Malachi 2:17-3:5 Getting What You Ask For

to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsack preaches from his series,

Dead Religion, taking us through the book of Malachi. Let's listen in. Welcome to Recast Church.

I'm Don Filsack. I'm the lead pastor here, and I just want to welcome you. I'm glad that you're here, and I hope you are, too.

So we'll see. I've had a lot of people ask me over the years what the name

Recast means. Have any of you ever had somebody ask you what the name Recast means? What in the world does the name of your church mean?

I actually think sometimes it's helpful to have an obscure name that requires a little bit of explanation, and it gives me an opportunity to share our core values because, of course, our name is an acronym for our core values, and I like to go over those once in a while, and I recognize many of you have been here for a while.

You've heard these before. Hopefully, you could say them, but I'm not sure if you could, and so I'm going to go over those again just really quick to remind you that the

R and the E in Recast stands for replication. It is the notion and the idea that we want to see the kingdom of God expanding through us into relationships with other people.

We also want to see other churches planted, and we've kept our eyes open and are constantly praying that God would lead us to the people to plant another church in another community, and so we keep our eyes open for that as well.

The C in Recast stands for community. Although we want to grow together in community here, and that's one of the things that we value greatly, this regarding our core values is more about the community where God has planted us.

We would love it if Matawan was disappointed if Recast left, that they would feel an impact from our departure in this community.

If we up and moved to California or the church just folded or something like that, that they'd be disappointed that we weren't here, and so that your neighbors would be disappointed to see you move, that your co -workers would be disappointed to see you go, that you would be blessing and an encouragement and a life -giving individual to people around you, and we'd be a life -giving church.

The A is for authenticity. We're a church that values authenticity. We want to be a place where you don't have to put on a mask when you gather together, and I recognize that there are places and there are times in our lives where we prefer to wear a mask, right, where we like to put on a cover and act like everything is going great and everything's going rosy, but we actually want to be a place where we can authentically mourn with those who are mourning and celebrate with those who are celebrating, and that we can work through that real life together, and that is the

A. The S is for simplicity. We intentionally keep our programming to a minimum. Those of you who have been around for a while probably already have identified that, but we keep our programming to a minimum so that you have some time to develop relationships out in the community.

You have time to invest in your neighbors. You have time to have people from your workplace over for dinner or during the week and different things.

It's not primarily simple programming so that you can pick up more TV shows or something like that, and it's up to you what you do with your time, but at the same time, we minimize the programming intentionally and streamline that so that you have more time to invest in others, and then the

T, of course, is truth, which is the one that comes at the end, but ties it all together, and that's why we turn our attention to God's Word every time we gather together.

We open up the Bible. We read it together. We study that together because we believe that the scriptures are the truth that gives us the power for our lives, that gives us the knowledge of God so that we can go out and live in a way that honors

Him and worships Him with everything that we do, so that ties in kind of what our name is, and that's why we're going to turn to the

Bible now. We're going to look into Malachi, dive back into that book, and I want to remind us all that this is

God's Word. Malachi is the very Word of God. There are many mixed feelings about the books of the Old Testament depending on where you come from and how you were raised and what you know.

Some of you were raised in a church that had a Sunday school program like our Recast Kids where the kids are learning and stuff, and so you knew some of the

Old Testament stories, and maybe some that's the extent of your knowledge of the

Old Testament. Some of you have read the Old Testament yourselves, and so you've dug in and you've read some of it for yourself, and then you've been confused by portions of it.

I would suggest to you that maybe the most confusing portion of scripture to many, aside from the book of Revelation, is the

Old Testament prophets, prophets like Malachi that we're going through right now. The reality is the prophets are very direct in the way that they speak to us, and ultimately the way that God is speaking to us through them.

He seems to be quite harsh. Have you identified that? Have you noticed that? As you read through the prophets, there's some harsh direct speech that we find there, and that is because the prophets were individuals who were sent to God's people during the time of significant rebellion against His covenant.

God had made an agreement with His people, and the people said that they would keep up their end of the bargain, and they didn't.

