[“Be Careful What You Wish For” video]
In life, it’s so easy to look at the circumstances around us and to wish for something without really having a full understanding of the entire situation. For the boy in the video, his wish certainly ended up putting him in a place he never imagined and one that he would have never wished for had he seen the whole picture.
As we continue our journey through the book of Malachi this morning, we’re going to see that the people of Israel made a similar mistake. They looked around at their circumstances and made some assumptions about God based on their observations. And as a result, they, too, made a request of God without really understanding what they were asking for. But fortunately for them, God is going to treat them with mercy and grace, and not give them what they are asking for, at least not until He first gives them the opportunity to get a glimpse of the future so they can understand all the ramifications of their request.
But God is not exactly going to go easy on them either. The people have rebelled against God and God is not going to ignore that. He is going to hold them accountable for their actions and is going to take some steps that will be painful for them in order to help them turn from that rebellion and turn back to Him.
And the reason God is going to do both of those things – treat them with mercy and grace on one hand and hold them accountable for their sin on the other – is because of the main theme that we developed our very first week in Malachi. So let’s begin once again this morning by reviewing that overall theme. Let’s fill in the blanks:
God desires for me to pursue Him
in the same way He has pursued me
With that theme in mind, turn in your Bibles to the last verse of Malachi chapter 2. You’ll want to keep your Bibles open to the passage that begins there in verse 17 as we examine that passage this morning.
I’m going to approach this passage a little differently this morning. We’ll just work through these six verses rather methodically and discuss some of the important issues that are contained in these verses. And then we’ll wrap up our time by focusing on some important implications for our lives.
This passage begins with…
1. The people’s question (2:17)
You have wearied the LORD with your words. But you say, “How have we wearied him?” By saying, “Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the LORD, and he delights in them.” Or by asking, “Where is the God of justice?”
The people made their judgments about God based on what they could observe rather than what God had revealed to them through the Scriptures. They saw the evil nations around them flourishing and assumed that meant that God considered their evil to be good. But they even went beyond that – they claimed that God actually delighted in evil. But that idea certainly violates what God had previously revealed about Himself in His Word.
The Psalmist made it clear that God not only does not delight in evil, He doesn’t even allow evil in His presence:
For you are not a God who delights in wickedness;
evil may not dwell with you.
(Psalm 5:4 ESV)
And the prophet Isaiah warned against those who would call evil good:
Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter!
(Isaiah 5:20 ESV)
And then after they looked around at the nations around them, they reflected on their own plight. Their crops were failing. The temple was only a shadow of its former glory. Israel no longer had its own king and they were under the rule of a foreign nation.
So in their eyes, things just weren’t fair. After all they were God’s chosen people. They were the ones who should have been prospering. And in their minds, their enemies were the ones God should have been punishing. So they asked:
• Where is the God of justice?
I want you to remember that word “justice” because God is going to use that very same word a little later in the passage when He answers this question.
As I’ve already hinted at, perhaps the people should have been a little more careful about what they asked for. Because God is about to answer their question – but certainly not how they expected.
2. God’s answer (3:1-5)
We’ll look at God’s answer in more depth in just a moment, but we could summarize his answer with just two simple words:
• I’m coming!
In effect, God is saying to the people, OK, you want a God of justice, then a God of justice you will get – I’m coming. And his coming is going to include:
o Two messengers (3:1):
“Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts.
In this verse, Malachi refers to two different messengers that God is going to send:
A forerunner
This first messenger is going to prepare the way for the God of justice.
As we’re going to see more clearly as we continue to examine this passage, this is an act of grace on God’s part. Before He executes justice, He is going to send a messenger to let people know He is coming.
Jesus, with His words that are recorded by Matthew, Mark and Luke, reveals the identity of this messenger. We’ll look at Matthew’s account:
This is he of whom it is written,
“‘Behold, I send my messenger before your
face,
who will prepare your way before you.’
