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Psalm 91, he who dwells in the shelter of the
Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the Lord, my refuge and my fortress, my
God, and whom I trust. For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence.
He will cover you with his pinions and under his wings you will find refuge. His faithfulness is a shield and a buckler.
You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday.
A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you.
You will only look with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked. Because you have made the
Lord your dwelling place, the Most High, who is my refuge, no evil shall be allowed to befall you, no plague come near your tent.
For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.
You will tread on the lion and the adder, the young lion and the serpent you will trample underfoot.
Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him. I will protect him because he knows my name.
When he calls to me, I will answer him. I will be with him in trouble. I will rescue him and honor him.
With long life, I will satisfy him and show him my salvation. Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for the opportunity that you've provided us this weekend to get to know you better, to make that fuzzy picture that we had of you a little more clear.
We thank you so much for the teaching and preaching that has gone forth all weekend long, and we pray that this evening that all we would do would bring glory to your name.
In the name of your precious Son, we pray, amen. Please stand and take your hymnals.
Turn to hymn 55. Hymn 55, Oh God, Our Help in Ages Past, based on Psalm 90, verses 1 through 5.
It's really a psalm about God's eternal sovereign reign over us.
And then at the end of the song, we'll sing about the shortness of our life in contrast to that.
55, Oh God, Our Help in Ages Past. Oh God, our help in ages past, our hopes for years to come, our shelter from the stormy blast, and our eternal home.
Under the shadow of thy throne, thy saints have dwelt secure.
Sufficient is thine arm alone, and our defense is sure.
Before the hills in order stood, o 'er earth received her frame.
From everlasting thou art God to endless years the same.
A thousand ages in thy sight are like an evening gone.
Short as the watch that ends the night before the rising sun.
Time like an ever -rolling stream bears all its sons away.
They fly forgotten as a dream dies at the opening day.
Oh God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come.
Be thou our guide while life shall last, and our eternal home.
Well, typically on Sunday nights, I recommend a book and then I give it away. Tonight's going to be different.
I'm not giving books away because these are my personal books, but I want to recommend three.
So instead of recommending one and giving it away, I'm going to recommend three and not give any away. Just the way it goes.
If what Pastor Steve Meister has been preaching the last few days has struck a chord and you would like to know more or you'd like to study more and you think
I need to get my arms around some of these concepts, maybe you have not heard the word spiration or whatever it might be, let me recommend three books and I'm going to ask
Ben Roberts, I don't think Ben is here tonight, to order some of these books. We'll sell them probably at a loss and sell them in groups of three because I think if you read these three short books, you'll understand exactly or you'll understand more fully what
Pastor Steve is talking about. So they're in a set. I'll tell you what they are in a minute, but we've got different colors, small little books.
They're from Crossway. And this theme is entitled
Short Studies in Systematic Theology, Short Studies in Systematic Theology.
So this one here is on the attributes of God and it's by Gerald Bray. So if you think to yourself,
I thought wrath was an attribute, but now understanding what Pastor Steve has been teaching us, the
Father and the Son and the Spirit in eternity, to whom would they show wrath? There would be no wrath.
They are holy, but there's no wrath in the Trinity. But the sin of man would cause
God to reveal wrath, etc. So that's the attributes of God by Bray. The Trinity by Scott Swain.
Many of you were looking at the Trinity book with Pastor Steve, the resident Pastor Steve at Sunday School.
And this one's by Scott Swain. And then this one is on the person and work of Christ by Wellam. And so if you get all three of these books, this would be a good way to start.
It's intro. They're short, not easy to understand in the sense that we're talking about God.
But out of a lot of the books that are on the Trinity and others, these are pretty simple. And so if you want to know what did
Jesus do to empty himself, etc., etc., these three books by Bray, by Swain and by Wellam, they're kind of cool colors, too, aren't they?
So this is what I would recommend as a pastor. If you want to study more of what
Pastor Steve has been teaching. All right, Pastor Steve, why don't you come up? I just have one quick question to ask you before you start.
Please come up. I want to do it in front of everyone. It's a very serious question. Sometimes I have the gift of rebuking.
