Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3172
“But unto you that fear My name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in His wings; and you shall go forth and grow up as calves of the stall.” Malachi 4:2.
[Other Sermons by Mr. Spurgeon upon the same text are Sermons #1020, Volume 18—“THE SUN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS” and 1463b, Volume 25—THE RISING SUN.]
THIS great promise was fulfilled at the coming of our Lord. There were many waiting for it, like Anna and Simeon, mourning the darkness in which they dwelt and scarcely cheered by a single star, for the voice of prophecy had ceased. Then suddenly Christ came and so the Sun of Righteousness arose upon those who feared the Lord! They went forth into blessed liberty, rejoicing in Him. And afterwards their light was greatly increased in brightness and their life in happiness as they grew in Divine knowledge and holiness. It is difficult for us to conceive the revulsion of feeling which must have come into the hearts of such patient waiters for the Lord as Anna and Simeon. They must have triumphed exceedingly, magnifying the Lord, with Mary, that at last He had come—the Light to lighten the Gentiles and to be the Glory of His people, Israel!
This promise has also had a practical fulfillment in the deathbed experiences of God’s people. Tortured with disease, they have been lying in the darkness and gloom of death. Perhaps fears have come in and physical infirmity has been the platform upon which Satan has planted his heavy guns of temptation. But suddenly a wondrous light has surprised them—their dying bed has become a throne of glory! They have found themselves arrayed in royal garments as though it were their coronation rather than their departure out of this world. They have been enabled to sit upright in the bed and to tell others that they had beheld the brightness of the coming Glory and that they had experienced in their souls the foretaste of unspeakable and Divine joys even before their bodies were released from infirmity and pain! Though the body has been bound fast with cords, the soul has mounted up as on the wings of eagles, in sacred rapture and holy bliss! The Sun of Righteousness has risen upon them! Before their earthly sun went down, the heavenly Sun lit up their sky with a sacred high, eternal noon! And unto you who fear the name of the Lord, whatever gloom may surround your departure from the earth, the Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings and one day you shall find Him rise even upon your mortal bodies—
“From beds of dust and silent clay To realms of everlasting day”—
your very bodies shall wing their flight to dwell—
“Forever with the Lord!”
While the promise in the text has had these two fulfillments, there is no doubt that it awaits another. We are looking for the return of the Lord Jesus! And though, perhaps, we have no right to expect that He will come today or tomorrow—for there are many prophecies which apparently must be fulfilled before He comes, and which may require long periods of time—yet we are to expect Him and are to be as servants who know that their master will come to call them to account. Perhaps just when the Christian Church shall become most weary. When the hands of her ministers shall hang down through feebleness. When the warriors shall be “faint, yet pursuing,” when Gog and Magog and the hosts of the enemy shall have gathered themselves together for battle and everything seems to forebode a long dark night for the Church and for the world—perhaps just then Christ will suddenly appear in the clouds of Heaven! Perhaps at such a time
as that, the Sun of Righteousness will arise with healing in His wings and the triumphant saints shall go forth to meet Him clothed with His brightness, sharing in His Kingdom! And as the next verse solemnly tells us, treading down the wicked who shall be as ashes beneath their feet in the day of their Lord’s appearing! Perhaps this is to be the great fulfillment of the text.
But I do not intend to dwell tonight upon any of these three probable fulfillments of the prophecy. I want rather to talk about matters which more nearly concern us just now and to put a few practical soul-matters before this entire congregation, hoping that God may press them home upon some—so that they may find healing beneath the wings of Christ tonight!
I. The text speaks, you will observe, of a certain class of persons—THOSE WHO FEAR GOD’S NAME.
The great multitude of people in the world do notfear the name of God. They do not care whether there is a God or not. If there were no God, their conduct would not be very different from what it is now. God is not in all their thoughts—they live as if they were their own creators and sustainers—and practically join in the language of Pharaoh, “Who is Jehovah that I should obey His voice?” Now, for such people, the Bible contains no blessing—why should it when they reject both it and the God who wrote it?