(Matthew 11:10 ESV)
The context indicates that Jesus is speaking here of John the Baptist. We don’t have time to explore this in detail this morning, but the prophet Isaiah also spoke of this same messenger and Jesus also used his prophecy in referring to John.
But as we’re going to see at the end of Malachi, there is going to be a second fulfillment of this prophecy in the future. This shouldn’t really surprise us since we have seen frequently that Old Testament prophecies, especially those prophecies that relate to the coming of the Messiah often have a dual fulfillment. We’ll speak to that more in just a moment.
That first messenger is going to prepare the people for the coming of the second messenger…
The Messiah
The second messenger, who is described as “the Lord whom you seek” and the “messenger of the covenant” can be none other than Jesus. He is the only one who God would call “Lord”. And notice that He is coming to “his temple”. That can only refer to God Himself – in this case the second person of the triune God – Jesus.
As I just mentioned, many of the Old Testament prophecies regarding the coming of the Messiah, Jesus, don’t clearly distinguish between His first and second comings and that is certainly the case here.
• Two-fold prophecy:
1) First coming – to purify (vv. 2-4)
But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the LORD. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the LORD as in the days of old and as in former years.
When Jesus came to the earth for the first time over 2,000 years ago, He began a process of refining God’s people. Malachi uses two pictures here to describe that process.
The first picture was that of a refiner’s fire. We know that precious metals like gold and silver don’t come straight out of the ground all nice and shiny and clean. Some silver ore, for instance, contains as little as 1% silver. So the ore has to be crushed, sifted and then put into a refiner’s fire where it can be separated from all the other elements.
Notice here that God is going to “sit as a refiner”. The process of refining metals takes time. While the refiner’s fire melts the metal, the silversmith sits and watches the molten metal. He doesn’t stir it or move it away from the fire. He merely continues to pour off all the other elements and then he watches until the silver becomes so pure that he can see his image reflected on its surface. Only then does he take it away from the fire.
The second picture is that of the fuller’s soap. A fuller was someone who cleaned, whitened, and thickened freshly-woven cloth – usually wool.
The process involved stomping on the cloth with the feet or hitting it with bats while it was in a tub containing an alkali solution that would clean and whiten the cloth.
Both pictures show that at His first coming Jesus came to cleanse God’s people and to remove the impurities from their lives – a process that was certainly not pleasant or easy. Jesus did that in two ways:
First, by His sacrificial death on the cross, He made those who would place their faith in Him positionally clean before God. We call this justification and Paul describes how Jesus did this for us:
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
(2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV)
By taking our sin upon Himself, Jesus paid the penalty for our sin on the cross. When any person places his or her faith completely in that work of Jesus as the means to deal with the sin in his or her life, that person is permanently considered clean by God based on the finished work of His Son on the cross.
But Jesus isn’t done with us yet at that point. He also continues to work in our lives to conform us to look more and more like Him. He wants us to be so pure that when others look into our lives they see a perfect reflection of Jesus. We call that process sanctification. Paul describes that process like this:
For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.
(Romans 8:29 ESV)
So at His first coming, Jesus came as a refiner and as a fuller in order to purify God’s people.
2) Second coming – to judge (v. 5)
“Then I will draw near to you for judgment. I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired worker in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, against those who thrust aside the sojourner, and do not fear me, says the LORD of hosts.
Remember when I asked you earlier to remember the word “justice”, when the people asked “Where is the God of justice?” Here it is again, although it is translated “judgment” in this verse. What the people didn’t seem to realize when they asked their question is that the God of justice is also the God of judgment.
I’m reminded here of a similar time during the time of the ministry of the prophet Joel when the people of Israel were asking for God’s justice. They, like the people of Malachi’s day, were in for a big shock when God answered their plea for justice:
Woe to you who desire the day of the LORD!
Why would you have the day of the
LORD?
It is darkness, and not light,
as if a man fled from a lion,
and a bear met him,
or went into the house and leaned his hand against the wall,
and a serpent bit him.
