“Your words have been hard against me, says the LORD. But you say, ‘How have we spoken against you?’ You have said, ‘It is vain to serve God. What is the profit of our keeping his charge or of walking as in mourning before the LORD of hosts? And now we call the arrogant blessed. Evildoers not only prosper but they put God to the test and they escape.’” Then those who feared the LORD spoke with one another. The LORD paid attention and heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared the LORD and esteemed his name. “They shall be mine, says the LORD of hosts, in the day when I make up my treasured possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him. Then once more you shall see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve him.
Malachi 3:13-18
Let me tell you the story of one of my favorite theologians that you have probably never heard of. In fact, he was not a theologian. He was a Japanese soldier during World War II, and he became a legend, at least to myself and a friend of mine who served as an elder with me in Boise. His name was Hiroo Onoda. He was such a believer in the Imperial cause that, long after Japan surrendered in 1945, whenever he would see surrender leaflets, family letters, or loudspeaker broadcasts, he dismissed them as propaganda. He kept this up for twenty-nine years. It was not until March 9, 1974, when he had heard the official orders from his former commanding officer, who people convinced to go to the island to relieve him of his duties. This man was not to be blamed for his steadfastness, but rather for his delusion. He was simply wrong. However, the soldier of Christ has the proper marching orders, and yet how seldom we stand for even a season.
One of the recurring themes throughout the Bible is the idea of a small remnant—sometimes even dramatized by one lone “last man standing,” so to speak, whether a Noah, or an Elijah, or a Jeremiah—someone who finds himself all alone in a world gone mad around them.
Doctrine. The Lord always distinguishes between apostasy and remnant.
The Apostate’s Last Step in Deconstruction
The Remnant’s First Step toward Reconstruction
The Lord Makes the Distinction Once Again
The Apostate’s Last Step in Deconstruction
The word “apostasy” is a general theological term. It comes from the Greek word apostasia, which shows up only once in the New Testament in 2 Thessalonians 2:3, but it is a description for a decisive falling away from God’s house. It can apply to individuals and groups. Today, we have gotten used to hearing the term “deconstruction” for an individual case of apostasy. But here is the main way the Bible talks about apostasy: a corporate falling away.
From verses 13-15, four things are shown in the last step toward apostasy:
First, apostasy deconstructs our duty to God—‘What is the profit of our keeping his charge’ (v. 14b). Unbelief trades in the ultimate for the proximate, the everlasting for the passing. It wakes up one day, as far as we can tell, with the sneer, “What’s the point?”
Second, apostasy deconstructs a sincere heart toward God—‘or of walking as in mourning before the LORD of hosts?’ (v. 14c) Calls to holiness or away from public sin are deconstructed or dismissed as posturing, as moralism, as self-righteousness. “But,” someone may say, “is there no such thing as posturing?” Yes, of course there is, but what of it? If one can fake anything, will you do nothing in response? The remedy for moralism is not nihilism, but real morality. Charles Spurgeon once said, “bold-hearted men are always called mean-spirited by cowards.”1 We ought to mourn over sin even if we’ve never known anyone who ever has; we ought to mourn over our own sin all the more so if we never have!
Third, apostasy sees God as a rewarder of the arrogant—‘And now we call the arrogant blessed’ (v. 15a). Those who are “winning” are “being blessed.” Blessedness by success alone. It can even be surface results. We have seen this in pragmatist metrics for church growth and we have seen it in populist politics. To the foul-mouthed insulter goes the spoils! We live in a culture where we reward the one who makes much of themselves.
Fourth, apostasy sees God as unable or unwilling to punish evildoers outside—‘Evildoers not only prosper but they put God to the test and they escape’ (v. 15b). This is clearly not the same “testing” as God had commended about the tithe. Like words from the Psalmist that should be directed at those outside, the pagans: “and they say, ‘The LORD does not see; the God of Jacob does not perceive” (Ps. 94:7).
So, who specifically is this apostate Judah, or apostate Jacob (to use the name used at the beginning of this book)? Those two action items they deconstructed—‘keeping his charge’ and ‘walking as in mourning’ (v. 14)—these could both be general for all the people, both specific to the priesthood, or one general and the other specific. Since the priests have been so singled out in this book, the priestly application would make sense. The priestly keeping guard had always used that Hebrew word used here (שָׁמַר), and is described in the law:
At the entrance of the tent of meeting you shall remain day and night for seven days, performing what the LORD has charged, so that you do not die, for so I have been commanded (Lev. 8:35).
