The Messenger of Promise
This is the manuscript of the Malachi 4:4-6 sermon I preached on June 22nd at Trinity West Seattle in 2025.
You can watch it here or read it below.
SERMON INTRO
Good morning Trinity! Welcome to the end of the Malachi series. I am so grateful to be here with you today. Malachi has been a challenge to preach and a challenge to walk through together. But God has given so many good gifts and reminders to us throughout. I am honored to be able to close out this series with you all today.
Let’s pray.
When I was about 6 years old, my family was at Disney World in Orlando, Florida. It was a family vacation with my siblings, parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandmother. So much fun for a 6-year-old me.
My parents set up this system where they would give us money and we would have that limited amount to spend each day. We could use it for anything from toys to treats. Whatever really. So one day, at Animal Kingdom IIRC, I wanted some ice cream. I had the exact amount of money leftover to buy an ice cream. I was so excited! But my dad told me no because we were headed to dinner soon after one more thing, a playground area.
So a while later, I was just leaving the playground area and I saw the ice cream cart. I was elated! Forgetting my dad’s instructions from a little bit ago, I sprinted over there. Bought the ice cream. Mickey Mouse on a stick or something. Ripped it open, went for that bite. I turned to walk back to my family. And as soon as I saw my dad…I remembered. (note that the ice cream didn’t taste so good after that).
We all forget. That is a big problem. Today we are going to address remembering. Let’s hop into the text.
HERE IS WHAT WE FACE
[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.”
There is a lot to talk about here. What an amazing ending to both the book of Malachi and the entire Old Testament! There is a lot to unpack here.
We’re going to focus on verse 4 for a bit. I want you to notice a command in the text. A command for both Israel in their day and for us in ours. The command to “Remember…”
The Hebrew root word here for remember is “זכר zkhr” while it is primarily translated as “remember” there are some other ways that word is defined and used in the Old Testament. Here are a few of those ways:
To remember.
To name or mention.
To call to mind.
To think of.
To call or summon.
To make known.
To profess or praise (in hymns).
The Hebrew word זכר adds flavor to God’s command of remembering. Remembering is a very active endeavor. It is not simply an intellectual ascent to truth. Or a plain acknowledgement of some truth. Remembering is an active ordeal. It is an embodied and intentional process.
Replace remember in verse 4 with any of the definitions above:
Remember the law of my servant Moses…
Name the law of my servant Moses…
Mention the law of my servant Moses…
Call to mind the law of my servant Moses…
Think of the law of my servant Moses…
Make known the law of my servant Moses…
Profess the law of my servant Moses…
Praise/sing the law of my servant Moses…
God wants all of this when it comes to his laws.
His rules and statutes provide Israel the way to relate to God. The law of Moses is important because because it reveals the way in which the Israelites can relate to God and relate to each other. God is a holy God and Israel, his people, needed a way to relate to him and distinctly stand out as his people in the world. The law provided that for them Remembering the law was a state of mind, a lifestyle, a way of existing in the world.
God wants his word on people’s hearts that literally flows out of their mouths. They profess it. They think about it constantly. He wants them to intentionally pursue him.
Remembering is more than just a private mental thing. Remembering is a public thing. Remembering is a lifestyle. Remembering is a reality embedded in their very being. An inward way of being with an outward expression.
God wants Israel's whole heart and they have not given it. He wants them to remember Him with all of who they are. That is the tension of the whole book of Malachi. The Israelites are not remembering God.
Remembering the law of Moses, and all that God commanded Israel is the reason the book of Malachi exists in the first place! In Malachi specifically, we have all of these disputes between God and Israel given by Malachi. Israel forgot, intentionally and unintentionally, the God who delivered them from exile only a few generations prior. He brought them home! And they were able to rebuild. But now they are forgetting again.
We know from the first dispute Israel forgot God’s love for them, they were chosen when God chose Jacob.
We know in the second dispute that Israel, specifically the priests, had forgotten to worship God with their best, with their whole hearts.
We know in the third dispute that the Israelites forgot God’s covenant through their actions in faithless marriages.
In this book alone God calls them to remember time and time again. Israel proved that they have already failed to remember. They keep forgetting God.
Remembering is incredibly important to God. It is a command! Malachi ends with this command, but the entire Old Testament ends with this command to remember.
Israel failed to remember what God had done yet again, just as they did over and over again throughout the Old Testament. Forgetting God is a common theme with Israel.
Think back to the story of Moses in Exodus. This is many many generations before our text today. After God delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, Moses goes up on Mount Sinai, also called Mount Horeb like in our text today, and is up there on top of the mountain interacting with God. While he is up there, what happened?
Moses comes down the mountain and sees the Israelites dancing and praising this Golden Calf. In his fury, Moses takes the stone tablets that God himself carved for him and Moses throws them to the ground…breaking them.
