Gordon McPhee delivered to St. Edward’s Presbyterian, Beauharnois
Luke 3: 1-6
READY FOR A GOOD SCRUB!
Scripture: Malachi 3:1-4 [MSG]
“Look! I’m sending my messenger on ahead to clear the way for me. Suddenly, out of the blue, the Leader you’ve been looking for will enter his Temple—yes, the Messenger of the Covenant, the one you’ve been waiting for. Look! He’s on his way!” A Message from the mouth of God-of-the-Angel-Armies.
But who will be able to stand up to that coming? Who can survive his appearance?
He’ll be like white-hot fire from the smelter’s furnace. He’ll be like the strongest lye soap at the laundry. He’ll take his place as a refiner of silver, as a cleanser of dirty clothes. He’ll scrub the Levite priests clean, refine them like gold and silver, until they’re fit for God, fit to present offerings of righteousness. Then, and only then, will Judah and Jerusalem be fit and pleasing to God, as they used to be in the years long ago.
SUMMARY:
Malachi 3:1-4 may at first reading seem an out-of-place passage for the second Sunday of Advent when we light the candle of Peace. God is sending a messenger with hard news characterized by the words, “Who will be able to stand up to that coming? Who can survive his appearance? He’ll be like white-hot fire from the smelter’s furnace.” But this is, in every sense, a message of hope for God’s people of Israel and especially for us, as we have witnessed and bear witness to its continuing fulfilment. John the Baptist is the messenger who clears the way for the Messenger of the Covenant, Jesus Christ. Jesus’ message to them and to us is that God has not turned His back. And most importantly, it is not up to us to figure out or find the solution or screw up the strength and courage to make things right with God; to make peace with our Creator. Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, is going to do that. He is going to make us “fit and pleasing to God.” Fit to present offerings of righteousness pleasing to God. He is doing whatever it takes today, now, in our daily lives, to refine us like fine silver and gold in a “white-hot fire from a smelter’s furnace.” He does this because he loves us, He sees in us the precious metal that is there to be redeemed. We are not dross, filthy rags to be discarded. We are His beloved children. He is faithful and will redeem us so that we will have peace with God our Father through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit.
INTRODUCTION:
Well, here we are at the second Sunday in Advent. This morning we lit the Peace Candle in a world that increasingly doesn’t seem to know anything about peace except that we all want it and don’t know how to get it. Last week we lit the Hope Candle and I know my brother Wilson turned your hearts to look to the Rock of our Salvation, Jesus Christ. He is our one and only hope for a salvation that is “growing in faith, love and holiness.” Not a one-off stagnant hope but dynamic and alive, growing like the living peace we’re going to talk about this morning. Everything God does is alive. He didn’t just create the world and step away. No! He is the sustainer and the fulfiller of everything you see around you. Without His power, His consuming presence, everything would simply cease to be.
Peace, like hope and faith, is a gift from God. It is coming upon you in wonderful ways, only allow the eyes of your heart to be opened to what God your Father is doing in your life. Jesus will sanctify you into a condition of peace with His Father and yours. He will make you peacemakers in this world, and you will be called children of God.
SERMON:
Malachi is a very interesting little book in many ways. The prophet’s name in Hebrew literally means “My Messenger.” The message is a scathing rebuke by God of the Jews who had returned from exile in Babylon. Because it is a very short book of prophecy, it is in the group of twelve minor prophets, but its message is anything but minor. As the most recent book of Old Testament Scripture, about the 5th century BC, it has the distinction of being the last book of the Old Testament Bible. Which makes Malachi the lead-in to the New Testament and particularly the Gospels. This is appropriate because that important message is a very real and recognizable prophecy of the coming of God’s new covenant in Jesus Christ. Like Malachi’s big-brother prophecy book, Isaiah, which is nicknamed the Fifth Gospel, he makes some of the most recognized prophecies to the work of John the Baptist and Christ.
In the two chapters prior to this passage, God, through Malachi, has chastised the Israelites, in particular the priests who administer the worship in the Temple, for treating their holy service with bored contempt. It seems the people have grown weary of worshipping God. “It’s just another Sabbath,” they say, “and do we really need to show up at the Temple every week?” They felt that although God had, exactly as He had promised, miraculously brought them back to Jerusalem from Babylon after the seventy years prophesied by Jeremiah, He hadn’t yet restored Israel to its former wealth and glory. They were a small, unimportant, although strategic, province of the Persian Empire. And because they hadn’t gotten what they wanted but certainly didn’t deserve, they were petulant with God. They flaunted God’s laws, miscarrying justice, abusing authority for gain even against their own people and especially mistreating the marginalized, the most vulnerable in the community. God was not pleased.