And there was a ritual mourning, which had degenerated into a mere form (cf. Zech. 7:1-6), which may be hinted at earlier in this book, in those “tears, with weeping and groaning” (2:13). As we have seen already in this book, there is no need to choose between priest and people. Leadership is simply judged by a stricter standard, but they lead them into the same sin and therefore the same general judgment.
Now how do these all connect to each other? Clearly the people who are guilty here are not lamenting these sins. Better to understand these as the prophet’s lament and the remnant’s temptation. The apostate at this point are unteachable; but what do I mean by a temptation?
This can take the form of popular appeal, “This is just the way it is today,” or “Everyone believes this.” We hide behind the spirit of the age. We all like to think we are as good as anyone else at resisting peer pressure and whatever cultural winds are blowing, but we are selective and will go with the flow whenever our own idols have a common sympathy with that spirit of the age.
This can come in the form of spiritual intimidation, such as when the prosecutors at the Diet of Worms bore down on the conscience of Martin Luther, as if to say, “So, you alone have this right and all of the wisdom of the Church for centuries has it wrong? You alone have heard from God!”
The Remnant’s First Step toward Reconstruction
The one verse that gives us this picture of a remnant is here:
Then those who feared the LORD spoke with one another. The LORD paid attention and heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared the LORD and esteemed his name (v. 16).
Commentators rightly point out that there is a literary device being employed here in this mention of a book. It is “obviously metaphorical of YHWH’s omniscient recall,”2 appearing elsewhere about those “written unto life” (Isa. 4:3) and “everyone found written in the book” (Dan. 12:1). Six times in Revelation we read of those whose names were written in “the book of life” (3:5; 13:8; 17:8; 20:12, 15; 21:27).
From the words of verse 16, we may gather four truths about a remnant:
First, they are marked internally by the fear of the Lord. They are called here ‘those who feared the LORD’ (v. 16a) and it repeats it with additional words, ‘feared the LORD and esteemed his name’ (v. 16e). In other words, there came a point when God’s approval or disapproval as the only thing that mattered. “The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil” (Prov. 8:13).
Second, they are marked externally by taking counsel as a distinct group. Some may think it divisive that they ‘spoke with one another’ (v. 16b). Not so! In his book on the healing of divisions in the church, the Puritan Jeremiah Burroughs wrote,
We are angry with men because they are divided from ourselves rather than because they are divided from the truth … When they divided from God, they divided from His people … If you are divided from the truth, what can hold you together? Truth is a single, simple, plain thing; but error is various and ensnarls itself with infinite contradictions.3
There is great ignorance over what makes for true and false divisiveness, or, put differently, good and bad kinds of division. Paul says, “there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized” (1 Cor. 11:19).
Third, their prayers to persevere as His people are heard by God—‘The LORD paid attention and heard them’ (v. 16c). “For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer” (1 Pet. 3:12; cf. Prov. 15:29). Why? Because God is under obligation to the creature? Not at all; but He says, “for those who honor me I will honor” (1 Sam. 2:30).
Fourth, God sets them apart to preserve them. Where is this in the text? Remember what we just saw about that ‘book of remembrance’ (v. 16d). This highlights God keep His own, as we saw about the Good Shepherd last week: “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and qno one will snatch them out of my hand” (Jn. 10:28).
All of this to say that a remnant is not a passive set of leftovers. They are the active, zealous, true people of God who will not go with the flow all the way down the drain.
One example of an individual in Scripture who followed similar such steps was King Josiah in 2 Chronicles 34: “when the king heard the words of the Law, he tore his clothes” (v. 19); then said to the priests, “Go, inquire of the LORD for me” (v. 21a); then warned of the potential consequences:
For great is the wrath of the LORD that is poured out on us, because our fathers have not kept the word of the LORD, to do according to all that is written in this book (v. 21b).
Then he launched out on his reformation. But it all started with a humbled heart, a mourning for the sin of the whole people, and gathering people to speak with and not waste a moment in “going scorched-earth” over all their idols.
