As I mentioned on Monday afternoon, I hope
this morning to turn your attention to some
verses in the Word of God, and let
us read then in the Prophet Malachi, the
fourth chapter, and from verse one.
The Prophet Malachi, chapter four, Remember
my name, shall the son of righteousness arise
with healing in his wings.
And ye shall go forth, and grow up
as calves of the stall.
And ye shall tread down the wicked, for
they shall be ashes under the soles of
your feet, in the day that I shall
do this, saith the Lord of hosts.
Remember ye the law of Moses my servant,
which I commanded unto him in Horeb, for
all Israel with the statutes and judgments.
Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet,
before the coming of the great and dreadful
day of the Lord.
And he shall turn the heart of the
fathers to the children, and the heart of
the children to their fathers.
Lest I come and smite the earth with
a curse.
Particularly these latter words in verse six.
He shall turn the heart of the fathers
to the children, and the heart of the
children to their fathers.
These words, of course, as you see, are
the conclusion of the word of God in
the Old Testament Scriptures.
The last word of prophetic revelation, until some
four hundred years and more were to pass,
and the angel of the Lord came and
spake to Zacharias, the father of John the
Baptist.
And yet, although such a lengthy period intervened
between the giving of these words and the
commencement of the ministry of John the Baptist
and then of our Lord himself.
Although that period intervened, it is quite clear
from the New Testament Scriptures that these particular
words were not forgotten.
And indeed, they were used on more than
one occasion by the enemies of Christ against
his claims.
For example, you may remember how on the
Mount of Transfiguration, when the disciples had heard
the declaration from heaven, This is my beloved
Son, in whom I am well pleased.
And when they were constrained to a fuller
awareness of the deity of our Lord, they
nevertheless had a difficulty which they put to
Christ.
And that was, why then say the scribes
that Elijah must first come?
And the scribes, of course, were using the
fifth verse of Malachi 4, Behold I send
you Elijah the prophet before the coming of
the great and dreadful day of the Lord.
They were using that verse and literally interpreting
it in such a way as to deny
the coming of our Saviour.
For they said, Elijah was not yet come.
And you will recall how our Lord, in
reply to that question, said that Elijah is
come already.
And they knew him not.
In other words, the meaning of verse 5,
is not that Elijah literally would reappear on
the earth, but the spirit, the power of
Elijah.
That spirit would be seen again in the
earth before the coming of Christ.
As the angel Gabriel says in the words
that we have in Luke's gospel chapter 1,
He shall go before him, that is John
the Baptist shall go before Christ in the
spirit and power of Elias.
And so our Lord, both there in Matthew
17 after the transfiguration and again in Matthew
11, identifies John the Baptist as the Elijah
that was to come.
If he will receive it, he says in
Matthew 11, this is Elijah which was for
to come.
So we have therefore an interpretation given us
in the New Testament Scriptures of the 5th
verse.
And the 6th verse also, which we are
particularly concerned with, is interpreted in the New
Testament.
At first sight, it might appear that the
words of verse 6 are a premise of
the unity which the gospel will restore to
families.
He shall turn the heart of the fathers
to the children and the heart of the
children to their fathers.
We know that the gospel often divides families.
And yet here is a word which, as
I say at first appearance, may be indicating
the blessedness of family unity which can be
restored and is restored through the gospel.
Well, that is true.
But it is not the truth of these
particular words.
You will remember, I'm sure, how often the
Scriptures use the word fathers, not of a
man's immediate parents, but of his more remote
ancestors.
All the Jews spoke of Abraham and Isaac
and Jacob as the fathers.
When the apostle Paul in Romans chapter 9
speaks of the privileges of the Hebrews, he
says, to whom pertaineth the adoption, the glory,
the covenants, whose are the fathers.
And it is in that sense that the
word is used here.
The premise is that the hearts which the
fathers of the Old Testament possessed in the
best and the brightest days of Israel's piety,
the hearts of the fathers would be found
again in another generation.
The piety and the devotion of the fathers,
this would be rekindled and it would reappear
in the children.
That is the meaning of the verse.
He shall turn, he shall restore, he shall
bring back the heart of the fathers to
the children and the heart of the children
to their fathers.
And so it is expounded in Luke 1,
17, where the Holy Spirit renders it, he
shall turn the hearts of the fathers to
the children and the disobedient to the wisdom
of the just.
That is to say, hearts which are by
nature disobedient, in these hearts will be restored
the wisdom, the piety, the grace, which was
in the fathers.