And so in that not keeping up that end, God sent prophets to them to continue to call them back to His ways, even threatening judgment if they didn't, and that's something that we don't necessarily love in our culture.

But I want to state directly that we are not to entertain the common misconception that our culture espouses that God played one role in the

Old Testament and a different role in the New Testament. Now, some of us might have that as kind of a backdrop to maybe the way that we've tried to reconcile

Old Testament and New Testament theology, and some of us kind of thought, oh, He plays bad cop, good cop, just to put it in the most direct terms possible.

Bad cop, good cop. But God is God. The God of Malachi was the

God of Peter, and the God of Mary, and the God of all of the disciples, and the

God of Paul. We meet our Father in our text this morning.

He is our Father. He will not look like the God that is revealed in the book, in the movie

The Shack, but He is good. He is kind.

He is gracious. But He reveals Himself in our text this morning as a refining fire.

And in other passages of the prophets, He reveals Himself as a consuming fire.

He is, in our text, a swift witness against evil.

He is the one before whom none can stand. And He will prove

Himself through this text and in history to be the

God of justice. So, I'm going to ask the band to come up as we open our

Bibles to Malachi. As you're kind of shuffling through the pages there, trying to get there or navigating on your app, it's going to be

Malachi 2 .17. On the front of your worship folder there, the reference might be a little bit confusing, but occasionally

I think that the people who divided the chapters out, actually the one guy who divided the chapters out in the

Middle Ages, occasionally slipped a verse here or there the wrong direction. And so, verse 17, you're going to see it clearly,

I hope you see it as clearly as the guys who actually wrote out the little headings for your Bible there, that it's 17 goes with chapter 3, verses 1 through 5.

So, I'm going to read that as a chunk this morning and please follow along. If you need a Bible, could you do me a favor and just raise your hand?

If you don't have a Bible or a means to navigate to a Bible, I've got someone over here. Thank you, Mike, for doing that.

And if anybody else needs a Bible while I'm reading, you can raise your hand, but it's going to be Malachi 2 .17.

Recast, this is God's word to us. This is what He desires for us to hear about Him today.

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, 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 fuller's 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, as in the days of old and as in former years.

Then I will draw near to you for judgment. I will be a swift witness against the sorcerer, 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. Let's pray.

Father, I want to thank you for the opportunity that we have to gather together in your name.

I recognize that there's all different kinds of things that have been going on for each one of us. We're each an individual.

We're a unique person who is occupying some space here in this gathering.

And Father, there's a lot of distractions. There's a lot of things that have gone on this week. There's a lot of things that have been good, a lot of things that are negative.

There's, for some, food in the crockpot. There's different stuff going on at home. There's things going on at work.

Father, I pray that you would help all of that to fade away in the goal of this next hour to really take in you and to observe who you are, how you've revealed yourself from your word, how you have saved us, how you have reconciled us and redeemed us.

And Father, that we would be able to sing with voices rejoicing because you are so great and glorious and awesome and powerful and mighty.

And if we were to stand before you in our sin, none could stand. All would be completely undone in your presence because of your holiness.

But there's hope. And there's hope because you have loved us enough to send your Son to reconcile us, little, small, insignificant us, with you, the

God of the universe. So Father, I pray that that would be the fuel for our passion and worship this morning.

Father, that we'd sing out rejoicing and glad because we have hope where before we would surely have been consumed.

Father, accept our worship this morning. Accept these songs as more than just a practice of our vocal cords, more than just a practice of reading the words on the screen, but because we are the redeemed and we love you.

In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. You can go ahead and be seated.

I would encourage you to keep your Bibles open or reopen your Bibles to Malachi chapter 2, the last verse, and then the first five of chapter 3.

So you have your Bibles open there and you can see that the things that I'm saying are coming from the text, maybe even more so in the prophet

Malachi is some of the things that he says here are pretty direct. I want you to see that that's coming from God's word and not just certainly not just from me.

And then remember if any time during the message if you need to get more coffee or juice or donuts, you can go ahead and take advantage of that.

Don't be shy to get up. And if again, if the chair that you're sitting in gets uncomfortable, you can get up and stretch out in the back and it won't distract me.