It may be asked why Josiah died in battle as he did. The incorrect answer (which has been given recently) is that it was a “merely secular” renewal effort and that the people as a whole were not sincere. The people as a whole were not converted. It may be that many were insincere, yet Josiah and anyone else who zealously carried out his orders did exactly the right thing. So the details are added,
Thus says the LORD, Behold, I will bring disaster upon this place and upon its inhabitants, all the curses that are written in the book that was read before the king of Judah … But to the king of Judah, who sent you to inquire of the LORD, thus shall you say to him, Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: Regarding the words that you have heard, because your heart was tender and you humbled yourself before God when you heard his words against this place and its inhabitants, and you have humbled yourself before me and have torn your clothes and wept before me, I also have heard you, declares the LORD. Behold, I will gather you to your fathers, and you shall be gathered to your grave in peace, and your eyes shall not see all the disaster that I will bring upon this place and its inhabitants’” (vv. 24, 26-28).
God often spares a remnant even if only for one glorious last stand—that glory being His.
The Lord Makes the Distinction Once Again
This will just be a brief point, but obvious enough in the text. There are two parts to it. Verse 17 speaks of a day of revealing, and verse 18 of the truth so revealed.
They shall be mine, says the LORD of hosts, in the day when I make up my treasured possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him. Then once more you shall see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve him (vv. 17-18).
The phrase ‘that day’ has that same sense of the Day of the Lord throughout the Prophets. There are places where it has dual fulfillment—one part on the immediate horizon, the other on the Last Day—and there are other places where it is either one or the other. Here, if it only has reference to the Last Day, then it is aiming the believer at God’s ultimate evaluation of them and His guarantee that He ‘will spare them’ and that they will be vindicated.
But speaking of vindication, it is the Lord and His ways of making this division that are vindicated by this passage’s end. This is the repeated theme, from cover to cover. The One who separates light and darkness in Genesis 1 also says in Genesis 3:15: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring.”
In the Bible it is mostly in God’s own house where the axe is laid to the root of the tree, as John the Baptist says to the Pharisees, or where Christ comes to bring the sword to divide even in households. So this ‘once more you shall see’ is a final seeing of what God is always doing and which we are almost never hearing from pulpits.
Practical Use of the Doctrine
Use 1. Admonition. Keep a watch out for weary cynicism toward serving the Lord. This passage treats those who say, ‘It is vain to serve God’ (v. 14a), as those who are marked out for judgment. But do not think that these thoughts and words cannot invade every one of us, especially when the years pass by and those near to us abandon the Lord.
We may take it personally, as if they have abandoned us. We may take it as punishment, as if we have turned them away from God. We may take it as peer pressure, as the Psalmist who “saw the prosperity of the wicked” (Ps. 73:3), and finally, “All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence” (v. 13).
So, what is the use in serving the Lord, even if you find yourself a “last man standing” or a “last woman standing”? Let me mention … such great uses:
(i.) Not falling, as that is the opposite of standing! Of course, none of Christ’s own can fall utterly, as He says, “whoever comes to me I will never cast out” (Jn. 6:37; cf. Jude 24).
(ii.) Passing on the gospel, as Paul stood against all odds in Galatia: “so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you” (Gal. 2:5). We must never calculate our faithfulness to the gospel by its “chances of success.” We trust God that He will give that next generation the increase.
(iii.) Being there for those who have lost their way, to come back home. Many will come to their senses, like the Prodigal Son (Luke 16:17); but what if that son came home only to find his father had given up hope?
(iv.) Honoring your King by carrying out His orders till the end, like that old Japanese soldier holding out until otherwise directed: “Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (1 Cor. 15:28).
Use 2. Exhortation. What was that first tangible, public step of the remnant? They spoke with one another. Let us speak with one another about revival and reformation. Call it what you want to. Give me a church that starts to speak with one another about returning to God’s ways.
This also challenges much superstition about following false leaders and groups to the ends of the earth, lest one be divisive. When a denomination or whole tradition, or its institutions, have embraced heresy or violence against the moral law, and that from its leadership: Now is the time to speak to one another.
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1. Charles Spurgeon, “The Clean and the Unclean” sermon on Leviticus 11:2–3 (1863).
2. Merrill, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, 444.
3. Jeremiah Burroughs, Irenicum: Healing the Divisions Among God’s People (Orlando: Soli Deo Gloria, 1997), 7, 15.
