Malachi 3:1-4
“His Promise to Refine You”
December 9, 2012 - Second Sunday in Advent

         I got a frantic call from my wife Friday. She finally tracked me down doing my workout and told me some guys had shown up at the house and wanted to climb on our roof and clean it off. This is an annual service we have done, but I had forgotten to tell Beth I had set it up earlier in the week. And their boss told me they were coming next week and would call before they showed up. But they just suddenly appeared and Beth wasn’t ready for it.

         That’s how Malachi predicted the appearing of the Lord would be in our text this morning. As the prophets so often do, he telescopes events that are spread out more in time. There would be a call ahead, the promise of a messenger, followed by the sudden arrival of the Lord in His temple.

         Looking four hundred years ahead, Malachi foresaw the arrival of the messenger we call “John the Baptist.” We read about his ministry of preparation in Luke 3. Our Scripture song his father Zechariah’s song at John’s birth, with those words in Luke 1:76, “But you my child shall be called the prophet of the Most High, for you will go before him to prepare his way, to give his people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins.”

         At the end of the next chapter of Malachi, at the very end of the Old Testament, the prophet connected the coming messenger with the prophet Elijah. As Jesus Himself acknowledged, John came in the spirit of Elijah, bringing his call for repentance and preaching with fiery fervor.

         When Malachi wrote these words four hundred years before Christ, the people were not ready. We weren’t prepared to have our roof cleaned Friday afternoon. The Jewish people of 420 B.C. were not ready to have their souls cleaned. Malachi points out that their priests who offered sacrifices were giving God the leftovers. They were sacrificing animals that are blind or sick or lame. Men were divorcing the “wives of their youth,” in order to marry trophy wives. Justice was being perverted and the tithe, that tenth of their income which belonged to God, was being held back and not given. They were definitely not ready for the Lord to show up and clean house.

         When Jesus finally did come to His people, God sent that promised warning and preparation in John the Baptist, but Jesus still showed up suddenly. People weren’t much more ready for Him than they were 400 years before. But some of them did get ready through John’s preaching, repenting of their sins, being baptized and accepting the Lord’s forgiveness. A few of them understood that it was time to get cleaned up.

         As you and I think about preparing for Christmas this year, getting ready to celebrate that first coming of Jesus, are we prepared like those few were, to have some cleaning done, some cleaning of our souls?

         And especially as we remember that this season of Advent also looks ahead to the second coming of Jesus Christ, are we prepared for that, prepared for the final judgment that our Lord will bring, cleansing our souls for eternity?

         Just take our Christmas preparations for a moment. A few of us had a delightful time Friday evening hanging greens and decorating our tree, putting out the beautiful poinsettias while listening to Christmas music and enjoying the beauty of the season. The infant Savior born at Christmas is such a delight.

         What we may forget is Malachi’s warning in the rest of verse 1 that the “messenger of the covenant in whom you delight” is coming. That messenger is not John the Baptist anymore. That’s the Lord Himself, the maker and keeper of the divine Covenant, the divine promise God made to His people. And that Covenant is a promise of both good news and bad news. For those who are doing what’s right and good, there is blessing, but for those who are not keeping the Covenant there is judgment.

         Malachi warned people in his time and he warns us that the sudden arrival of the Lord is not all delight if we are not ready. So verse 2 asks the burning question, “But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?” That delightful little Baby grew into a Man who came to His temple and overturned the tables of moneychangers who gouged worshipers for their own profit. He came to His temple and predicted, as we read a couple weeks ago, that it would all be torn down.

         The image that Malachi gives us is that of fire, and not a sweet little Christmas flame in your fireplace at home to make you feel cozy on a winter evening. No, this is a “refiner’s fire,” a fire hot enough to liquefy metal so that all the impurities in it can be skimmed off to leave only the sheen of the pure element.

         I gave the children bright copper pennies this morning to help them understand what God intends for us in the coming of Jesus Christ. The prophet’s promise is that He wants to refine us, to clean us up totally, to purify us from every bit of sin and wrong that pollutes the pure metal of His image in us.

         Verse 3 talks about refining silver and gold, but I thought of copper for a couple of reasons. One is that my mother grew up in the midst of what was then the largest copper mining and refining operation in the world, in and around the town of Jerome, Arizona. Mom was raised in Cottonwood, down in the valley below the mines, but in between Cottonwood and Jerome sat Clarkdale, which was where they refined the copper.

