12.5.21 Malachi 3:1–7 (EHV)
1 Look! I am sending my messenger! He will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord, whom you are seeking, will come to his temple! The Messenger of the Covenant, in whom you delight, will surely come, says the LORD of Armies. 2 But who can endure the day when he comes? Who will remain standing when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire, like launderers bleach! 3 He will be seated like a refiner and a purifier of silver. He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and like silver. They will belong to the LORD and bring him an offering in righteousness. 4 Judah and Jerusalem’s offerings will be pleasing to the LORD as they were in the days of old, in years long ago. 5 I will approach you to judge you. I will be quick to give testimony against those who practice occult arts, those who commit adultery, those who swear false oaths, those who cheat workers out of their wages, those who wrong a widow and a fatherless child, those who turn away a resident alien—all those who do not fear me, says the LORD of Armies. 6 Certainly I, the LORD, do not change. That is why you, sons of Jacob, have not come to an end. 7 Since the days of your fathers, you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the LORD of Armies.
Who Can Endure the Day When He Comes?
The One who Sees Himself as He is, and the One who Sees the LORD as He is.
When a married couple is expecting their first baby, they have seven to nine months to prepare for the arrival. They will probably buy baby clothes, decorate a room, get a crib or a bassinet, and do everything they can to make sure they are as prepared as they can be for this complete change in their lives. You would expect them to be excited and a little bit scared.
Advent is similar to that. Malachi talks about TWO different messengers. One PREPARES the way for the Messiah and announces that the SECOND more important Messenger of Salvation is coming. About 400 years later, God sends John to publicly preach, a few months up to what, a half a year, before Jesus publicly comes on the scene and is baptized. I don’t think the Bible is specific about the exact time. But it was long enough for people to start thinking about and start preparing for the Messiah to come.
Advent is meant to prepare us for the coming of the Messiah as well. Jesus has come once into this world, and He is coming one more time. You couldn’t have two more different arrivals, as a helpless baby through a virgin in a little cattle stall and in the clouds for all to see. Both can be humbling in a sense. It’s humbling to think of what God had to do to come and save us, and it’s also humbling to think of what He will do at His Second Coming. It evokes different emotions in us: emotions of humility, fear, hope and joy all at the same time.
How do we prepare properly? Think of how we sometimes prepare for a gathering around Christmas. If you have a Christmas party to go to, you only have to prepare yourself on the outside and set aside the time to go. If you have a party at your house, it’s a completely different story. You have to clean your entire house, and that’s a lot more work. So we don’t like people coming to our homes as often, because it takes more work. And maybe that can be a little picture of how we try to prepare ourselves for Jesus to come. We can make ourselves look nice to people in public or on a Sunday morning, put on our nice clothes, sit, smile, and sing. But our behavior at home might reveal a completely different persona. Maybe you’ve become kind of nasty to your spouse and children. Maybe you are rather perverted on the computer or at work. Maybe, over time, you’ve become rather lazy in your prayer life and devotion life. How are you preparing for Jesus to come? Are you treating it as if you can just show up and put on a nice suit? Or are you trying to clean your house?
Sometimes when I come to my shut-ins homes, they are apologetic about the condition of their homes. I honestly don’t care how their homes look. I tell them, I’m not coming for a fashion show, I’m coming to give you the Word and the Supper. I don’t want them to feel like I’ve come to judge how clean their houses are. And that’s a popular thing that we say, “Don’t judge.” But it’s interesting to note that that is EXACTLY what God warns the Messiah WILL do when He comes at the Final Judgment.
I will approach you to judge you. I will be quick to give testimony against those who practice occult arts, those who commit adultery, those who swear false oaths, those who cheat workers out of their wages, those who wrong a widow and a fatherless child, those who turn away a resident alien—all those who do not fear me, says the LORD of Armies.