I don't know if you've noticed this, if you believe this or not, it's a pretty firm conviction from God's word that God does not get weary in the same way that you and I get weary.

You see the designation in the text that you weary me with your words, but I want to be clear at the outset of this message that God does not run out of fuel, okay?

He doesn't get hangry at the end of a busy day. He never runs out of batteries.

He never needs sleep. And despite what some of you men in the room might think, he can do more pull -ups than you.

You get tired before he gave up. There's something about the human concept, however, of weariness that can be applied to a specific type of verbal interaction and relationship with the

Almighty. Through the prophet Malachi, God communicates to his people that they exhaust him when they say certain things.

They tire him out with certain things that they say. Now, taken for granted in that is the notion that he's listening to you, he's hearing you.

That can be intimidating, right? Anybody moderately intimidated if you were to go through the last week of everything you thought or spoke and he was there listening to that.

That's an intimidating thought, but that's not the strict point. But he is listening, and there is a line of speech, a line of thinking, a line of verbalizing that wearies him.

Now, I want to be clear that at the outset that God is not exhausted by your repeated prayers for the salvation of a wayward son or daughter, your repeated prayers for him to bless your family or to preserve your life or to, you know, the repeated prayers are actually encouraged in scripture.

So, it's not that he gets exhausted by the quantity of your prayers. He's not wearied when you ask for the fifth time today that God would give you patience with your co -worker.

He's not even wearied by your cries of anguish and suffering during tragedy. It's not like, come on, you know, buck up and toughen up.

I mean, my son went to the cross for you, you know, get over yourself and move along, you know, come on.

He doesn't get wearied by our cries out of anguish. You can look at the Psalms as an example and as a model of someone,

David, often crying out to God, how long will you hide your face from us, O Lord? How long will you hide your face?

And things like that that he cried out in his moments of suffering and difficulty. And that's not the kind of thing that's wearying to God.

God is strong to handle your complaints and cries for him to show up in the midst of your tragedy.

So, what is it that wearies God? We see it here in the text and it's quite, I would suggest to you, a specific and narrow line of reasoning, a narrow line of thinking that we can find ourselves falling into if we're not careful.

What I would suggest to you is that it wearies God and I don't think it's a stretch to say it kind of ticks him off.

This very specific, unique type of monologue that we could have, a way of discussing things with him.

This is a monologue that reasons simply this, God, I think you seem to be okay with sin.

I'm beginning to grow in the notion, grow toward the thought that you are okay with sin.

And God says, cut it out. Don't suggest that for a second.

Don't let that thought. Of all the thoughts that you could think about me, God says, don't let that one cross your mind.

That is, you couldn't get further from the truth and he's gonna, he's gonna come down hard on this notion that he's okay with sin.

What type of speech draws God to the end of his patience? Saying that everyone, specifically in the text, this is a quote, everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the

Lord. To cut to the chase, the main hard attitude that leads a person to say a statement like this is distrust in the goodness and justice of God.

I'm beginning to wonder, God, are you good? Are you really a

God of justice? There are many things that could lead someone to a conclusion like this.

There's a lot of, a lot of ways of thinking. There's a whole host of roads that would lead to this idea.

Maybe a young man grows up in the inner city and is grazed going to church with grandma, but it doesn't take him too long to figure out that the guys with the nice cars are the guys doing bad things.

It isn't the church guys with all the bling. It's the pimps and dealers with sweet rides, right? And he comes to the conclusion that if there's a

God of justice, the wicked wouldn't prosper so. And so instead of the long -term judgment, instead of seeing the long -term judgment that is coming for those who die in their wickedness, he decides that God must be okay, and he launches his new career.

Or a man and his brother go separate ways in their youth, and one marries and raises a family, scraping to get by, and he takes his family to church and gives from his humble means to the ministry of God and seeks to raise his children in godliness.

But day in and day out, he just can't seem to get ahead. His brother turns away from God, but becomes a wealthy investment banker with a trophy wife, early retirement, so that he can golf and travel the world.

And in his weaker moments, the younger brother thinks that God is not truly just.

