TEXT: Malachi 2:17-3:6 TITLE: Return to Me For Refining

Transcription

1 TEXT: Malachi 2:17-3:6 TITLE: Return to Me For Refining Open your Bibles to Malachi 2:17. As the people of God we are supposed to love Him with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. We re supposed to take Him seriously and worship Him with awe and reverence. But our sinful tendencies can sometimes overwhelm our mind and our will to where we just no longer care about our walk with God. Apathy and complacency set in. It s sad when one person gets that way. It s tragic when a whole congregation gets that way. That s what happened in the days when God sent the prophet Malachi to call to His people, Return to Me and I will return to You. But God being the gracious, merciful, covenant-keeping God that He is does not leave this to their fickle hearts to change. He pursues them, confronts them and transforms them. Read Malachi 2:17-3:6. Spiritual apathy is a serious problem. When we are saved God begins a work in us to perfect us and make us into the likeness of His Son. The Bible says that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion until the day of Christ Jesus (Phil.1:6). Every day of your life God is working toward this goal. But we don t just sit and wait for God to do that. The Bible goes on to say that you are to continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act toward his good purpose (Phil. 2:12-13). So if you are apathetic about Christ and the things of God you are literally working against God who is plotting to perfect you into the likeness of His Son. And we see this all the way back in the OT where God deals with His people to reverse their spiritual apathy. For that to happen we have to understand two striking realities: 1. OUR SINFUL HEARTS (Malachi 2:17; 3:5). We are looking at people who lived in Jerusalem 2500 years ago. God disciplined His people for their wayward hearts by allowing them to be carried off into captivity in Babylon. Jerusalem was utterly destroyed along with the Temple that symbolized God s presence with His people. But God was not finished with them. He allowed the Jews to return to their homeland, rebuild their Temple and their city and to start their life over again. But by Malachi s time all those exciting days were in the past and their hearts began to grow cold once again. And the sinful human heart is on display in the way the people respond to the Word of God spoken though Malachi. Malachi 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? Six times in Malachi the Lord confronts His people with a truth and they argue with Him. Like here, Malachi says you have wearied (annoyed, aggravated) the Lord with your skeptical, sinful words. And their reply: Oh yeah, how have we wearied him?

2 The answer: They called God s character into question. They accused God of tolerating evil people and not punishing them. That s how convoluted the sinful human heart can be, that we can ascribe evil to God. So they complain, Where is the God of justice? Maybe the most significant thing about any of us is what we think about God. If we think God tolerates evil, we can blame Him for all of our problems. If we are skeptical about His presence we can live anyway we want to. If we think His ways are not perfect then we can easily rebel against Him. You see, they were acting like practical atheists. God may as well be dead as far as they are concerned. So how does God intend to correct this? He could easily just destroy them, but He s committed to His people. So the second reality we need to understand is GOD S REFINING PURPOSES (Malachi 3:1-6) The Lord could just let us go our own way right off the cliff of destruction, but He loves us and His plans are for our good. God is a covenant-keeping God. For us to understand God s eternal, redemptive, refining purposes for us we need to ask some questions. WHO? Someone is coming. Who is it? Malachi 3:1 - See, 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. So the Lord Himself is coming to them. He takes this personally. But before the Lord comes to them He will send my messenger. Remember that Malachi s name literally means my messenger. So the immediate fulfillment of this might be in the coming of God s messenger Malachi to His people to prepare them for what the Lord will do to correct their sinful hearts. But the text seems to be pointing to someone beyond Malachi who would prepare the way for God to come and do a great work in the hearts of people. In ancient times when a king was traveling to a region soldiers and others would be sent ahead of the king to clear the road of brush and rocks, and to fill in the holes. They would also announce to the townspeople that the king was coming and that the people should be ready to receive him and hear him. So that s the first messenger. But he prepares the way for another, far more important messenger. Malachi calls Him the messenger of the covenant. Who is it? We have some clues here, but for now make sure you understand that God Himself is moving toward His people personally. He is relentless in His pursuit of us. So let s ask another question: WHEN? When will He come?

