This morning I want us to revisit and focus on a statement that might not be familiar, but you might hear from time to time in church — “Already but not yet”. When we use this term it’s usually in the context of prophecy and since we are in the Minor Prophets this Summer, I thought it would be a good time to revisit it. “Already but not yet” means that something has already happened and we can experience those things now but the fullness of those things has yet to come to pass. Let me give you a couple of situations that illustrate this idea. Summer vacations are an event that can be “Already but not yet”. As soon as you clock out on your last day of work before you are off for a period of time, you are technically on vacation. However, you don’t experience the fullness of that vacation until you are on a beach somewhere, resting at home, or in the mountains. Christmas as a kid is definitely this kind of event. At midnight on December 25th it’s technically Christmas, but Christmas really isn’t totally experienced until everyone wakes up so you can spend time with family, enjoy traditions, and open gifts. The example that speaks to me the loudest is the sunrise. Not just any sunrise, but the sunrise after an all night lock-in. Lock-in’s are perhaps the greatest invention of our enemy that God has used mightily for His glory. Even though they can be an immense blessing, lock-in’s are tough. You have hours with teens and their attention. In those countless overnight hours, teenagers tend to open up more and as a Youth Pastor or a Youth Leader you will have some of the best discipleship moments you will ever have with students during lock-ins. That’s the good part, but on the other hand you also have to stay up all night and maintain a high energy the entire time. However, when the sun rises you know that it’s almost all over and you get to go to bed. As you all know the sun doesn’t work like a light switch where it’s dark one moment and light the next. Before the sun rises the light starts to announce it’s coming and with it comes hope. The sky begins to lighten, the darkness slowly turns to a deep blue, stars fade, and warmth starts to push back the cold. The sunrise has already begun even though the sun had not yet appeared. Then, after what feels like forever, the sun finally breaks over the horizon and everything the light had promised becomes a reality; it’s finally time for the parents to come and pick up their kids. This is what we mean when we say, “Already, but not yet”. That’s what I want us to keep in mind as we look at the very last chapter of the very last book of both the Old Testament and the Minor Prophets — the 4th chapter of Malachi.
The Book of Malachi follows a similar pattern that we have seen throughout the Minor Prophets. God used the prophet to warn the nation about impending judgment but Malachi has a few things that set it apart from other minor prophets. First, it is only one of three prophetic books written after Israel's return from Exile (the other two being Haggai and Zechariah). It's also the last Word from God sent though a prophet before He was silent for 400 years and it is written by a series of back and forth dialogues between Israel and God. God starts by making a claim against Israel. Israel disagrees and then God responds to show them their wickedness. God uses these conversations to confront their defiled worship, their lack of justice, their disrespect for marriage, their lack of remembrance of His faithfulness, their lack of faithfulness to Him, and their disobedience in bringing their tithe to the Lord obediently. However we then get to chapter 4 and the story changes because the focus is not on what the children of Israel are doing now, but what God is going to do in response to their sinful behavior. It’s in these last Words of God that we as 21st Century followers of Jesus find the “Already but not yet” idea played out. It should not only inform us, but encourage and empower us to keep on until the “not yet” comes to pass.
Sin has been Judged but not yet Destroyed - Malachi 4:1
The Lord of Heaven’s Armies says, “The day of judgment is coming, burning like a furnace. On that day the arrogant and the wicked will be burned up like straw. They will be consumed — roots, branches, and all.
