THE REFINER’S FIRE
Malachi 3:1-6
I. Introduction – Malachi says that at his appearing Jesus will be like a refiner’s fire, or launderer’s soap.
The Israelites had a question, not unlike a question we might ask. Our main text is in answer to a question from the Israelites:
Mal 2:17 - You have wearied the Lord with your words.
“How have we wearied him?” you ask.
By saying, “All who do evil are good in the eyes of the Lord, and he is pleased with them” or “Where is the God of justice?”
...which they concluded because of the prosperity of the wicked, and the afflictions of the righteous; complaining of the providence of God; accusing him of acting as if he delighted in wickedness, as if they who did evil were the most acceptable to him and rewarded accordingly.
The Lord answers:
I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the Lord Almighty. But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap.
He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the Lord will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the Lord, as in days gone by, as in former years.
So I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, but do not fear me,” says the Lord Almighty.
“I the Lord do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.
Two messengers are mentioned.
The first messenger can be no one but John the Baptist, whose duty was to prepare the way for the appearance of the Lord. The one whose appearing Malachi prophesied and John prepared for was Jesus, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.
Malachi called the second messenger “the messenger of the covenant,” the “Lord you are seeking and whom they desire.”
This messenger is the Lord Jesus himself.
In introducing Jesus, John announced this:
Mat 3:11 "I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
Some suggest that the baptism with fire represents either the “divided tongues as of fire” that appeared at the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, so that the baptism with the Holy Spirit and “baptism with fire” are the same event; or that the “baptism with fire” is the judgment of the wicked at Christ’s second coming.
But I think there is more to Malachi’s image than that.
Does Malachi refer to Christ’s second coming?
This appearing cannot be the “second coming of Christ,” for that coming will not be to refine, or launder, but to render final judgment, reward the faithful, and send the wicked into everlasting punishment.
John did not come to prepare the way for that event, but for the earthly ministry of Jesus.
When the “messenger of the covenant” came, Malachi said, “He will be like a refiner’s fire, or launderer’s soap.” The “fire” was to have a beneficial, not destructive effect.
A forest fire destroys indiscriminately. An incinerator consumes completely.
But Malachi says in verse 6 from our main text:
I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed—you are not destroyed.
A refiner's fire cleanses. It purifies.
It melts down the ore of silver or gold, separates out the impurities that ruin its value, burns them up or boils them out, and leaves the silver and gold unharmed.
The refiner’s fire and launderer’s soap are not destructive agents, but cleansing.
The refiner’s fire is not to destroy, but to improve.
II. What does the refiner’s fire mean to us?
Our religion isn’t worth much if it doesn’t connect with our life. It is merely an abstract idea, or concept.
If the refiner’s fire has any meaning to us, it must be connected usefully to life.
What is its relevancy?
I suggest that the fire and soap are the trials, sorrows, and hardships we suffer in this life.
We live in a furnace of affliction.
For we do indeed groan while we live in this life:
2 Corinthians 5:1-4 For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened--not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.
In this life, we find that we cannot avoid trouble and pain, problems with relationships, health, your job, finances, or any burden that drags us down.
No one can reasonably deny that such troubles and problems are common in life.
Rarely if ever has anyone lived as close to God as Moses,
Psalms 90:10 The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.
As Christians we are not inoculated from suffering.
Although Malachi’s prophecy may have been fulfilled for many by cruel persecution, it is not only persecution that refines.
Every person here suffers and has burdens.
When we implement our faith as the guidepost of our lives, suffering takes on deeper meaning, for suffering and trouble have purpose.
Jesus is like a refiner's fire because we need to be refined.
We were created in the image of God with the potential to revere God, become more like him and glorify him, but we fall short of God's glory again and again.
But Malachi does say, he is like a refiner's fire. And therefore Malachi’s prophecy was not merely a word of warning calculated to induce horror, but a message of tremendous hope.
Nevertheless, a refiner's fire is a fire, and fire burns.
Purging things from our lives that don’t belong there is a thing to be dreaded, like a painful medical procedure that must be done for a patient to improve.