He has done what is right, but he feels no further ahead. God wears justice in this.

You might have a specific story you could tell that tempts you toward this notion,

God, this doesn't seem so just, this doesn't seem so right. The reasonable impression that verse 17 should leave us with is that we are too often impatient and demanding for justice in our timing.

That's a big issue, isn't it? That's kind of what it comes down to, as if to say, God, you must not be just because you haven't been just in the scenario, in the situation that I'm looking at, in my timing, in the

I expect justice now, and where is it, God? Come on, come on, I'm tapping the clock here.

When are you going to show your justice? You must not be just, or else you would do it this way.

We want God to judge, and we want him to judge evil now. How many of you, just being honest, this is a moment of of introspection and reflection, but how many of you would say that at some point in your heart you've been there?

So I'm raising my hand to show you that I have. There have been times where I've been like, why does the one who's never been married have a lot of babies, and the family who loves

God can't conceive? You ever wondered that? Has that been a struggle?

I mean, some of you, it's a personal struggle, and you look at it, and you go, how? God, this does not seem humanly just.

It doesn't seem fair, but the question, where is the

God of justice, when coupled with the conviction that God is all good and okay with the wicked, is an abomination that wearies the

Lord. I use the word abomination as a strong but biblical word, because Proverbs 17 verse 15 says this, he who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the

Lord. He who justifies the wicked, that's a way of saying he who declares good, he who says it's okay, that the wicked are okay, is an abomination to the

Lord. The one who makes evil out to be good is an abomination.

God knows truly, fully, and honestly who is wicked, and there will be justice.

But the rest of this text sets out to answer what I think is asked kind of as a rhetorical question, and God takes it seriously.

Where is the God of justice? I think that that question is often on people's lips in a rhetorical way.

It's not like they're really looking for his location, they're really looking for his geography, but he sets out to answer the question nonetheless.

We may ask questions of God, but I would suggest to you that you only ask questions of God that you really want to hear the answer to.

Only ask questions that you really want him to follow through on, because we might find that we get more than we bargained for.

We call down the justice of God on those people. Watch out.

So in verse 1, he begins to, he begins his answer, he begins his answer. Where is the God of justice?

The rest of the text, verses 1 through 5, is going to be an answer to the question posed in 17.

Where is the God of justice? He begins his answer with one big word, behold, and this is the biblical equivalent of a neon flashing sign.

God wants to get your attention, and he says, check this out. You want to know the answer? Here it comes.

I am sending a messenger who will prepare the way before me, says the Lord Almighty. I believe that this is a reference to John the

Baptist, because Jesus did too. Jesus actually quoted this very passage in Matthew chapter 11, verse 10, when speaking of John the

Baptist, saying he was the one prophesied of in Malachi who would make straight the path for me.

He quoted that passage and applied it to John the Baptist. So we see in verse 1 a prediction of the coming of the

Holy One. He's on his way. Behold, I'm sending a messenger who's going to make smooth the pathway for him, who's going to prepare hearts to receive him.

And God says one will come to prepare the way before him, and then he, God, will suddenly come to his temple.

I believe that God is really being somewhat sarcastic in verse 1 when he calls himself the Lord whom you seek.

Like, you really want to find me? You really want me to show up? You really want me to be in your midst?

It's like God says, you know the God of justice that you are so desperate to see. He will be seen in the temple.

And Jesus' ministry in the temple fulfilled this prediction. Twelve years old, teaching in the temple, blowing the minds of the most learned scholars there in the temple, and then cleansing the temple, and doing ministry in and out of the temple precincts time and time again.

Further, he says that the one who comes, the one I'm sending, will be a messenger of the covenant.

When Jesus came the first time, he was the mediator of a new covenant that was unknown in Malachi's day.

Malachi's time, they didn't understand this new covenant that God was going to be bringing in. All they had was the

Old Testament, the old covenant, the covenant given to them as a people of Israel, a national distinction, and all of that that was involved in the giving of the law in the

Old Testament. But the prophet predicted a messenger, a messiah, who would come and bring a new covenant.