Yes. Sometimes encouragement. It's serious now. OK, this is Sunday night.
The elect come out. That's right. Yesterday's weather was awful. Cold, kind of dark.
I just like to know how would you describe with New Englandese the weather yesterday?
What was it? It was raw out. It was raw out. Yes, it was raw out.
If you would take your Bibles again and turn with me to the Prophet Malachi, Chapter two.
And while you're turning there, let me again thank you for your hospitality and for the privilege to be among you this weekend.
It's been a wonderful time. It's our first visit to New England at all. And really have enjoyed it and enjoyed the hospitality and particularly of you as of God's people here in the church.
And it's been just wonderful. I hope that what's been shared and taught is fruitful to begin a journey of considering things we've really just really scratched the surface of so much.
And so I hope it's an introduction and a prod for you to begin a continuing journey of what
I like to tell our church. Know the God you know. Do you know him that you might grow in devotion and love?
And if you're ever what if you're ever on the left side of the map or what I call the right side of the country in California, we're there in Sacramento.
I'd love to be able to host you there as well. So Malachi, let's return here.
Malachi, as we considered this morning, the prophet God sent to fix his people's mind on theology and who he is.
Let me read Chapter two, verse 17 through Chapter three, verse five. Malachi, Chapter two, verse 17.
It is written, 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? 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. 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 a fuller like fuller soap, 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. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord is in the days of old and is in former years.
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 and his wages, the widow and the fatherless, against those who thrust aside the sojourner and do not fear me, says the
Lord of hosts. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray. Our father, we thank you for this day set apart to you to rest and to rejoice in your goodness, in your son who arose the first day of the week to justify us by his perfect, righteous life.
We pray our father that in Jesus name, your spirit would continue to illuminate us to the treasure of your word and help us contemplate you.
And we pray that in the various spaces you've put each one of us in life, the various things you've ordained for each of us, many of them difficult, that you would help us fix our minds on the goodness of your character, the unchangeableness of your being, that we would have hope and confidence and seek your glory in all things.
We ask you to do this even now as we meditate on your word together in Christ's name. Amen. Finish this sentence with me.
What do we want? Justice. When do we want it now?
Are you sure? Have you ever noticed that we want justice to be served immediately on others?
But when it comes to our own accountability to justice universally, people usually have a different slogan.
Don't judge me. Crying for justice, we could usually interpret as just not us.
And even our desire for justice we see is tainted with injustice, inconsistency.
And like many other contradictions that arise from our sin, at the end of the day, we want
God's gifts without the giver. We foolishly seek, as if it were possible, independence from God.
We want justice without God. But here's the thing. Justice does not exist apart from God.
He is justice. Now, Israel knew this, at least intellectually.
So they knew to ask in verse 17, the end of chapter two, where is the God of justice?
Israel was oppressed all around. There was injustice everywhere. They were politically oppressed by the
Persians and violently threatened by the locals. And you can read the narrative of what's happening with Malachi in books like Ezra and Nehemiah.
And we consider, even as you move up into chapter two, verse 16, just before this, there's the violence of divorce, the abandonment of marriage.
And then at the end of our passage in verse five, all the wickedness listed there by the prophet.
And of course, they also had God's promises that had yet to materialize. For example, one of Malachi's contemporaries,
Haggai, had promised that the latter glory of God's temple would be greater than the former. But there is no glory there.
They, in chapter two, verse 13, are weeping over the Lord's altar with tears.
They had grown, but there is no sign of God's favor. So they assumed, as we see by this question at the end of chapter two, verse 17, that God was indifferent.
God was absent without examining themselves. Now, we have a long history of this as humanity.
We assume that we are the measure of God rather than the other way around.
Perhaps C .S. Lewis expressed this well in his old essay, God in the Dock. And dock there means the defendant's stand in a courtroom.
And C .S. Lewis wrote this, for the modern man, he is the judge. God is in the dock.
Now, man is a quite kindly judge. If God should have a reasonable defense for being the
God who permits war, poverty and disease, he's ready to hear it. The trial may even end in God's acquittal.
