So we'll begin here this morning in the gospel of Matthew. This is in chapter 11. And the Lord Jesus taught something about John the Baptist. And this is what he said. From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence and the violent take it by force. For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John, if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come. And then just a little bit later, they asked him, why did the scribe say that first Elijah must come? And he answered, Elijah does come, and he will restore all things. But I tell you that Elijah has already come. And they did not recognize him, but did to him whatever they pleased. The prophecy that Elijah would return comes from the last chapter of the last book of the Protestant Old Testament. So I'm going to be in Malachi for most of our time this morning today, or at least quite a bit of it. And I'll tell you a little bit about Malachi. The word means messenger, or it can be translated as an angel. And it is the last prophetic word before the 400 years of the word not coming to his people until Jesus is born. And so it is appropriate that this angelic prophet should predict the following, and this is found in Malachi 3.1. Behold, I send my messenger. And that's what the ESV says. You could translate it, behold, I send my angel. That's exactly the same word, by the way, as the name Malachi. Identical in form and everything. So behold, I send my angel and he will prepare the way before me and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple and the messenger or angel of the covenant in whom you delight. Behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming? And who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and like fuller's soap. So I will come back more to this idea of this angelic messenger near the end of the sermon. For now, what I want you to focus on in this little verse is the language of the day of his coming. Both of the songs that we sang this morning have that language in them. This day returns in the last chapter. So if you go ahead to chapter four, This is the first verse there. For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. That day is coming shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. Then it says a little later, behold, I will send you Elijah in verse five, the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes, 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 with a decree of utter destruction. So why am I talking about the day of the Lord this morning? Well, this is something that we came across last week when we were in 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 2. And so I consider this sermon still part of the Thessalonians series. 1 Thessalonians 5, 2 says, for you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. And then we saw that Peter says the exact same thing, with a little bit different twist on the way he talks about the imagery. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. And we saw that both of these get it from Jesus in his Olivet Discourse is what Jesus said. You do not know on what day your Lord is coming, but know this, that if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. So today I want to focus on this phrase. I think this will help you better understand what the phrase means as you come across it in Thessalonians, 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, and other parts of the Bible. But also, given this time of year, I think that you will see that it has practical importance not only for the second coming, but for the advent and birth of the Lord Jesus. When Jesus, Paul, and Peter use the day of the Lord, and this is also true of Malachi, they all follow in line with the great prophetic tradition of Israel. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about how the prophets use the day of the Lord language. Amos is probably the first of the prophets to use the phrase the day of the Lord, though as we will see, he's hardly the first to use the idea. What he says is very terrifying. I can remember the first time I came across this as I was reading through Amos for the first time. It's unbelievable language. Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord. Why would you have the day of the Lord? It is darkness and not light, as if a man fled from a lion and a bear met him. Or when he went into a house and leaned his hand against the wall and a serpent bit him. Is not the day of the Lord darkness and not light and gloom with no brightness in it? Zephaniah talks about it, he says, the great day of the Lord is near, near and hastening fast. The sound of the day of the Lord is bitter. The mighty man cries aloud there. A day of wrath is that day, a day of distress and anguish, a day of ruin and devastation, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness. Isaiah talks about this day. He says, wail for the day of the Lord is near. As destruction from the Almighty, it will come. Behold, the day of the Lord comes. Cruel with wrath and fierce anger to make the land a desolation and to destroy its sinners from it. Joel talks about this day as well. He says, the sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And we could just keep doing this all day if we wanted. There's lots of others who talk about this as well. I want you to notice five things about this day. First one is that it is associated with the day of judgment. I think you can see that in all four of those that I read, right? Amos says, whoa, this is not a day that you want to be a part of. But the thing is, the Bible says sooner or later, everyone will be part of it. Who can stand? Is there anything that you can do? And this is the question, is part of the reason why I wanted to have this sermon. What can you do when the day of the Lord comes? So it's a day of judgment. Second, this is a noisy day. We saw this