Malachi 04: And Then What?

What if the quiet years weren’t quiet at all? We open Malachi 4, sit with its blazing promise of the Sun of Righteousness and a coming messenger, and then follow the story after the pen drops. No prophets speak, yet the world shifts: Persia falls, Greece rises, Rome paves roads, and an everyday language binds distant cities. What looks like politics from the outside becomes providence from within—God preparing a world that can carry a message far and fast.

We trace the formation of synagogues that bring Scripture into local life, the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek (the Septuagint) that places God’s story into common speech, and the shock of Antiochus Epiphanes desecrating the temple that sparks the Maccabean revolt. Out of cleansing and courage comes Hanukkah, a living memory of fidelity and flame. Then come the factions—Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and Zealots—each wrestling with what faithfulness looks like under foreign rule. Their arguments set the table for Jesus’ teachings, parables, and confrontations.

As Rome asserts power and Herod remakes the temple mount, the world gains roads, law, and a fragile peace. Into this network, a voice will rise from the wilderness—John the Baptist—wearing Elijah’s mantle, turning hearts, and preparing the way. Malachi’s promise meets history’s moment. The takeaway is simple and searching: God’s silence is not his absence, and his timing stretches beyond our clocks. If he could align languages, empires, and longing for the birth of Christ, he can hold your waiting too. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs hope, and leave a review to help others find this conversation. Where do you see purpose in your own waiting?

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Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation (NLT).
Copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation.
Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Transcript

Welcome And Setup

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hey everyone and welcome to the Bible Breakdown Podcast. In this podcast, we will be breaking down the Bible one chapter a day. Whether you are a new believer or have been following Christ for a while, we believe that you will learn something new and fresh every single day. So thank you for joining us and let's get into breaking down the Bible together.