And this new covenant would be a covenant of cleansing, a covenant of the gift of new hearts, a covenant of hope and future blessing for all of God's people, but also a covenant of final judgment toward all who would reject

God's holy one, his chosen one, his messiah. Again, I think the phrase, in whom you delight, in verse one is a bit cheeky and a bit sarcastic.

The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming. Did they really delight in him?

The indications throughout the book of Malachi so far is that there wasn't a whole lot of delight in him. It seems as though God is making a point here that they should, but any delight that they had in the coming of the messiah apparently was a misplaced and ironic hope because of the way that they viewed his arrival.

By their question in verse 17, they demonstrate just how little they understood of the ministry of the coming messiah.

They are looking for God to come and mop up those wicked people out there.

Those wicked people over there. God, could you come and judge them? I see them doing wickedness every day.

Could you come and take care of that mess, that stench that I smell from over the fence? Could you come and resolve that for me?

Their cries out to God amounted to, how can you be so patient with those wicked sinners?

Those wicked sinners. When are you going to show up and fix that wicked mess over there?

And that mess only ever meant in their minds other people.

Others. So God says, you want the God of justice? You seek him and really want to see him because you delight in him?

Well, good news. Behold, he is coming.

He's on his way. When religious people filled with dead religion and self -righteous thoughts hear that God is coming over, they can only assume that he's coming to commend them.

That's what self -righteous hearts think, right? Oh, he's coming over? Yeah, I'll bake him a cake.

We'll hang out. I imagine that they may have thought, maybe we can just hang out in a shack with him for the week and he can finally answer all of my questions regarding his injustice.

Maybe finally he'll hang out with me and I can get the answers I deserve, and I can ask him all the questions, and he will be the one who answers to me.

He'll answer to me. Tell me he will finally defend himself before me.

Maybe we can have a picnic by the lake. He'll tell me all the ways he's grateful for my sacrifice and service, all the ways that I've done good for him.

Maybe he'll finally clean up the neighborhood of the riffraff and get this place sparkling and shining, just like me.

God now describes his arrival in the rest of the text, and it doesn't sound like it's going to be quite the picnic for the self -righteous.

Who can endure the day of his coming?

Who will keep their feet when he arrives? Who will stand in the presence of the mighty one?

Who will stand before his holiness, his majesty? Who will keep their feet?

Precast, don't hear my voice this morning. Hear the word of God and tremble at his warning.

We are commanded to work out our salvation with what? Fear and trembling.

And I'm afraid we've lost most of that verse. We don't work as much. The fear and the trembling is kind of a little passé.

Isn't that old school preaching? Isn't that like, isn't that really a little bit too stodgy for 2017 to talk about fear and trembling in the church, really?

It's all grace and celebration, isn't it? Fear and trembling.

He is on his way for purging, for cleansing, for refining, and for final judgment.

The great, awesome, glorious, terrible day of the Lord is on the way, and nobody encounters the

Almighty without reverence and awe. All will be astonished, regardless of whether you believed he existed or not.

You will stand before him in awe and wonder. You will fall on your face before him in awe and wonder.

All will bow as a byproduct of his holiness and awesome glory. I want to point out a technicality.

It's a little bit routine for the prophets. It happened a lot of times in Old Testament times when they were looking forward to the

Messiah's arrival. And from the vantage point of Malachi, over 2 ,400 years ago, he predicted both the first coming of Jesus and the second coming of Jesus.

We see him predict the first coming of Jesus in verse 1 and the second coming in verse 2.

He predicted that Jesus would come, and that would just be 400 years later from when he originally wrote.

But verse 2 points to a second coming in judgment and in purging, and I find it doubtful that Malachi understood that he was predicting two different advents of the

Lord, and yet what we see now from our vantage point 2 ,400 years later is that many years occur between the first coming that's predicted in verse 1 and the second coming in verse 2.

But when he comes the second time, he will be like a blazing hot fire, and he will also be like the much less intimidating bar of soap.

But our God is a refiner and a purifier, and he will refine his priests like gold and silver.

The process, by the way, of refining requires intense heat to melt the metal, the gold, the silver, and remove the impurities that float on the surface of the molten metal.