But the important thing is that man is on the bench and God is in the dock.
And our sinful self -absorption, we can assume that God is in the dock, that somehow justice is an independent standard outside of God, that we have the ability to determine and wield even against God himself.
That's the very temptation Satan gave to our first parents in the garden in Genesis three, verse five, that they could know good and evil without God.
That is, they could be God. They could determine right and wrong themselves. But justice comes from God.
Justice is God. God is justice. And his answer, as we'll see in this passage, to injustice and unjust accusations, is himself.
That's what God says here. And the Holy Spirit says to us in this portion of his word that God's answer to injustice is himself.
And we see also here the goodness of his patience, which is actually our salvation. What I want us to do is make three observations again from this passage.
I want us to consider God the just, God incarnate, and then God the justifier.
God the just, God incarnate, and God the justifier. Let's meditate on verse 17 together and think about God the just.
To say, as Israel was, that everyone who does evil is good is a frank rejection.
It's blasphemous. It's a it's a blasphemous denial of God's character. And essentially,
Israel is accusing God of being unjust and indifference to justice because he was not responding in the manner in which they expected and the timing that they demanded.
Again, God was in the dark. Now, we might not make these accusations like ancient
Israelites, but the the progress of history hasn't made the question any less relevant.
In view of rampant evil, is there justice? And we often might wonder, will will the injustice we see ever be righted?
When we ask for justice, we're always asking for God, always the
God of justice. Now, if you've been with us through this weekend, you're prepared to think about this as we consider
God's aseity, he's of himself, he's independent, he's without need of anything.
Also, God's simplicity, he's uncomposed, he's uncomposed of anything before him, from him and through him and to him are all things.
So he's not made up of things. All things are from him. That includes justice.
Before there was anything else, there was God. So justice is not a principle that God meets and we recognize, oh, he must be
God because he meets that principle of justice. No, he is it. It's not a rule by which we measure
God. Justice must be God. A friend we've heard from a couple of times over this weekend is the
Puritan Edward Lay. And he said this, God's justice is his essence and he must be unchangeable.
God's essence is justice, immutable. Another Puritan, Jeremiah Burroughs, said, whatever you can say of God is
God. The wisdom of God is God. The mercy of God is God.
The justice of God is God himself. And so all the attributes justice, like every other attribute of God, is what we attribute, what we ascribe to the perfection of the divine being.
God is the standard of justice. Justice is the revelation of God.
And so if we want justice, we must have God. If there were no
God, there would be no such thing as justice. This helps us with the well -rehearsed accusations of our atheist friends who would say that God must not exist because there's too much injustice in the world.
That claim is self -defeating on its face. If there's no God, if life is simply eternal matter, then there's no such thing as justice.
It's an illusion. You see, atheists need God to exist in order to deny his existence.
They have no basis for their claim that there's too much evil in the world.
That's why I always love to talk to angry atheists. And I always say, I love the fact you're angry.
It means that you don't believe what you're saying. Because if we're just matter, then nothing matters, nothing at all.
Or what about our culture's preoccupation to talk about the right side of history?
Think about what's assumed in that statement. If history has a side, it only has it if there's a sovereign designer directing it, giving it purpose and who would determine right and wrong.
You don't get a right and wrong side without a judge. Who's that?
It's God. He makes that determination. So claiming to be on the right side of history is really begging the real question.
How do you know which side is right and who makes that determination? Well, the answer, and we know the only way to know that is
God. So regardless of what anyone says in a debate, we all know there's a
God because we all have a sense of right and wrong. And the only way to explain that is that there is a just creator who made us in his image and gave us a conscience and wrote his law on our hearts.
That's it. And Israel not only had such a conscience, but they'd seen
God act in justice throughout redemptive history. When Israel cried out in slavery for redemption,
God justly judged their enslavers in Egypt and he upheld his covenant promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
And God then established a system of sacrifices in the temple in Jerusalem so that his justice against Israel's sin could be satisfied by a substitute.
And Israel would be reminded over and over again by every death in the temple that he is just and their sin deserved death.
And the just God only dwelt among his people at the cost of shed blood of a sacrifice.