3 Malachi 3:1b - Suddenly (unexpectedly) the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple Malachi 3:2a - But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? Malachi 4:5 calls it the great and dreadful day of the Lord. What s that? Now perhaps there was an immediate fulfillment of this prophecy in the ministry of Malachi coming to God s people and speaking God s Word to them. But this is bigger than that. When we read passages like this through the lens of the NT we understand that this great and dreadful day of the Lord is the coming of God s Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. So Malachi sees our day the day of Christ the day of the Gospel. The first messenger is John the Baptist. We know that because the Gospel writers quote this passage when we are introduced to John who was a prophet that came to prepare Israel for the coming of their Messiah. So Jesus comes into the picture here. But let s not get to far ahead of ourselvers. There s another question we need to ask to understand this: WHOM? To whom does He come? Malachi 3:1b - Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple The Lord will come to His temple. But it s evident that it s not just about a building. The Lord s focus is on His people who come to the Temple to worship. His focus is the whole life of the people of God. Later He will call out the Levites, the Temple priests and attendants whom the Lord had rebuked earlier in Malachi for their half-hearted worship and service to God. So God comes to His people He comes to us working His divine purposes for us. Now we come to a really big question: WHAT? What will He do when He comes to His people? Malachi 3:2 - 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. So when the Lord comes to His people in this way He will do a mighty thing. He has some cleansing and purifying to do in His people. He s calling them to return to Him, and this is what He will do to make that possible. He will deal with His people so severely that they may think that He doesn t love them or that they can survive what He is about to take them through. ILLUSTRATION I remember hearing Chad Brantley talk about having chemotherapy treatments for his cancer several years ago. The doctor told him they were going to come this close to killing him so they could defeat the cancer and save his life. And Chad talked about how awful he felt when he got those treatments, but the pain was part of a bigger purpose And what God has in mind for His people will be painful, but it s for a glorious purpose. ILLUSTRATION - The launderer s soap here in v.2 was really tough soap. My grandfather worked in a steel plant. I remember as a boy seeing in their bathroom the bar of soap my

4 grandmother used something like Dove soap, gentle on her skin. But there was another tray that had the soap my grandfather used when he came home with dirty, greasy, filthy hands. He needed more than Dove; he used Lava soap. Anyone remember that? I m not sure if they still make it. I think it had like shards of glass embedded in it to give it more scrubbing power. It would remove the dirt along with your skin. That s what launderer s soap was like. When the stain was so deep powerful soap was needed. So God is up to some heavy-duty cleansing here. But the image that Malachi really wants to focus on in v.2 is the image of the refiner s fire. In biblical times when a craftsman wanted to make something from a precious metal like silver he would start by putting a bar of silver ore in a pot over a blazing hot fire. The silver was super-heated in the refiner s fire to the point where it melted. As it melted the impurities (the dross) that weakened or cheapened the metal floated to the surface. The silversmith would take a ladle and draw off those impurities. The refiner would sit by the pot, watching it carefully to make sure that the metal was heated enough to remove the dross, but not heated too much to destroy the silver. Historians say that the silversmith would know that the refining process was complete when he could look into the shiny surface of the molten silver and see the reflection of his own face. And that s what God has in mind for His apathetic people. Malachi 3:3a - He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. So God loves us too much to leave us in our apathy, missing the life He has created us and saved us to live. So He comes to us in times like this like a refiner s fire. He puts us into the fires of trials and testings that will pull to the surface the impurities of our heart. He lovingly presides over this firey process to make sure that we re not tested beyond our ability to endure. ILLUSTRATION Living with a woman who loves to cook I have often watched Nan stand over a stove stirring some recipe, watching a thermometer to make sure the temperature is just right, stirring the mixture so it doesn t burn. And the outcome is delicious. That s the picture here. And this is the work that God came to do in His people through His Son Jesus Christ. Titus 2:14 (Christ) gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good. He aims to make us into those kind of people people who are His very own, eager to do what is good. I don t know about you, but I m not there yet. The Lord still has refining to do in my life. And if we are even the least bit self-aware with the help of the Holy Spirit we know we have attitudes and thoughts and rebellious impulses that are not pleasing to God. And God knows that the only way He can get at those impurities in our souls is through the refiner s fire. He is fitting us for heaven and there will be no impurities in heaven, so they have to be removed. Jesus said, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

5 And so one of God s great tools He uses for this purpose are painful, difficult trials by suffering. 1 Peter 1:6-7 - In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. James 1:2-4 - Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. Hebrews 12:10 - Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. But remember for His people God is like a skilled refiner s fire, not like a wild, forest fire. The fire is for purifying, not for destroying. He is relentless in His vision for us to make us into the likeness of His Son, so He sits over the firey process carefully watching until He sees the image of His own face reflected in the molten metal. Someone has said, The furnace of affliction in the family of God is always for refinement, never for destruction. But there s one more question we need to answer if we are to understand God s refining purposes in our lives. WHY? Why does He put his people through this? Malachi 3:3a - He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Malachi 3:4 - and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the LORD, as in days gone by, as in former years. Again, God is purifying for Himself a people for His own possession, people who are eager to do what is right. 1 Peter 2:5 - you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. ILLUSTRATION While the election returns were coming in Tuesday evening Nan and I watched a documentary on President Jimmy Carter. As you may know, he was (is) a believer, taught a Sunday School class at his home church in Plains, Georgia and, whether we agree with his politics or not, I think he genuinely tried to live out his Christian convictions as president. There was a point in President Carter s life when things changed for him spiritually. After losing his first bid to become the governor of Georgia he was devastated. One day he went for a walk with his sister Ruth who was a strong believer. All of his life he had been a "church-going Christian but he felt that his faith was

6 shallow and superficial. He said to his sister, "We are both Baptists but what is it you have that I don t have? Ruth replied, Total commitment. I belong to Jesus, everything I am. Jimmy Carter answered, That's what I want. He confronted the spiritual apathy in his life and everything changed for him. He turned His whole life over to Christ.