last week. We saw in 1 Thessalonians, the Lord himself would descend from heaven with a cry of command, the voice of an archangel, with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the word sound there is the root word that we get words like phonograph or phone. And it usually translates a Hebrew word. This word is the word kol, q-o-l, the way we transliterate it. And I'll come back to that word here in a minute. I mention it because this is the very word that's used in Isaiah immediately before that text I just read from Isaiah. He says, the sound of a tumult is on the mountains as of a great multitude. The sound of an uproar of kingdoms, of nations gathering together. The Lord of hosts is mustering a host for battle. And so the noise adds to the terror of that day. Third and fourth, I'm going to put these together. This is not realized by very many Christians. The prophets do not speak merely of one day in our future. Maybe that's how you think of the day of the Lord. Maybe as I read all of those passages in the prophets, your mind is going second coming, second coming, second coming. But many days of judgment are what they're talking about. And usually from our point of view in history, those days have already happened. Did you know that? The Day of the Lord is often how they describe this. In other words, the Day of the Lord is a past event many times. So, for example, Isaiah's prediction of the Day of the Lord was directed at Babylon. Very specific prophecy. And it came to fulfillment in 539 BC when it fell to the Medes. Amos was describing the fall of Israel's northern kingdom. And it happened in 722 BC. It was fulfilled. Obadiah predicts the fall of Edom as the Day of the Lord, which took place sometime after 586 BC. It was fulfilled. Joel predicted the siege of Jerusalem that took place in the 7th century. And we could go on and on with that as well. In other words, the Day of the Lord is a colloquial phrase that refers to any time that God judges a city, a people, or a nation. Now, There's a first day of the Lord. It's all the way back in Genesis chapter 3, verse 8. You know the story. This is the story of the fall. And the context is judgment of Adam and Eve for their sin. And it is accompanied by the coal, the voice, the sound of the Lord, just as we saw with Isaiah. And so, scholars have argued that what we have seen here, what you see here in verse 8 of chapter 3 of Genesis, is not what's usually translated the voice of the Lord as he walked in the garden in the cool of the day. But rather, they heard the sound of Yahweh traversing the garden as the spirit of the day, that is, the day of judgment. The frightening noise of the approaching judge told them it was time to hide. This is the first day of the Lord, what Klein calls primal parousia, a record of the beginnings of what is known later in scripture as the day of the Lord. And if that's true, then there are many other days of the Lord even before the prophets, like the flood, or the Tower of Babel, or the exodus against Egypt, and on and on you could go. Now further, you should take note of this language like this. This is in Zephaniah, for example. Zephaniah 1. This is basically how he starts his prophecy. I will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth, declares the Lord. I will sweep away man and beast. I will sweep away the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea and the rubble with the wicked. I will cut off man from the face of the earth. Now that's language that you find associated with the day of the Lord all the time. And if it's taken out of context, it would literally sound like the end of the physical world, wouldn't it? But here's the thing. This is past prophecy in Zephaniah. He just described things that have already taken place from our perspective. Now this particular apocalyptic language was fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem and resulting Babylonian captivity in 586 BC. So when you read language like this, something like, the sun, moon, and stars shall be darkened, or the mountains melt like wax before the Lord, and you realize that this has already happened on more than one occasion, then it ought to inform you when you read things in the New Testament that sound similar. As my friend Brian Godowa points out, we have our own phrases like this. I don't know if you realize it. That was an earth-shattering event, we say. Or, man, it turned the world upside down. Okay? In the Bible, this language is a poetic way of grabbing hold of your emotions so that you can feel the powerful judgment of God in events that people without spiritual eyes look at and they say, well, that's just how things go. And according to the Bible, no, that's not how things go. When nations fall, it is God who is judging them. It is never an accident. It is the sovereign God judging. When God comes in judgment, not only physical but spiritual things happen. Powers and principalities, which are often associated with the moon and the sun and the stars, are judged. And so it's as if the heavens themselves are collapsing and people are given over to doom. I read a Spurgeon quote this week where he talks about the foundations of civilization are removed. Those are the four things I said I wanted you to think about five things. There's a fifth one that's often associated with the day of the Lord. Now remember I asked this question, what shall you do when the day of the Lord comes? If it's this terrifying, this horrible. So sometimes there's something more pleasurable nearby. R.C. Sproul notices, in the Old Testament, the prophets spoke of the day of visitation. It was seen sometimes as a day of great distress and judgment, and at other times, as a day of great comfort and rejoicing, but it's the same day. So for example, think about the one I read in Joel. just spoke about the moon turning to blood. Did you know