That's the purifying process. To get it more and more pure, it would have to be heated and skimmed and reheated and skimmed and reheated and skimmed, moving closer and closer towards purification.

It's an intense process that requires an intense amount of heat, and requires a lot of effort to get the fire hot enough to melt the metal.

But our God is a consuming fire. He identifies himself in this metaphor as the refiner's fire, as the refiner himself, and as the purifier who will refine the priests.

And who is a priest in our new covenant? We established that a few weeks ago. Who are the priests?

All of those who are called by the name of Jesus Christ are now brought into a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.

So let's establish one more point about this great day of the arrival of the judge when he says, uh, you want to know where the

God of justice is? I'm on my way and I'm coming. I want to establish this this firmly in your mind.

Make sure this is lodged there before we go on and we think too much about the fear and the trembling. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Anybody glad for that? No condemnation for those who are in Christ.

You know, with that hopefully clearly lodged in your mind, it is important for us to remember that there is indeed a judgment for those who are in Christ.

Every idle word will be accounted for. All will be judged according to what they did and didn't do.

Not for condemnation, but there will be judgment. And the only hope for anyone is that God would be your refiner and your fuller.

Fuller is a is an old word that we don't use anymore. It's launderer, um, cleaner of clothes.

That he would, that God would be removing the impurity from our lives is really ultimately our only hope.

That he would be laundering us and applying the cleansing agents to our lives. And that cleansing agent here in our text is called the fuller soap, but it is more clearly revealed to us in the

New Testament as the very blood of Christ that cleanses us. It's an image of the fuller soap turns into an image of the blood of Jesus.

You see, the people of Malachi's day looked around them and had a good idea of what judgment would look like for everyone, but they were blinded to what the arrival of God would look like for them.

And they would be blindsided if he showed up. And God says in your arrogance, you have misunderstood my holiness.

You have misunderstood what it means for me to draw near to sinful humanity. You have bought into this shack theology that says you will just hang out with me and I will set your mind at ease.

But no, you will fall on your faces if I show up, says the Lord Almighty. Your mind will be blown when you meet me and I will need to purify you for you to even survive in my presence.

You will not endure on your own in the presence of the Almighty. And my fear for all of us this morning, in the season of what

I would say is significant false teaching going on in the church and around us, is that you will fundamentally be moved away from awe and wonder of the

Almighty. You will instead be moved into a low -level theology of humanism that is espoused by our culture and is running and beginning to have its way in evangelical churches today.

We live in a day and an age where we start with the human need, with what we want and what we perceive to be our needs, and then we extrapolate outwards to define

God. Well, God must be like the one who meets my needs instead of starting with God as he has self -disclosed himself in the word and see how he defines himself and let this be our starting point.

You see the difference? Pop culture theology is always beginning with man, with humanity, beginning with us and then going, well,

God must be like. It's very popular in our culture today. You see, we live in a society where God is cool as long as he doesn't get too judgmental, as long as he doesn't get too powerful, and as long as we don't take him too seriously.

Some of you identify that those might be the very things that would cause issue in your workplace were you to address them in that way, were you to say, were you to vocally speak out about how powerful

God is, were you to vocally speak out about his judgment, were you to speak out clearly about who he has revealed himself to be in this word if you were to take him too seriously.

But all through Malachi, God is saying, you better take me seriously because I'm pretty serious.

I have a gracious, refining, cleansing for any who would have me, says the Almighty, but I have swift and severe judgment for any who stand in opposition.

Look at the final verse, final verse 5 here. God will be a swift witness against evil on the day when he draws near to humanity for judgment.

Where is the God of justice? On his way. He's on his way.

Is he just? Does he love evil? By no means.

Not even close. We will all behold with our eyes his swift and terrible judgment of sin.

Those who remain in sin in the spiritual realm, like the word used in the text is sorcery, seeking power over others through the worship of powers that are not

God, that's what the word sorcery means in this text, they will be swiftly judged.

Those who remain in sexual sins like adultery without repentance and refining will be swiftly judged.

Those who swear falsely using falsehood to their advantage without being cleansed will be swiftly judged.

