12/6/20 Malachi 3:1-5 “Are You God’s Reflection?”

04 Dec 12/6/20 Malachi 3:1-5 “Are You God’s Reflection?”

12/6/20    Malachi 3:1-5   “Are You God’s Reflection?”

I have noticed in my short time here on earth, that often times we embark on a journey or an endeavor and we really don’t know what we are doing.  I remember when I was a kid and I jumped up on a self-propelled swather with a steering wheel for the first time.  I thought it would be easy with a steering wheel.  After all, I could drive anything with a steering wheel so what could be so hard about this.  Anyway, I almost put it in the ditch and it really scared me as I still remember it today.  I happened to be with my uncle at the time and I thought that he would die laughing.  I am sure that many of us can remember something like this where we thought we could do something and it turned out to be a little different than we expected.  I think that this happens sometimes in our faith walk.  Sometimes we get so caught up in the little things of Scripture that we forget the big picture.  Today we are going to look at a passage from Malachi that tells us of the coming of someone important.  Let’s see if we can fit this passage into the big picture so that we can steer the swather a little better.

Advent is a beautiful time of year.  Many people confuse this with Christmas.  There is nothing terribly wrong with this.  However, we need a period of time where we can reflect and look forward to the birth of the Christ child.  It is kind of like Lent is to Easter.  It is a time of preparation.  I think of it like this.  I love turkey dinners.  There is just something about all those wonderful aromas from all of the wonderful trimmings for this dinner.  But this great feast whether it be for Thanksgiving or Christmas or whatever doesn’t just happen.  Isn’t that right, all you chefs?  There are lots of things that have to happen before we can even cook.  We have to buy the turkey.  We have to buy the potatoes, the vegetables.  We need to get rolls and lefse.  Lots of things have to be done as we anticipate this great feast.  And I never can thank Sharon enough for all the work she puts into the making of one these meals.

And this is what Advent is all about.  We are getting ready.  We are preparing our hearts and our minds for this great event.  Before we get to the passage in Malachi, I would like us to set up the ground work for all that is happening, then and today.  I think that we have to begin with the question, “Who is God?”  You may be saying to yourselves about now that this is really a pretty silly question.  We all know who God is.

The sad part of this is that the majority of people in this country don’t know who God is.  They have created their own definition of God and most of the time it is all wrong.  God is defined in the Bible, period.  We are no longer a Christian nation.  We say we are but our actions show that we don’t know God at all.  When we go back and read in Genesis 1, we find that God made everything.  He made us.  He made the animals.  He made the earth and all plants.  He made the air we breathe.  He made the skies and the universe.  There is nothing that He did not make.  Already I have eliminated a third of our population who don’t believe in this.  And as far as I know, there has never been any proof from anyone that God did not do this.

This is the basic building block for our faith.  We were made by God.  We are God’s workmanship.  The Bible refers to this many, many times.  It is beyond our comprehension and our science that God could take nothing and make something.  This is hard to understand but we know this.

So then what happens?  We get to live in the Garden of Eden through Adam and Eve.  Everything was perfect for us there so we lived and worked in the Garden.  I would like you to notice that we worked.  There is no such thing as a free ride in our kingdom.  God worked for 6 days and then He rested.  Adam and Eve worked in the Garden of Eden.  And we are to work at the things that bring glory to God.  So, there we were in the Garden for only God knows how long.  There was no death yet so we could have been there with the animals for years or even centuries.  It would have been a perfect life.

Then the serpent comes into the picture.  Satan then draws us into the world of sin through the eating of the forbidden fruit.  As a result of this first act of sin, we are banished from our garden home.  Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden.  But this wasn’t the end of their relationship with God, and praise the Lord for that!

God was still going to be with them only not as a physical person as He was in the Garden.  They would now have to have faith in Him and bring Him sacrifices to atone for their sins.  And this is the beginning of centuries of our trying to get back into the good graces of God that we had in the Garden.  In just about all of the Old Testament and the New Testament and right up to our modern history we have been trying to get back into the good graces of God.  Just look at the history of Israel.  They had periods where they followed God closely and things went well.  Then they fell away from God and things went bad.  We can even see this today.  Our country was built on the solid foundation of Jesus Christ.  If you don’t believe me, then just take a look at some of our historical documents and see how often God is mentioned.  In the last 60-70 years we have fallen away from God and now our country is not doing so well.  I will let you draw your own conclusions here but I think that it comes right from the Old Testament.

What the people both then and now failed to realize was that it doesn’t take any work on our part at all to get back into the good graces of God.  There is nothing we can do on our own to do this.  Even all the sacrifices that we made in the Old Testament meant nothing to God.  What God wanted through all of these sacrifices was the faith of the people.  That is all He has ever wanted and that is all He wants from us today.  I hope that this will give us a little basis for what is going to happen next.  We were born into a perfect world in the Garden of Eden, we sinned and were cast out of the Garden, and now we have been trying to get back ever since.

This brings us to where Malachi is today.  Malachi will be the last great prophet of God before the coming of Jesus.  The tables are set for the period of Advent of roughly 400 years.  God was silent for this time but Malachi tells us that one is coming.  He tells us this in the first verse.  Malachi talks of John the Baptist who is coming before Jesus.  All we have to do is go to the Gospels and we can read about John the Baptist.  And here is Malachi talking of him some 400 years before it happens.  Now if this isn’t something that only God can do then I don’t know what would be.  Our all-knowing God knew this well before it happened.