This then is the promise of the verse.
Looking then in these words, let us observe
in the first place that the chief cause
for decay in the church is the decay
of heart religion.
I say this is the first thing surely
which appears in our text.
The failure of heart religion is the cause
of the decay of the church.
Now you will bear in mind the original
circumstances when this prophecy was delivered.
The church was not in a condition of
fruitfulness and prosperity.
A hundred years before Malachi, there was the
restoration in the days of Zechariah and Haggai.
There was the rebuilding that was begun in
that day and those prophets wrestled against the
discouragement and the spirit of weakness that was
in the people.
The temple was rebuilt, the services were resumed
and yet there was so little progress.
The church had not advanced.
And the condition of the people when Malachi
prophesied was not one that simply required encouragement.
It required solemn warning.
The burden of the word of the Lord
by Malachi.
And the book of Malachi brings this word
of judgment and of warning.
And at the same time it promises that
the God who changes not would bring in
a new era.
When from the rising of the sun to
the going down of the same Jehovah's name
would be praised.
But the condemnation of the church in the
day of Malachi was a condemnation which had
to do with the state of their hearts.
And that is implied in the words before
us in verse 6.
God does not say here, I will perpetuate
your hearts in the hearts of your children.
He does not say that the church of
the future will possess the spirit which you
now possess.
No.
He says, I will bring back the hearts
of your fathers and those hearts, they will
be found in the children.
The children to be raised up would be
children that will not resemble you but will
resemble your fathers in the days of Israel's
brightest piety and devotion to God.
Now, there is no need to take more
than a few moments to remind you of
the indications in this prophecy of Malachi demonstrating
the weakness, the decay, the failure of heart
religion.
It comes at once at the beginning in
chapter 1.
We know that the description of a sound
heart is a heart which appreciates the greatness
and the marvel of God's love.
And that was just what the generation of
Malachi did not appreciate.
I have loved you, saith the Lord.
Yet ye say, wherein hast thou loved us?
The love of God that had come to
them undeserved and unmerited come to them when
it had not come to others.
Had not come to Edom, had not come
to Esau.
That grace which had come to them, that
was love which they had grown so accustomed
to as to be unmoved by it and
no longer truly to appreciate it.
And in that peril the church always stands.
To us the love of God has come.
Most of us from the very first days
of our infancy when we were brought to
the ordinance of baptism and we received that
sign and seal of the love which led
Christ to Calvary.
And from that time we have sat under
the institutions of God's worship and the word
of His grace.
And yet it may be possible and indeed
it is possible that within that very context
God may have to say again to His
people I have loved you, saith the Lord.
And yet He say wherein hast thou loved
us?
And my friends the Bible tells us so
repeatedly that our appreciation of the love of
God its reality or its unreality is indicated
so clearly by one thing.
It is by whether or not we know
what it is to give ourselves wholly to
Him.
Remember there in Luke chapter 7 the difference
in the house of Simon the Pharisee.
The difference between that man who set a
meal for Christ and who entertained Him and
the woman who stood behind Him and washed
His feet with her tears and wiped them
with the hairs of her head and how
Jesus spoke to Simon of what that represented.
And what it represented was this that here
was a heart and a life that was
touched with the consciousness and the appreciation of
the love of Christ and of what she
owed to Christ for that love.
There is a hymn that says Savior, thy
dying love thou gavest me nor should I
ought withhold my Lord from thee.
And yet the people to whom Malachi spoke
were those who were able to bring cheap
and inferior and blemished sacrifices to the house
of God and they did that because they
had so little heart attachment to God and
so little consciousness of His love.
Where your treasure is, says Jesus, there will
your heart be also.
And if the things of Christ and of
heaven are our treasure then it will be
shown by the way that we live.
There are other things in this great prophecy
that speak similarly.
In chapter 2, God rebukes the sons of
Levi for their lack of fear of God
saying there how in a previous generation the
sons of Levi had been those who walked
before God in peace.
I gave them to Him for the fear
were with He feared me and was afraid
before my name.
The fear of God that is part of
heart religion.
And what I am simply saying from the
words of our text this morning is this.
That the church is in her best days
when heart religion flourishes.
When there is true love to Christ.
When the fear of God is in the
midst of His people.
When there is spiritual vitality and holiness and
energy.
And when that spirit declines then there is
the decay of the church.
And that has always been true.
The decay of the church does not come
because of the power of error or of
external temptations.
It comes because there is first a vacuum
in the church.