Those who oppress the defenseless without repentance will be swiftly judged.

Those who reject others because of their racial or ethnic heritage without cleansing and refining fire will be swiftly judged.

And as a summary, those who have not lived a life of reasonable fear and reverence for the

Almighty, those who have not run to him for refining and cleansing will be swiftly judged, says the

Lord of hosts. I don't know if you've found yourself in that list yet.

It's meant to catch you. You're in there. You're in there.

Everyone in this room has done something while ignoring the fear and reverence that is due to their Creator. Every one of us, we're in the same boat together.

Every sin we have ever committed is a move of forgetfulness at best and rebellion at worst.

And I think we know we've done both. We've sinned out of forgetfulness, and we've sinned out of outright rebellion, thumbing our nose at our

Creator and saying, I think you have it wrong here, God. I'm going to do this my way. And so our only hope is that we would submit to the refining and cleansing that God offers to us freely.

I believe that the refining and cleansing begins the moment a person puts their faith and trust in Jesus Christ. It is

God refining our purposes from the inside out. It is God forgiving us and giving us a new foundation of love and grace.

And then that love and grace is a launching place, a place from which a platform to launch out in the worship of Him with righteous offerings that will be pleasing to Him, as the text tells us.

Without the saving work of Christ, who is the messenger of the covenant, we have no hope of pleasing

Him. But what remains for those who would refuse to come to Him on His terms is only the dreaded fear of judgment that keeps driving us back to dead religion time and time and time again.

Why does it drive us back to dead religion? Because dead religion is a religion that looks around the room and goes,

I think I'm better than most of these people. I think I got this because I'm better than 50 percent of the people that I've met.

Matter of fact, I bet I'm better than 75 percent and God's got to take at least half of us, right?

I mean, at least half of us are going to heaven because that's just, I mean, how does the mind work like this though? Isn't that, isn't that in our darkest moments, isn't that the the depth of human religion?

Isn't that where it really goes? Yeah, if he grades on a curve,

I guess I'm doing okay. No, there's nothing in here about curves.

There is a whole lot in here, not grading against each other, but there's a whole lot about refining, refining and cleansing that you need.

Who does the refining? Who does the cleansing? You. You're the problem.

How are you going to, how are you going to clean yourself when when you're the one who is dirty? You're the mess, right?

God is the one that is offering a cleansing to you, to all of us. Praise be to God for the blood of his son that cleanses us from all unrighteousness.

And we have a hope that we will offer pure worship and sacrifice to God when we have been finally purified on that great day.

I have a few quick applications as we wrap up this text this morning. The first is a quite simple,

I like to draw in applications that are both kind of trying to do something, but I think the most fundamental application of all when we encounter

God's word is it is always every single time calling us to believe something. Any time that you read, your quiet time, you're reading a verse, you're reading through a devotional, ask yourself what is this asking?

What is God's word asking me to believe about reality? Should be question number one, even before you ask the question, what am

I supposed to do? We like to jump to the do, but God wants to transform us by the renewing of our minds.

He wants to transform this so that what comes out of this and what these do and what these do all are moving based on truth.

So number one, believe that he is a God of judgment. Believe that he is a

God of judgment. Now, I think that for some of us where we were raised, it's like, whoa, you're kind of preaching like I heard when

I was a kid or whatever, you know. It's like, how many of you grew up in a church that was pretty heavy on the judgment of God? I did.

Any of you? Handful of us? And some of us don't want to admit it. I'm just kind of like,

I don't want you to know where I'm coming from. Our culture, by the way, right now will not tell you this.

The shack outright declares that this is not true. It says that this is false.

God doesn't judge sin. It says that in the text of the book. And then the guy who wrote the book actually came out with a new book called

Lies That Christians Believe, and one of those lies is that God will judge sin. He says, that's a lie that you believe.

That's a lie that Don believes that God will judge sin. So, you're not going to get that from the culture around us.

The culture is going to drive you away from a God of judgment toward a God who just agrees with every decision that you make and is there as your cheerleader and your support.