There was definitely a fulfillment of the promised judgment in Malachi during the 400 years of silence. When we look to history we see Israel's rebellion against God continued and God sent judgment just like He promised. It came through Alexander the Great, through the Egyptians, and through the Syrians during the Maccebian era. Then the Romans came and conquered Jerusalem. That's when God breaks His silence as He speaks to Zechariah and sets in motion the events we see played out in the Gospels. Rome would then absolutely destroy Jerusalem in 70 AD. One of the only things that remains of that judgment is the western wall of Herod’s temple (often called the “wailing wall”) that can still be visited in Jerusalem to this day. However there is more to this prophecy than just what we see in history and that is definitely part of the “Already”. Remember I want to look at what this means to followers of Jesus today. We have already seen this prophecy played out against the sins of Israel, because when Jesus came the judgment against all sin started. John spoke often of the judgment Jesus brought in his Gospel like in John 3:18-19 where we are told that “There is no judgment against anyone who believes in him. But anyone who does not believe in him has already been judged for not believing in God’s one and only Son. And the judgment is based on this fact: God’s light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil.” Judgment against sin was now coming against all people, but for those who trust Jesus as Lord and Savior that judgment was taken care of once and for all on Calvary. 2 Corinthians 5:21 tells us that “For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.” Justice had been done when Jesus willingly took the punishment for our sin and those sins will never be remembered or brought up by God again (Hebrews 8:12 & 10:17). When Jesus came the ultimate judgment of sin had begun. For those who have trusted Jesus as their Lord and Savior it is finished once and for all at the cross. However for those who have rejected Jesus, there is still a time of ultimate judgment that is coming for them because of their sin, and that is to say that sin is destroyed once and for all. Listen to Peter as he uses some of the same imagery found here in the first verse of Malachi but in reference to this ultimate day of judgment, 2 Peter 3:10: “But the day of the Lord will come as unexpectedly as a thief. Then the heavens will pass away with a terrible noise, and the very elements themselves will disappear in fire, and the earth and everything on it will be found to deserve judgment”. The first time Jesus came, He came to be our Savior paying the penalty for our sins. The next time He returns He will ultimately judge sin once and for all. We see what this day looks like in Revelation 20:11-15, “And I saw a great white throne and the one sitting on it. The earth and sky fled from his presence, but they found no place to hide. I saw the dead, both great and small, standing before God’s throne. And the books were opened, including the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to what they had done, as recorded in the books. The sea gave up its dead, and death and the grave gave up their dead. And all were judged according to their deeds. Then death and the grave were thrown into the lake of fire. This lake of fire is the second death. And anyone whose name was not found recorded in the Book of Life was thrown into the lake of fire.” According to James 1:15 all sin leads to death, so when Jesus came the first time He defeated both sin and death once and for all. But when Jesus returns sin and death will be destroyed forever, never to bring its brokenness back into our lives again. For a follower of Jesus, we already have victory over sin through Jesus Christ, but we have yet to experience the ultimate destruction of sin and death that will come at His return.
Healing has Begun, but we are not yet Whole - Malachi 4:2-3
“But for you who fear my name, the Sun of Righteousness will rise with healing in his wings. And you will go free, leaping with joy like calves let out to pasture. On the day when I act, you will tread upon the wicked as if they were dust under your feet,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.
As God speaks through Malachi, His focus switches from those who are lost in their sins in verse 1, to those who have feared His name in the next two verses. These would be the remnant that God speaks of in Chapter 3 of Malachi and those would ultimately be the ones who trusted Jesus as the Christ. Jesus spoke of this many times when He was speaking to the Jews. In John 8:42 Jesus tells them that “If God were truly your Father, you would love me because I come to you from God.” In John 6:45, He tells them that everyone who has listened to the Father and learns from Him (this is through the prophets) comes to Jesus. There is no doubt that these verses are referring to those in the future that follow Jesus by faith and are saved by His grace. It’s here that we start to see the blessing that comes from God’s grace experienced by faith in Jesus — this is our “Already” phase. The picture that God gives us through Malachi is of a calf that is kept pinned up or caged awaiting the time it will be slaughtered, but then it is set free from its fate and it experiences joy. As a follower of Jesus we experience the same thing. Listen to what we are told in John 8:36, “When the Son sets you free you are free indeed”. When we trust Jesus as our Lord and Savior according to Romans 10:9, we are saved from the coming judgment of our sins and we are set free from the slavery of that sin. We should come and rejoice just like that calf each time we come to corporately worship the Lord, because we are forgiven and have been set free for the Glory of God. We no longer have to fear death, because death was defeated on the cross and will be destroyed when our King returns. At the moment of Salvation we have our “Already” moment. We are already set free, justified, given a new life, adopted into God’s family, forgiven, reconciled, redeemed, sealed, and so much more. However our “Not Yet” moment is the hope the church should be holding tightly to because when Jesus returns we will experience glorification and all the things we have struggled with in our lives will be gone forever. Let’s look to the future in Revelation 21:3-7, “I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, “Look, God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.” And the one sitting on the throne said, “Look, I am making everything new!” And then he said to me, “Write this down, for what I tell you is trustworthy and true.” And he also said, “It is finished! I am the Alpha and the Omega—the Beginning and the End. To all who are thirsty I will give freely from the springs of the water of life. All who are victorious will inherit all these blessings, and I will be their God, and they will be my children.” That’s our “yet to come” as followers of Jesus. It's an eternity in heaven, but more importantly it’s an eternity in the presence of the King of all Kings, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Yes, we have been healed by the grace of God when we trust Jesus, but our ultimate healing is yet to come.
