Most people, especially when they get to be my age, look at their lives as a series of connected units. For some people it is a series of years or decades. Their 40th birthday was celebrated with the color black, as though life is down-hill from that point. But to a five-year-old, reaching her sixth birthday is a huge milestone and victory. Then there is that sweet-sixteenth birthday. Sometimes life is pictured as a series of events: birth, graduation, marriage, a big move and retirement. The eulogy at the average funeral is a chronology of those major events. The obvious reason for this way of thinking is that we are bound by time – minutes and hours. What other way is there to depict our lives besides consecutive steps in the sands of time?
Jehovah God is not so limited. He is not confined by time. Not only did He create the tools and systems which we use to measure time – the earth’s spinning rotation and its revolutions around the sun. But He ordained time itself even before the cosmic clocks were set in place. In other words, He is above minutes, years and calendars. He even controls and manipulates time and seasons at His will.
Furthermore, God did not make anything which He created greater than Himself. He is not ruled by the clock, but rather He tells the clock and the sun to stand still when He chooses to do so. This means, among other things, that He doesn’t see things as they take place in ordinary chronometry. Jehovah is omniscient: all knowing. He knows all things at once, and He always has. He doesn’t observe events, learning things the way that you and I do. For example, before creation He didn’t look into the future to see if there was anyone who trusted Christ, so he could at that point elect to save him. God’s foreknowledge and His foreordination are inextricably united in the nature of His deity. And it is not simply that His perspective is so high that He can look at the locomotive and the caboose at the same time – if you remember what a caboose is. The Lord knows the train as a complete two-mile-unit of two hundred cars.
And He knows you, not as a series of years or events, but as spiritual entity, either as righteous or unrighteous. Yes, it appears to us as if God deals with us in time, because we are confined to time. I was physically born and eventually I was born again; I was baptized, and later God called me into His service. I can give you the year in which each of these things took place. At one point the Lord led me away from Calgary and down to New Mexico. Then in 1990 His Spirit convinced me to accept the offer to become your pastor. Yes, it looks as if the Lord lead me step by step and through each passing moment. But that is because I am confined by time. He is not.
Consider one more thing before I return to the subject in Malachi. A man asked me recently: “What do you consider the order of events in a person’s salvation?” “Which comes first: justification, regeneration, reconciliation, etc?” Like every other aspect of life, to the repenting sinner there appears to be a chronology within salvation. But ultimately everything God does to save the sinner, He does at once. In fact, there is a sense in which the will of God in salvation was accomplished even before creation. That is because, as I have said, as far as the Saviour is concerned, He is not confined by time.
What has all this got to do with Malachi? I bring all this up because our prophet raises another aspect to this kind of thought. What came first: Christ’s first coming or His second coming? His incarnation or His glorification? Obviously, the birth of Christ preceded His sacrifice on the cross and His ascension into Heaven. That is the only way we finite creatures can look at it. Furthermore, we know that Christ is soon coming back to complete what He has started. God’s angel asked the disciples: “Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven?” Then he declared, “This same Jesus, which is take up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.” Those disciples spent the rest of their years living in the anticipation of Christ’s return. That is the way we are supposed to live.
But, despite what the angel said on that day Christ ascended into heaven, do you know how many times the Bible uses the words “second coming?” Never. The Bible doesn’t directly speak about “the second coming of Christ.” And yet we see it throughout God’s Word, including our scripture here.
Malachi is talking about the coming of Messiah: the King to His temple.
Those self-centered, sinful Jews had demanded of the Lord, “Where is the God of judgment?” “We insist on justice; we demand that the God of the universe punish those who sin against us.” “If Jehovah be God, where is He?” To that demand, Jehovah replied, “Behold… The Lord whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple.” Then Malachi describes some of the events which will be included in that sudden appearance. He speaks of refining with fire, and the purifying of Israel’s priests so that they return to offering sacrifices which are pleasant to the Lord. And in the next breath he speaks of witnessing against sorcerers, adulterers, purgerers and oppressors, judging them for their sins.
Now, here is the point I’d like to consider this morning: Is Malachi 3:1-6 talking about what Christ has DONE or what He is going to do? Off the top of my head I say, “Isn’t it obvious? This is stuff which is yet to come.” But let’s keep in mind that “God’s thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways His ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are His ways higher than your ways, and His thoughts than your thoughts,” (Isaiah 55:8-9). Does the timeless God differentiate between Christ’s first coming and His second?
When the Lord spoke of “my messenger” in verse 1, He was referring to John the Baptist. There are at least a dozen New Testament scriptures which make that interpretation and assertion. But after that, at face value, the rest of our text doesn’t sound like Christ during His incarnation. After the Baptist’s call for Israel to repent, what was his most important message? Wasn’t it, “Behold, the Lamb of God?” John 1:29: “The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” But after introducing Christ’s forerunner, the rest of Malachi’s prophecy about Christ doesn’t sound very lamb-like. “Who may abide the day of his coming? And who shall stand when he appeareth?” No one. “I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers” and other sinners. This doesn’t sound like someone who was oppressed and afflicted; who opened not his mouth and who was brought as a lamb to the slaughter, according to Isaiah 53.
To explain, I take you back to the timelessness of Jehovah. You and I may differentiate between Christ’s first coming and His second. But the Lord Himself doesn’t necessarily do that; at least in many of His scriptures He doesn’t. Take as another illustration Malachi 4. Notice verse 5: “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse. How does the chapter begin? “For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. And then we read: “But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings.”
