Advent Week 3

Love Amongst The Mess - Malachi 3:1-6

Theme: God’s unchanging love through the mess!

Introduction

I was helping out a family friend in his plastic weilding business, one of the jobs was at the Gold refinery. We were taken through security in an unmarked building and briefed on procedures and to keep to the paths. We had to strip down in a room when we left to ensure their was no gold dust or pieces on our socks or in our clothes. We were told the fines and punishment for any gold found on us. That is how precious gold was to them. My boss at the time contemplated using a sling shot to fire stolen gold over the fence then using a metal detector to find it afterwards. He said he was joking, but that was an elloborate plan just for a joke.

I was privelledged to watch how they used to purify the Gold. The crucible was prepped then the unrefined gold was placed into the crucible and then lowered into the fire which was at 1947.52 degrees Fahrenheit or 1064.17778 degrees celcius. then when the gold is in liquid (molten form) it is removed and placed into a mold. The dross or the impure metals are removed (as they float to the top). All under the watchful eye of the gold smith so as to ensure that it is not taken out to early or left to long. Then what is produced is a pure anf precious metal that is worth a lot.

Background:

Malachi and the people of God lived through political unrest and upheval, and faced poverty and foreign domination, but their lives was spiritually uneventful. In a holding pattern waiting for God who seemed like he had abandoned them. Their religious duties had become hum drum and their worship unenthausiastic. Apathy had set in, can you relate, are you just going through the motions of worship, if its been for too long that is an issue, is it something that needs snapping out of?

Malachi discerns the mood and attitude and puts it into words, feeding back to the people of God words of truth regarding their spiritual state, before God steps in to speak to them about his refining love that will buff the hardness out of their heart and make them beautiful and precious again.

Malachi 3:1-2 ““I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the Lord Almighty. But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap.”

Firstly, they could not escape confrontation with God, neither will no person meaning neither will we it’s inevitable. It’s his goodness that he warns everybody about this, and has a love plan to overcome this for all.

The messenger is John the Baptist, he is the one crying in the wilderness making a way (through baptising) It is not the Path that needs to be cleared, as if the trees and rocks are covering the path to God, but it is the object that needs to be cleared. People (us) are the object and what needs to be cleared is the obstacles in our heart, which has broken the covenant.

So selfism, old ways of thinking, our own religion that we have let govern ourselves (think on the 612 odd laws that the religious elite had which made it impossible to reach God). In other ways our sins need to be removed. Whilst this is good news to a people who think God has abandoned them, this is impossible on their own.

Which leads to this seemingly cruel statement. Who can ‘stand’ was a military type metaphor about who can stand or make a stand against the onslaught. The onslaught for them is the fire of God himself

Deut 4:24 “For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.”

Heb 12:29 “for our “God is a consuming fire.””

The cleansing fire of Soddom and Gomorrah

Gen 19:24 “Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the Lord out of the heavens.”

Who could also forget the strange fire that consumed Aaron’s sons when they offered wrong worship. The answer is, no one, no one can stand against this kind of fire. Destroying and purifying overlap, since purity only comes from destroying the impurities like my goldsmith experience that I shared at the start. So again who can stand?

Well it is God’s love plan as I said before, he wants to purify, he wants to wash away (destroy) the things that are stopping full relationship with him. The metaphor is not like our soap, as that didn’t exist. They used an alkali to whiten the cloth, to make it like new again. Also, the beauty of the imagery of the refiner is a passionate refiner looking into the furnace knowing and waiting for the right time when the dross has been burnt off and can see his image in the molten which was a sign that it was perfect and pure.

What an amazing picture that God is giving of himself here, a loving Father burning and buffeting us until he sees his reflection again, which makes us pure and sets us free from what was stopping us…Sin.

Malachi 3:3-4 “He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the Lord will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the Lord, as in days gone by, as in former years.”