that right after that, he says, and it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved, not wiped out, not obliterated, but saved. This is very unexpected. Now Malachi says something about this also. This is Malachi 4.2. For you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. In other words, though it's a day of woe for many, and we see that in verse one of Malachi 4, there is an escape. It does not have to consume you like a helpless tree in a forest fire. If you feel utterly burdened by your sins, or helpless because you know that the hand of God is hot against you, the news is, of these days of the Lord, is that there is a way out. And with all of this, then, let us think more deeply about Malachi. Because Malachi gets us to this day in an important way. this day of rejoicing and happiness. But he does it fairly slowly. So again, as we've seen, this is how the prophet starts off chapter four. Behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and the evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. Now so far, if you read that chapter just in verse one, this is a day of woe. Now it's not, I wanna talk a little bit about when this might be fulfilled, okay? It's not possible to know it with certainty exactly when this day of verse one occurs. We've seen it in all of it discourse that there are two days that Jesus has in mind. One is the judgment upon Jerusalem in 70 AD. That was fulfilled. And then the other is the second coming of Christ in glory to judge the living and the dead that we speak about in the creed. So Malachi could be talking about either one or I think he could be talking maybe about both. We're able to narrow down when it did not happen by moving ahead to the second to last verse of the Old Testament, verse five. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. So Elijah the prophet has to come before that day happens. So there's a book called Serac that is one of the books of the Apocrypha. And it was written a couple hundred years after Malachi. And Serac sees this day as still future to him. He talks about Elijah coming. He says of Elijah that he was ordained for reproofs in their times to pacify the wrath of the Lord's judgment before it broke forth into fury and to turn the heart of the father to the son and to restore the tribes of Jacob. Blessed are they that saw you and slept in love for we surely shall live. So when you're reading that text in Serac, it kind of acts like a Jewish expectation of what the coming Elijah will do, and it bases it off the life of Elijah in the past. And it clearly just sees that Elijah has not come yet in his time. And it's into that kind of an expectation that Jesus then speaks of John the Baptist being Elijah, the way we started the sermon off this morning. And so we know that the day of the Lord in mine must happen after John comes. But now I want you to take note of what this Elijah will do, and this is in Malachi. This is the last verse. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to the fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction. The point of this is that the Bible in the Old Testament is ending on good news, on salvation news. But it's still talking about that day of the Lord. It is exactly what Serac said. Serac is actually quoting Malachi here approvingly as part of the expected works that this Elijah would do in the future. So this day of doom has good news attached to it. tell you a little bit about John from one of the commentaries on the Gospel of Matthew. He says the account of John's ministry in Matthew 3, that's Jesus' baptism when John is baptizing all these people, right? Supplies clear links to the prophecy of Malachi 4, 5, and 6. John preached the coming of judgment and warned people to repent so that they would escape its terror. And his requirement of baptism as a mark of that repentance and new beginning was a potent symbol of the restoration of those of the tribes of Israel who were willing to respond. So Elijah had come. And that means that the day of the Lord in Malachi comes sometime right around this, after John. When exactly does that happen? So I think it depends on the perspective. Which are you talking about the day? The doom and the gloom? Or are you talking about something else there in Malachi? So in the New Testament, there's at least three days of the Lord. We mentioned one is the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD at the hands of the Roman Empire. And I don't have time to recount here other than to say that that day of the Lord spoken in early in the most of the first part of the Olivet Discourse was very clearly fulfilled in 70 AD as Josephus records almost the exact parallel language that Jesus talks about to describe the things that happened. And I don't even think he realized that he was using Jesus's words to do it. There's a second day of the Lord in the New Testament that we call the parousia, the second coming or the blessed hope. All of the prophetic language uses these symbols to describe what happens in previous days, but those symbols come to bear on this great judgment day of heaven and earth, when everyone has to stand before the king and give an account. Did they or did they not bow their knee to Jesus? Did they or did they not receive him by faith? Did they or did they not do the things that he commanded? So Peter, seems to be taking that kind of apocalyptic language to the nth degree, saying that the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. Now, last week I gave you this John MacArthur quote to kind of finish the sermon, and I didn't really comment on the quote much. But we saw that he takes that language of Peter very literally of the total annihilation of heaven and earth with a giant footprint, he said, sometime in the future. Now this is not the only way that the church has read Peter's words. Many preterists, and