord Jesus

Christ, some for eternal salvation,

others for eternal damnation, and

that’s what the Old Testament

means speaking of the Day of the

Lord.

And so the Day of the Lord is the

best day for the believer and the

worst day for the unbeliever.

If you are here and you are not a

Christian, I need you to know this:

you are going to hell.

You might say, “That’s not a very

loving thing to say.”

Here’s the good news: you don’t

have to go to hell.

The bad news is right now if you

don’t know the Lord Jesus Christ, if

you’ve not turned from sin and

trusted in him and accept him as

your Savior and Lord, your eternal

fate is now destined for hell, the

conscious, painful torments of hell.

The reason that God is so emphatic

about this throughout Scripture but

particularly here in Malachi is, we get

so preoccupied with the present that

we forget to anticipate the eternal.

So he likens hell to a fire, to burning.

He’s using this language, “Burning

like an oven and also ablaze.”

He’s talking here about conscious

torment.

The burning in hell is a supernatural

burning.

Isaiah 66:24

24 “And they will go out and look on

the dead bodies of those who

rebelled against me; the worms that

eat them will not die,

Isaiah 66:24

24 “the fire that burns them will not

be quenched, and they will be

loathsome to all mankind.”

But you need to know this: no one is

getting away with anything.

Here’s the truth: we don’t know how

long that season is.

So I would encourage you with a

sense of urgency to consider your

own fate.

“Well, we know they’re in a better

place because they died.” It takes

more than your death to go to a

better place.

It takes the death of Jesus in your

place to go to a better place.

See, for the non-Christian, this life is

as close to heaven as they ever get.

For the Christian, this is as close to

hell as we ever get.

Upon dying, it gets worse for the

non-Christian.

It gets better for the Christian.

So he not only speaks of hell, he also

speaks of heaven

Jesus was risen from death and our

bodies will be risen from death like

that, and the curse will be lifted.

There’ll be a new heaven, new earth,

New Jerusalem.

Our picture of heaven should be

what this earth was intended to be

before sin invaded it and corrupted

it.

He says that heaven will be like that

and our glorified, resurrected,

perfected bodies, it will be like the

sunshine of a new day.

He also says that that day will come

with healing.

No more doctors.

No more hospitals.

No more surgeons.

No more chemotherapy.

No more physical therapy.

No more wheelchairs.

No more canes.

No more walkers.

No more prescriptions.

It’s almost hard to conceive of that

world.

Sin brings death.

And because Jesus conquers death,

he brings life.

Healing, healing, spiritual healing,

emotional healing, physical healing

in totality for all of God’s people

forever.

What will that day be like for you

when the Lord Jesus comes back,

when he calls you out of his grave as

he came out of his grave?

Are you going to hell?

Are you going to heaven?

Are you going to suffer forever or be

blessed forever?

Will you be like one who is living in

a never-ending blazing furnace or

like one who is healed with sunshine

on their face and joy in their heart

and a sweetness in their step?

If you’ve not turned from sin and

trusted in Jesus Christ who is God

become a man, lived without sin,

died on the cross in your place for

your sins and rose as your Savior,

then you are destined for hell instead

of heaven.

So what the law does?

The law is God’s Word, and it is

God giving us his standard.

God is holy, God is righteous, God

is good.

So the law sets the standard.

We judge ourselves by his standard.

At any point that we fall short of his

standard, it’s sin.

This leads to condemnation.

This leads to judgment.

This leads to death.

So we should trust in him and give

our sin to him so that he will pay the

penalty that we should have instead

paid

and that’ll be God’s mercy and grace

and then his justice and his love will

kiss at the cross where Jesus dies in

our place because Jesus fulfills the

law,

never sins at all, goes to the cross for

all of us lawbreakers so that he might

die in our place that we might live

with his righteousness.

And so the prophets are always

preaching repentance.

Turn from sin, trust in Jesus.

There’s only two guys in the Old

Testament who didn’t die,

Enoch and Elijah.

There’s only two guys in the Old

Testament who didn’t die,

Enoch and Elijah.

Hebrews 9:27

27 Just as people are destined to die

once, and after that to face

judgment

Matthew 11:13-14

13 For all the Prophets and the Law

prophesied until John.

14 And if you are willing to accept it,

he is the Elijah who was to come.

JOHN 1:21

21 They asked him, “Then who are

you? Are you Elijah?”

He said, “I am not.”

