Following is the text of the sermon I was going to deliver on December 8, 2024. However, I had a cold and was unable to lead worship, and so I am posting it here, in case anyone wants to read the message for today, the Second Sunday in Advent, Year C.
The text is the Old Testament text from Malachi:
Malachi 3:1-4 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. 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 sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the LORD. 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. (ESV)
“Malachi” means “My Messenger,” and it speaks to Malachi being the messenger of God. In the time when Ezra and Nehemiah were leading the people of Judah back to Jerusalem to rebuild it, to rebuild the broken and shattered dreams of a nation, the people were asking, “where is God?” Often in times of tragedy this is the very question we ask. Where is God? The answer may shock us: He is right here. And in control. And orchestrating all these things for our benefit and for his glory. You ask, how can God turn tragedy into something good? Why would a loving God allow suffering in the world? The fact of the matter is, we do not deserve his grace, not even a little bit. We are thoroughly and utterly depraved to our hearts, and have inherited this sin nature from our first parents. The fact that God still has our good in his view is why he deserves the glory, because he could and rightly should eradicate us in an instant, and yet he not only allows us to continue, he makes us to thrive, even in the face of adversity.
The people returning to Judah after 70 years of exile may not have remembered, but God remembers, that it was their infidelity to God that brought them to Babylon in the first place. It was their worship of foreign gods, false idols, that incensed God and justified his use of Babylon to take his people into captivity. But a lot happened after that. After Nebuchadnezzar arose another king, Belteshazzar, who used the Temple implements for a raging kegger. God judged him and found him wanting, and then the Medo-Persian empire rolled in. Under Darius the Mede the people enjoyed some semblance of security and freedom, but it was Cyrus the Persian who gave them leave to go rebuild Jerusalem. This was prophesied about 150 years previously by Isaiah, who even named Cyrus as the deliverer of God’s people. But the initial efforts were stopped when Zerubbabel, the heir to the throne of David, failed to complete the rebuild and the surrounding people appealed to King Artaxerxes to have them stopped. Then Ezra appealed to the King to search the records and they found the writ from Cyrus, and rebuilding resumed under the high priesthood of Ezra and the governorship of Nehemiah.
This is the context in which the reading today is written. Malachi the prophet addressed the things that the people were saying in this manner: First, God accuses the people of unfaithfulness in some regard. Then the people respond by saying, how have we done that? And God lays out his case and shows the people exactly how they have been unfaithful. Let me give you an example of what I mean from a previous passage:
Malachi 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?” (ESV)
This is the verse directly before our reading today, and so it is the verse that is being addressed by Malachi’s words that we read today, chapter 3 and verses 1 through 4. But I’m also going to look at verse 5, because it brings the entire passage to a close.
Verse 1 says:
“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.” (Malachi 3:1, ESV)
I love this verse, and the next one, because those were the Bass Arias from The Messiah that I sang. But I never truly understood them. God says, “Behold, I send my messenger.” Remember what Malachi’s name means? It means “My Messenger.” The Hebrew literally says, “Behold, I send Malachi.” This messenger will prepare the way before God’s coming.
“And the Lord whom you seek…” Remember in verse 2:17 when the people said “Where is the God of justice?” That’s who is coming.
“…will suddenly come to his temple;” God is everywhere, but in this case his presence will be in the temple there in Jerusalem. God is saying to the people, you want a God of justice? The God of justice is coming to his temple.
“…and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts.” Again, the messenger is “m’alak.” It is a play on Malachi’s name, but in this case it doesn’t mean Malachi per se. Instead, God is the messenger of the covenant, and the message he brings is not one that is pleasant. The people broke the covenant with God, though he was always faithful to the covenant and will never break it. This is both calm assurance and a terrifying thing, because the covenant is upheld by a faithful, just, and eternal God… but there are consequences to the people breaking the covenant. And we see that in the next verse:
“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.” (Malachi 3:2, ESV)
The warning here is stark. You asked for a God of justice, and the God of justice is coming; but you will likewise be judged. “Who can endure the day of his coming?” All are judged according to their own deeds, and not one of us is sinless. The Psalms tell us that no one is righteous, no not one. Paul in his letter to the Romans tells us that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. There is no hope of salvation apart from God’s grace. Certainly not in our own sinfulness. Our righteousness, says Isaiah, is to God like filthy rags. “Who can stand when he appears?” You wanted a God of justice, he is coming.
