Malachi 3:5-6 “So I will come near to you for judgment. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive aliens of justice, but do not fear me,” says the Lord Almighty. ‘I the Lord do not change. So you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.’”

Jesus was a real person, fully human and fully God, son of Mary and Son of God. He is not a myth, as some people claim. But the Jesus who was only sweet, only mild, only gentle; who overlooked bad behavior and didn’t care how people lived their lives–that Jesus is a myth. Malachi says that he was coming near for judgment. It was not the main mission of his earthly ministry. But you hear it in the Sermon on the Mount as he confronts the rather loose interpretation of God’s law popular in his day. You hear it in the seven woes he pronounces on the Pharisees.

You hear it four hundred years earlier in the words of Malachi. He has no tolerance for sorcery, dabbling in the occult. It is flirting with the enemy. It is evidence of a divided heart, unwilling to accept and embrace the measure of health or prosperity our loving Father has carefully decided serves us best.

He is quick to testify against the adulterers. There may be no area of life in which the human race has been in more of a hurry to throw off God’s plan for our well-being than in his plan for love and marriage. Even in his day Jesus had to confront easy divorce; lustful, leering, dirty-minded men; and the apparent failure of his people to grasp why God made two genders in the first place.

Look closely at the other sins listed in the prophet: “those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive aliens of justice.” In 1879 American Church Father C.F.W. Walther delivered a series of lectures to his congregation explaining why the Lutheran Church opposed Communism and Socialism: mostly because those movements were atheistic, defended violence, and did not recognize the right to private property.

But he went on to say, “When the rich…look upon (the poor) as existing simply for their profit…if they will not give the laborer proper wages…if they will not support the laborer and his family in case of sickness, if they can live in luxury and be unconcerned when the laborer is suffering: then we are not their friends, but, from principle, their enemies! O my brethren, what terms of reproach might not be justly applied to us, if we sided with the human vampires and not with the oppressed!” (Communism and Socialism, p. 36).

All of this flows from one great sin, the Lord points out: “(They) do not fear me.” Even the most faithful Christian may stumble into any of these sins in a moment of weakness, even multiple times. That God forgives. But when there is no fear of God, and the sin is embraced, and no repentance follows, then the Lord comes for judgment.

So our God and Savior is just. But he is more than just. He comes to spare his people. “I the Lord do not change. So you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.”

God does not change. Since the opening chapters of the Bible story, the Lord has shown himself to be the God who comes looking for people who aren’t looking for him. He wants to repair the relationship he did not destroy. He wants to find people who don’t know they are lost. He intends to rescue people who aren’t aware they are in danger. He gives life back to people who don’t realize they are dead.

So the descendants of Jacob, the Jews to whom Malachi wrote, were not destroyed. They were spared, time after time. The Lord kept coming to them through leaders and prophets. Finally Jesus came to them himself. He called them back. He died for their sins.

He still seeks our return. More than that, he offers to carry us all the way home. He gave us his word, and baptized us into his family, and feeds us with his Supper, not so that he can judge us, but so that he can spare us. Don’t dismiss his judgment. Don’t forget his grace.