I'm talking about the Orthodox preterists who still see a second coming in the future, see even Peter there as using language more in line with the Old Testament usage and predicting the destruction of the temple. We've seen how similar language is in fact used for things that have already happened. But most of the church has seen this passage in Peter as referring to a still future to us event where God will judge not just Israel, but everyone. And I believe that that is what Peter is talking about, though I confess I do not know exactly what that will look like. I am not as confident as John MacArthur that this will be God literally wiping his feet on the earth and the destruction that you can only have Hollywood picture for you in the movies. OK, I don't know how God is going to unfold this, but I do know that he is going to do it. So those are the kind of the two that we know about. There's a third day of the Lord in the New Testament, and Peter talks about this one, too. He does so in his very first sermon on the day of Pentecost when he quotes Joel. And that's a passage that we've already talked about this morning. So thinking of that very moment when you remember the tongues of fire fell on them and they began to prophesy and speak in tongues, the tongues that the nations themselves understood and the gospel went out and people started saying that they were drunk and all these kinds of things. Peter stands up and he quotes Joel. And he says, in the last days it will be, God declares that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh, and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even on my male servants and female servants, in those days I will pour out my spirit, and they shall prophesy. And everybody goes, yeah, so that's the fulfillment's happening right there at Pentecost. The thing is, though, Peter doesn't stop his quotation there. He keeps going. And this is what he says right after that. And I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and vapor of smoke, and the sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day, and it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. So what is Peter talking about? Well, many people think that he's confused, because obviously the moon did not turn to blood, and there was no blood and fire and smoke and dark sun on the day of Pentecost. So he must be talking about the future, they'll say. And yet, this apocalyptic language is followed immediately by something everyone thinks happened on that day, which is that those who call on the name of the Lord will be saved. And so here's the thing, if Joel is starting with things that have been fulfilled, that everybody agrees with, and he ends with things that are being fulfilled, and everybody agrees with, then what in the world about this middle weird stuff that's going on? So Gary DeMar explains using some of the same passages that we've seen of the Day of the Lord, this is what he says, From what we know of how the Bible uses sun, moon, and stars in numerous contexts, nothing physically happens to the sun, moon, and stars. The sun does not go dark, and stars do not fall from heaven to the earth, even though the Bible uses this type of language. Here's an example. Isaiah 13.10. which we've seen is fulfilled already in the destruction of Babylon. It's a prophecy against Babylon. This is what Isaiah said about that event. He said, for the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light. The sun will be dark at its rising and the moon will not shed its light. this actually happened spiritually. What do I mean by that? Well, when you understand something like a Daniel worldview of the prince of Persia fighting against the prince of another nation and that the heavenly beings are called stars and lights and are likened to the moon and the sun, suddenly you realize that in fact this was fulfilled in Babylon. when God punished the heavenly host over that nation. This is very real, but you can't see it with human eyes, because it's in the spiritual realm. So what about Acts? Well, Damar notices that Joel does not actually prophesy that the moon will be like blood, which is what a lot of people want him to say, it will be like blood, but that it will actually be turned into blood, okay? So even blood moon eclipse prophets like John Hagee, who's made a lot of money the last couple of years selling books on this very topic, have had to take notice that the moon does not actually turn to blood, but says it only appears like blood. These blood moons are not unusual things. We've seen several of them, and they're just eclipses of the sun that when you look at it, it looks like it turns red. Okay, and turns to blood. So these are very common. They've happened throughout history. But Joel and Peter do not say that the moon appears blood red. As much as he likes to say he's being literal, Mr. Hagee, he just isn't doing that when he's reading this text. What both Peter and Joel are talking about is the end of the covenant age and the beginning of a new one. So Joel seems to be used by Peter as a kind of a double fulfillment because Joel has actually already been fulfilled many centuries earlier, as we already pointed out. For Joel, it was the temporary termination of the covenant with Israel through their captivity. It came to pass. Okay, but the thing is that Jeremiah and Isaiah, they called that a divorce using different language, but God took them back and kind of reaffirmed the covenant as Hosea teaches us. So Pentecost basically signals the final straw of the old covenant. For those who turn to Christ, especially among the Jews, as many of them did that very day of Peter's sermon, this was a day that brought salvation for them. That's what you need to know here. For those who would not turn to Christ, it brings disaster. And this was verified in a national way, in a very stark way, in 70 