He's there to support you. Christ came to appease the wrath of the

Father. Stated directly, God hates it when you and I sin.

He hates it. And it wearies him to suggest otherwise. It wearies him to suggest that because he's patient that he loves sin.

You imagine a kid who has just lied to his parents or has just stolen money from his mom's purse going, you must love sin because you're not punishing me right now.

Wow, that's pretty brash. That's looking for some trouble, right? And that's kind of like what our culture is doing.

Challenging him to judge us. Challenging. I dare you to come down here and fix this. I dare you to come down here and make it right.

And he's like, I'm going to. God is utterly holy.

He's utterly powerful. He's not a buddy we will hang out with. He's completely just in his judgment of sinful humanity.

And that leads me to my second application. Thank God for his great patience.

Thank him for his patience. Don't challenge his justice. Thank him for his patience.

I for one am glad that he didn't show up to wrap all of this up before I got saved.

Anybody with me on that? You're glad that he let you be included in his number. I am.

The religious people in Malachi's day were calling for God to come and judge sinners, thinking all along that they weren't sinners.

But God had a little surprise for them. None will stand on that day of his arrival.

And for those who will fall before him without cleansing from that rebellious list shown in verse 5, which is just a sampling of sins, it will be a terrible day of judgment.

So run to him while his patience endures. Run to him even today for salvation.

The day of judgment will come suddenly. So flee to his mercy. Flee to him for cleansing and refining while his patience lasts.

Thank God that his patience has extended even to this very day.

Third, remember that he is a God of refining and cleansing. He's not just a

God of judgment, he's a God who willingly extends refining. He willingly extends cleansing.

And we all need that. Anyone who would come to him the way that he has provided for cleansing will be cleansed, will be clean.

He is eager to forgive sinners who acknowledge him as king and submit to the forgiveness he has provided for them through the cross of Jesus Christ.

But for those who are already believers, many of us in the room, our refining and cleansing should be a consistent drive in our hearts because this very important word, humility, should drive us all to humility.

None of us would endure that great day of the Lord's arrival without a cleansing that he has provided.

Live your life before God and others this week in joy, in humility, in radical gratitude and thankfulness.

If he has cleansed you and is refining you, if you are in Christ and his spirit is in you, rejoice, but remain humble.

As we come to communion, consider this verse on the screen. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sin.

What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can make me whole within?

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Not a single thing but the blood of Jesus.

If you believe this, then be welcome to come to one of the tables and take the cracker to remember his body that was broken in your place.

Take the cup to remember his blood that was shed for your cleansing.

Our God is a consuming fire to those who remain in their wickedness, but he is a shelter and fortress to those who humble themselves enough to run to him for mercy.

Let's pray. Father, this is a heavy text.

It's serious. And I recognize that I have enough sin to bury me, to put me under.

I have no grounds in myself to stand before you. And Father, I even confess to not thinking of you as holy and as awesome and as mighty and as powerful and as majestic as you are.

My mind can't take it all in. I've studied your word. I've worked through it. I've sought to be a diligent student.

I've thought less of you than you are. So Father, I pray that you would draw near to each one of us in a way that is convicting to those who need conviction, that is encouraging to those who need encouragement, that is merciful to those who need mercy and are seeking it.

But Father, I pray that you would rattle cages. I pray that you would rattle people who are complacent about you.

I pray that you would rattle us and set within us a fear of false doctrine that would see you as less than who you are.

Father, I pray that you would move through us and amongst us and communicating out to the world around us your awe, your wonder, reverence for your name, and salvation that is available, cleansing and refining that is available through the blood of your

Son. And as we celebrate, we come to these tables and we celebrate the victory that Christ has won on our behalf, that your wrath was appeased by your

Son. I pray that that would produce joy within us, knowing what our destination was and what it is now because of you, that we would rejoice.

And Father, if there's anybody in this room that doesn't have that that joy, but instead is left with the fear and trembling of,

I just don't know how it'll go on that day. Father, give them boldness to come and speak with me or somebody in the band or Father, just to really seek out wisdom from your

Word to know who you are and come to saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. Thank you for his sacrifice for us, in Jesus' name, amen.