“I am going to be QUICK to call YOU out.” He’s not going to hesitate. Why? They have no shame in what they’re doing. They have NO repentance at all. They openly practice occult arts, such as the palm readers and Wiccans of our world. Some have sexual relations with whomever they want and whenever they want, regardless of what GOD has to say. Others openly lie and cheat in order to take advantage of people who are less fortunate than they are and get rich off of them. Some also have no concern for the hurting, the helpless, and the needy. As government programs run out of money, this will be a real thing that we will have to try to address more and more. There are spiritual sins, sexual sins, and social sins that are evident to God and to most people who are aware of what God has to say. God says, “I’m going to publicly call you out when I come.”
What a contrast to us! We don’t like judging or calling out sin. People are very touchy about that, and the quick trigger can be a defense mechanism used by those who want to keep on sinning. So everyone has to walk on eggshells, saying nothing, while the other person is able to manipulate the situation with his or her sensitivity. You have a spouse that is drinking too much, and he knows it. You have a child who is spending too much time on her phone. You even slightly mention something, and they respond as if you hate their guts and have personally insulted them. So you say NOTHING in FEAR of a fight. But it solves nothing and only gets WORSE.
Ultimately, on Judgment Day, God is not going to worry about offending you. If you want to live your life in sin, and if you want to impenitently and defensively cling to your sin, you are going to be publicly called out and embarrassed on Judgment Day. And you will deserve it. Will you be one of them? But who can endure the day when he comes? Who will remain standing when he appears?
God sent John to PREVENT that Judgment Day scenario, by WARNING them of the judgment to come ahead of time. Jesus ALSO did the SAME THING! Listen to the way He talks to the Pharisees and Sadducees. He openly calls them offspring of Satan. Listen to what He says to Peter, “Get behind me Satan.” He bluntly says to the disciples, “If you, though you are EVIL, know how to give good gifts to your children.” He blatantly tells them that He doesn’t NEED their testimony because He knows what’s in their hearts. Even His ENEMIES admit that Jesus was not afraid to tell people the truth about themselves. But He wasn’t doing it to be RUDE. He was doing it to show them that they needed HIM to be their SAVIOR.
So Malachi predicts His coming to a refiner of silver coming with fire or a launderer of clothing coming with soap. Think of what fire does to silver. It completely melts it down. One lady saw this Bible verse, and wanted to personally see what a silversmith does. As she watched the silversmith work, he held a piece of silver over the fire and let it heat up. He explained that in refining silver, one needed to hold the silver in the middle of the fire, where the flames were the hottest as to burn away all the impurities. She asked the silversmith if it was true that he had to sit there in front of the fire the entire time the silver was being refined. The man answered yes, that not only did he have to sit there holding the silver, but he had to keep his eyes on it the entire time it was in the fire. If the silver was left even a moment too long in the flames, it would be destroyed. * So refining takes great care and detail if you want to do it right.
The same rings true with cleaning clothes. They didn’t have front loading washing machines back in the day. So I’d imagine you’d have to scrub your clothes with soap by hand and rub out the dirt on a rock or a stone with some elbow grease. The literal word used for soap is lye. It’s similar to bleach, but it has a different chemical base. It is very powerful, so that it could actually burn your skin if you were exposed to it too long. In the right conditions, lye can cause a dead body to decompose, so Mexican cartels use it on the bodies of those they kill. When cleaning clothing, you’d have to be careful so as not to destroy the material while cleaning the cloth. So again, this is how God pictures us, as the dirty clothing that He is coming to scrub on and clean with this powerful substance that can kill. But if you want to be clean, He’s got to come and do His work.
If the silver and the clothing were alive, the natural response would be to run from the refiner and the launderer. I don’t want to go anywhere near Him. It’s too painful. I’m happy to be who I am. But then He shows us the end product. The before and after pictures. Being pure and holy is a beautiful thing. No more shame. No more guilt. No more imperfections. How can this be? I’m too dirty. Luther put it beautifully -
Christ is not merely the Purifier but also the purifying Agent. He is not only the Blacksmith but also the Fire; not only the Cleaner but also the Soap. He does not sit indolently at the right hand of His Father. Rather He is always working among us vitally, effectively, and uninterruptedly as He is spread abroad over His mystical body, as fire is applied to metal. So He is elsewhere called Salvation, and not just Savior. That is, He is Salvation itself and the Laboratory of salvation.