And then God revealed his moral laws to his people. What Sharnock said again, we looked at this morning on holiness.
God's law is the transcript of his righteousness, an outline of his goodness. It is reflected for us as a way to live justly and to image
God in the world. Israel knew the justice of God, but they were not crying for God to examine them.
They wanted selective justice. They wanted the illusion of justice without God.
And that's what our world obsessed with justice today misses. You don't get justice without a judge.
It's impossible. And asking for justice now is asking for God, an infinite, immutable, righteous and holy judge.
The truth is, when we take to the streets and demand justice now, we have no idea what we're asking for.
For true justice to come upon our world, it would come unswervingly, unerringly, in perfect righteousness according to God's own character.
And that's what God promises to do. We see, secondly, God will deal with injustice himself.
And beginning in chapter three, we see not only God, the just God of justice, but God incarnate.
God incarnate. God says he's sending a messenger in chapter three, verse one, to prepare the way before me.
He is coming. He says he will deal with injustice because he's the judge of all the earth.
And consider what he says is promised by his coming. First, God is sending my messenger.
Now, when royalty in the ancient Near East approached a town, a messenger was sent ahead to be sure the town was prepared and fit to receive royalty.
And this would include even physically smoothing roads and making sure the entrance of royalty was befitting the dignity of the king, of the monarch.
So this messenger is coming to prepare the way for me. That is the
Lord of hosts. I mean, it's almost hard to comprehend what God is saying here. He says, I'm coming. But even further in verse one, in a series of poetic parallels,
God describes himself from the first to the third person.
So notice he says he will prepare the way before me. And then the
Lord whom you seek, that is the God of justice, the Lord whom you seek, he will suddenly come.
That is, was surprisingly without expectation. And then in a parallel way, the
Lord whom you seek will suddenly come, the messenger of the covenant. Now, messenger, that phrase is used in chapter two, verse seven, to refer as a human or an angelic description of a messenger for God.
So you see what we have here in chapter three, verse one is is very curious. God says he is coming and then he says the
Lord is coming and then he says the messenger is coming all at once.
And he's coming in the middle of verse one to his temple. Now, if we had time, we would go throughout
Malachi and see how the temple is at the center of much of the people's grumbling. The people sniffed at the temple.
They were disappointed in the temple. They wept over the temple and Ezra chapter three, this temple fell far short of what they expected.
And God says to this temple that you sniff at and disdain. I am coming. The Lord is coming.
The messenger is coming. God himself, the Lord and a man are coming all at once.
This is very curious. Now, Israel in Malachi's day was not the first to wonder about God's justice and timing.
When John the Baptist was suffering in prison for justly rebuking Herod's sin.
It's recorded in Matthew chapter 11 that he asked if Jesus was the one to come and sent his disciples to ask
Jesus. And Jesus answered John's question by citing his acts of justice towards those who'd been mistreated.
The blind see the lame walk, the dead are raised, the poor hear good news. And then
Jesus begins to speak to the crowds about John. And in Matthew 11, verse 10, he cites this verse here,
Malachi three, verse one. And the way it's recorded in Matthew, Jesus says, behold,
I send my messenger before your face who will prepare your way before you.
So that means that John the Baptist is the messenger. And then he says, behold, I send my messenger, which means
Jesus is the Lord whom you seek, the messenger of the covenant,
God himself, the eternal son of God has come in human flesh.
And you notice he did not misquote Malachi three, verse one, even though he changed the pronouns, he's hinting at the meaning of it for him.
He heard that promise in the eternal covenant of redemption as the son sent by the father to assume humanity as the
Christ, as the God man, as the way that would be prepared for him. So the way the eternal son hears
Malachi three, one is not I send my messenger merely I send my messenger before your face as the mission of from the father.
What we're being reminded of here is that the Old Testament is a Christian book about our triune
God. And we observe in this promise of justice, the plurality of Yahweh, the
Lord, the one God who is distinguished as subsisting in three persons so that the
Lord of hosts in this verse can distinguish himself as the Lord. Just like we see in passages like Psalm 110, the
Lord says to my Lord, God's triunity is writ all across the pages of scripture.