AD, which signaled, very practically, the end of the Old Covenant because the temple was destroyed, the people were scattered, and there was no way that they could carry out their sacrifices anymore. Now I have no problem with that same language being used at the second coming, when all who reject Christ will fall under eternal judgment. But the thing is, it started with Peter at Pentecost. He couldn't be any clearer about this. But in fact, for Pentecost to happen, for that day of salvation and the beginning of judgment to happen, there had to be a day of rejoicing that had to come even sooner than that. Because Pentecost doesn't just happen in a vacuum. So these are the three days of the Lord in the New Testament. There's one more day that I think we see hints at even here in Acts, and that Malachi seems to imply as well, and that Luke, who wrote Acts, tells us about at the beginning of his gospel. All of this is tied to the day of the Lord in a quite unexpected way. It's tied directly to Pentecost. It was a day where judgment was withheld. So I want you to notice, after Malachi predicts the day burning like an oven that will consume the evildoers, pointing in my mind, as I've said, to 70 AD and the final judgment day beyond it, he changes again, and I want you to go back and read verse two of Malachi four with me. So there's this judgment and then switches the topic or switches the way he talks about the day. But for you who fear my name, the son of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. Now notice, this happens immediately after Elijah comes. Because verse two is tied to the day of the Lord in verse one. And these are parallel to each other in verses five and six. So here's the thinking, that day that shall roast some in an oven of fury will cause those who fear the name to see the son of righteousness rise with healing in its wings. This will not happen until Elijah comes, but before the great and awesome day. In other words, verse two is a messianic prophecy because no one else could be the son of righteousness. This is part of the prophecy that takes place prior to the burning and the wrath. So I want to focus here on the sun for a little bit. The sun of righteousness. Now this is the only place that he's called the S-U-N rather than the S-O-N. He's the sun of righteousness up in the sky. So Calvin explains how in the world Malachi could use this term for the son of God when the sun was actually worshiped by pagans as a lesser deity. He says a most suitable term it is when we consider how the conditions of the fathers differed from ours. God has already given light to his church, but Christ brought the full light according to what Isaiah teaches us. On thee shall Jehovah arise and the glory of God shall be seen in thee. This can be applied to none but Christ. Again, Isaiah says, All these words show that the Son is a proper, appropriate name to Christ. For God the Father has given a much clearer light in the person of Christ than formally by the law and by all the appendages of the law. So Jesus is thus called the Son of Righteousness. So when did this Son of Righteousness first dawn upon us? In other words, when does the day of the Lord in salvation dawn? Now, I'm not talking here about the various comings of the Son of God in the Old Testament as the angel. The Apostle John makes clear that the Son, S-O-N, was the light of Genesis, and that the light was already in the world, but he says, and this is talking about John the Baptist and then Jesus, there was a man sent from God whose name was John, John the Baptist. He came as a witness to bear witness about the light that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light. The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. And when does he say he was coming into the world? He answers that in verse 14. So people think that the Gospel of John has no Advent story like Matthew or Luke. I beg to differ. This is very much John's Advent story. He just tells it in a very different way. He speaks of the light coming into the world. This refers to the birth of Jesus, who is the son of righteousness in Malachi, out of the womb of the Virgin Mary. He speaks of the word tabernacling among us. And this is quite possibly a reference to the timing of Jesus's birth. So, I want you to go back a few weeks ago, for most of you who were here, And we saw in a sermon that I did how scholars have fixed the birth of Jesus to that incredible date of September 11th, 3 BC. Do you remember that? And this was because of John's apocalypse and this astral prophecy of Revelation 12, one through four with the sun going through the woman and Jupiter and all these kinds of things that are going on in that text. And so September is the key thing here. Long, long before this, there were many who explained that the birth was indeed in that month. So here's John Lightfoot. He says the time of his birth was in the month of Tishri, which answers to part of our September. So we're in the same month there as September 11th. And he says, about the Feast of Tabernacles time, as many have concluded by observing that he lived just two and 30 years old and a half and died at Easter. That month was remarkable for very many things. He says, he's just recounting Jewish tradition and Old Testament stuff. It was at this time that God created the world. that the tabernacle was made, that the temple was consecrated, and that in it many of the fathers before the flood were born. I came across all these quotes as I was doing that earlier sermon, and I found one from John Gill, who goes directly to John's gospel. And I thought this was remarkable. He says the time of his birth was as it was fixed in prophecy before the scepter or civil government departed from Judah. Herod was king in Judea when he was born before the second temple was destroyed for he often went into it and taught in it