Apathy and half hearted worship had entered into God’s people, by a partial hardened heart through a lack of faith. They didn’t trust that God would keep his promise of returning them to himself. They thought and acted as if God had abandoned them. They had waited 400 years. How about you? Have you let a lack of faith sneak in, are you not believing God’s promise of return and/or answering your prayers. They struggled after 400 years, we sometimes lose heart over 4 weeks. Keep reminding yourself of God’s promises even if you cannot see them at times, remember he also promised to return. Are you living like he is, becasue he is.

One of his promises is to grow us in his love, so that we can love him more deeply and those around us, which equals spiritual maturity that we desire. He answers it not like we want, growth without pain or discomfort. That is the worlds view!

What is true love? we see plenty of Rom Com movies to know that it is romantic, mushy and cheesey. We love each other so much we finish off each others sentences. We learn it from Hallmark cards with soppy sickly sweet language and metaphors. It is the kind of love that says ‘I love you just the way you are’ and it never challenges the other person. We then get married and see that that kind of love doesn’t last long. the sickly sweet language fades and is replaced with have you paid this bill yet. it goes from ‘I can’t believe I am married to you’ to at times ‘I can’t believe I am married to you’. If love is not rooted in something deeper than feelings alone it is set for doom. We know love is a covenant a contract, you won’t see that on a Hallmark card. Becasue life is hard and we as humans are fickle.

In the book ....... the author summazies that one cannot truly love someone else unless they love themselves first, becasue they do not know what love is. they have low self-esteem and therefore need to love who they are, becasue they are worth it. That is a problem, and a contridiction for if you do not know what true love is, how are you to love yourself. The author moves on to say that self love, love of materials, and selfish love could be narcistitic.

She does hold to the notion that community love (loving others is important and neccessary). The major problem is that if we are both the agent and object of true love and thats how we learn what love is it becomes skewed to our own experience, in this case of the author she had been abused herself. wether abuse or narccissm or what ever lens we have had through experience (taught_ would be different from case to case, showing that there would be all kinds of correct love, therefore not knowing an ultimate true love.

If this is a lens on how to love someone it is no wonder she said that it is near impossible to understand love at all. The assumption is that we have that spark of good or divine within us. The bible teaches the complete opposite, love comes from an outside source (God who is love), and it’s displayed to us who are not worthy, and who are wicked in our own right, love is not catered to our felt needs or our comfort levels, and God is not overly concerned about your self-esteem either, he would rather you are refined and grow in his true love through struggle town and not your ease. Whilst the author made some good points and some of her logic and the worlds concern about loving yourself and boosting your bruised self-esteem kind of love seems helpful it actually short changes us. Where God’s kind of love is the only way we know what true love is and isn’t.

God doesn’t say to us ‘I love you the way you are.’ He says instead I love you too much to leave you the way you are. God loves us, but doesn’t love us the way we are. He wants us to grow and get better, to grow deeper in his love and the love of others. Becuase of our sin nature and ability to slide back into the old man, God has to use pain, suffering. I was watching Navah learning to walk and watching her grow bigger over the last little while. That growth comes with pain, restless nights, suffering and some bruises. Elysia and Josh would not be good parents if they stopped her doing that becasue it is uncomfortable for her. Instead they encourage and make her walk a bit further each day, even when she grizzles about it. So to does our loving Abba Father.

Illustration

C.S. Lewis gives a marvelous picture of this refining process in the third book of the Narnian Chronicles, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The central character is “a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.” He is transported magically to the land of Narnia together with his cousins, Lucy and Edmund. There they join Prince Caspian on a journey by ship to the End of the World.

To avoid having to work, Eustace escapes inland There he finds jewels and treasure of untold value – the hoard of a deceased dragon. He puts a particularly precious bracelet on his arm, and goes to sleep, imagining all the power he will have with this wealth. When he awakes, however, something has happened: “Sleeping on a dragon’s hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself.”

It takes Aslan, the Great Lion, the Son of the Emperor over the Sea, to change him back into a boy. Here is how Eustace tells the story to Edmund:I looked up and saw the very last thing I expected: a huge lion coming slowly toward me. . . .  I was terribly afraid of it...I wasn’t afraid of it eating me, I was just afraid of it – if you can understand. Well, it came closer up to me and looked straight into my eyes.  And I shut my eyes tight.  But that wasn’t any good because it told me to follow it. . . .