         The other copper connection for me is that one form of copper ore is the semi-gemstone, malachite. I found it fascinating that one of the minerals being dug out of those hills around Jerome had the same name as our prophet today, even though it wasn’t directly named after him.

         In any case, at that smelter in Clarkdale and others around the area malachite and azurite and other ores were crushed and treated and heated until they melted down a copper “matte” that was about 70% copper was separated from a liquid “slag” of junk minerals that were bled off and discarded. I’ve ridden or driven by the huge slag piles that they left hundreds of times. They looks like a low dirty black ridge surrounding where the smelters used to be.

         Malachi and John the Baptist are telling us that Christ came to melt the slag out of our lives, out of our hearts, out of our souls. Malachi did not write for spiritually healthy people, prepared in every way to meet their God. He spoke to a nation of people who, he said in chapter 2, had “wearied the Lord,” with their sins and with words which displayed their indifference to their sins. He promised that God would come and refine them, purify them.

         The second image at the end of verse 2 might seem a little friendlier, a little gentler. Instead of fire hot enough to melt metal, we read about “fullers’ soap.” God wants to wash His people, brighten them up like a load of dirty laundry. But even with this we need to remember that “soap” in Malachi’s time would have been made from lye. It was caustic, it would burn if it touched your flesh.

         No, this promise to refine us is not all that gentle. We are talking about an aspect of the coming of Jesus which ought to intimidate us, maybe ought to terrify us a bit. Have you every been intimidated by anyone, by their skill or by their power or even just by their goodness?

         Sometimes after a workout I sit down to cool off and watch others play racquetball. Occasionally I’ve sat and watched a really fine open-class player warm up. He stands in the court and hits perfect shot after perfect shot, every one a hard, fast kill to the front wall an inch or two off the floor. I look at that and I’m intimidated. I don’t even want to get on the court with him. He’d blow me away in a couple minutes.

         Somebody really, truly good, morally or spiritually, can intimidate us like that. I love to read Eugene Peterson. He’s a pastor’s pastor. He loves Scripture and he has wonderful thoughts on the spirit in which one ought to do ministry. But occasionally as I read what he says, I begin to feel, “This is just too much. I can’t be that humble, that prayerful, that devoted to my calling.” Eugene Peterson sometimes blows me off the court of ministry.

         It is not pleasant to meet a person who is everything you would like to be but are not. She might be physically fit or he may be fiscally responsible. You are not. He might spend lots of time with his kids or she may sew her own clothes. You don’t. However it is, you feel convicted and challenged by who this other person is. Jesus is the ultimate in that experience. He is loving but He is also firm. He is strong but not dominating. He is self-sacrificing but never compromising. He is compassionate without any wrong motivation. He always has the right re­sponse. He is never immoral. He is wise and He is gentle and He is always, always, always good. And you and I are not, not, not, not at all.

         What Malachi says about Jesus Christ is that His coming blows you and I off the court of life. “Who can stand when he appears?” Who can measure up? Who can possibly play the game like He can?

         We may have it all backwards. We think the fact Jesus is truly God is tremendous and terrifying. That’s true, but the fact that Jesus is also truly human is really terrifying. Here, said G. K. Chesterton, is “something more human than humanity.” When we see how truly human Jesus is, you and I have to confront how inhuman we are. His perfect humanity shows up all the flaws in our fallen and flawed humanity.

         But Christ Jesus did not come just to intimidate us. Malachi’s promise is that He came to refine us. When God took the awesome step of pouring His own being into human form, He meant for humanity itself to be changed. His advent at Bethlehem was to transform us, to make us over, to melt us down with an awful heat and mold us into His true design for life. He promised to refine us.

         What you and I need to see then in the Nativity, besides the peace and serenity and delight which surrounds it, is a fierce challenge to our complacency. Christmas is meant to change us. When we look into the manger we must not see only a sweet, harmless baby nestled there, we must also see the burning power of God which could leap like fire out of the straw and consume us.

         That’s why Jesus “is like a refiner’s fire.” His perfect humanity blazes up in our sinful darkness, and His heat can terrify. What Malachi said was repeated by John the Baptist about Jesus, “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” John told a little parable about the Messiah gathering in the wheat kernels but burning up the chaff, the straw left over, with “unquenchable fire.” All the slag in us is to be melted out.

