The Last Word Is Law: God's Final Injunction Text: Malachi 4:4
Introduction: The Great Unhitching
We live in an age of evangelicalism that is deeply embarrassed by its father. The Old Testament has become, for many, like a crazy uncle you have to invite to the wedding but hope he doesn't say anything. We want the Sermon on the Mount, but not the mountain of Sinai from which its authority flows. We want the grace of the New Covenant, but we want it to be a free-floating, sentimental grace, untethered from the covenantal story and the legal grammar that gives it shape and meaning. This is the great unhitching, the modern Marcionite heresy that seeks to sever the New Testament from the Old, creating a god of pure feeling who makes no demands and has no standards.
Into this modern confusion, the last word of the Old Testament prophet Malachi lands with the force of a divine thunderclap. After four hundred years of prophetic silence, this is God's parting instruction to His people. What is it? Is it a word of abstract comfort? A call to look for inner spiritual experiences? No. The last word is law. God's final injunction before the forerunner appears is a command to remember the law of Moses.
This is profoundly significant. God is closing the canon of the Old Testament, and as He does so, He points His people back to the foundation. He is telling them that the way to prepare for the Christ who is coming is not to forget the law, but to remember it. The way to understand the gospel is not to jettison the law, but to be grounded in it. The law is the schoolmaster that leads us to Christ. A schoolmaster you ignore is one who cannot teach you anything. An evangelicalism that ignores the law of Moses is an evangelicalism that will inevitably misunderstand the grace of Jesus Christ. It will create a Christ who saves us from a god we do not know, according to standards we do not acknowledge. Malachi 4:4 is therefore a direct assault on all forms of antinomianism, both ancient and modern. It is a call to covenantal sanity.
The Text
Remember the law of Moses My servant, even the statutes and judgments which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel.
(Malachi 4:4 LSB)
A Command to Remember
The first thing we must see is the central verb: "Remember."
"Remember the law of Moses My servant..." (Malachi 4:4a)
In Scripture, remembering is not a passive mental exercise. It is not wistful nostalgia. To remember is to act in accordance with what is remembered. When God remembers His covenant, He acts in history to save His people. When we are told to remember the law, we are being commanded to bring our lives back into conformity with it. The great sin of Israel throughout its history was not ignorance, but forgetfulness. They had the law. They just refused to remember it. Our generation is no different. We have Bibles in every hotel room and on every phone, yet we suffer from a terminal case of covenantal amnesia.
And notice whose law it is. It is "the law of Moses My servant." This is crucial. The law did not originate with Moses. Moses was the mediator, the servant, the delivery man. The law is from God. As God says a few words later, it is the law "which I commanded him." This demolishes any attempt to dismiss the law as a mere product of its time, the primitive legal code of a bronze-age tribe. No, this is the transcript of the character of God, revealed for the good of His people. Moses was God's servant, and we honor the master by taking the servant's message seriously.
The Whole Counsel
Next, God specifies what part of the law we are to remember. All of it.
"...even the statutes and judgments..." (Malachi 4:4b)
This is a direct shot across the bow of all pietistic, pick-and-choose approaches to the Bible. Many are content with the "moral law," by which they usually mean the Ten Commandments, and even then, only the ones that do not inconvenience them too much. But God says to remember the "statutes and judgments." These are the case laws of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. These are the practical applications of the Ten Commandments to the nitty-gritty of everyday life: economics, agriculture, criminal justice, and civil government.
This is what modern Christians are most eager to forget. We want a "spiritual" faith that stays neatly in the church building and in our hearts. God gives us a faith that is to govern the marketplace, the courthouse, and the capitol building. The statutes and judgments provide what the Westminster Confession calls the "general equity" of the law. While the specific applications might change, the principles of justice they embody are timeless because the God of justice is timeless. To forget the statutes and judgments is to forget how God wants the world to run. It is to surrender public life to the devil and his minions, contenting ourselves with a shrunken, privatized piety that God never commanded and does not honor.
The Fire of Horeb
The historical anchor for this law is then given.
"...which I commanded him in Horeb..." (Malachi 4:4c)
Horeb is another name for Mount Sinai. This is where God descended in fire and smoke, with thunder and lightning, to make a covenant with His people. The giving of the law was not a quiet, academic affair. It was a terrifying display of divine power and holiness. The people were so afraid that they begged Moses to speak to God on their behalf, lest they die. This is the God of the law. He is not a tame God. He is not your buddy. He is a consuming fire.
To remember the law is to remember the God of the law. It is to remember His absolute authority, His transcendent majesty, and His righteous holiness. Our modern therapeutic age has tried to domesticate God, to turn Him into a cosmic affirmation machine. But the God of Horeb will not be domesticated. His law is not a set of helpful suggestions for self-improvement. It is the non-negotiable command of the sovereign Creator of the universe. To forget Horeb is to forget who God is, and when you forget who God is, you will inevitably begin to worship a god of your own making, which is the very definition of idolatry.
For the Whole Family
Finally, we are told for whom this law was given.
"...for all Israel." (Malachi 4:4d)
In the immediate context, this was the covenant nation of Israel. But who is "all Israel" now? The New Testament is abundantly clear. The church is the Israel of God (Gal. 6:16). Gentiles who have been united to the Jewish Messiah by faith have been grafted into the olive tree of Israel (Rom. 11:17-24). We are the commonwealth of Israel, no longer strangers and aliens, but fellow citizens with the saints (Eph. 2:12, 19). The covenant promises made to Israel are ours in Christ. And so are the covenant obligations.
This law defines the family. It is the constitution of the kingdom. It is for "all Israel," which means it is for the Church. To say that the law of God has no application to the Christian is to say that the Christian is not part of Israel, which is to contradict the entire teaching of the New Testament. Of course, we relate to the law differently now that Christ has come. The ceremonial laws are fulfilled in Him; we no longer sacrifice lambs because the Lamb of God has been sacrificed. The civil laws guide our pursuit of public justice, but they are not applied in a woodenly literalistic fashion. But the moral law of God, summarized in the Ten Commandments and detailed in the statutes and judgments, remains the perfect standard of righteousness. It is the way of life for those who have been given life in Christ.
The Law Before the Gospel
Why does God end the Old Testament this way? Because you cannot understand the good news until you have understood the bad news. The law is what shows us our sin. It is the divine mirror that reveals our filth and our utter inability to cleanse ourselves (Rom. 3:20). The law diagnoses the disease for which Christ is the only cure.
But it does more than that. After we are saved by grace through faith, the law becomes our guide for grateful obedience. It shows us how to live in a way that pleases the Father who saved us. Christ did not die to deliver us into a lawless void. He died to purchase for Himself a people who are zealous for good works (Titus 2:14), and the law of God defines what those good works are. The Spirit does not write chaos on our hearts; He writes the law of God (Jer. 31:33).
The very next verses in Malachi predict the coming of Elijah, who we know is John the Baptist (Mal. 4:5-6). And what was John's message? "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matt. 3:2). Repent of what? Repent of law-breaking. The call to remember the law was the necessary preparation for the ministry of John the Baptist, which was the necessary preparation for the ministry of Jesus Christ. The sequence is inviolable. First the law, then the forerunner, then the Lord. Any attempt to get to the Lord without going by way of the law and the forerunner is a fool's errand. It is an attempt to build a house with no foundation. God's last word in the Old Testament is a command to remember the law. We would do well to remember it too.