and it was at that time pointed out at Daniel's weeks. The circumstances of the shepherds watching their flocks by night agrees not with the winter season. It is more likely that it was in autumn, sometime in the month of September, at the Feast of Tabernacles, which was typical of Christ's incarnation, and there seems to have been reference of it in John 1.14. the word was made flesh and dwelt, or tabernacled, among us. The Temple of Solomon, a type of Christ's human nature, was dedicated at the Feast of Tabernacles, and as Christ the Passover was sacrificed at the very time of Passover, and the Holy Ghost was given at the very day of Pentecost, typified by the firstfruits offered on that day, so it is most reasonable to suppose that Christ was born at the Feast of Tabernacles, a type of his incarnation, and which feast is put for the whole ministry of the word and ordinances to be observed in the gospel times. Give you one more little quote here from Joseph Mead. He says, but it will be objected that the birth of Christ was in December. So some of you might still say, but it's in December. It can't be in September. In other words, the Christian celebration of Easter is tied to the timing of his actual death, but the birth of Jesus is not celebrated when he was actually born? Why would anybody do this? So he goes on to conclude that you have to remember that it wasn't until after the time of Constantine that the day we now observe was chosen. December 25th was not celebrated in the early church as Christ's birth. It takes place after Constantine. In other words, it was not original and there was an agenda behind choosing the December date. So that leads me to a question. Why did the church choose December 25th to celebrate the Lord's birth? After all, there's nothing in scripture saying we must celebrate or that we must not. It just leaves that as a disputable matter. So why did they do it and why did they do it at this time? So I think that this has to do with everything with the prophecy of Malachi 4.2 and the son of righteousness. December 25th is almost the shortest day of the year, but not quite. So I suspected that those who formally chose this day did so because of the time of year when the sun reaches its lowest point and begins a new cycle of longer, warming days of spring and new life. And in fact, when I'm sitting here thinking about this, I was writing that on the day of the winter solstice, the very moment when it takes place. The day when the sun miraculously starts to rise further and further north to give new life to the world. And I always used to wonder if this was related, this Christmas day, December 25th, to the winter solstice. But the problem is, it's four days off. December 25th is not the winter solstice. That's the 21st. So it's classic medieval church thought to take a pagan day that they're using to worship their gods and to subvert it for Christianity. Knowing that in this kind of a case, it is God who made the season in the first place, so the pagans are just celebrating what he made in the first place. So someone explains this, the selection of December 25th addressed the second issue. The end of December was filled with pagan gatherings and festivities in honor of the sun god. who had become victorious over the god of darkness, and the days slowly began to get longer. He's talking about the winter solstice. Christians were falling back to pagan temptations with these festivities, and thus the church fathers wanted to provide with them their own reason to celebrate. This reason, of course, became the birth of the Son of God, who made the Son, and who is called the Son of Righteousness. So am I telling you these things? I'm not here to justify the practice. I'm just trying to explain what in the world's going on. But there's one kind of last question. If that's what they were doing, why the 25th and why not the 21st? So it turns out that this has everything to do with the Roman calendar, the Julius Caesar calendar. Here's what a dictionary explains about this. The Roman calendar is said to have been introduced by Romulus in 738 BC, who divided the year into 10 months, comprising 304 days, 50 days less than a lunar calendar, and 61 days less than the solar calendar. Its commencement, therefore, did not correspond with any fixed season. So then another fella tells us that in 713 BC, just 20 years later, the Romans corrected it by adding two months and made it commence at the winter solstice. So now suddenly the Roman calendar starts on the solstice. Then, 700 years later, Julius Caesar comes along and tries to get this thing as exact as he could, and this is the origin of the 365-day, 6-hour calendar, with a fourth year being leap year, okay? Comes with Julius Caesar. So this is his style, and it prevailed greatly throughout the Roman world. Julius made the first day of the Reformed year begin with the day of the new moon following the solstice, and that's how it started in January. But Isaac Newton, you remember Isaac Newton, the guy with the apple falling on his head? He, of all the people, explains that while the early church didn't care about these kinds of celebrations, those who came later placed four major feasts at the cardinal points of the year. So they did one at the spring equinox, one at the fall equinox, one in the summer solstice, one at the winter solstice. And the winter solstice was the birth of Christ. And guess what? In that Julian calendar, the winter solstice was on December 25th. And then it changed to the 24th and then the 23rd, until eventually you get it where we have right now. In other words, The science was changing and the church just kept the date at the 25th, but it was the solstice the whole time. That's why Christmas is on the 25th of December. It has nothing to do with the actual birth of Christ, but it has everything to do with the prophecy of Malachi, a