         Christmas is more of a challenge than you thought it was. In this cheerful season of peace and love, God may be asking more than you expected. He wants to refine peace and love in your own being, to heat things up and melt off all the impurities which keep peace and love from shining more brightly in you.

         You may be thinking, “This is not what I came for. This is not the kind of Christmas I want! Let’s get back to the little baby, and joy to the world, and peace on earth, and just be a little more merry. This is no promise,” you say, “this is a threat!” I’m with you. I too like those other parts of Christ­mas better. Yet there really is a promise here in Malachi 3, not a threat, a promise.

         It’s a promise because God believes you have so much to offer. You are made in His image and there is truly gold and silver in you. Malachi looked at those corrupt priests in his day, the descendants of Levi offering their shoddy, cheap sacrifices and acting as if they were doing God a favor. He looked at them and in verse 4 said that God promised to refine them, to purify their hearts so that they would one day “present offerings to the Lord in righteousness.”

         That’s the same promise for everything you and I have to offer. In Jesus Christ God wants to refine us into a righteousness that will make whatever we offer pleasing to Him, as Malachi says in verse 4.

         Maybe you truly want to help others, but when you do a little shadow of resentment and anger at the trouble and expense of it all clouds your joy in being kind. God wants to refine you, to purify your helping spirit. Maybe you genuinely love your spouse, your family, but mixed in there is a desire, a lust that makes your eyes, your heart wander where they shouldn’t. In Christ the Lord wants to refine you, to separate out your love and make it pure and holy.

         Can you see the hope in this promise to refine you? It’s a hope that you and I will be made better than we are, be made like we want to be, be made like Jesus. No matter how impure the ore of our lives is, He can refine it. I just read that they are now taking those old slag heaps by Clarkdale in Arizona and reprocessing them to extract gold and silver. No matter how much slag, how much sin we’ve gotten mixed up in, He can forgive it and melt it out of our lives. He can melt down our hearts and souls and pour them liquid and shining into bright new molds. God’s love in Jesus refines you because you are worth refining.

         There is hope for anyone. There is hope for you. This Advent, this Christmas let your heart be melted and purified. George MacDonald said the fire of God’s love has a strange property: the closer you get to it the less it burns. At a distance from God, holding onto our sins, our secret impurities, all the stuff mixed into us, God’s love is an inferno threatening to consume us. But come close to God in Jesus Christ; draw near to Him and His fire becomes the warmth of grace. It’s like a cup of hot coffee. Spill it on yourself and you will be burned. But draw it close and sip it slowly and what burned you outside will warm you in­side.

         Can you see the comfort in the promise to refine you? Some of you are feeling the heat. Refining, smelting, requires heat and pressure. You are experiencing it. Things are hard. Your health or your work or your family—or all of them at once—have melted down and burned you deeply. “Where is it all going, why would God do this ?” is what you’re asking. There is an answer, a comfort in this promise.

         God never causes the pains and troubles that come to us. Yet God often allows us to feel the heat. He lets it happen because He can use the heat and the pressure of our trials to melt and purify and remold our souls into a shape that will please Him. He brings us close to the fire in order to make us more like Jesus. The heat you are feeling is a love that wants to draw you nearer to Himself.

         The old hymn, “How Firm a Foundation,” sings,

            When through fiery trials your pathway shall lie,
            My grace all sufficient shall be your supply;
            The flame shall not hurt you; I only design
            Your dross to consume and your gold to refine.

         Your trials do not mean you are far from God. They mean you are very near. You are near to someone who loves you and values you like precious metal. In the heat, you are feeling the warmth of His love. He loves you and wants to make you shine like silver and gold, with all the worth that He intended you to have.

         This Advent, then, draw near to Jesus. He Himself did not turn away from the refining fire. He let Himself be melted down on the Cross for you, so that His own perfect life could be poured into you to form a perfect alloy. That’s what He’s making in you, a shining blend of all the good you have to offer and the perfect grace and love He has to offer you. He’s burning, melting off everything that doesn’t belong in you so that what’s left will be pure.

         The Lord is refining you. That’s His promise. By the grace and love and fire of Jesus Christ He is creating something bright and new in you. As Zechariah’s song to his infant son ended, “In the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.” May the rising Son burn off all our darkness and leave us shining in His light.

         Amen.

         Valley Covenant Church
         Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
         Copyright © 2012 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj