Now we start to come to the good part. There are still plenty of things
wrong with the people, and for those who persist in being disobedient and
living sinful lives, this is not necessarily good news. But for those who long
for the coming of their Lord and King, these verses are refreshing because they
don’t just speak of how terrible the people are being, but they also speak of
what God is going to do to refine the purify the people.
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?”
3:1 “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.
5 “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.
One term to be looked at more closely in this passage is “messenger”.
In the Ancient Near East, a messenger was a person who, “delivered an oral
message, along with documentation, explaining and defending his master’s word.”[1]
This tradition is consistent with Old Testament practices in which human
leaders often sent messengers on business as their equal representatives (see
Judges 11:13, 2 Samuel 3:12,13). However messengers of God often included both
humans (prophets, etc.) and angels (Gen 18:22, Dan 12:5), including the
“messenger/angel of the Lord”. For
most Christians today, this will immediately bring to mind John the Baptist,
the messenger who prepared the way for Jesus. Even though Malachi was written
some four hundred years before Jesus was born, this is still an accurate
interpretation.
However, it is hard to reconcile John the Baptist and Jesus the God who
preached grace and love with the Lord
of hosts. It is important to remember that God has not, and does not change
(see the next section of Malachi, 3:6). Our sin, and our flippant attitudes
towards it, are still just as damning as the Israelites were. The difference is
that we have received the new covenant, and the ability to repent of our sins
at any time and in any place because we are covered by the blood of Jesus, who
paid the price for those sins. If you still doubt that Jesus the loving God is
fully united with Yahweh, the Lord
of hosts, read through Revelations and you will soon realize that the lamb is
also a lion, and a fiercely protective one at that.
The action of God sending His messenger to prepare the way for Him,
proves to a necessary one because, as we have seen over the past several weeks,
the people have no idea how to be holy and live righteous obedient lives. They
love the covenant, and delight in doing thing for it, but this love hasn’t
seeped into their hearts and changed their attitude towards the God of the covenant.
Many times, Christians get caught up in doing things for the church, rather than for God, and serving others out
of necessity, rather than out of a love for their creator and sustainer. Our
need for recognition overrides our desire to be obedient, and so we justify
ourselves by thinking we are doing good things for the church and other people,
therefore God must be satisfied with
us. Wrong. The messenger comes to prepare the people for the fire.
Today there are other ways of refining silver by using chemicals or
electro-refining methods, but in this passage, the way that silver is refined
and purified is by heat. Silver has a melting point of 1,763ºF or 961.8ºC. The
refiner must sit near the crucible where the silver is being heated and melted
so that they can see when the process is completed and all the impurities in
the silver have been burned off. I’ve heard that at this point the silver is
reflective like a mirror and if you dared to stick you head into the furnace
and look inside the crucible, you would see a perfect reflection of yourself (I
was not able to source this information though).
Thus, God will refine and purify the people and the priests with fire:
very hot, painful fire. But when he is done, they will be pure and holy, and
will be able to live righteous and obedient lives. The sin will literally be
burned out of them, and they will enjoy an intimate and holy relationship with
their God. We can’t become holy if we don’t allow God to burn the sin out of
our hearts. Painful? Yes. Harsh? No—not when you consider what Christ endured
on the cross for our sakes.
The people and priest were asking where God’s justice was, and I can
understand it. They watched as “good” people suffered, and “evil” people prospered,
and they assumed that God favored the evil people. But one of God’s primary
tools of refining, purifying, and making His people righteous is suffering.
When we look around us and we see evil people prosper and good people suffer we
get mad at God and think there is no justice, when the truth is that the good
people are in the process of being made holy, and the evil people are not.
Would you rather suffer now for a finite period of time, or endure the flames
of hell for all eternity?
Verse 5 stands as a warning: God is coming, and he will bring pain and
suffering on His people to purify them and give them a healthy fear of Himself.
Those that think they can sin and get away with it, God is only going to let
them get away with it for so long before he confronts them, and us in our sin,
and forces us through the fire so we won’t have to burn for eternity. This
passage is a testament to God’s faithfulness and love for His people despite
our obstinate behavior, fickle attitudes, and unrighteous lives.
[1]
Willem A. VanGemeren, Gen Ed., New
International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis (Grand
Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1997) 2:941
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