“Are you the Prophet?”

He answered, “No.”

LUKE 1:17

17 And he will go on before the Lord, in

the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn

the hearts of the parents to their

children and the disobedient to the

wisdom of the righteous—to make ready

a people prepared for the Lord.”

Elijah was a prophet filled with the

Holy Spirit.

He had a successor, a guy named

Elisha.

It’s different men, but it’s the same

power of the Holy Spirit working

through them anointing and

appointing them for similar

prophetic ministry to preach and to

call people to repentance of sin and

receiving of Jesus.

LUKE 9:30

30 Two men, Moses and Elijah,

appeared in glorious splendor, talking

with Jesus.

Malachi is the last book of the Old

Testament and prepares us for the

coming of Jesus.

Revelation is the last book of the

New Testament preparing us for the

second coming of Jesus.

JAMES 5:17

17 Elijah was a human being, even as we

are. He prayed earnestly that it would

not rain, and it did not rain on the land

for three and a half years.

So before Jesus came the first time,

the Holy Spirit empowered John the

Baptizer to continue the ministry of

Elijah.

But Elijah is typified as one of the

great prophets because he preached

repentance, even though his life was

in danger and he God spared his life.

Elijah’s a fearless man.

The only way you become a fearless

man is when you’re filled with the

Holy Spirit.

This is what the prophets do, and

this is what Elijah did, and this is

what I think Elijah will be doing in

the end:

Preaching the repentance of sin.

When it comes to repentance, we

need to repent of our rebellion and

our religion.

For some of you, the sin that God

wants to deal with is rebellion

In addition, we need to repent of our

religion.

Religion is where we don’t see our

sin, we only see their sin.

It’s where we want people to change,

but we don’t want to change, where

we don’t want to be humble, we want

to be proud.

We don’t want to be under God’s

authority; we want to exercise

authority like we’re God telling

everyone else what to do and making

and enforcing rules that God never

made.

You come to Jesus just as you are

and change.

You come to Jesus as you are, but

you don’t stay as you were.

God is tolerant in that he welcomes

us to his Son as we are, but he

expects repentance so that we change

by his grace, and repentance is

always met with resistance.

’

You look at all the social problems,

the ails and the evils, God says, “I got

an answer, - Dad.”

Dad can do what institutions and

governments and organizations

cannot do.

The family is the first government.

The father is the first leader.

God holds the men responsible for

their family for their legacy.

The number-one thing that is

needed for social change is men to

love their own children to be good

fathers and for children to honor,

listen to, obey, love their dad.

Is this still an issue, issue in your life?

How will a father’s heart change by

the power of the Holy Spirit?

How will a child’s heart toward their

father change by the power of the

Holy Spirit?

How do you know that the Holy

Spirit is at work?

If you see different kinds of men in

the church than you see in the

culture, you know that the Holy

Spirit is at work in the men and the

men are yielding to the Holy Spirit.

How do you know that the Holy

Spirit is at work in children?

One of the evidences of the work of

the Holy Spirit is the condition and

nature of the family, particularly the

relationship between the father and

the children.

This is the big idea of legacy.

It starts with fathers and faith flows

through generations of the family.

Well, it starts with the fact that God

is a father.

’

There’s good news for you.

Now, one of my goals at FCC is that

the men would all have a father’s

heart, the Father’s heart.

Developing a father’s heart starts by

knowing God as Father.

You can’t become a father, like the

Father, unless you know the Father.

It’s coming to know God as Father,

talking to God as Father, relying on

God as Father as early as possible in

your life.

Practically what this means is, you

grow up to honor your Heavenly

Father, to honor your earthly father,

to obey your earthly father and to

forgive your earthly father because

your earthly father is sinful and will

err.

Men, the most important decision

you make is who’s your God.

The second most important decision

is who you marry, and that decision

has generations of implication, it just

does, for good or bad.

’

’

I need you men to have the father’s

heart, not only for your family, but

our church family.

The only way what we’re doing

succeeds is if the men have the

father’s heart.

1 Cor. 4:15

15 Even if you had ten thousand

guardians in Christ, you do not have

many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I

became your father through the gospel.

Malachi ends perfectly because it’s

God’s word and God’s final word,

and God’s final word to the men is

you’re very important.

You’re very needed.

The Father is calling forth fathers,

that the Father is calling forth fathers.

And so God’s final word and God’s

answer is more men with a father’s

heart.