He led Eustace to a well.  “The water was as clear as anything and I thought if I could get in there and bathe it would ease the pain in my leg [where the bracelet was now squeezing his transformed arm].  But the lion told me I must undress first. . . . . . . . Eustace doesn’t want to so starts to rub the scales off himself after scrubbing a long time he breifly saw the beautiful skin below it and the filthy scales to the side. But it kept coming back and he kept scrubbing and it kept coming back before he could bathe in the well. Eustace tells the story.

”Then the lion said. . . You will have to let me undress you.  I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now.  So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.

”The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart.  And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt.  The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. . . . Then he caught hold of me – I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on- and threw me into the water.  It smarted like anything but only for a moment.  After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm.  And then I saw why.  I’d turn into a boy again.” . . .

James 1:2-4 “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”

Gym work outs, I have just started working out as part of my health kick. Does anyone know what DOMS are (delayed onset muscle soreness) you feel good the next day but the day after you can harldy walk or sit down. But through that you get stronger and healthier. Trials and tribulations are good for us, wether we have brought them on ourselves or just the recipient of them.

On that we live in a Gen 3 world (what sin did this man commit for him to be blind from birth, Jesus replies nothing part of the suffering of this world). You see we live in the mess, and it comes upon us even if we have done nothing wrong. This understanding found in the bible should absolutely shatter that ridiculous hyper-pentecostal teaching of “Your Best Life Now” or “If you had more faith you wouldn’t be suffering” I saw someone who had clinical depression be told that he had sin in his life and that is why he had depression.

But there are times that we need God’s refining love because of our sin and becasue of our idols.

Malachi 3:5-6 ““So I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, but do not fear me,” says the Lord Almighty. “I the Lord do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.”

When we commit sexual sin, worship other gods, pollute his gospel, become greedy, put people down for power, be selfish and self absorbed so that we lack empathy for others, when we lack compassion, when we turn away from the marginalized and the foreigner. When we lie, slander, cheat, break our promises to God and to others all these things bring slander to God’s name and shows that we love ourselves and the world more than God. You better believe God will deal with it, especially of we bury it so far down we cannot see it ourselves.

God will break our hand if we will not let go of our sins/idols no matter how small or big as these are the dross and impurities that we have been talking about. It’s love that is behind a verse that says, “Beware your sin will find you out” remember God loves us too much to leave us the way we are. He will do what ever is neccessary to claw off the impurites like Aslan did for Eulace, even if it hurts a lot, as to reveal the boy in us, which is the innocence that our new lives are in Christ, that is love! He is there no matter how messy our lives become.

So wether we feel abandoned by God, or wether we have gone through struggles just becasue we live in a Genesis 3 world, or becasue we have deep seated sin. God will take us through the desert becasue he loves us, not becasue he wants to punish us. That punishment was taken upon the cross. God will take us through the desert to draw us into intimacy with him, to get rid of all the distractions.Just as God takes his people into the wilderness in Hosea where he states “There you will nt call me master, but husband.”

So summarizing verse 6 for us, He rebukes us but not destroys us, He is not looking to punish, but to refine. When we lose sight of what he is doing or cannot figure out why we are going through the struggles we are in an already messy world, trust his heart towards you, trust the true love that is Him. This quote from Spurgeon is a great quote to remind us of this passage.

God is too good to be unkind. He is too wise to be confused. If I cannot trace his hand, I can always trust his heart. C.H. Spurgeon

In closing God works in the mess and his love is unchanging towards us and he will use struggles, trials, the good and the bad to shape us, mature us and make us pure. I mentioned before that destroying and purifying overlap becasue the impurities must be destroyed so the purifying can take place. So why do we not fully get destroyed like Sodom and Gomarrah, or like Aarons Sons when they offered strange worship? It is becasue of Christ, he took the destroying agent (God’s wrath) so that we could become purified. If you haven’t worked it out, our impurities were and are our sins, past, present and future. So we are not destoryed becasue of Christ. God is in your struggles and he is in your mess becasue he loves you!