There is a decay and failure of heart
and of spirit.
And when that vacuum occurs then other things
will soon come in.
That is what happened across the English speaking
world at the end of the last century.
And it is still with us today.
And we can have churches and buildings and
pulpits and finance and programs.
But if we have that without the power
of heart religion we have very little at
all.
I have somewhat against thee Christ said to
Ephesus.
Because thou hast left thy first love.
Cursed is the man who trusteth in man
and whose heart departeth from the Lord he
shall be like the heath in the desert.
That then is the first thing.
The failure of heart religion is the decay
of the church.
I will turn the heart of the fathers
to the children.
Secondly let us notice in this verse that
the promise that the heart of the fathers
will be restored to the children is a
promise which is made on the basis that
this is God's own work.
Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet
and he shall turn, that is to say
God clothing his servants with unction and authority
and power.
God will be the one by whose word
and power the hearts of the fathers are
restored in the lives of the children.
It is altogether beyond human power.
One generation cannot pass its spirit to another.
What great Christian institutions you can think of
and I can think of that once burned
with devotion to the word of God which
were once so eminently used by Christ and
yet they could not pass on that spirit
to all the generations that followed.
And that is still true.
We can pass on names and buildings and
other things but we cannot pass on the
heart of one generation to another.
So we read in the book of Judges
chapter 2 of the sons of the men
the spiritual giants who entered Canaan and who
conquered the land.
We read of their sons they knew not
the Lord nor yet the works which he
had done.
That does not of course mean that they
were intellectually ignorant of what had happened.
Of course they were not.
They belonged to the same tribes they lived
in the same towns.
They knew it in the sense of knowledge
they had received and yet says the scripture
they knew not the Lord.
I was not able to finish my lecture
on Monday afternoon and there was one section
that I was particularly sorry to have missed
and it fits in really at this point.
That matter of preaching for conviction of sin
preparation that has to be made for men
to know that they are lost.
I want to commend to you in John
Owen's Discourse on the Holy Spirit that is
the third volume of his works.
The third volume of John Owen there is
a very fine chapter on this whole question
of conviction of sin and its relation to
conversion.
But what I want to say now is
this that when John Owen published his Discourse
on the Holy Spirit in 1674 as you
see by the date the 17th century was
far advanced and the days of Thomas Hooker
and John Cotton and those other leaders were
past and a new generation had come on
the scene.
And John Owen mourns that in particular this
whole subject of preaching for conviction had begun
to disappear.
He says, this is what Owen says a
generation of new divines was now in the
ascendancy.
That's my phrase, but now I'm taking him
up again.
We have lived to see all these things
decried and rejected all conviction sense and sorrow
for sin all fear of the wrath and
curse due to sin all troubles and distresses
of mind by reason of these things he
says they are now called foolish imaginations the
effects of bodily disease and distempers enthusiastic notions
arising from the disorders of men's brains.
And he concludes the whole doctrine concerning these
things that is preparatory conviction is branded with
novelty and hopes expressed of it's sudden vanishing
out of the world.
And in 1714 in New England Solomon Stoddard
speaking of the very same thing he said
this is a very dark cloud and if
this opinion should prevail in the land it
will give a deadly wound to religion it
will lead men to think themselves converted when
they are not.
Well, I throw that in here because you
see how it fits in to our text.
God says he will restore the hearts of
the fathers to the children and that means
that without God's grace and power it cannot
be done.
And that explains those great periods of decline
in the church.
How swiftly they can occur how low the
church can fall.
It's equally true of course in the individual
level.
How parents yearn that the spirit of Christ
may possess the hearts of their children.
We have to speak of God's word to
them we have to see that the truth
is not hidden from the generation to come
but when we have done all the scriptures
remind us that this is God's work and
God's alone to give that spirit to the
generation that is to come.
And the glorious assurance of our text is
that God will do that work.
He did it in A.D. 27 when
the scribes and the Pharisees sat in Moses'
feet when the people were led by blind
leaders of the blind when the very temple
of God was a den of thieves and
suddenly in the wilderness of Judea a voice
was heard saying repent for the kingdom of
God is at hand and then behold the
Lamb of God which taketh away the sin
of the world.
And what happened was that in the hearts
of those who had been indifferent and worldly
and simply consumed with all material interests hearts
that were hard and unbroken these hearts were
possessed by a new spirit and it was
because God was fulfilling His own word.
The hearts of the fathers were being restored
to the children.
