Sermon Tone Analysis

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.