Populus Zion
Malachi 4:1-6
December 4, 2022 anno Domini
Populus Zion. The people of Zion, that’s the people Malachi prophesied to, and that’s us. They were back in Zion waiting for the day of the Lord and we are in Zion waiting for the great day of the Lord. And as Vicar Otten told us on Wednesday night it is not an easy wait.
Martin Luther and other ancient Christians believed that Malachi was Ezra. Malachi means “my messenger.” It seems more of title than a name. Malachi, if not Ezra, would have been a contemporary of Ezra. Since I preached on Ezra for a whole Lenten season in 2021, I’m sure you remember everything about Ezra, but if you have forgotten a few details here’s a refresher.
Ezra was among the captives in Babylon, whom Cyrus, King of Persia, allowed to return to Jerusalem around 500 B.C. Together with Nehemiah, Ezra, who was a priest, helped rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and the Temple.
For the Israelites, all of life centered in and around Jerusalem. It was the City of God. Inside the Temple, on Mount Zion, in the Holy of Holies, God sat above the Ark of the Covenant to hear their confession of sins and to receive the blood of the sacrifices to atone for those sins. There God sat. There God listened and there, God delivered His gifts.
When they were in captivity the Israelites longed for Zion. In Psalm 137 the Psalmist speaks for those captives.
“By the waters of Babylon,
there we sat down and wept, when we remember Zion.
For there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors, mirth,
saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!
How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill.
The Psalm ends with the captives blessing those who would destroy Babylon.
In Malachi God’s children are back in Zion, but it isn’t sunshine and roses. They were in the presence of God, but they were still waiting for His greater presence, for THE Day of the Lord, when He would come for them in the flesh as their Savior. There were problems in Zion from without and from within. Without, the neighboring nations and people tormented Israel. They hindered their work and told lies about them to Darius the King hoping he would shut them down. Within, the people got lazy when it came to rebuilding the walls and the Temple. The days grew long, and they weren’t the glorious days they dreamed of from captivity. The men lost interest in the Lord and in their faith and started flirting with the good-looking pagan women of the land.
This is what Malachi saw and what he preached against. They were in the city of the Holy God, but they were not holy. God had been gracious, but people were self-righteous and demanding more. God was patient with them, but they were impatient with Him. God was working on them for their eternal well-being, and they were unhappy because He wasn’t giving them what they wanted when they wanted it.
Malachi is the preacher we need right now, for we too are in Zion. The Holy Christian Church is Zion. Where God’s Word is preached in truth and where the Sacraments are given according to Christ’s institution, God is present to save and deliver His people. Christ Jesus came into the world to bring you into the presence of God. He walked out of Jerusalem to be cast down into hell for your sins that you might be forgiven and raised up to live before God. In baptism, you were chosen by God to be His child, marked with His name, and granted citizenship in the eternal Zion. You have been set free from your captivity to sin, death, and hell. His Word is the constitution or better the Covenant between Him and you in the Kingdom of God, in the heavenly Jerusalem, in the Zion of His presence. You’re in, but it is not an easy city in which to dwell.
There are enemies without. Last week the US Senate passed the Respect for Marriage Act. Oddly the bill does not define what marriage is, which makes you wonder what exactly it is respecting. The Act respects an undefined marriage, but its sights are set on us, on every church or believer that confesses marriage to be between one man and one woman. Get ready for my sermons to be called hate speech, for us to be stripped of our non-profit and tax-exempt benefits. Get ready for our work to be hindered by the very Government that supposedly guarantees the freedom of our speech and freedom from a coerced state religion.
But there are also enemies within. Somehow people imagine that being part of a Christian congregation, living in that little bit of Zion in Saint Cloud, or Waite Park or Sartell, is going to be heaven on earth. But then they find the church is filled with sinners, whose sins are as small as complaining about the coffee to as large as slandering the people next to them in the pew or the pastor standing in their pulpit. Like the physical residents of Zion in the days of Malachi we are tempted to laziness and indifference, to fool around with the world, more than we find ourselves in God’s Word.
For the old and new people of Zion, Malachi preaches a wonderful sermon. For behold the day is coming. The Day, the Day of the Lord – that is a day when God comes to earth and meets with man face to face. The first day of the Lord was the creation of Adam and Eve. The second day was when the Son of God was born of Mary and hung on the cross for our salvation. The last and ultimate day of the Lord is when Christ will return and we will see Him face to face and take up residence in the Zion by sight.
For the enemies of Zion, it’s going to be hot day, a revealing day, a destructive day. Their work will be shown to be stubble and their accomplishments will blaze like a dried-out Christmas tree. But for you, you who fear the Lord’s name, that day will shine gloriously upon you. On that day when the Son (S-O-N) rises in the eastern sky to awaken us from our graves or to call us to Himself if we are alive, the final healing from sin will take place, the healing of body that follows the healing of soul. That’s the day I get to throw my hearing aids away and hear every note the heavenly choir sings to the Lamb. The burning barrel of hell will be filled with walkers and canes and eyeglasses and pill bottles. It will be heaped with all the medical marvels of the ages. Doctors and Pastors will forever be unemployed because there will be no more sin and nor more death.
On that day you will go out leaping like calves from the stall. Now we are confined, limited by our sin, still locked up in a fashion in this sinful world. But all is not bad, for in this stall we are fed with God’s Word and nourished on Christ’s body and blood. We are alive, but on that day, we will be free of sin, death, and the devil, and like a calf, leaving the confines of a stall for the open green pasture, running and romping about, full of life and joy in Christ.
It is not easy to live in Zion here on earth. There are enemies within and without. You’ll be tempted to impatience, indifference, and numerous affairs with the world. But the day is coming. So, straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near. In the name of Jesus. Amen.