The Warning given but not fully Realized - Malachi 4:4-6
Remember to obey the Law of Moses, my servant, all the decrees and regulations that I gave him on Mount Sinai for all Israel. “Look, I am sending you the prophet Elijah before the great and dreadful day of the Lord arrives. His preaching will turn the hearts of fathers to their children, and the hearts of children to their fathers. Otherwise I will come and strike the land with a curse.”
I often think of the people in Noah’s day and wonder about the apathy they felt toward what Noah was preparing for. We don’t know for sure how long it took to build the ark, but logic tells us that it took at least a handful of decades. During that time I’m sure people came and asked questions about what Noah was doing and I’m sure Noah told them of the coming judgment. They had heard this for a long time. When things don’t happen immediately in our lives we can become desensitized to warnings and become apathetic toward it. I wonder what happened to that apathy when the rain started to fall? The nation of Israel was surely in this same mindset. God had been warning them for hundreds of years that repentance was needed or judgment was coming upon them. I’m sure that same apathy was present with the nation until the Assyrians and Babylonians came knocking on their city gates. This warning in Malachi was the second time God was warning the nation of Israel. You would think they would have listened because of what had already happened during the exile. God had even given them a gameplan before He would be silent for 400 years, but they still didn’t listen. He first tells them to remember the Law of Moses and it’s important for us to remember what the Law was for. In Romans 3:20 we are told the law was given to show us how sinful we are not to fix our sin problem. God was telling them to remember the law not to save them, but to remind them of their need for a Savior that would be coming. Then a promise of a coming Elijah before the day of judgment comes. This points to the message God broke the silence with when He spoke to Zechariah and promised that He would have a son and this son would have the spirit of Elijah and prepare the way for the Savior and would turn the hearts of the father to their children. The law already showed their sin and how they could never measure up to God’s standard. So in the fullness of time Jesus came with John paving the way, proclaiming, “This is the one I’ve been talking about, the lamb who has come to take away the sins of the world”. This was a warning, but the consequences have not yet been fully realized at least as long as we are still breathing. This warning is still for us today. We are all sinners and have fallen short of the Glory of God (Romans 3:23) and the law shows us that none of us can keep it perfectly and that is what is required of us. We also have John the Baptist’s message that Jesus is the lamb who takes away the sins of the world, or if we would like to make it a little more personal, Jesus is the lamb and the only one who can take away YOUR sins. What we do with this warning of our sin and the promise of what Jesus did has to be responded to now. There is no second chance once this life is over. That's when the curse of sin will be experienced once and for all, because, as we are told in Hebrews 9:27, that it is appointed for man once to die and then comes the judgment. As we read before, those whose names have been written in the Lamb’s book of Life will spend eternity in heaven with Jesus, but those who have not will be judged by their sins and be cast into the lake of fire for all eternity. It’s been 2000 years since that promise was given, we cannot let apathy keep us from accepting its truth and warning others that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life and there is no other way to be saved than Him.
Christians live in the reality of “Already but not yet”. We have experienced a lot in Jesus Christ, but the best is yet to come when He returns again. Listen to Revelation 19:11-16 as this day is described, “Then I saw heaven opened, and a white horse was standing there. Its rider was named Faithful and True, for he judges fairly and wages a righteous war. His eyes were like flames of fire, and on his head were many crowns. A name was written on him that no one understood except himself. He wore a robe dipped in blood, and his title was the Word of God. The armies of heaven, dressed in the finest of pure white linen, followed him on white horses. From his mouth came a sharp sword to strike down the nations. He will rule them with an iron rod. He will release the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty, like juice flowing from a winepress. On his robe at his thigh was written this title: King of all kings and Lord of all lords.” While the reality of His coming and what that means for those who have been saved by the grace of Jesus is exciting and we should rejoice in it, we also should be reminded about what lies in store for those who do not know Jesus as Lord and Savior. Their future reality is just as real as ours. This means that while the Lord tarries, we still have work to do. It is the same work that John the Baptist had. We must tell everyone that Jesus is the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world.