Forgetting God led the Israelites to idolatry. Their affections became twisted. They became like the other nations around them.
Israel and their leaders, over and over and over again, forget God’s faithfulness and turn to other things.
We can see their forgetfulness and warnings against forgetfulness in Deuteronomy 4,6,8,9,25, and 26. Where God tells them to pay attention, or they will forget and become busy or complacent. Which they do…and it led to complacency.
We see their forgetfulness throughout the book of Judges over and over again in Judges 2,3, and 8. Also in 1 Samuel 12. Where considering and remembering what God has done is considered necessary, yet they turn to other things. They not only forgot God, but they drifted away from Him entirely and did evil!
Judges 2:11
[11] And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the LORD and served the Baals.
Then we get all the way to the prophets. So many of the prophets, even other than Malachi, warn against forgetfulness. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Hosea warn explicitly against forgetting the Lord and equate it to an active and literal turning from God.
Elijah himself is mentioned in our text. He raised a kid from the dead! He called down fire from heaven! Then he was threatened by a queen, and forgot that God is the one who did all those things! His forgetfulness led to self-reliance and fear in 1 Kings 17-19.
Not remembering leads us to fear, complacency, evil, self-reliance, and so much else. Those are dark places to be.
HERE IS WHAT WE MUST DO
And if these pillars of the faith witness these wonders and miracles of God and they are still not remembering God…what chance do we have??
Remember, the law of Moses is about how an unholy people can relate to a holy God. The law was also about how to relate horizontally as well.
Well what does the law have to do with us? Jesus himself says in Matthew 5 that he came to fulfill the law and he did. Perfectly. On our behalf.
Well, we are also called to remember. Because God does want us to relate to him and he also wants us to relate to others well. Think back to the words of Jesus here:
Matthew 22:37–40
[37] And [Jesus] said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. [38] This is the great and first commandment. [39] And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. [40] On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
Israel is commanded to remember the law of Moses. Jesus fulfilled that law, and tells us that we must obey his command to love God and love others.
Loving God with ALL your heart. With ALL your soul. With ALL your mind. Then loving your neighbor as yourself. Sounds quite a lot like what we have been talking about.
Remember your love for God and others…
Name your love forGod and others…
Mention your love forGod and others…
Call to mind your love forGod and others…
Think of your love forGod and others…
Make known your love forGod and others…
Profess your love forGod and others…
Praise/sing of your love forGod and others…
How good are we at that church? If the new law because of Christ’s work is to love God and love others, how are we doing at remembering that? Not just a mental scent to knowing we should, but actually BEING those things in the core of who we are.
WHY WE CAN’T DO IT
In our normal routines and rhythms, we forget. Our lives get busy with kids, work, hobbies, and so much more.
But the forgetfulness here is more than those quiet moments where we decide that a new Netflix show or that sporting event is more important than spending time with the Lord.
The forgetfulness here is a deeper thing. It is in our very being. We, like Israel, struggle to remember what God has done. We forget the horizontal and vertical parts of remembering to love God and others. When God asks us to remember, he’s not simply asking about keeping a mental awareness of him.
When you are at a restaurant and the server neglects your family and your order is taking longer than you expected. Your water cup never gets refilled. Your order is wrong. The bill comes. You see that line for the tip at the bottom of the receipt. What is the first thing that pops in your mind?
“They don’t deserve a tip. The service was horrible. Their wages are too high in Seattle anyway.”
We have forgotten the depth of grace we have received, and don't give it in return. Even if we end up tipping anyway, which is admirable, this illustration reveals the very first impulse of our hearts is still about us. Our experience, our food, our stomachs that is our focus…not God and others. There is something deeply broken in us.
So you see…we literally cannot remember what God has done even if we try. Our hearts and minds instinctively point in another direction. So if we cannot remember, just like Israel can’t, is all of this hopeless?
HOW JESUS DOES IT
Let’s go back to our text.
[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.
I may have buried the lede here…but do you notice a second command in the text?
[PAUSE]
The first is remember, but the second command is behold.
Behold, I…which is God…God will send Elijah before the awesome and great day of the Lord.
We can’t remember, so God simply asks us to behold him. To look.
God sends hope even though he knows the remembering in the previous verse will not happen. God did send Elijah, John the Baptist who was the forerunner to Jesus. He is referred to as Elijah in the gospels.
That great and awesome day of the Lord is both Christ crucified and points to what is to come in the book of Revelation. Elijah is coming again on that day too according to Revelation 11.
God himself is in control of all of this. Behold his work!
We are asked to remember, but we can’t. So what does God do? He literally comes down and remembers the law of Moses to its fullest extent. He literally fulfilled it and did it all, never forgetting. Check this out.