It is foreshadowed and outlined in the Old Testament and then brought into the clarity and light of the
New Testament with the coming of the sun as a man in the Lord Jesus. And in Jesus, John wrote in John one, 14, that the word became flesh and dwelt among us that were dwelt literally means tabernacled, set up temple, dwelling of God with man and the
Lord would walk around his temple that he refers to here, the very temple that Israel was disdaining and desecrating, and he would cleanse it and drive out the money changers among us.
And he would make a house of prayer, a den of robbers, and God came as a man to his temple and brought justice.
Christ spoke as one with authority and Christ clarified the unjust teachings of the
Pharisees and the Sadducees that tied burdens on people that they wouldn't even bear. And he fulfilled all justice or righteousness in himself.
And walked in perfect obedience to God's just law because he is the messenger of the covenant.
Or what the New Testament will say, he is the mediator of the new covenant, not like the one
God made with Israel, which they broke repeatedly, even here in this new covenant,
God fulfills the conditions himself in Jesus so that God's people can be changed from within.
The temple is where God dwelt with man and in Jesus, God dwells with us.
And before Jesus let them destroy that temple, Jesus declared not one stone would be left on top of another in this temple in Jerusalem.
And on the cross, the Lord Jesus suffered God's justice against sinners so that when he died, the veil in this temple was torn in two.
And we now enter the presence of God through Christ alone, not through a temple in Jerusalem and as Christ arose and ascended to God, the father from which one day he will return and complete his work and the rest of this passage will see now everyone who trusts in Jesus is made just and credited with his righteousness.
Our temple is his presence. That's why repeatedly in the
New Testament, first Corinthians three Ephesians to the church is called what the temple of God, because we gather in union with Christ who is present by his spirit with us even now.
And one day Christ will return and he will be the temple of his saints forever. In Revelation 21, verse 22, we read,
I saw no temple in it, the new heavens and new earth for the Lord God, the almighty and the lamb are its temple.
God promised himself in the Lord Jesus as Israel cried for justice five centuries before God promised he would come and bring justice and he has.
But there's more about his work. We see, thirdly, the Lord is the justifier and the judge,
God, the justifier and the judge through the end of this passage. We cry for justice and we cry for God, but really the question is the one that Malachi asks here in verse two, who can endure the day of his coming and who can stand when he appears?
Now, that's not an idle question, is it? Remember, Psalm one, verse five, the wicked will not stand in judgment or Psalm 130, verse three.
If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, who could stand? What is justice but marking iniquity, it's taking account and bringing retribution for wrong, and if the
Lord would do that to us, who could stand? So God uses here in verses two through the end, two images of purification.
In verse two, the refiner who heated metal and removed the dross till it was pure with fire, and then the fuller or the launderer who would soak clothes and lye and scrub it clean of dirt.
Now, consider the implied question by these images. Are you pure enough or clean enough to endure this day?
When the God of consuming fire comes, are you pure metal or dross?
If you're honest, you'll have to confess. I have yet to find a part of me without dirt, without dross.
How can I welcome his coming if he comes this way? We often ask why bad things happen to good people.
It's not unimportant as a question, but there's another question that should get way more consideration by our world.
Why do bad people expect good things? We often wonder why the world isn't any better, but we seldom ask, do we deserve a better world?
When justice comes, how can anyone be confident they'll be exonerated?
God promises to bring justice to the world, but there are two ways to do it.
To purify people, to make them just, and to purge the unjust.
And God promises to do both in verses three to five, to purify and to purge.
Let's look at purification in verses three to four. In one collective statement, Malachi portrays the work of Christ in both advents, both appearings as a single panorama.
God will bring grace and justice to purify and purge. So the sons of Levi in verse three, purification will begin with the priesthood because their iniquity is so prominent and leading the people astray in this book.
And Christ came as our prophet and our perfect priest.
And he holds his priesthood, the Bible says in Hebrews seven, permanently to purify the sons of Levi.
Titus chapter two, verse 14 says, Jesus gave himself for us to purify for himself a people for his own possession.