There will naturally be "fear and trembling" in the process of becoming pure.
We teach our children to avoid things that will hurt them, but often they do not always agree with what is best, or with the disciplinary process that trains them.
But we must be refined, for God will have no alloys in heaven.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
And yet he will have someone in heaven.
He will have a redeemed people. His banquet hall will be full.
And therefore Jesus must be like a refiner's fire.
If he is only a consuming fire, heaven would be empty.
And if he were no fire at all, heaven would be empty.
III. The paradox of the Christian Life
Here is the paradox of the Christian life.
The Bible presents Christian life to us as a dichotomy—two seemingly opposing but equally legitimate aspects of a single thing.
Illustrate dichotomy by leaf or coin.
The leaf of a dichotoledinous plant has two opposite parts, separated by a vein.
But though opposites, both are parts of a single leaf.
Which is it?
Is the Christian life filled with joy, peace, and abundance? Cf. John 14:27
Or is it filled with trouble, trials, and suffering? Cf. John 16:33
Is there fun in the Christian life? Is it wrong for us to wish for and pursue enjoyment in the Christian life? Must we fear we are looking at things wrong if we seek and find any pleasure, as if by doing so,
we are missing the point of life?
Of course not.
The Christian life is FILLED with joy and peace
Romans 15:13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.
and yet Moses observed that the entire span of life is filled with toil and trouble
Psalms 90:10 The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.
The Christian’s life is filled with pleasant things and filled with unpleasant things.
Neither displaces the other.
Nor is the Christian life a 50-50 proposition, half the time happy and joyful, and the other half of the time battling problems and unhappiness, seeking ways to push them back and find the happy half of life, feeling more like it’s a 25-75 or even a 0-100 proposition.
It is a misrepresentation of the design of Christian life to present it as either entirely trouble-free and fun OR as only sorrow and hardship, though some seem to have more than their share of one or the other. It is wrong to say there is “no fun” for the Christian, but to reduce the question to a matter of fun / no fun, joy / no joy is a shallow debate.
How can we experience Christ’s refining fire as refining, and not consuming?
How can we have both joy and peace while we experience a painful refining process?
IV. Suffering and trouble are an essential part of life (meaning they are not without purpose)
No one enjoys walking through the desert, but strolling through lush green gardens does little to refine us.
There is no path to heaven that doesn’t pass through deserts.
Why? Because Jesus said, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."
And it is no more possible to become pure painlessly than it is to be burned painlessly.
Refining comes through the fire of affliction.
God’s people have always been refined by being subjected to the dark valleys of life.
• Moses had to flee to Midian (named his son Gershom, which means “I have become an alien in a foreign land.”
• Joseph, his father’s favorite son, was sold into slavery in Egypt.
• Joseph later found himself in prison, falsely accused, far from home.
• Israel in the wilderness, waited 40 years because the spies falsely reported the prospects of claiming their promised land
• Job enduring loss and suffering physical affliction
• Judah, captive and serving foreigners in Babylon for 70 years
• The apostles, pursued and persecuted, most of them killed (Paul’s assignment involved witnessing to kings and rulers, and he did it in chains, as their prisoner)
• Early Christians – persecution and martyrdom
• Later Christians – There is a website (https://www.opendoorsusa.org/christian-persecution/world-watch-list/) that shows the top 50 countries where there is religious persecution right now.
Just the top 50! In descending order of the intensity of persecution.
• Jesus: Paul told us he “made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
Php 2:8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”
Isaiah 53:3 He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Even Jesus “learned obedience.” And it was through the path of suffering.
Hebrews 5:8 Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.
We see the fire of affliction in later scripture:
1 Peter 1:6-7 … for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith--more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire--may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
James 1:2-4 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
We may think of the refining fire as discipline.
Hebrews 12:5–10, 14, "My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord . . . for the Lord disciplines him whom he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives . . . If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children . . . he disciplines us for our good that we may share his holiness . . . Pursue holiness without which no one will see the Lord."