Matthew 5:17–18
[17] “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. [18] For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
So how do we remember the law? WE CAN’T! But God does it for us.
God knew we couldn’t remember, so he asked Israel then and asks us now to behold!
“Look to me” God says.
“Look what I will do,” God says.
We struggle to remember, so behold the work of Christ.
He remembered and lived out the law for us.
Look to God and see. He is the one working.
APPLICATION
The beautiful part about Christ living out the law and remembering for us is that all that a few things happen. Let's look back at Malachi again.
[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.”
Remember how we said the law was not only for Israel to vertically relate to a holy God, but that it was also for their horizontal relationships?
In Christ the law was remembered, and Elijah (John the Baptist) was sent before the great and awesome day of Christ. So all of verse 6 depends upon Christ’s work too.
The dread Israel must have felt that the hearts of fathers and children would not be turned toward one another…and that curse would be brought upon the land with utter destruction...but because of Christ two things are true.
First, the horizontal relationships begin to be restored, just as it states here in the text.
Fathers, parents, can love their children with their whole heart. Children’s hearts can turn toward their parents. This is not just a here and now promise, it is a generational one! Because of Christ we can look back and see the redemption of Christ at work throughout our families, even in the midst of the terrible things that took place! We can also look to future generations with hope that it does not depend on us, but on Christ…who has already done the work. Christ redeems ALL of it!
Second, that destruction mentioned? The utter destruction for not remembering? Well Christ took that destruction upon himself! When he was on the cross his body was destroyed. Those of us who look and behold Christ, and believe in the salvation he so freely gives, he took upon himself each time you forgot the Lord. Each time Israel forgot. Each time I forget. Each time all of us forget the Lord, Christ took it and the destruction that was promised because of the forgetfulness.
So if you have not taken a second and behold the work of Christ, then look to him now! Ask him for forgiveness. Only then, can remembering even begin to take root for us.
CLOSING
We must be changed in the very center of who we are for remembering to even begin. How does that change happen deep down inside of us? It happens when we believe the gospel. When we behold Christ for ALL of who he is. Each of us here needs to know and believe that Christ has done.
I want to invite Nick up as I close.
Jesus himself is the embodiment of remembering. He is literally the walking remembrance of the law of Moses in the flesh. He never forgot the rules and statues. He lived them out to the fullest. Not only because we could not, but also because we would not.
We cannot remember, so behold the work of Christ, who perfectly remembered.
His work, and his work alone is sufficient. He is the messenger that Malachi has promised.
But it gets better! When we do behold Christ and believe that he has done the perfect remembering for us, when we do believe in his death and resurrection for our failed remembering of God…we are saved and given the Holy Spirit!
1 Corinthians 3:16–17
Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? … For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.
God dwells with us church! What a glorious hope! We can’t remember, so God gifted us himself. Because of Christ’s redemptive work for our failings, we CAN remember. Not because of anything we have done, but only because of what Christ has done for us. And only because we have the Holy Spirit with us. So if you struggle to remember, ask The Helper that the church was given in Acts 2.
We will never remember Christ perfectly in every single situation on this earth, that is why we need Christ to begin with. But there is hope. Christ's work completely redeems us.
We can trust in Christ’s sufficient work and work out our salvation with fear and trembling. Humbly taking steps as he transforms our heart to beat to the rhythm of the gospel.
If you struggle to remember, behold the work of Christ.
Some more good news too…we can remember together! Christ himself gave us, the church, his bride, a way to remember his work every time we meet…through communion.
On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” Later that night he took wine, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me” (1 Cor. 11:23-25). Jesus said that his body was broken for us (bread) and his blood was shed for the forgiveness of our sins (wine), so that we could find eternal life through him (Lk. 22:19-21; Matt. 26:26-29). We remember this reality when we receive communion.
Communion Liturgy Instructions
Please only receive this meal if you have received Christ. If you haven’t received Christ, or you are not sure whether you have, come forward later and talk to a leader during our post-service prayer time. We would love to talk with you about that and invite you to receive Jesus!
At Trinity, we use the intinction method. Where you take a piece of the bread and dip it in the cup, and you can participate with us.
GF in the center aisle.
If you have kids and want to take communion with them, now is the time to get them.
If you have kids and want to take communion on your own, you are welcome to do that as well. Once you have received it, you can go get your kids and bring them up to continue worshiping with us through song.
COMMUNITY GROUP INSTRUCTIONS
What is one way you’ve seen yourself forget or struggle to remember God recently? Consider not only forgetting in your mind, but in your daily life, decisions, or relationships?
What helps you to behold Christ in the busyness of life? What are some ways to make space to notice God’s presence and work?
Have you recently experienced the Spirit helping you remember something about God or others that changed how you acted or felt? If yes, please share!