Luther, M. (1999). Luther’s works, vol. 18: Minor Prophets I: Hosea-Malachi. (J. J. Pelikan, H. C. Oswald, & H. T. Lehmann, Eds.) (Vol. 18, pp. 410–411). Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House.
Jesus is a Refiner and a Launderer who doesn’t want to destroy us. He wants to miraculously cleanse us and purify us. Malachi draws this beautiful picture of God. He says,
Certainly I, the LORD, do not change. That is why you, sons of Jacob, have not come to an end. 7 Since the days of your fathers, you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the LORD of Armies.
“I’m still the same God,” He was saying. I haven’t changed. Not only does He condemn, but He also SAVES. He saved the Israelites from Egypt and also from Babylon, because of who HE is. Think of how He described Himself to Moses in Exodus 34, “The LORD, the LORD, the COMPASSIONATE and GRACIOUS God, slow to anger, ABOUNDING in love.” And isn’t it interesting to think of HOW He saved us? He would prove His CHANGELESSNESS, by, in a sense CHANGING HIMSELF, and taking on FLESH. He would become soft and weak, a little baby. Think of the Christmas hymn, “Where Shepherds Lately Knelt.” It’s so beautiful and simple -
In that unlikely place I find him as they said:
sweet newborn babe, how frail! and in a manger bed,
a still, small voice to cry one day for me,
a still, small voice to cry one day for me.
Can I, will I forget how love was born, and burned
its way into my heart unasked, unforced, unearned,
to die, to live, and not alone for me,
to die, to live, and not alone for me?
What a cleansing thing, when He takes me back to the waters of my baptism. There’s no pain in that for me! What a purifying thing, when I take His body and blood, for ME. And for you too. God says, “I’m still here for you! I haven’t changed! I’m still gracious. I’m still free.” That’s what makes us WANT to come back to Him.
A man told a story about a boy he had mentored when he was young. He welcomed him into his home with his wife and children. Watched movies with him. Fed him meals. Later on, the boy got into drugs, and ended up breaking into the man’s house to steal some of his things on multiple occasions. They saw the boy on video. Eventually, the man looked for the boy and caught up with the boy on the street. He called him to his car, but the boy didn’t want to come. He was afraid and ashamed. He said to the boy, “You KNOW me. You know I don’t want to hurt you. Just come.” So the boy came. He took him home and sat him down, and then showed the boy the video of what he had done. The boy repented and the man forgave him, told him he wanted to help him. The boy voluntarily turned himself in, and ended up having to go to jail for a while. But the process helped to clean him up, and he became a man because of it, because he stopped running. The boy felt safe enough to do that with the man, because he knew the loving man had his best interest in mind. That’s love.
Isn’t it beautiful the way that Malachi says it? Return to me, and I will return to you. How many times do you deal with people who, when you try to apologize, when you try to come back to them, only cross their arms and refuse to forgive or have anything to do with you. The very sight of your phone number or mention of your name throws them into anger and rage. Jesus isn’t like that. He will return to you. You are what He died for. He wants you in His arms. You have His Word on it. You have His promise on it. This is His covenant, that He will be gracious, because that is WHO HE IS.
Let’s go back for a minute to the woman who went to see the man who was refining the silver. The woman was silent for a moment. Then she asked the silversmith, "But how do you know when the silver is fully refined?" He smiled at her and answered, "Oh, that’s easy--when I see my image in it." * Isn’t that a beautiful picture of what God does for us, for why He puts us through the pain of seeing our sins? Do you see God doing that with you at times, when He allows you to be crushed with sin and guilt? It may be painful, but see yourself for what you are. And then you run back to Jesus, and you see again who He is, how He hasn’t changed. He still loves you. He still wants you. He still cleanses you. What a humbling thing. This is how God prepares us for His coming. When we see ourselves as we are, and then see Him as He is. Amen. *Sermoncentral illustration