In union with our perfect, holy high priest, we are purified.
And we are priests. Peter in first Peter two, five says you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
As we come into God's presence through faith in Christ, we gather as his temple, his church, and in him as his priests, we offer spiritual sacrifices.
Hebrews 13, verse 15 says through him, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name.
As we confess, as we sing, as we pray, as we read his word, we're lifting incense to God by his temple through Christ.
Christ is the head of a priesthood of sincere believers in his church so that Christians are sincere servants washed and justified and purified by our great high priest.
But not only purification, we see. Secondly, in verse five, God comes to purge the unjust.
None of Christ's work in his first coming means that the day of vengeance or judgment has been put off.
John the Baptist declared the same when he was preparing the way for the Lord Jesus in Luke three and Matthew three.
We read this. He, referring to Christ, will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.
Jesus himself taught clearly that those who reject him will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.
God is going to correct our unjust, unjust world in Christ by purifying those who trust the
Lord and making them righteous in Christ and verse five, by drawing near for judgment as a swift witness against everyone outside of him.
Now, what we have in this verse, verse five, is not an exhaustive list of all the sins of which everyone's guilty.
It's a list of seven. And in scripture, seven is a number of completion concurrent with the days of creation.
And this is representative of all that Israel would know. And what God is saying by listing these seven sins of his people to them, he's saying and communicating he will judge universally, exhaustively, meticulously and comprehensively.
But there is a day of coming judgment where no wrong and no injustice is going to be overlooked or cast aside.
Nothing is hidden from God's sight. And when he comes in justice, there will be no hiding.
This is Malachi's question in giving the promise in verse two, who can stand when he appears.
No one will stand in the day of judgment if they stand outside of Christ. No one.
Now, Malachi began this dispute in chapter two, verse 17, with you have wearied the
Lord with your words. But if we've been together this weekend and you're paying attention, you know, the
Lord, who is who he is, doesn't get weary, does he? In fact,
Isaiah says explicitly in Isaiah 40, verse 28, the Lord is the everlasting God. He does not faint or grow weary.
God is without body that wearies or passions that weary. He's impassable.
He's the perfect fullness of infinite life and can't be acted upon outside himself. He's immutable, unchanged by anything.
But God here says he's been wearied. God is accommodating himself to speak in a language with which we're familiar, like weariness to describe his divine actions.
So we're to ask, well, the Lord is wearied. We get weary.
When do we get weary? We get weary when we're about done.
When our patience is about exhausted, weary to the end.
This statement here of God's weariness is a vivid description of patience nearing its end.
Where is the God of justice? He's being patient, but the patience,
God says, is expiring. We see this in the New Testament in 2nd Peter, chapter three, verse nine.
The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promises. Some count slowness, but is patient towards you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. Our God is patience.
Now, between the advents of Christ, we could say in these last days that we are in an age of patience.
But if patience is patience, it means it does not go on forever.
And ultimately, it's exhausted and it comes to an end. God will both purify and purge.
Later in Malachi, chapter four, verses one and two, we see that the same heat, the same rising sun, will both incinerate and bring life.
And what we have in this image here, purification and purging, and later in chapter four, incineration and bringing life, is a reflection of the simplicity of God in the effect of his justice.
Have you ever had a superior, maybe a boss, a coach, a teacher, a parent, and you want to ask for something, but you need to check their mood first, whether you've checked them, caught them on a good day.
I notice my kids doing that sometimes. They usually send one of them as an emissary to see how's dad today before we bring on him what we've conspired together to ask.
So you wait, you maybe start, you go into your boss's office, you start with some conversation to see, is their disposition more like mercy or more like wrath today before we ask.
What the reflection of God in his word, his aseity, and his simplicity mean most basically is
God is nothing like that. Wrath and grace, they're not parts of God that are in constant need of balance and you need to just hope you catch him on the right day.
No, God is God. Again, he doesn't submit to principles or parts of which he's made up.