prophecy attached to the day of the Lord, a prophecy for the dawn of the Son of Righteousness that tells of the light of God coming into the world. It's fascinating to think about how these guys did this and why they did it, whether you agree with the practice or not. And we saw earlier that Malachi began this talk with the prophecy of the angel. So I'm gonna go back to Malachi. It's a twofold prophecy that predicts John the Baptist in Malachi 3.1. Behold, I send my messenger and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come into his temple and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight. Behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. The first messenger is John. This is exactly what you see in chapter four. So Malachi 3 and Malachi 4 are predicting John's coming. He's the first of these messengers or angels. As Mark tells us, he is the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord and make his paths straight. So Mark is taking Malachi 3, 1 and saying, John is the fulfillment. There's a second angel or messenger in this prophecy and he's called me. He will prepare the way before me. Who is the me? Well, he is the Lord. He is Adonai. He is David's Lord and David's God. And it says he will suddenly come to his temple. Temple. Why? To tabernacle among us. That's why Jesus thus becomes the second messenger angel in the prophecy. Now check this out. Why call the incarnate Christ an angel here? Well, partly it's because Malachi 3.1 is taken from Exodus 23. Exodus 23, where it talks about the angel of the Lord being the guardian angel of Israel sent by the fathers who must be obeyed, who alone forgives sins. So he's taking it right from an angel passage, so it makes sense to call him the angel. But there's another reason why, and it's because of Malachi 4.2. Angel becomes parallel with the sun. What is an angel? Does not the psalm say he makes his angels spirits and his ministers a flaming fire? You see, angels are light. What does it say of Satan? Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. What does Satan mean? It is Hillel Ben Shakar, the shining one, son of the dawn. Lucifer, the light bringer. You see, this is why he's called an angel in Malachi 3.1. It parallels the son of righteousness in Malachi 4.2. And many people this week will think about the birth of Jesus. They won't know why they're doing it on this day. They won't know why they chose this day to do it. They won't know that he was actually born on a different day. But the thing is, you can know. And you can know that this day, the day God brought Jesus into the world, whenever that actually was, was the day that the light dawned upon men. The light shone in the darkness, but the darkness has understood it. But you can if you see by this light. Someone writes, for the Christians, the day of the Lord was the coming of Jesus, the expected Becoming the unexpected is the theme of the Christmas story. What could be more unexpected than a day of judgment becoming a day of salvation? Or a day of wrath becoming a day of incarnation as a baby in human flesh? Luke confirms all of this. because he takes the day of the Lord prophecy at the end of Malachi 4 and he sees gospel instead of wrath. Luke's talking about the birth stories here and he tells this in his first chapter as he is preparing for us to meet the baby Jesus. Again I want you to hear the end of Malachi then I want you to hear Luke and how he talks about this. Malachi says, Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes, 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 with the decree of utter destruction. But Luke takes this and says, he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, quoting Malachi, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared. Changes it. And so the day of the Lord in the comforting parts of Malachi's prophecy is the coming of Jesus in the manger. The judgment begins later, after they put him to death, and at 70 AD, and at the second coming. But those are all tied together eschatologically in what happened to Christ. But today, this is the day of the Lord that brings salvation. And as the apostle says, hearkening back to the day of the Lord imagery, today is the day of salvation. It is a day for all to see that God comes not only in judgment against sin, but in mercy and grace to pardon sinners. It's a day we celebrate on the first day of the week, the resurrection day, so that it can be proved to you every time you come to church. For those who fear the name, as the prophet angel said, This is a day where the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings, and they will go out leaping like calves from the stall. It is a joyous day that you need not fear if you hear, because the Lord has come near in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord who is called Emmanuel, who is God with us. Let's pray together. Father, we ask that you would help us to see more of Christ today, and I ask that you would help us to see more of the grace of the kindness of God in coming as one of us in human flesh, an event that we can talk about any time we want, an event that many think about at this time of year, but it's an event that is unexpected because it forestalls the judgment that is coming. Lord, there is terror to come for those who don't know Christ, but for those who do, who fear the name, the son of righteousness rise with healing in its wings. I pray that you would bring healing to those who need it this morning, who are troubled in life and are going through difficulties. I pray that you would cause them to look again to the Lord Jesus Christ and his kindness and his mercy here on the day of salvation so that they wouldn't have to face the day of wrath and woe and judgment that is coming. We pray that you would seal these words in our hearts by your Holy Spirit in Christ's name. Amen.