Community And Housekeeping

Malachi Context And Exile Return

Reading Malachi 4

Elijah’s Forerunner And John The Baptist

God’s Timeline And Waiting

What “400 Years Of Silence” Means

Persians, Synagogues, And Greek Spread

Septuagint And Common Language

Antiochus, Desecration, And Revolt

Hanukkah And Jewish Independence

Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Zealots

Rome, Herod, And Birth Of Jesus

Encouragement When God Feels Silent

Closing Blessing

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Well, everybody, welcome back to the Bible Breakdown Podcast with your host, Pastor Brandon. Today, Malachi Chapter 4. And today's title is And Then What? And then What? What I'm really excited about doing today is we're going to finish up the final book of the Old Testament, and then we're going to look at what happened after the end of Malachi chapter four. And so we're going to have a lot of fun. This is one of those that I don't think it's talked about enough. And so I'm really excited to jump into this. So if you have your Bibles, want to open up with me to the final chapter of the Old Testament. And as always, while you're doing that, make sure you take just a moment, like, share, and subscribe to the YouTube channel and the podcast. Make sure to leave us a five-star review on the podcast. It really does help. And make sure you're going to the Bible breakdown discussion on Facebook. It's an amazing group of people doing a wonderful job. And as always, the more we dig, the more we find. And you can get all of that at the Biblebreakdown.com. Well, if you've been with us over the past few days, we have been slowly making our way through Malachi and talking about how we are refined for God's glory. And if you remember, the big idea of a lot of this has been that the nation of Israel has slowly been making their way back from exile. Remember the Assyrians destroyed the nation of Israel, and then Judah, which was a split-off from Israel, they were destroyed by the Babylonians, and for 70 years they were in exile. And then finally they come back home, and as they are coming back home, nobody's been taking out the trash, feeding the cat, watering the dog, watering the flowers. So everything's dead and gone. And so they are having to start over again, and it is a mess. And when you're living in a primarily agricultural society, you got to start planting crops, you start doing whatever, and now there's a drought. And God is using this drought to say the reason why there is a drought is because you guys need to come back to me. You got to come back to me completely. And Haggai talked about this, and now Malachi's been talking about this. And in the past three chapters, what's been going on is God has been talking to them about the idea of how they've got to clean up their relationship with him. They've got to come back to him completely. No halfway about it, all the things, and then get ready for what's coming. And what we know is coming, that they don't really know is coming yet, is it's about to get silent for a little while. It's about to be a season of where there's a lot that's going to happen, but there's going to be no prophetic word happening. So we've got one more chapter, chapter four, and then we're going to talk about what happens after Malachi puts down his pen. So if you're ready, Malachi chapter four, verse one says this. But for you who fear my name, the Son of righteousness will rise with healing in his wings, and you will go free, leaping with joy like calves let out to pasture. On that 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. Remember to obey the law of Moses, my servant, all of the decrees and regulations that I gave him on Mount Sinai for all Israel. Look, I am sending you a prophet, the prophet Elijah, before the great and dreadful day of the Lord arrives. He, his preaching will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers. Otherwise I will come and strike the land with a curse. Period. And he puts down his pen. Well, first of all, let's break down this chapter and let's talk about what happens. He is telling them that the Son of Righteousness, obviously we know he's talking about Jesus, the Son of Righteousness is on his way. Before that, though, I will send his hype man. I will send someone who is going to look a lot like Elijah in his spirit and the way he goes about doing things and his excitement for God, his no-nonsense approach. He is going to come before the time of the Messiah to prepare the people for his coming. And that's exactly what happened. Johnny B. John the Baptist comes up on the scene and he starts with this attitude of Elijah, just saying, it's time to get our hearts right with God. The king is coming. The king is coming. And it's amazing to realize that happened. To which, by the way, when he says this, he says this in a way that sounds as though, like it's going to happen by next Tuesday, right? Was 400 years between them. Because God thinks on a bigger scale than we can imagine. And this is so encouraging to me because Elijah, or excuse me, Malachi wrote this, and then it was 400 years before it was fulfilled. That's encouraging to me because I'm starting to realize that timelines are much bigger than we think they are. And that's important because what we've got to make sure we remember is sometimes we can get discouraged because we think about how, you know, God is not coming through just yet. It's taking a little bit longer than what I thought. Jesus rose again in 33 A.D. and here we are 2,000 years later, and it hasn't, you know, the fulfillment of the kingdom hasn't come yet. And then we look at what happened at the end of Malachi and realize God's timetable is on a much bigger scale than ours. And so God doesn't just say, okay, this is going to happen, and then nothing, nothing's going on. There's a lot of stuff that happens in between. But God is faithful. And that's what I want to talk about for just a moment. I want to talk about what happened at the end of Malachi. Because what we what we say a lot of times is we say this idea of 400 years of silence. And what that means is, is that doesn't mean that the people just kind of hung out for the next 400 years. Because that that would have been, you know, several, you know, a few different generations that happened. What that means is there was no prophetic voice during that time. No one was speaking from God. After that, a lot of stuff happened, but there was no prophetic voice. So I want to take just a moment and I want to share with you what happened between them. So at about 430 uh AD, or excuse me, BC, 430 BC, was when Malachi wrote his uh his prophetic book. And Malachi writes the final Old Testament book