The justice of God is God. It's God himself. And as we see in verse six of this very chapter, he is the
Lord. He does not change. And so when righteousness is coming, it is immutable, unswerving, eternal justice and our judgment or salvation do not depend on whether or not
God is having a good or bad day. God only has perfect days in himself. No, our righteousness or judgment or salvation or judgment depend entirely on God.
Entirely on our status before God and our relationship to him, death or life, judgment or salvation, both happen by the righteousness of God coming to humanity in finality.
And the difference of whether we're rescued to life or ushered to judgment depends on our status before God and our relationship to him in the
Lord Jesus. We see this same point reflected in the New Testament again in second
Thessalonians, chapter one, verse seven. Listen carefully as I read. God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us.
When the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know
God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of the
Lord and from the glory of his might when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints and to be marveled at among all who have believed because our testimony to you was believed.
Notice that same thing we see in Malachi, same events, God coming, brings judgment to those who do not obey the gospel and do not trust
Christ and his brings glory to those who belong to him and who marvel at his coming
God and justice when the Lord Jesus is revealed in his return will relieve the afflicted and his saints will glory and marvel and worship and all who believe in him will be glorified in his coming.
All who believe will rejoice in his coming and they have nothing to fear of judgment because there's no condemnation for them because it has been satisfied in Christ and their relationship to the righteous
God is righteousness in Jesus and yet God will come and to those who do not obey the gospel who have not trusted the
Lord Jesus, it will be their vengeance and eternal destruction away from the
Lord and his glory. So, the great question left to us, the great question that we are to steward and to ask of others is how do you stand before the
Lord now, how will you stand in the day of coming, how what is your relationship to God, are you righteous, are you righteous, are you righteous, are you righteous, are you righteous, are you righteous, are you righteous, are you righteous, are you righteous, are you righteous, are you righteous, are you righteous, are you righteous, are you righteous, are you righteous, are you righteous, are you righteous, are you righteous, are you righteous, are you righteous, are you righteous, are you righteous, are you righteous, are you righteous, are you righteous by faith in the
Lord Jesus so that you fear no condemnation because His righteousness has been credited to you by the grace of God and you can welcome the
Lord and marvel at His return or are you arrogant and unbelieving and need to fear the coming of judgment because it will be your condemnation.
This is the great question, dear Christians, that we are called to herald to our world, to share with our friends, to press on the consciences of others by the mercy of God.
And we can be absolutely assured that if God has fulfilled the promises of His first coming,
He will be faithful to fulfill the promises of His second and what we see in verse 5,
He will draw near for judgment and only those who are righteous in Christ will stand.
Many have accused over the years God of being silent in the face of evil, but nothing could be further from the truth.
God has spoken in many portions and in many ways and in these last days,
He has spoken in His Son. And in His Son, all of God's promises are yes and amen.
The Word has become flesh and tabernacled among us to bring us back to God and God has spoken in the dying and rising and ascension of His Son and saving all who trust
Him. And God now speaks to our world, patience, patience that they might repent.
But promised judgment is to come. This is not silence, it's patience with the assurance of justice.
Whether in redeeming grace or retributive judgment, God will deal with every single act of evil ever committed on His earth, every single one.
We can't even fathom what that means, but the infinite God of justice will do it.
And there is no other basis of justice. And when God speaks again, it will be as Jesus comes in justice.
The God of justice will come again. And until He does, we wait and we declare to our world, turn to Christ, be rescued, that you would stand with us who are in Jesus when
He comes and marvel at His coming and not be ushered into judgment.
Amen, let's pray. Father, we thank You for the assurance of Your unerring justice.
It gives us comfort to know even what we suffer in this world, that vengeance belongs to You.
You will bring justice to pass. And we thank You even more that the judgment we deserve has been suffered by Your Son on our behalf, that in Him we are now righteous before You.
We pray, our Father, that You would turn the hearts and minds of people in our community, in our state and nation and around the world to trust
Your Son, that they would with us glorify Your name in His return.
Father, we pray You would give us a great burden to share the great hope of Christ with others and the fact and reality that every conscience knows that there is a judge who does justly, and He will come again.
Father, we pray You would show mercy now in this age of patience, bring many to Yourself through faith in Christ, that we would together with one voice rejoice in His return.