This past week, a young man killed the CEO of United Healthcare in cold blood on the streets of New York, and people are holding him up like some kind of folk hero. Yes, the evil man is dead. But faced with our own sinfulness, we deserve the same fate. Every sin we commit is against God himself. David wrote in Psalm 51, “Against you, you alone, have I sinned and committed all this iniquity.” We should not celebrate the death of anyone, for there, but for the grace of God, go you and I.
“For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap.” We don’t use that word, “fuller” much anymore. Do we at all? When’s the last time you used that word? But a fuller was the one who created the soap to clean the body, but it did so in a way that was painful because it was entirely too strong to use on the body. It contained lye, a caustic agent that would sting the skin. Like a refiner’s fire that melts down the ore so the impurities can be scraped off and cast out; like the fuller’s soap that stings the skin;
“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.” (Malachi 3:3 ESV)
The first to be purified are the priests, the Levites, because they are the ones who bring sacrifices for the people. In order to do so, their sins must be atoned for first. At the end of the book of Exodus, the Tabernacle had been completed and the glory of the Lord descended on it like a cloud and none of the priests, not Aaron, nor Moses, could enter the Tabernacle until they had been cleansed of their sin. This we read about in the book of Leviticus, and then the first verse in the Book of Numbers says “The LORD spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the tent of meeting…” (Numbers 1:1, ESV). After they were cleansed, sanctified, consecrated for the work of God, they were allowed into the tabernacle to minister to and for the people. And so that’s what we’re seeing here. After the Levites are purified, “they will being offerings in righteousness to the LORD.” They will resume the sacrificial system that will purify the people as well.
“Then,” he says, after the sons of Levi are purified of their sins,
“Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the LORD as in the days of old and as in former years.” (Malachi 3:4, ESV)
The restoration of the people has to occur as it did in the wilderness. Because the priests have not been purified, their offerings are made in sin and are detestable to God. The worship of God is a vain thing when it is done in sin. When we confess our sin before God and one another at the Communion table, we are saying to God, take this sin far from me, purify me. David wrote in Psalm 51, “Change my heart, O God, and renew a righteous and steadfast spirit within me.” Paul reminds us that:
“Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. 28 Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. 29 For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. (1 Corinthians 11:27-29, ESV)
It is important that when we come to worship we are in the right standing with God, and that means confession of sin and repentance, turning away from it. Then we turn our eyes to the one who bore the punishment for our sin on the cross, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Now, verse 5 is not included in the reading today, probably because this is an Advent reading and is meant to look forward to when Christ shall return. In this case, God, as we saw in chapter 2 verse 17, is answering the question, “Where is the God of justice?” And so verse 5 completes that answer:
“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.” (Malachi 3:5, ESV)
The people were looking for judgement on their enemies, and God answers by saying “Then I will draw near to you for judgment.” We are so quick to point the finger at other people’s sin that we are not prepared to face the true judgment of God for our own sin. In fact, in our eyes the sin of others is magnified, and for us and our sin we minimize it to the point of triviality. But make no mistake, God’s judgment will be upon all on that final day. The question is, what will you say on that day? Who may abide the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? Only one, the one who has repented and put his full trust in Christ alone for his salvation, only such a one may stand before a holy God, and not on our own merit, but upon what Christ has done for us. He has taken our sin upon himself and died the death that we deserve, then on the third day rose again to conquer death and offers to us eternal life in his name. Let us lay down our sin and our judgment of others. Let us stand as David stood and say “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a righteous and steadfast spirit within me.” Let us lay down every burden and come to the table washed clean in the blood of the Lamb.
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