Discipline is for training, improving, not punishing
When I was in high school, having no talent for sports, I avidly pursued music, my favorite courses being band and choir. In my freshman year the choir director was lax with discipline and the choir was mediocre at best. In my sophomore year a new choir director--Mr. Ellison--came who was a strict disciplinarian. He tolerated no frivolity and foolishness in choir practice, did not allow talking by the other voice parts while he was working to “woodshed” a soprano part, for example. And he stuck with a difficult passage until we got it right. As youngsters, our patience wore thin at times, but when we heard the result of hard work and discipline, we were floored at the glorious sound of well-learned music! Our choir won sweepstakes at the annual contest and was asked to visit other high schools in the area to “show them what can be done with a high school choir.” In my last choir class before graduation, Mr. Ellison said we could sing anything we wanted from all we had learned. The immediate response from everyone was the most difficult we had learned, and had all grown weary of practicing over and over and over: Brahm’s Requiem, or “How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place, O Lord of Hosts,” based on Psalm 84, which is now my favorite of the Psalms. As we finished Brahms’ fine work that day, tears were streaming on many faces. We had never sung it better.
Strong discipline made the difference between a ho-hum performance and a stellar performance.
Discipline is from love, Everlasting punishment is from wrath.
V. Experiencing and responding to the refining fire
What Is Life Like in the Refiner's Fire?
It must be a life of confidence in God.
And the foundation of our confidence is this: The furnace of affliction in the family of God is always for refinement, never for destruction.
I the Lord do not change; therefore you are not consumed, O sons of Jacob!"
which simply means that life in the refiner's fire is a life of confidence in the unchanging, purifying love of God.
When we feel the heat, we might begin to doubt God, or to turn completely away from him, thinking he ought to remove it.
The fire of affliction can result in our thinking of God as a fierce, hostile, punisher who delights in tripping us up and tossing us into impossible situations.
Or simply an absent God who pays no attention to our distress.
• Seemingly unanswered prayers
• Bad situations linger unresolved
Jesus showed the underbelly of life as the route to blessedness in the beatitudes:
• Blessed are those who mourn.
• Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.refin
• Blessed are you when men shall revile you, and say all manner of things against you falsely.
In 3:5 Malachi makes it clear that when the Lord came, not everyone will be refined. Some will be consumed:
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 hireling in his wages, the widow and the orphan, against those who thrust aside the sojourner, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.
This is not the work of refinement, but the final judgment of condemnation. It is clear in Mal. 4:1,
For behold, the day comes burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.
How can we experience his fire as refining and not consuming?
That is up to us.
In the end, keeping a right perspective on the dichotomy of Christian life comes down to one word: trust.
The answer of the entire Bible to this question is: trust in the purifying love of God!
Proverbs 3:5-6 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.
Job: Though he should slay me, yet will I trust him. Job 13:15
“I shall come forth as gold.” Job 23:10
The way to experience the fire of Christ as refining and not consuming is to trust his promise to bring us through the fire to endless joy.
He promises to be with us in the floods and fires of life.
Isaiah 43:2
When you pass through the waters,
I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire,
you will not be burned;
the flames will not set you ablaze.
For I am the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior
VI. How can I know if God is refining me or Satan is making trouble?
How will I know if some affliction comes from God or from the devil?
You won’t always know.
The doings of heaven are beyond us and we do no great service by trying to explain what we do not know.
But the truth is, it doesn’t matter.
We don’t have to know what lies behind our troubles.
When you are having trouble in life, God knows and cares. You may not know why it has befallen you, but he does, and promises to be with you and help you.
God sometimes speaks of himself as doing that which he allows to be done.
Isaiah 45:7 The One forming light and creating darkness, Causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the Lord who does all these.
Deuteronomy 32:39 'See now that I, I am He, And there is no god besides Me; It is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded and it is I who heal, And there is no one who can deliver from My hand.
James 1:2-4 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
1 Corinthians 10:13 No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
If you read the book of Job, you will see that principle in action through a window into heaven.
There is a song Robin and I enjoy that says, “Nothing can touch me that doesn’t pass through his hand.”
If you’re suffering in a fire of affliction, that affliction has already passed God’s approval as being within your endurance.
