GETTING PREPARED
Text: Malachi 3:1 - 4
Malachi 3:1-4 See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight—indeed, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts. (2) 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; (3) he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the LORD in righteousness. (4) Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the LORD as in the days of old and as in former years (NRSV).
There are people like those in Malachi’s audience in every generation. They don’t make preparation a priority. These were covenant people who were side-stepping their covenant.
When you hear the word covenant, what do you think of? A covenant is a pledge between two parties. “… a contract is performance-based, and a covenant is acceptance-based. …. a contract is transactional and a covenant is relational. … ” https://jrjarvis.com/whats-the-difference-between-a-covenant-and-a-contract/ God is good at keeping His end of what He promises and we are bad at keeping our end. Unlike a contract, a covenant does not depend on the faithlessness of the other party. In a contract, if one side violates the terms, the contract is broken. God always keeps His word.
Malachi’s audience would not be ready for God’s arrival in their circumstances because they were not prepared for the Lord’s coming. How did they slight the covenant that they made with God? They showed contempt for the priesthood by offering blemished (crippled or diseased) animals for sacrifices, they profaned the Lord’s table, they caused many to stumble, and they were divorcing their native wives and marrying women of pagan nations (Malachi 1 -2).
They needed to clean up because they were not fit to be in the Lord’s presence. Have you ever noticed how pets resist a bath and sinners resist cleansing? Malachi was sent as a messenger to prepare the way for the Lord’s coming.
In today’s text, we see a messenger , his message and the response.
MESSENGER
There are are two extremes. People panic when they hear news of a storm or they are complacent.
1) Panic button: Do we take messengers seriously? You can always tell when they have hit the panic button!
You can always tell when people have taken messengers of impending danger seriously in the grocery store. The threat of bad weather always drives people to the grocery store to get supplies. Staple items like bread, milk, water, cheese, batteries are some the first things people will but to get prepared. Who can forget the toilet paper shortage of the covid 19 shut down?
2) Complacent: Do people get complacent about impending disasters?
It has been said the “Complacency is a blight that saps energy, dulls attitudes, and causes a drain on the brain. The first symptom is satisfaction with things as they are. The second is rejection of things as they might be. “Good enough” becomes today’s watchword and tomorrow’s standard. Complacency makes people fear the unknown, mistrust the untried, and abhor the new”. (Galaxie Software. (2002). 10,000 Sermon Illustrations. Biblical Studies Press.) Complacency can be deadly and dangerous!
One of the worst things about a disaster is to not to be prepared for it. I once served a church that had a role in disaster relief in the event of a hurricane. The chair person of the committee on disaster relief one day got perturbed because of how poorly attended a meeting was. Only the people on the committee showed up. People did not take getting prepared all that seriously even after Hurricane Matthew (2016). I always worried about the event of a hurricane and the ill-prepared people of that community. Luckily, we never had to deploy our disaster relief task while I was their pastor.
Have we heard the message to prepare for the Lord’s arrival? God’s people were not in fellowship with God. Someone, (Elizabeth Achtemeier) explains their sin: “Their sin was a total indifference toward the will of the Lord, rising out of their loss of intimate fellowship with God in the covenant bond.” (Elizabeth Achtemeier. Interpretation: Nahum through Malachi. ATlanata: John Knox Press, 1986, p. 184). In avoiding their fellowship with God could they avoid their responsibility to be the people God called them to be? Were they (and are we) guilty of doing things that they should not have done? Were they (and are we) guilty of leaving things undone that they should have done?
MESSAGE
What was the message of the messenger? They were indifferent, lacked accountability and had misguided zeal.
1) Indifference: The message was that they had failed because of their “indifference”. How could they be in fellowship with God and indifferent at the same time?
2) Accountability: Like them, we have failed in responsibility. We can all make excuses but when it comes to God we will all be held accountable for how we have failed to stay in relationship with God. The liturgy of our communion service reminds us that “…we have not loved God with our whole heart, we have failed to be an obedient church because we have not done God’s will and have broken God’s law. We have rebelled against God’s love and have not loved our neighbors, nor have we heard the cry of the needy” (The United Methodist Hymnal. A Service of Word and Table II paraphrased, p. 12). We cannot blame someone for things on our watch.
3) Misguided zeal: “When he pastored the Methodist church in Scarborough, William Sangster had an eccentric member who tried to be a zealous Christian. Unfortunately, the man was mentally deficient and usually did the wrong thing. While working as a barber the man lathered up a customer for a shave, came at him with the poised razor, and asked, “Are you prepared to meet your God?” The frightened man fled with the lather on his face!” Galaxie Software. (2002). 10,000 Sermon Illustrations. Biblical Studies Press. [Source of Origin; Wycliffe Handbook of Preaching & Preachers, W. Wiersbe, p. 215]. Would you have stayed in that barber’s chair? The people in Malachi’s audience were all guilty and in need of being spiritually cleaned up. We , too, are guilty and need to be cleaned up.
