The Elijah Reformation Text: Malachi 4:5-6
Introduction: The Great Unraveling
We are living in an age of societal disintegration. You do not need a prophet to tell you this; you only need to read the headlines or look out your window. Our civilization is coming apart at the seams, and the central point of that unraveling is the family. More specifically, the central point of the unraveling is the collapse of fatherhood. We are a culture drowning in what can only be described as father-hunger. Our young men are lost, rudderless, and angry. Our young women are confused, unprotected, and exploited. And all of it, when you trace the tangled threads back to the source, leads to the empty chair at the head of the table.
Our secularist overlords have an explanation for this, of course. For them, the traditional family was a patriarchal prison, and its demolition is a liberation. They see the chaos and call it freedom. They see the ruins and call it progress. They have spent the better part of a century waging a relentless war on fatherhood, and now that they are surveying the wreckage, the smoking rubble of broken homes and shattered lives, they have the audacity to wonder why society is so violent, so unstable, so disordered.
But God is never taken by surprise. He is the God who declares the end from the beginning. And as He closes the canon of the Old Testament, with four hundred years of prophetic silence to follow, He leaves His people with one final, potent, and deeply diagnostic word. He tells them precisely what the hinge of history will swing on. He tells them that the coming of the Messiah will be preceded by a foundational restoration, a turning of hearts. And He tells them that this restoration will not be in the halls of government or the academies of the learned, but in the living rooms of ordinary families. The great issue, the hinge of blessing or curse, is the relationship between fathers and their children.
These last two verses of the Old Testament are therefore not a sentimental sign-off. They are a stark and solemn warning. They are a promise of reformation and a threat of utter destruction, placed side-by-side. God is telling us that the gospel of His Son is not an ethereal, abstract reality. It is a world-altering power that lands right in our homes. It either heals the most basic human relationships, or its rejection confirms and seals their ruin. This is the choice that stood before Israel at the first coming of Christ, and it is the same choice that stands before us now.
The Text
“Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and awesome day of Yahweh. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land, devoting it to destruction.”
(Malachi 4:5-6 LSB)
The Forerunner and the Day of Judgment (v. 5)
We begin with the promise of the forerunner in verse 5:
“Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and awesome day of Yahweh.” (Malachi 4:5)
God announces that before the main event, He will send a warm-up act. He is sending "Elijah the prophet." Now, the disciples of Jesus were good Old Testament students, and they knew this verse. They asked Jesus about it directly. "Why then do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?" (Matt. 17:10). Jesus gives them a clear, unambiguous answer. He tells them that Elijah has already come, and they did to him whatever they wished. And lest there be any confusion, Matthew tells us, "Then the disciples understood that He had spoken to them about John the Baptist" (Matt. 17:13). Jesus Himself says, "if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come" (Matt. 11:14).
So, the prophet sent in the "spirit and power of Elijah" (Luke 1:17) was John the Baptist. He was the great transitional figure, the last of the Old Testament prophets, whose ministry was to prepare the way for the Lord. He was a rugged, confrontational, wilderness preacher calling for repentance. He was not a soft-spoken man in a fine suit; he was a man in camel's hair with a leather belt, eating locusts and wild honey. He was Elijah all over again, calling a corrupt and compromised generation back to covenant faithfulness.
And what was he preparing them for? "The great and awesome day of Yahweh." Our dispensationalist friends have trained us to think that this must always refer to the final, end-of-the-world judgment. But that is to flatten the rich tapestry of biblical prophecy. The "day of the Lord" in Scripture is a technical term for any time God "shows up" in history to bring a decisive judgment upon a nation or a people. There was a day of the Lord for Babylon, for Egypt, for Edom. And the "great and awesome day" that Malachi and John were pointing to was the cataclysmic judgment that would befall the covenant-breaking nation of Israel in A.D. 70.
This was the culmination of all their rebellion. Jesus Himself prophesied it in detail in the Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24). He warned that generation that all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from Abel to Zechariah, would come upon them. The coming of Jesus was a coming in salvation for those who would receive Him, but it was a coming in devastating judgment for those who rejected Him and crucified Him. John the Baptist stood at the crossroads and warned them. The axe, he said, was already laid at the root of the trees. The Messiah was coming with a winnowing fork in His hand. The day of decision had arrived.
The Heart of the Reformation (v. 6a)
Verse 6 tells us the specific nature of the preparatory work this Elijah would do.