Is not the day of the LORD darkness, and not light,
and gloom with no brightness in it?
(Amos 5:18-20 ESV)
In effect, God was saying to the people, “Be careful what you ask for. You want justice? Then I’ll start with you.”
When Jesus returns to the earth for the second time in the future, He is coming as a judge. That is implied in verse 1 where Malachi reveals that “the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple…” This idea of God coming suddenly is seen frequently in the Old Testament prophets and in those cases it always refers to the second coming of Jesus when He will come to execute swift judgment. We see that same idea here in verse 5, when God says that He will be a “swift witness.”
Let’s close our time by thinking about a few…
IMPLICATIONS FOR MY LIFE
Before we close by developing some specific ways that we can use this passage to guide our daily lives, let me share with you what I think is the overall implication for our lives from this passage:
God loves me too much to let me continue in my sin.
I know that it’s getting a bit repetitive to open every message on Malachi by going back to the main theme of the book:
God desires for me to pursue Him
in the same way He has pursued me
But I hope you can see now why it is so important for us to do that. Unless we keep God’s pursuing love in mind, we’re going to miss the message of the rest of the book. In this passage, God is not pointing out that the people ought be careful what they ask for out of hatred or spite. He is doing it out of love. He loves them – and He loves us – so much that He doesn’t want them to continue living a lifestyle of rebellion and sin. So He wants them – and us – to know that because of that love He is going to take some serious and painful steps so that His people will return to Him.
But at the same time, He also wants them to understand that if they choose not to respond to His “tough love” and allow Him to refine and wash them, they are going to face His swift judgment. He is going to be patient with them, because, as Peter points out, He doesn’t want even one of them to perish:
The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
(2 Peter 3:9 ESV)
But as Peter points out in the very next verse, there will come a time when it is too late to repent, and for those who have refused to do that, judgment will be swift and devastating:
But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.
(2 Peter 3:10 ESV)
So with that in mind, what lessons can we learn from this passage that we can put into practice in our everyday lives? I’m going to enlist your help here.
• How should I develop my ideas about God?
First let’s look at this from the negative side. How should I not develop my ideas about God? [Wait for answers]
o NOT based on my circumstances
Now let’s turn it around and look at it from a positive perspective. What should be the source of my understanding of God? [Wait for answers?]
o Based on God’s Word
One of the things we’ve talked about this morning is that we need to be careful what we ask for.
• What should I ask for from God?
Again, let’s start by looking at this from a negative standpoint. What do you think is probably something we shouldn’t ask for from God based on what we’ve learned this morning? [Wait for answers].
o NOT justice
And what do you think we should ask for? [Wait for answers.]
o For mercy and grace
• What I need to understand about God’s work of refining in my life:
Before I close with a few things I think are important here, I’m interested in your ideas. So based on what we’ve learned this morning, what are some things you would be important for us to know about God’s refining work in our lives? [Wait for answers]
o It is a continuous process
Because I will never come to the place where my life reflects Jesus perfectly here on earth, God needs to continually do His work of refining in my life. It is a process that is going to continue for the rest of my life here on earth.
o It is often painful
The two pictures that Malachi uses – a refiner’s fire and the fuller’s soap – both reveal that the process of being refined by God often involves pain. God doesn’t make the process painful just because He wants us to suffer. But He knows that is often the only way to get our attention and to get us to get serious about the process of becoming more like Jesus.
o I can trust that God knows what He is doing
This is why we must get our ideas about God from His Word and not from our circumstances. If we look only at our circumstances, we’ll tend to do what the Israelites did in Malachi’s day and begin to question what God is doing. The evidence of Scripture, however, indicates that God is a sovereign, wise God who loves us so much that He wants what is best for us, even if that hurts for a while.
Let’s pray and thank God for His refining work in our lives and ask Him to help us apply what we’ve learned together this morning.
