Tj Some people are afraid lest the thought of God's people being His jewels should be lost by this rendering, but it is not.
1 J. T. Marshall, in The Expository Times, vii. 18.
504 A PECULIAR TREASURE
If you read it as it is in the Authorized, " They shall be mine, saith the Lord, in that day when I make up my jewels," you have an idea conveyed to your mind that a day is coming when God will gather His jewels and make them up into one great whole ; but this, while perfectly true, is nevertheless a very partial idea. The real idea is best expressed thus : " They shall be mine, saith the Lord, in the day when I act — my jewels." The word "jewels " is in the nominative case in apposition to the pronoun " they," at the beginning of the sentence, " They shall be mine in the day when I act, my special treasure." So that you have not merely the assuring and blessed word that God will gather these people together, His own precious treasure ; but there is another word, which goes deeper and is more full of blessed assurance still, that God is coming " to do " — and " to act," coming in upon all this indifference to set it right ; and God says, " In the day I act, these people who have been faithful, and have feared My name, and thought upon My name, shall be My special treasure." You see there is nothing lost. We still have the sweet assurance that He will gather His own people as His jewels ; but we have also the great assertion that He is coming to act, that while the present is man's day, God's day lies ahead. He will manifest Himself in greater power and glory than ever before. " In that day they shall be Mine, My jewels, My special treasure." 1
1. It seems, then, that the Lord of Hosts has something, even in this evil world, on which He sets a high and peculiar value ; notwithstanding there is so much that He condemns, — sometimes as if all were evil. Indeed, it were very strange if He had not, when we consider what it is for Him to have formed, sustained, governed, a world. Think of this mighty globe of matter ! Why, it requires an angel's faculty to conceive any adequate notion of its very magnitude. There never was a man on earth who had space enough for it in his mind, if we may express it so. And then think of all its elements — its marvellous order, the laws of Nature (invented, established, maintained in perpetual force), its productions, and then, its relation to the heavens, as well as the mighty scheme of Providence, and the whole system of spiritual government. Now in so vast a system of existence, and so immense and various an economy of operation and regulation, there should be found something peculiarly precious, of which He may say, by eminence — " It is mine."
1 G. Campbell Morgan, " Wherein ? " 85,
MALACHI in. 17 505
2. Who are God's " peculiar treasure " ? God estimates them not by their physical structure, not by their mental qualities, not by their learning or wealth, but by their harmony or disharmony with His will, by their sympathy or want of sympathy with His character and authority, by their dominant thoughts and feelings concerning Himself. You tell me what a man feels, thinks, and does in relation to God and I will tell you what God's estimate is of that man. In verse 1 6 we have a full description of the small remnant of faithful ones whom God designates His peculiar treasure.
(1) " They feared the Lord " — not that guilty tormenting fear which drives man away from God, which shudders with remorse in His presence, which trembles beneath His frown, which seeks, like Adam, guilty, a hiding-place where God is not ; but that holy fear which reverently approaches God, which devoutly yearns for His fellowship, and yet is awed by a sense of His nearness, that fear which covets His favour, and whose highest heaven is to live in the light of His approval, that fear which remembers His covenant and submits to His kingly authority.
(2) " They thought upon his name." Twice He had revealed that Name to their fathers ; once to Moses as the " I Am " and once to Abraham as "I am God All-sufficient." To Moses He proclaimed what He is in Himself, the " I Am," the Self-Contained, the Self-Existent, the Absolute, the Source of life and being. To Abraham He proclaimed what He is to His people, " God All- sufficient," the All-satisfying portion, the All in All. This Great Name was ever in the thought of the faithful Eemnant; they pondered over it as revealed to their fathers ; they gloried in its infinite superiority to the gods of the heathen from whose bondage Jehovah had delivered them ; they remembered what that Name had done for them and for their fathers before them and were thankful ; they thought of the infinite resources of that All-sufficient Name and were trustful.
(3) " They spake one with another." They not only thought about God in solitude and silence, but they also cheered and strengthened one another in evil times by rehearsing together the wonderful things which God had done for them and for their fathers. It was no empty idle talk ; it was so good that Jehovah hearkened and heard ; so precious was it that God bent His ear,