And how much more under the ministry of
our Lord.
You remember that day when Zacchaeus chief among
the publicans was called by the effectual power
of Christ and Jesus coming to his home
and says that this day is salvation come
to this house for as much as he
also is a son of Abraham.
This man who was so unlike Abraham something
has happened to his heart he is now
truly a son of Abraham.
The work of restoration then is God's work.
Thirdly our text tells us or at least
I believe it indicates to us that God
delights to repeat His own work.
Why does the Holy Spirit use the name
Elijah?
Behold I send you Elijah the prophet.
As we said at the outset of course
it is not a literal reference to a
future reincarnation of Elijah.
It is a spiritual simile.
But why use the name Elijah?
Well I believe it surely indicates to us
that God delights to repeat His own work.
What Elijah the Tishbite did in the days
when Ahab reigned and Jezebel at his side
when the prophets of Baal and the prophets
of the grove ruled in the land in
those days the voice of God was heard
through Elijah the Tishbite.
The authority, the unction the power of the
word of God.
Hear O Lord hear me says Elijah on
Mount Carmel.
That the people may know that thou art
the Lord God and that thou hast turned
their hearts back again.
Then we read the fire of the Lord
fell.
And the success was due to Elijah's God.
And this verse tells us that God delights
to repeat His own work.
He did it on the day of Pentecost.
He did it in the conversion of Saul
of Tarsus.
He did it as the gospel spread through
the Greek and Roman world and right through
and on into history.
You remember those beautiful words of John Calvin.
After a period when coldness and death had
seemed to possess and grip the church.
We listened to Calvin saying I offer my
heart a slain victim for a sacrifice to
the Lord.
Are you my soul chained and bound unto
obedience to God.
That's new religion.
And that's religion rekindled.
The hearts of fathers in the children.
There's an anecdote I also didn't have time
for on Monday.
And I want to leave it with you.
In 1630 in Old England when Thomas Hooker
was silenced.
For a little while he kept the school
for children.
And his assistant in that school was a
young man who was converted under Hooker's preaching.
John Elliot.
The future apostle to the Indians of North
America.
John Elliot.
And the spirit of Hooker the spirit of
God lived again in Elliot.
When Elliot was an old man in 1688
he also needed an assistant.
And his assistant was a man called Nehemiah
Walter.
1688.
In the year 1740 Nehemiah Walter was an
old man.
And one day he heard a young man
who had crossed the Atlantic from England preach
in New England.
His name was George Whitefield.
And when old Nehemiah Walter sat and listened
to George Whitefield he could only say one
thing afterwards.
It is, puritismus ridigivus.
Puritism.
Revived.
The old preaching that in the days of
Hooker had wrought such devastation in the kingdom
of darkness.
That preaching which had seemed to vanish as
John Owen said in 1674.
When nobody seemed to be under conviction of
sin.
When preachers were men pleasers.
When they sewed pillows on men's elbows as
Whitefield says.
When they preached peace when there was no
preach.
Suddenly in the midst of that God raised
up preaching that was the very preaching that
so many years before had pulled down the
strongholds of Satan.
It's puritanism said Walter.
Revived.
I sometimes remember something that happened to me
in the middle of the 1960s when I
was visiting Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia and being
shown round the library.
And there was one particular corner of the
library that especially interested me.
But as I approached it I was immediately
warned that this was a rather special corner
and these books did not belong to Westminster
Seminary.
And when I began to look at the
books this is what I discovered.
There was something unusual about them.
They were mostly the books of the Southern
Presbyterians.
Names that were so little known.
The Dabneys and the Thornwells and the Moses
Hogan John Rice and these men of these
former generations.
And then I was told that these books
were simply temporarily loaned to Westminster Seminary.
They were destined for a new seminary that
was proposed in Jackson, Mississippi.
I'm glad that I looked at those books
because, you see, they speak of this very
verse God gave, as you know, to men
here in the South the vision that what
was embodied in the fathers that could live
again in the children.
It wasn't simply that they were books but
here was truth and truth that needed to
be fed to a rising generation.
And I say the promise of our text
is that God delights to repeat His own
work.
He sent Elijah in the days of Ahab.
He sent John the Baptist.
He sent Thomas Hooker.
He sent George Whitefield.
And He is sending men today into the
ministry of the Word of God.
And that is why so many of you
are here at this present time.
And lastly, the text tells us that a
revival of heart religion is the only way
for a declining church to be spared the
judgment of God.