Was Malachi’s message that they were unfit for the Lord’s coming alarming?
1) Cleansing: They needed more than a shave. They needed more than a shower. They needed more than clean clothes. They needed something that only God can provide. They needed to be cleaned up to be able to present what was acceptable to God.
There was once a doctor who was laughed to scorn because of his theory. His doctor peers seemed to think of him as a water-boy among doctors where his theory was concerned. He had speculated that the reason that the reason that so many patients were dying following surgery was because of a poor sanitation factor. He had made the suggestion that doctors thoroughly wash their hands before surgery. He was humiliated and ridiculed by his peers for his theory. The ridicule and humiliation took such a great toll on him that this doctor died in a mental institution. History proved that this doctor was right his antiseptic theory. (paraphrased: Bruce Larson. No Longer Strangers. Waco: Word Book Publisher, 1971, p. 20). Again, have you ever noticed how pets resist a bath and sinners resist cleansing?
What happens when infection is left untreated? Can it lead to gangrene? What happens to tissues infected with gangrene that are left untreated? Germs kill but so does sin because the wages of sin are death (Romans 3:23)! John Wesley once said, “Cleanliness is next to godliness!”
2) Confession of Sin: Someone (Boyce Mouton) summarizes very well how part of our cleansing is confession.
• “Wash me!” was the anguished prayer of King David.
• “Wash!” was the message of John the Baptist.
• “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me,” said the towel-draped Jesus to Peter.
Without our being washed clean, we all die from the contamination of sin. For God’s sake, wash. Galaxie Software. (2002). 10,000 Sermon Illustrations. Biblical Studies Press. [Source unknown]. Through the blood of Jesus God washes away our sin!
3) Conformity: I read the story about a man who visited the Fiji islands. This visitor was skeptical of missionaries. He even spoke with the Fijian chief and told him that the missionaries only wanted to get rich off them. The visitor said that nobody believed what the Bible had to say nowadays. He even went as far as to say nobody listens to the story about Jesus either. He concluded his remarks by saying “People know better now, and I am sorry for you that you have been foolish”. The Fijian chief shocked this visitor when he told him about their old savage ways. The chief said, “Do you see that stone over there? On that stone we smashed the heads of our victims to death. Do you see that native oven over there? In that oven we roasted human bodies for our great feasts. If it had not been for those good missionaries, the Bible and the love of Jesus Christ which changed us from savages into God’s children, you would never leave this spot! You have to thank God for the Gospel, otherwise you would have been killed and roasted in the oven and we would feast on your body in no time!” (A. Naismith. 1200 Notes, Quotes and Anecdotes. Great Britain: Pickering Paperbacks, 1988, p. 134). This story makes a wonderful point. There were missionaries who were forerunners to other missionaries until the Fijian people received God’s salvation into their souls.
THE RESPONSE
How do you think God wants us to respond? God obviously wants us to repent. God is not willing that anyone should perish but that all come to repentance (II Peter 3:9)! Repentance means to confess the errors of our ways and make a change. How can we come before God in the filthy rags of our own righteousness (Isaiah 64:6) ?
An uneducated mountain man was arrested for stealing a horse. He wasn’t too bright, but he was smart enough to hire a pretty good lawyer who managed to argue his case rather effectively. In fact, the attorney won the case for him. The judge told him he was acquitted. The mountain man scratched his head and said to the judge, “Does that mean I get to keep the horse?” (Michael E. Hodgin. 1002 Humorous Illustrations. Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 2004, p. 310). Repentance does not mean that we get to keep the horse! Repentance mean that we do an about face---make 180 degree turn. Repentance means that come to God acknowledging our sinfulness because we cannot get clean without God’s help!
Are we not helpless and ill-prepared without God’s help? God intervenes out of His love for us.
1) God’s intervention: Without God’s intervention, there was no way that they could return. All four of the Gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke and John point out how John the Baptizer was the forerunner helping others to prepare the way for the Lord’s arrival. God was intervening in the ministry of John the Baptizer who told people---even the elite religious leaders who thought otherwise that they needed to repent.
2) The lamb of God: Jesus is the lamb of God that takes the sins of the world away (John 1:29). Jesus, God’s only begotten Son, is the once and for all sacrifice who washes our sin with own blood as the book of Hebrews points out to us four times (Hebrews 7:27; 9:12; 9:26 & 10:10)! Jesus came to break down all of the barriers that stand between God and us. Jesus came to break down the barriers of hate, greed, anger, exploitation, pride, immorality, injustice and division (Malachi 3:5). Who ever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved (Acts 2:21). Jesus came to reunite us with God and with each other. United with God we stand in righteousness. Divided from God we fall in unrighteousness. God comes to us in the righteousness that only Jesus can give us! It is only in that righteousness that only Jesus gives us that we can stand faultless before God’s throne because all other ground is sinking sand.
In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