calling Israel to repent and to look for God's coming messenger. So he said, I'm going to send a messenger, but he didn't say when. And so it was it was coming, and the idea was to get yourself ready. Now, during that time, the Persian Empire still ruled, and the Jews were still under the control of the Persians. During this time also, synagogues started to be formed. And they began forming so that people could study the scripture wherever they live. Now, the reason for that is before then, everybody lived relatively close to the temple, and you would go to the temple and you receive instruction. Well, at this point, you have people living, you know, still in Babylon, still in Assyria, all these different things. And so what we would now say is the ancestor of the modern-day church, the synagogue, was developed because people didn't live close to where the temple was going to be anymore. And so, right about the time of Malachi, you started seeing these synagogues beginning to happen. And at the end of Malachi's ministry, you entered what we call the 400 years of silence. So this is where the rest of the story begins. For about the next 100 years, the people are preparing for the kingdom. They're preparing for the Messiah. They're working on things. And in 331 AD, Alexander the Great conquers the Persian Empire. That's when he starts from the city-state that he was in, and they begin conquering and conquering and conquering until he conquers most of the known world and he spreads Greek culture everywhere. They call it Hellenization. They spread the Greek culture all over the place, and the Greek language, the Koine Greek language, becomes the common language across the ancient world. Now, about 50, well, 75 years later, 250 BC, the Septuagint, which was the Greek translation of the Old Testament, is made. That's important because in most of the synagogues, even during the time of Jesus, that's what was going to be read because it was the common language. Then you fast forward, so we started at 430. Well, now we get to 1687 A.D. You have a group of people, and there's a guy called Antiochus Epiphanes, bans worship of the Jewish people, and he desecrates the temple. He goes in and just ransacks the place. And so we have from 430, the king is coming, and as they're getting ready for it, you have a hundred years later, Exander the Great, and then at 167 AD, these people come in and they just absolutely desecrate the temple. And so what happens in 167, the same year, after the desecration of the temple, that's all they needed to know. The Jewish people revolted under a family called the Maccabees. They had the Maccabean revolt revolt and they ended up fighting for their faith and Jewish freedom. And here's the thing: for a little while, they won. They went through this season of winning and restoration, and they would lose a little bit and all this kind of stuff. And then that that date's not quite right. So about 167 A.D. for both of these, at about the same time, the temple is cleansed and they start celebrating Hanukkah. There's this amazing miracle that happened with Hanukkah, that they had run out of oil for the candles and the temple, but they continued to burn for eight years. Just a complete supernatural thing. That's why they light up menorah around Hanukkah, it is to symbolize the days of supernatural burning of the candles to celebrate the holiday. And so that is why they do that around the holiday season every time. Now, then another family described as descendants of the Maccabees ruled an independent Jewish kingdom for about a hundred years. And so after the Greeks had taken over, the Maccabees came in and said, Listen, you are not going to desecrate our temple. And so they threw out all the Greeks. They went and they cleansed the temple. They started celebrating Hanukkah. And for about a hundred years, the Jewish people had freedom. And during that time, that is when, under this freedom, you had the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes, and the Zealots started rising up because of this reform that was happening. They were trying to get back to the Torah, get back to the Torah, get back to the Word of God. And the Pharisees focused on the law. The Sadducees were the wealthy priests who really focused on money. The Essenes, these were people who said, You're still not going far enough. So they went even further out into the desert and really started focusing on the coming of the Messiah, which by the way, that's where John the Baptist comes from. And then you have the zealots, they just trying to kill everybody. They just want to be completely autonomous, completely autonomous. And then in 63 BC, Rome conquers Israel. And so they are now the power. And in 37 A.D. they put a puppet king called Herod the Great as a king under the Roman rule, and he expands the temple, and it is under Herod's leadership that Jesus is born in about 3 BC. So that's why I want to tell you it's a chaotic time. That's why I just went through all of this. It is starting from 430. You've got Alexander the Great conquering the Persian Empire. You've got uh 167, you have where they just completely desecrate the temple, you have the Maccabees at the same time going, no, sir, and they take everything over, and then you have Rome conquering Israel, and then you've got Hera the Great. And so I wanted to make sure to say that to you because we have this misunderstanding that we have 400 years of silence between Malachi and Jesus. We think that nothing was happening. But actually, a whole lot of things were happening, and what was happening the whole time is the king was still coming. He was on his way. The earth was getting ready, everything was getting right, and at the right time Jesus comes on the scene. And I want to say that to you as an encouragement. Because many times we can look around our world and go, Jesus, you said you were coming. Where are you? It looks like it's crazy around here. It looks like everybody's done lost their minds. And the reality is, if you go through this with me over those 400 years, there were many times when they probably did the exact same thing. But the amazing thing is, is that Jesus was coming. He was faithful. And at the right time, he did come. And I hope that fills you with encouragement to realize that we can get disappointed, but never discouraged, because the king is still coming. And it may look like that everything's going wrong. You imagine that moment when that Antiochus Epiphanes can't went in and desecrated the temple. How can God come when all this bad is happening? Well, he is. What a good thing it is to serve such a great God. I love you. I'll see you tomorrow for the next part of the Bible Breakdown Podcast.