"And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers..." (Malachi 4:6a LSB)
This is the core of the matter. The sign of true, national repentance, the evidence that a people are preparing to meet their God, is the restoration of covenantal faithfulness within the family. When a nation is in rebellion against God, the first place it shows up is in the home. The hearts of the fathers grow cold and hard toward their children. They become selfish, negligent, abusive, or simply absent. They abdicate their spiritual responsibilities. They provoke their children to anger. And in response, the hearts of the children grow bitter and rebellious toward their fathers. The generational covenant breaks down. This is the spiritual state of nature.
The ministry of John the Baptist, and by extension the gospel itself, is a ministry of radical reconciliation. It is a turning of hearts. Notice the direction. First, the hearts of the fathers turn to the children. Reformation and revival begin with the leadership. It begins when fathers repent of their abdication and take up their God-given responsibility. It is not about demanding respect; it is about becoming respectable. It is about fathers turning from their sin, their selfishness, their pursuit of vanity, and turning their hearts, their affections, their attention, their instruction, toward the children God has entrusted to them.
When this happens, a corresponding miracle occurs. The hearts of the children are turned back to their fathers. Rebellion is met with repentance. Bitterness is replaced with honor. The covenant line is restored. This is not about achieving a perfect family through therapeutic techniques or better communication strategies. This is a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit, accomplished through the preaching of the gospel. The gospel reconciles us vertically to our Heavenly Father, and the inescapable fruit of that vertical reconciliation is horizontal reconciliation with our earthly families. A man who says he is right with God but whose relationships at home are a disaster is a man who is deceiving himself.
The Covenantal Choice: Blessing or Curse (v. 6b)
The verse, and the Old Testament, ends with a solemn, hanging choice. This restoration must happen, or else.
"...lest I come and strike the land, devoting it to destruction.” (Malachi 4:6b LSB)
Here is the binary choice that God sets before every generation. Receive my Son, embrace the reconciliation He offers, and let that gospel power heal your homes, or face the consequences. The alternative to this Elijah-reformation is the curse. The word for "devoting it to destruction" is the Hebrew word herem. This is the word used for the utter destruction of idolatrous cities like Jericho. It means to be devoted to God for utter destruction, to be wiped from the face of the earth without remedy.
This is precisely what happened to that generation of Israel. They had the ministry of John. They had the ministry of Jesus Himself, and the apostles. A remnant believed, and their hearts were turned. Their families began to be healed. They were brought into the new covenant. But the nation as a whole rejected the message. They did not listen to the new Elijah; they beheaded him. They did not listen to the Son; they crucified Him. They rejected the turning of hearts.
And so, God came. He came in the Roman armies of Titus Vespasian in A.D. 70. He struck the land with herem. The city of Jerusalem was leveled, the temple was destroyed, and the people were slaughtered or sold into slavery. The old covenant world was brought to a bloody and decisive end. This was not an accident of history. It was the covenantal curse of Malachi 4:6, executed in full.
Conclusion: The Unchanging Alternative
The book of Malachi ends with the word "curse," which is a sobering way to close the book. The Hebrew scribes were so troubled by this that in their scrolls, they would repeat the second-to-last verse after the last verse, so as not to end on such a grim note. But we should not soften it. The choice remains just as stark for us.
Our society is under the judgment of God because our families are disintegrating. The fathers have turned their hearts away from their children, chasing after career, or pleasure, or sinful distractions. And the children's hearts are filled with the resulting bitterness and rebellion. We are ripening for a curse.
What is the solution? It is not another government program. It is not another self-help book. The solution is the same as it was in the first century. It is the gospel of Jesus Christ, preached with the spirit and power of Elijah. It is a call for radical repentance that begins with the fathers in the home. It is a call for men to turn from their sins, to embrace their responsibilities, and to lead their families in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
When Christ comes into a man's heart, He does not leave the rest of his house untouched. He comes to turn the hearts of fathers to their children, and children to their fathers. This is the foundation of any true reformation. This is the only hope for our land. We must choose the gospel restoration of the family, or we will get the herem destruction of our society. There is no third option.
The Old Testament ends with a curse, but thank God, the story does not end there. The New Testament begins with the fulfillment of this very prophecy, with the coming of the one who would bear the curse for us. Jesus Christ was devoted to destruction on the cross, He was made a curse for us (Gal. 3:13), so that the blessing of Abraham might come to us. He took the herem so that we could receive the reconciliation. The choice is before you. Turn to Him, and let Him turn your heart toward home. Or refuse, and remain under the curse. There is no middle ground.