He shall turn the heart of the fathers
to the children and the heart of the
children to their fathers lest I come and
smite the earth with a curse.
And that is what happened to the church
at Jerusalem.
Those whose hearts were not turned whose hearts
were not broken who withstood the preaching of
the cross of Christ.
Not one stone was left upon another lest
I come and God came.
Repent and do thy first work said Christ
to the church at Ephesus lest I come
and take away the candlestick.
And Christ came.
And Christ comes in judgment to His churches.
And we are warned to take heed lest
we also fall.
And all the preaching of the gospel, my
friends, is preaching against this background that if
the gospel is not attended with success if
it does not lead to piety and love
and fear to God then it is sure
to be followed by the judgment and the
wrath of God.
That is happening in history.
It has happened in our generation.
But oh, the text looks forward of course
to that final consummation.
The day of Christ has begun.
We are living in it.
We are seeing its privileges and its blessings.
But it is to come to a great
consummation in the great and dreadful day of
the Lord.
And Christ will come as a thief in
the night when the elements shall burn with
fervent heat.
When all these things shall be dissolved.
And my friends, what the Scriptures tell us
is that this work of grace, this turning
of men's hearts, this is the only alternative
to that coming of judgment which will have
no end.
His fan, said John of Jesus, His fan
is in His hand.
He will truly purge His floor.
He will gather the wheat into His garner.
He will burn the chaff with unquenchable fire.
That is still true.
Those who go forth with the word of
the gospel are going forth with that message.
King James I said of a certain Puritan
preacher who he didn't much care for.
He said he preached as though death was
at his elbow.
But my friends, death is at our elbow.
We know not what a day will bring
forth.
Your fathers, said the prophet, your fathers, where
are they?
And the prophets, do they live forever?
They don't.
Every voice that is lifted up in the
preaching of the gospel is only a voice
for a brief and short day.
And what is coming, says the Scripture, is
eternity.
And in the face of all the uncertainties
of life, in the face of the sure
coming of that day of judgment and of
woe, O may God clothe us with the
spirit of Elijah.
And may the spirit come upon a new
generation and rekindle in hearts today that spirit
which God gave to His fathers.
He shall turn the heart of the fathers
to the children and the heart of the
children to their fathers.
Lest I come and smite the earth with
a curse.
Shall we pray briefly and then may I
say a few words about the trust.
O Lord our gracious God, we thank Thee
for these exceeding great and precious promises in
Thy holy word.
We pray that in our day and generation
we may apprehend them, that we may believe
them.
That Thou wouldst increase our faith and Lord
grant that as we seek by Thine enabling
to cling to Thee and to Thy holy
word that Thou wouldst use us each one
for the furtherance of Thy kingdom and glory
in this day.
Bless O Lord the work of this seminary.
May it be mightily prospered.
Be with those who teach and instruct.
Be with those who seek to learn.
May the spirit of Christ be abundantly in
the midst that Thy name may be praised
not only now but in the generations and
ages to come.
Hear us we beseech Thee and pardon our
sins for Jesus' sake.
Amen.
I was asked if I would just say
a word briefly about the work of the
Banner of Truth Trust.
There are copies of the magazine that we
produce every month.
I think there are some at the front
here and there are also some copies at
the fellowship hall.
There are many magazines and I don't really
urge this magazine on you.
I'm much more concerned you should read the
books that we seek to publish.
But if you're interested in the magazine please
take a complimentary copy and if you did
want to subscribe the details are on the
back.
But as I hope many of you know
we seek to produce Christian literature.
We seek to do so not so much
as a business but in the hope and
prayer that we will influence especially ministers and
students.
And I'm thankful to say that there are
many indications that that is so.
But we covet your prayers for the circulation
of these books.
We very much value the help of churches
many of you I'm sure have book tables.
That's a great help to us.
We try not to spend much money on
advertising.
We have found that it is by the
testimony and word of mouth of Christians that
books best sell.
I'm holding in my hand the second volume
of the Collected Writings of John Murray and
I urge this particularly upon your attention.
I think it is without question one of
the very finest books we have been privileged
to produce and it contains much of the
material which John Murray himself prepared in the
latter years of his life.
And to conclude I'm going to do something
which is not at all British.
But I want President Patterson to come forward.
We have inscribed this volume to him as
a token of our esteem, our friendship, the
encouragement he gave us on his recent visit
to the UK.
And it's only a book but it's a
real token, Mr. Patterson, of our Christian debt
to you and our affection for you.