To which of the Lord’s appearances does Malachi 4 refer? His first or His second? Someone might point to the reference to Elijah and then to the two witnesses in Revelation 11 and say this is all about the second coming. And I won’t try to refute that. The Jews of Jesus’ day were sure that Elijah would return before the great and dreadful day of the Lord. But in Matthew 17, after Moses’ and Elijah’s meeting with Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration, the disciples questioned the Lord about what was coming next. Matthew 17:10: “And his disciples asked him, saying, Why … say the scribes that Elias (Elijah) must first come? And Jesus answered and said unto them, Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things. But I say unto you, That Elias is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer of them. Then the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist.” John the Baptist came and ministered in the same spirit as Elijah, at the time of Christ’s first coming. But what immediately followed John in the chronology of time was not the great and dreadful day of the Lord. John introduced the “Lamb of God” not the great judge of heaven and earth.
Obviously, some of Malachi 3 refers to things yet to take place.
In the near future, Israel will rebuild a temple in spite of the presence of her Muslim enemies. Israel will try to reestablish her former way of worship in that temple. And the returning Christ shall “suddenly” appear, which suggests instantly and surprisingly.
But “who may abide the day of his coming?” Revelation 1:7 says, “and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him; and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen.” Revelation 6:17: “The great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?” Malachi 4:1: “For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.” Amos 5:18-20: “Woe unto you that desire the day of the LORD! to what end is it for you? the day of the LORD is darkness, and not light. As if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house, and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him. Shall not the day of the LORD be darkness, and not light? even very dark, and no brightness in it?”
The seven years of tribulation, and particularly the last half, will be like a smelter, with heat sufficient to melt rock and to separate out silver and gold. “For he (the Son of God) is like a refiner’s fire… and he shall SIT as a refiner and purifer of silver.” Matthew 25:31: “When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he SIT upon the throne of his glory; And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats, and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left… Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world… Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels… and these shall go away into everlasting punishment but the righteous into life eternal.”
Malachi 3:5: “And I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the LORD of hosts.”
That verse reminds me of Revelation 20:11: “And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.”
Malachi 3:1-6 suggests to me the second coming of Christ with all its ramifications. And yet, there is that reference to Christ’s messenger preparing the way before Him. Those words, speaking of John the Baptist, take me back to the first coming; to the incarnation of the Son of God.
With that in mind, let me spiritualize this scripture to remind you of the gospel.
The Lord spoke with irony when He said, “the Lord whom ye seek, in whom ye delight, shall suddenly come to his temple.” The people demanded, “Where is the God of judgment?” but they didn’t understand what they were asking. And haven’t there been people throughout history who have asked “Where is the God of salvation?”
We are all sinners, and millions of us have from time to time cried out, “Lord, I need deliverance.” We have seen and felt the pain which our sins produce, and we’ve recognized the need for an escape. But instead of God’s salvation they have joined AA, Drug Addict’s Anonymous and committed themselves to some form of rehab. Billions of suffering sinners have turned to their churches, their good works, their resolutions and their philosophies to provide them with peace, but that peace never arrived. But “when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law,” the people of that day rejected and crucified Him. They didn’t really understand what they were asking when they prayed for help. Sinners don’t need help; they need deliverance; salvation. And that involves more than a simple sponge bath.
Representing us, those Jews rejected the Saviour, because they didn’t want a Refiner and Purifier. They didn’t want to hear the word “repent” or “save yourselves from this untoward generation.” The God of judgment said, “Except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish.” He said, “Except ye be born again, ye shall not see the kingdom of Heaven.” But we cannot be blessed by the God of salvation until we come face to face with the God of judgment. Because, our sins must be… our sins will be… judged in one way or another.
The Saviour has come “like a refiner’s fire, and like fuller’s soap.” The word “fuller” is one of those extremely rare words in our current vocabulary. It is even rare in the Bible. But it is sufficiently explained in Mark 9:3 where we read another account of the transfiguration of Christ. Jesus’ “raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow; so as no fuller on earth can white them.” Strong’s Concordance explains the word, saying, ”A primitive root; to trample; hence to wash (properly by stamping with the feet), whether literally (including the fulling process) or figuratively.” In other words, Malachi prophesied that Christ would come to clean; to wash away the sinner’s filth. But again, that cleansing is more than a sponge bath; it is more like the work of a smelter.
That reminds me of David’s words in Psalm 51: “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness; according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleans me from my sin.” Verse 7: “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” The hymn we often sing is Biblical: “What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”
We can see the fulfilment of the prophecy in verse 5 throughout the earthly ministry of Christ. He condemned the sins of the people to whom he was preaching. And His apostles picked up that theme and magnified it a hundred times. “Go and sin no more.” “Awake to righteousness and sin not.”
Not only was Malachi telling those priests to sin not, but he was more specifically condemning their corrupt priesthood and sacrifices. And one of the results of the Saviour’s grace is that today’s sinners may become the Lord’s priests. “That (we) may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness” which is pleasant unto the Lord. Peter told people whom the Lord had purified by grace and cleansed in mercy, “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.” “Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ” or as Malachi puts it: “pleasant unto the Lord.”
Conclusion
We may look at the priests and the people of Malachi’s day as representatives of ourselves. We are sinners; all of us are committing transgressions against God in a variety of ways and degrees. And despite our corrupt sacrifices and offerings, the Lord is angry. We are rushing toward eternal destruction.
But “when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law,” and its condemnation. He came with healing in his wings. He came as the Lamb of God, to give His life in sacrifice on the altar of the cross. And, again, what was the demand of John the Baptist as His immediate messenger? It was “repent.” “Repent before God and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ” the Lamb of God.
Without that relationship to God through Christ, the sequence of our lives will turn out very, very badly. “He that hath the Son, hath life, and he that hath not the Son hath not life.” “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.”