All right! The proud and the wicked are gonna burn! The Day of the Lord is coming and all those evil people out there are going to get it! We like to take comfort in the fact that those who are so full of themselves and who are so evil and wicked are going to one day get what they deserve. When the Scriptures talk about the Day of Judgment burning like a fire, there's a part of us that wells up with eager anticipation for the vengeance of God on the proud and the wicked. But there's just one problem. WE are the proud and the wicked! Are we not full of pride? Thinking we can live just fine without God's Word? Are we not proud thinking that we are somehow better than all those evil people out there who do such bad things? Are we not proud assuming that we will escape that burning Last Day because of how religious we think we are? Are we not the wicked who act so sincerely that we're coming to church for forgiveness yet won't let a single bad comment against us go unpunished by our anger and holding a grudge? Are we not the wicked who love to call ourselves Christians but have so little regard for learning and growing in God's Word? Are we not the wicked who lightly ignore our Lord's command to love others as ourselves? Indeed, the burning-like-an-oven Last Day doesn't sound so exciting now if we face the prospect that Malachi is talking about us!
But the Lord says that before that Day comes, He's going to send Elijah to preach and turn the hearts of children to their fathers. That Elijah who would come is John the Baptist. Jesus says so. So the Day of the Lord that Malachi is talking about is the time when God's Judgment for sin would come. So, again, in Advent, we are pointed to Good Friday. Because the Day that the Lord's Judgment is coming is the Day Jesus faces it for us on Calvary. In fact, who are the proud and wicked that God is going to destroy? On Good Friday, the proud and the wicked is Jesus! On Good Friday, the selfish and the hater is Jesus. On Good Friday, the idolater, adulterer, murderer, coveter and hard boiled sinner is Jesus. Not with His sins, of course. They're our sins. But on Calvary, they're His. He takes them. He bakes in the oven, as it were, of God's Judgment, sweating blood and being pierced. Suffering and dying under the weight of our sins and pressed to death by the heat of the Father's judgment. On the cross is the curse of sin, Jesus, who was a made a curse for us. When Malachi talks about that awful day, he's directing our attention to the day when God's Son died for sinners, as if He Himself were every sinner, the worst sinner, to save us.
So how does this cross and death of our Lord rescue us from our pride and wickedness? By burning it up. But killing it off. That's done by the preaching and the Sacraments which brings this Savior to us. When the burning wrath of God's Law is preached, our sinful Old Adam is burned up. Or, if you like better, drowned in the waters of Holy Baptism. The point is, the preaching of God's holy Law is the death of the sinful nature and the preaching of the life-giving forgiveness of sins in Christ is the our life. By the Word we are turned from being among the proud and wicked into those who fear the Lord's name, those who go out like “stall fed calves,” that is, feasting upon the good things of God: His Word, forgiveness, the Body and Blood of Christ. For your Old Adam, every preaching of the Law and the Gospel is Judgment Day. But for you, the new man in Christ, it is a day of healing and triumph, a day to trample the Old Adam and the power of sin underfoot like ashes. In Christ's church, the gifts of Calvary are given to you to rescue you from that fearful day of Judgment and to make you a new person in Christ, humbly trusting in your Savior, doing good as Christ lives in you.
So what about the Last Day then? Because there WILL be a Last Day. A Last Day and an end of this heaven and earth. Well, as we've been hearing in this Advent season, for those who are in Christ, that day is not a day to be feared but to be eagerly longed for. Apart from Christ, that Day will burn like an oven and the judgment that fell on Christ will fall on all those who deny and despise Him and want to hang on to their sins. But for you who are in Christ, that will be the day the Sun of Righteousness rises with eternal healing in His wings, bringing to you eternal life and the wiping away of all sorrow and sadness. Apart from Christ: burning day where the roots and stubble are consumed. In Christ, life and joy everlasting.
So don't root for the proud and wicked to be destroyed! Rather, repent of your own pride and wickedness and cling to Christ in whom we are rescued from sin and death. In this Advent season, let us learn to see in ourselves the pride and wickedness for which the Son of God had to die. But more than that, let us rejoice that He came to do exactly that. Now we are rescued from the threatening peril of our sins and saved by His mighty deliverance and now we can serve Him with cleansed minds. The Sun of Righteousness arises for you. In the Name of Jesus. Amen.
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