Throughout the book of Malachi we are given warning after warning, and we are set challenge after challenge – all of them are challenges as to how we follow the Word of the Lord – but then we come to the last section of his prophecy and are presented with ‘something completely different’. As you can tell just from reading it, we are now not being told about what will happen to those who are not faithful to God and His Word, instead we are told about what lies ahead for those who are faithful.

In the middle of this section, specifically in verse 2 of chapter 4, we are also presented with a wonderful picture of what it is like to have a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, of what it is to live in a true and beneficial fear of the Lord. Those of you who have attended courses such as those that ‘Evangelism Explosion’ run will remember from those (and those who haven’t should know from our own experience of the world) that one of the things we should always remember as evangelising Christians is that unbelieving people can be affected most by hearing about the way that knowing Jesus in a personal and saving way has changed us, and has changed our lives. Here we have a picture of that transformation given to us which we can use to help us to construct personal pictures for others.

It’s all very easy for us to say to unbelievers that we are set free by our faith in Jesus Christ, its very easy for us to say to them that we have a deep inner peace because of our faith. It’s very easy for us to point to what is written in the Holy Scriptures about both these things; we can read to them from there such as these of Jesus’ own words:

“You are truly my disciples if you keep obeying my teachings. And you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.”

And:

'I am leaving you with a gift – peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give isn’t like the peace the world gives.”

But what does this really mean to an unbeliever? For people who haven’t experienced the truth and do not know the peace they remain no more than words. There is a nice sound to them, but they’re still not real to them. So, just as Jesus used word pictures in the parables we also need to be ready to use word pictures in order to try to explain to unbelievers what difference true faith in Jesus Christ actually makes to the lives of real people, to our lives. Here Malachi briefly touches on one such picture – I’m going to expand what he gives us, and then give some ideas of other variations that we can work from as well.

Malachi talks about calves – calves leaping with joy as they are let out to pasture. We should allow ourselves to have a mental picture of this. Every year on farms across the country calves are born during the winter. The farmers cannot let them out, the weather is too cold and inclement – they’d simply die. So those calves are kept inside, in a pen, in a barn; not knowing what it is like outside – effectively they are imprisoned. They don’t know anything else except the life they are living indoors, imprisoned, restricted, and trapped. And all this is simply because they were born during the winter. It’s not their fault, they haven’t done anything wrong – but they don’t know anything different.

Then, one morning, the farmers sense the beginnings of spring. The weather lightens, the sun isn’t as watery and powerless as it is during winter, the air no longer bites into you and it smells different. So they go to their barns, leave the doors open, and drive the winter calves out of the pens. They are driven out into the full glare of the natural light – which can be quite a shock for the calves, because they haven’t experienced it before. Then they are driven on, across the farmyard, and through the open gate into a field. Underfoot it is no longer concrete and straw but is soft, it’s mud and grass. Then suddenly the calves go mad! No walls, no imprisonment, no captivity, no restrictions. Their heads prick up, and off they charge in a whirling frenzy of joy and delight at this new experience. Head up, stiff-legged jumps, “leaping with joy” as they go out to pasture. They have, after a fashion, a new freedom. Yes, there are hedges and fences, but all those are for their own good, for their own safety – but within those hedges and fences is a wonderful new world where they can gambol, just like lambs, play, eat, run – and all freely.

And that is what coming to a saving knowledge of Jesus should be like. People are born into this world, trapped in sin, experiencing only a world that is sinful. They know nothing else. They have no idea of the freedom that they can have through trust in Jesus. They live their lives trapped in a world of sin, with their lives restricted by the demands and expectations of that world; a life with no true hope and with no true lasting joy.

Then one day someone tells them the truth about Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit opens their hearts to hear it. It is as if a doorway has been flung open shedding the blinding light of truth into their lives – indeed, some find it all too much and retreat to the darkness they have lived in for so long, step back to what they know. But others move on, listen to the Word, allow it to fill their lives, are lead into new pastures by that Word, have their entire lives transformed by that Word. The Word leads them to the one truth, to Jesus Christ. Suddenly it frees them, takes them out of the restrictions in which they lived, and gives them a new life free from the result of their sins. A life they never knew existed is now theirs. They are joyful, they dance, they rejoice, they give thanks, in a sense they behave just like those calves. Yes, there are the commands of God to seek to live by, but they realise that those are no more than the hedges and fences around the field, there for their protection, for their safety, for their own good.

It is just as Malachi, the messenger of God, says to us:

“But for you who fear my name, the Sun of Righteousness will rise with healing in his wings. And you will go free, leaping like calves led out to pasture.”

We don’t need to use calves for the story; we could use new-born lambs; we could use long-term prisoners freed; we could use children cooped up by bad weather for week after week finally let loose; there are many other ways to convey to people the joy and the freedom that is to be found in faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. But we need to tell them, and we need to let them see that we do rejoice in the Lord. We need to demonstrate that we are not trapped in some other man-made and restrictive system but that we have been set free by Him, that our lives are transformed through our faith in Him and our faithfulness to His commands.

And for ourselves, let us remember those calves as they dance across the meadow and ask ourselves the question – do we dance with joy in the freedom of our faith?