So far, we have a pretty straight forward verse.  Now comes that hard part of this advent reading.  “Who can endure the day of His coming?  Who can stand when He appears?”  These are a couple of tough questions.  I would say that most of the people in the day of Malachi would say that they couldn’t stand before God.  This was written about 100 years after they returned from the exile.  Things are still pretty fresh in their minds and they have turned as a people toward God.  This will be the beginning of the following of the Law that was practiced at the time of Jesus.  It turns out that they will follow it so closely that the Law will become a god in itself.

We have talked about this many times in the past.  We have our own gods that we are not able or willing to give up.  I would hazard a guess that we could go to the streets of just about any of our cities and they would tell us that the coming of Jesus would not be a big deal.  There would be no problem with them standing before Him when He comes.  This is how far we have fallen away from God.  I will tell you with absolute certainty that there is not one person here today or in this entire country who will be able to stand before Jesus when He comes back.

The only way that we will even be able to be in His presence is if we have a personal relationship with Him.  This is why I remind you so many times that if you don’t have that relationship yet, then confess your sins to Him and ask Jesus to live in your heart today.  Tomorrow may be too late.

Now, there are many people who don’t know God who feel that everyone will go with Him to heaven anyway.  But let’s look down at verse 5.  God will judge us.  He will be quick to judge the sorcerers, adulterers, perjurers, cheats, people who oppress others especially those who are rather defenseless.  These sinners are the ones who do not fear God.  This is judgment!!  God is not going to mess around with these people when the time comes.  The society in the time of Malachi was a corrupt society.  It was a pagan society where just about anything went.  The strongest survived.  The weak and the lame and the widows didn’t.  And the really sad part of all of this is that most of them didn’t believe in God.  They did not fear Him.

Just a few years ago you couldn’t turn on TV without seeing some sorcerer peddling their evil wares.  We had a first lady who followed these things.  Even today we have many people trying to lure us into adultery of some kind.  We scoff at Jesus when He tells us that we will be committing adultery if we just think about someone in the wrong way.  We have people who perjure themselves on a daily basis in the name of a corporation.  Our society has made it perfectly legal for corporations to lie.  We have people running companies that have stolen other people’s life savings and for the most part, not much happens to them.  Just in these few areas alone I can’t help but wonder, “What in the world are we doing?”

And of course, there are many other areas like this that I am sure come to your minds.  But God is not going to spend much time in judgment here because He has already done this.  This is important for us to remember also.  You do not have to judge people.  That is not your job.  God has already judged our behavior so you don’t have to unless of course you feel that you know more than God.  This is another of our big downfalls and a source of misunderstanding.  Again, we feel we can define who God is when we can’t, unless you know your Bible.

So far this is quite a message for Advent.  This is a pretty strong passage.  But I have skipped over the good part here in order to show you our need.  Our needs begin in Genesis and continue to this day.  Malachi is telling us that God is coming so that He may purify us.  John the Baptist will come announcing Jesus.  Jesus will come and live a life that we are supposed to follow.  He will come and be the final sacrifice that God will ever need so that we may all be cleansed.

So, after Jesus ascends back to heaven, we should be all clean and we should be back in the Garden, right?  Of course, this isn’t right.  As I said earlier our responsibility is to get in a right relationship with Jesus.  This is how we save ourselves.  This is how you try to pull yourselves out of this quagmire we call our society.  After you have done this then Jesus can begin the process of refining you, making you pure, making you holy.  Even though you don’t deserve this, Jesus loves you and will never leave you.

Jesus Christ loves you so much that He did all of these things for you.  He didn’t do these things for us, but rather He did them for you, individually.  And as you get to know Him better, Jesus will be busy refining you like silver.

There is an old story of a woman who had read this passage and didn’t know what it meant to be refined like silver.  So, she set out and found a silversmith.  I suppose the closest thing we have to a silversmith in this area would be a jeweler.  Anyway, she found one and asked him how he refined silver.  He told the woman that the silver had to be put in a fire of sorts and heated to an extremely high temperature.  As the silver is heated the impurities are burnt away leaving the pure silver.

This is just like our lives.  As we live our lives in the Christian faith, we go through many trials and situations.  Each one of these is like the silver in the fire.  We will learn from what we do and our mistakes as we rely more and more upon Jesus Christ.  This is what John Wesley called sanctification or growing.  We have a difficult time understanding some of the things that happen in our lives.  We have all had times when we just cry out to God, “Why?”  All bad things that happen can be traced by to the serpent in the Garden.  God through Jesus Christ only wants the best for you and this is why you need to be refined like silver.  He will always be there to help you and that is a promise.

The silversmith then went on to tell the woman that if the silver isn’t heated enough, then it will be impure.  If it is heated too much, then it will be destroyed.  The silver has to be taken out at just the right time or temperature.  The woman was amazed at how the silversmith worked the silver in this kiln.  She finally had to ask, “How do you know when it is done?”  The silversmith replied, “It is done when I can see my reflection.”

Jesus will know when you have been refined enough when He looks at you and He can see himself.  Brothers and sisters in Christ, think about this during this Advent season.  Pray about this all through this season.  I can only thank Jesus for not giving up on me and for first loving us.  Let’s pray.