The last words of Malachi before our passage are of God accusing the Israelites of saying sardonically, “God loves sinners and sin alike. God loves all.” and also saying, “Judgment? God’s too nice to judge.” Then God replies, “Look!”. Now I don’t know about you, but if I thought God had fixed His gaze on me and said, “Look!” in the sternest of tones, I think I’d wish I was wearing depends. This would not be a good day. And I think that is exactly the reaction Malachi is reaching for in his readers. This is the halfway turning point in the prophecy. Up to now we’ve heard about a people fed up and disillusioned with God and all their excuses for being that way. And now, God tells them what He’s going to do about that. You know, it really is an eye opening experience to read these last two chapters of Malachi and then turn the page and begin reading the Gospel of Matthew. What God, faithful in all he does, predicting what He’s going to do in Malachi and then fulfilling it in Matthew; at just the flip of a page.
“Look!” Shouts God, “I’m sending my messenger on ahead to clear the way for me.” Now you might expect that messenger to arrive with a sword or a plague to enact vengeance and wrath on the Israelite people. But in fact, it is John the Baptist. As the Gospel of John records John the Baptist testifying, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said” (John 1:23). This is the messenger sent, as Isaiah said, to raise every valley up and make every mountain low, to straighten the crooked turns and smooth the rough terrain, to make a highway for the Lord.
But John the Baptist is only the messenger for the real bearer of the message from God. Malachi continues, “Suddenly! Out of the blue.” Not suddenly, as in right now, but at a moment we do not expect. When our hearts have grown slow and dim like the Israelites of Malachi’s day. When worshiping God is mundane and tiresome and we don’t see the point anymore. Then He will come. The Messenger of the Covenant will enter His Temple. He is the promise you’ve been waiting for, but will you know Him? If your heart has grown dull and heavy, will even His sudden appearance in your life rouse you to see?
This is Jesus Christ, whose birth we celebrate in just a few weeks. He does not bring a message as John the Baptist did, He is the Message from God-of-the-Angel-Armies, the living Word of God. Malachi asks, “But who will be able to stand up to that coming? Who can survive his appearance?” And well he may ask. You see, Jesus doesn’t come into your life as a helpless baby child. He humbled Himself and did that to claim without refutation that he knows every estate of man. He knows your coming in and your going out. He knows the extent of every temptation that has or ever could come upon you. You are an open book; no secrets are hidden because He has lived everything you have and, I dare say, much, much more. When He comes to you now, He is a “white-hot fire from the smelter’s furnace … the strongest lye soap at the laundry.”
He’s not coming to stroke your head and soothe your ego, full of words of peace and comfort. Jesus, when he comes into your life is coming to fix what is broken. And brothers and sisters, there is much in our lives that is broken. If we could see ourselves as we are, we would know there is nothing that does not need a complete rebuild from the ground up. And our God is so merciful, and so gracious and so loving that He is sending His only begotten Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ, into our lives, suddenly, not to discard us as dross or give up on us as irrecoverable garbage but to refine us as precious metal, to cleanse us as pure white garments.
If you wonder sometimes at the trials and difficulties that assail you as you walk with Jesus, remember you are walking with someone who is determined to redeem you at all costs. He is going to scrub you by whatever means is necessary to clean you down to the last follicle and toenail. You’ve put your hand, not into the hand of a carpenter, but into the hand of a refiner of precious metal. He loves you and sees the glorious and immeasurable value that you are to His Father, who counts you as one of His dear children, and He’s going to burn out every last contaminant from the beautiful person He knows you are. Are you in trouble, tested at every turn in your walk with the Lord? Then rejoice! You are being cleansed, you are being purified, made fit for the kingdom of your God, and able to stand in the presence of your creator and redeemer.
“He’ll take his place,” Malachi says. This is Jesus’ place. It is the message that He is bringing from God to you, Himself. God’s message is that because of the Cross, He does not see your sin anymore. He sees what He has created and intended you to be. The very best of His creation. And he will never, ever discard you or let you go. So He has sent the Holy Spirit into the world to sanctify a people, you, for Himself. A people of His own, to serve Him and love Him as He provides for and loves you.
We lit a candle of Peace today. It is a peace that cost the life of our Saviour Jesus Christ whose birth, for that exact purpose, we celebrate soon. Jesus said it was a peace very different from anything the world offers you. Not empty platitudes and vain hopes that promise little and accomplish less. The peace Jesus gives us was won through the pain, shame and suffering of the cross, and we have here in these words of Malachi that assurance that Jesus is not finished us ever. Do not become discouraged because you don’t see things working out the way you imagined when you first looked to Jesus. He is coming upon you suddenly, to refine you and cleanse you and make you “fit to present offerings of righteousness” so that you can enter into the full joy, His Joy, in the presence of His Father.
There is a lot of work to do. Jesus is here, in you, to get it done. He is perfecting in you peace with God, your Father and Maker; don’t rush it. He’ll never quit on you, never give up on you, and one day you will be fit and pleasing to God, ready to present offerings of righteousness. “Look! He’s on his way!”
Amen
