Malachi 3:16

Malachi 3:16

In the text the prophet describes the method used by good men to confirm themselves in their faith. "They that feared the Lord," he says, "spake often one to another." It was their surest means, by God's grace, of resisting the temptation, of their enemy, and so it is ours. It was the greatest earthly blessing of their lives, and so it is of ours. An earthly blessing indeed it ought scarcely to be called, for it reaches from earth to heaven. The communion of saints which is begun here will go on for ever and ever; only that whereas now they who fear the Lord speak to one another of Him, hereafter He will himself join their company, and they shall be one with Him and in the Father.

It has been well observed, that when Christ sent forth His seventy disciples during His own lifetime to preach the Gospel through the cities of Judah, He sent them forth two and two together. What the Apostles needed in their journeys as preachers of the Gospel, we need equally on our journey through life. The great object for which Christians were formed into a Church or society was that they might afford to one another a mutual comfort and support. But even where the feelings of Christian brotherhood were strongest towards the whole society of Christians, still there was room for individual friendships of a yet closer kind; where the comfort and support would be yet dearer and more effectual.

I. Consider the support comfort to be derived from our communion with the Church or society of Christians. Every Christian ought to feel that between himself and a man who is also a Christian there is a natural connexion of the closest kind. How often do we see that similarity of tastes in some worldly matters bring two persons together, in spite of every difference of station, of manners, and even of general character. How much more should this be the case, when the point of agreement is that one thing needful, in comparison with which everything else fades into nothing!

II. The text should be true of the society of Christians in general, but it is, and ought to be, much more so of those who take sweet counsel together, and are bound to one another by the closest ties of personal friendship. He who is without Christian friends loses the most powerful earthly instrument by which he is saved from temptation and encouraged to good. Few men, if any, can keep their hearts fixed as they ought to do, on God and on Christ. They cannot encourage as they should do the workings of the Holy Spirit within them, without sometimes speaking out of the abundance of their heart, and pouring forth to others the thoughts which most engross them. Therefore it is the interest, and if it be the interest in spiritual matters it is the duty, of every Christian to endeavour to secure the blessing of a Christian friend.

T. Arnold, Sermons,vol. i., p. 190.

I. The prophet Malachi lived some time after the restoration of the Jews to their own country, and the building of the second temple, when they had been brought back from the captivity in Babylon. He was the last of all the prophets, and flourished about four hundred years before the coming of Christ. Of this period of four hundred years, therefore, the Bible tells us nothing; nor, as far as the Jews are concerned, can we learn much about it from any other quarter. We know only that they were left during this time just under similar circumstances to those in which we ourselves are living now. I mean, that they were left in a state of trial, to see how far they would make use of the means of grace already given; that the revelation of God was for the time completed; miracles were at an end and prophecies were at an end; there was in their hands the volume of the Law and the Prophets, and in that written word alone were they to seek for the knowledge of God's will. At the same time they were taught to look forward to some future day when God should again visit them in a more open manner, and should establish a state of things far better and more perfect than that which actually existed. We see at once how exactly this corresponds with the condition in which we ourselves are placed now. The history of the Bible mentions further a third case similar to the two which I have noticed: the state, namely, of the Jews, for another period of nearly three hundred years, from the death of Joshua to the beginning of the ministry of Samuel.

II. Twice then already have the servants of God had their term of patient waiting; twice have they had to struggle with the temptations of the world, with no other weapons than the shield of faith and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. And twice has experience shown that their faith and their struggles were not in vain; and that the Lord in whom they trusted was able and willing to save them to the uttermost. If we are longer waiting for the fulfilment of the promise, yet its language is more positive and clear than it ever was before, and the blessings to which it directs our hope are of a nature far more valuable. He who looks for complete certainty and the removal of every difficulty in the way of our belief in Christ, is confounding earth and heaven together. There we shall enjoy perfect knowledge, and our service will be one of untroubled love; but here we must walk by faith, not by sight, and the enemy of our souls will never cease his assaults against them.

T. Arnold, Sermons,vol. i. p. 181.

Religious conversation.

I. "Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another." (1) Then.The context tells us that the time spoken of was an evil time. So prevalent was sin, so bold, and apparently so prosperous, that people were beginning to say, "It is vain to serve God." (2) " They that feared the Lord."It is a sufficient description of the good, be they many or few, that they are those who fear God. In times of difficulty and discouragement they spake often one to another. It does not expressly say what about; but it is implied that they spoke to one another as those that feared the Lord; as those who had a common cause, and that common cause the cause of good, the cause of God. They tried the experiment of sympathy, of combined counsel, and combined action too.

II. Religious conversation should begin in God's worship. Here at least we can communicate one with another on the common basis of the fear of God, and take in large supplies of strength and faith at the very Fountain-head of both.

III. Another way in which all who fear God ought also to speak often one to another is in the privacy of true friendship, when to one faithful ear you can confide something of your personal difficulties and temptations, and exchange that sympathy which is always strengthening, even where it may seem to be rather the confession of weakness.

IV. "The Lord hearkened and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before Him." Let us remember that for every idle word we speak we shall give account in the day of judgment. Of all the sayings written down from Christ's lips in the Book of God, none surely is so terrible in its sound as that which declares: "By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned."

C. J. Vaughan, Memorials of Harrow Sundays,p. 316.

Consider:

I. The comfort and value of Christian friendship. Who is there that has ever analyzed his emotions that has not felt how large a portion of his joys spring from the fount of sympathy? In solitariness there is no happiness; and there is hardly to be found in Scripture a more touching exhibition of the solicitude of our Divine Parent for our happiness than is to found in these words: "God setteth the solitary in families." The friendships of the world are bound only by the ropes of selfish sand, and mayhap, when reliance strains upon them, will give way. But the blessed communion of saints is formed of the golden links of a holy love and godly principle. A friendship which coheres by virtue of a mutual love of Christ can never be sundered.

II. The prevailing power of intercessory prayer. Herein it is that Christian friendships are so incomparably superior to the friendships of the world. Happy is the man who can reckon among his friends one, two, three, who are in favour with God, and who can go with him and for him to the throne of grace, and who have interest, so to speak, in the court of heaven. When the secrets of this mysterious world are laid open at a future day we shall be astonished to find what the intercessory prayers of the "hidden ones" have done, and how kings and statesmen, how churches and pulpits, have been influenced by the electric touches of these secretly spoken supplications which have gone up from the hearts of kneeling cottagers, and have entered into the ears of the Lord God of Sabaoth.

R. Glover, By the Waters of Babylon,p. 91.

I. Godliness is here presented as the firm basis of confederation and communion.

II. The godly spoke (1) of God's holy name; (2) of His awful power; (3) of His precious promises; (4) of His immutable truth.

J. Baldwin Brown, The Sunday Afternoon,p. 20.

Reference: Malachi 3:16. W. Arnot, Good Words,1862, p. 441.