True Justice - Malachi 2:17-3:5

Good morning. It is always a joy to be with you and to sing with you.

Let’s open our Bibles to Malachi.

Guest, I am glad you’re with us - If we have not met yet, my name is Stefan Wilson and I am one of the pastors here at Harvest.

If you did not bring a bible, there should be one under a seat nearby and you can meet us in Malachi - It is the last book of the Old Testament, just before Matthew.

I'm thankful for Pastor Ron's faithful, pastoral handling of Malachi 2:10-16 last week as we continue our series in Malachi.

In this series, we've seen how God confronts Israel’s false, half-hearted worship, calling for worship that is wholehearted and based on the truth of his word—not just their feelings or perceptions.

And we as a church are in this series because if we are not careful, we are in just as much danger of worshiping halfheartedly according to feelings and perceptions rather than worshiping with all that we are according to all that God has said, and so these words for us are just as relevant and appropriate today as they were to the people of Israel in Malachi's day.

Now before we begin, I want you to think about the effect of starting just slightly off target and, down the road, what then that means for where you end up.

Back in college, I was part of a training exercise where we had to use a compass to navigate through the wilderness. We were supposed to reach a certain objective about ten miles out, and there was a pipeline road visible along the way that actually followed our course.

If I would have just kept that pipeline road in view, we would have made it easily.

But I was proud and that method was too easy.

I wanted to show that I could get us there using the skills we had learned.

So I never even looked at the pipeline road!

Now, a compass isn’t perfect; there’s always a bit of human error in reading it.

So by the time we’d traveled the ten miles, we were off—by a full mile! The objective was nowhere in sight, and my team wasn’t happy.

What started as a slight misreading ended with us far off course.

Here’s the point: You can have the best of intentions, but if your bearings are even slightly off, you’ll miss the target by a mile.

We live in a culture that cares a great deal about justice, which is good.

But the problem is, the world’s definition of justice is off from the start, because it is based on our own thoughts, perceptions, and experiences.

And when you begin with the wrong definition, you’ll always end up missing the target of true justice.

But true justice is something we should pursue!

When you are wronged by someone, it is right to want justice

When you see injustice in the world, it is right to want justice

But that assumes that we are starting with the right idea of justice.

And when the culture redefines justice according to human ideas, rather than the truth revealed in God’s word, we end up far from what justice truly is.

The Church isn’t immune to this.

We’ve become so accustomed to living compartmentalized lives—where we worship on Sunday but live like the world the rest of the week—that we begin to adopt the world’s view of justice

Without even realizing it

If we as a church are going to pursue true justice in our lives and in our community, we need to begin with what God says about it.

To put it another way: True justice has to start with the truth about justice.

And that’s exactly what God is confronting in Israel in our passage today and it is just as relevant for us as God’s people today.

So let’s give this our full attention as we look at what true justice is, where it comes from, and how it can only be accomplished according to God’s Word.

Malachi 2:17–3:5 ESV

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 fullers’ 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 sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired worker in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, against those who thrust aside the sojourner, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.

These are God’s words

Big idea: True justice starts with the people of God. - 9:00

Justice is not first and foremost about something going on out there

It is first and foremost about what is going on in here, in my own heart.

And true justice starts with God’s justice being applied to his people first and then going out from there.

Now, before we get into the text, we need to gain some clarity on the idea of justice from a biblical worldview.

Justice in the biblical usage is the applying what is true, good, and right to a community or situation.

It is a just society that embraces the truth, seeks the good, and does what is right.

But it isn’t as if these are separate ideas - Truth, goodness, and righteousness are actually interrelated

You cant have truth apart from what is good and what is right.

You can’t have goodness that isn’t true and righteous.

You cant define what is right without the truth and an understanding of goodness.

Make sense?

You need them all and justice is simply the result of a right approach Truth, goodness, and righteousness.

When any of those three is distorted, you have injustice.

And it isn’t just that we agree on what is true, good, and right - That would mean that justice was up to our own opinions.

Instead, there must be an objective standard by which we measure truth, goodness, and righteousness that does not depend on us, but that we depend on.

And that standard is God himself.

God is the source of truth, he is the standard of goodness, and he is perfect in his righteousness.

And so [the point here is that] we can only pursue true justice when we have a right view of God.

And so with that, let me just say very clearly: It is impossible to have true justice in a godless society.

A society that embraces and celebrates unrighteousness will never arrive at true justice, but will instead embrace a distorted version of it because their view of God, truth, goodness, and righteousness is distorted.

And when this happens, whatever the society calls justice will simply be a new form of injustice that is accepted by the majority.

And we as God’s people must not go along with that line of thinking.

We need to be confronted with the truth about justice so that we can live accordingly.

So, with that understanding of justice, we can make sense out of everything that God is going to say in this passage, because he is a just God who is the source of truth, goodness, and righteousness.

Make sense?

[Bridge Question] What is true of God’s justice that will bring true justice to bear on his people?

There are three facts about God’s justice that we must acknowledge and accept if we are to be a people who know what true justice is and pursue it in this world.

So, the first fact of God’s justice is that…

God’s justice:

Exists (2:17) - 13:00

His justice is not a matter of perception, or perspective, or majority consensus. It actually exists because a true, good, righteous, just God exists.

Now, I want you to see what the people do and then we'll see how God reacts. They say "everyone who does evil is good in the side of the Lord and he delights in them.”

Now, to be sure, that is not true. Deuteronomy 18:12 says very clearly that those who do evil are an abomination to the Lord and he does not look favorably upon them.

But the people are taking their experience, and their perception, and their perspective, and they are defining justice accordingly.

They are reinterpreting God’s word to fit what they are seeing and according to popular opinion.

“God says he is just, but we don’t see it, so he must not be.”

But it isn't that God somehow changed his mind or redefined his word.

It is that the people themselves have embraced unrighteousness - They aren’t seeing justice because they have distorted the truth, what is good, and what is right.

It is their own embracing of unrighteousness that has led them to the conclusion that God is unjust.

We have seen in just two chapters in Malachi that the people are:

Questioning God’s love

Bringing sick and stolen offerings to God’s temple.

The priests are corrupt and are teaching the people to be the same.

Husbands are discarding their wives in order to marry other women who worship other God’s. The people are faithless, selfish, and deceitful all the while claiming to be obeying God’s commands.

You see it?

They are distorting the truth about God because they have distorted their lives

Hear me, Church family: what you desire, what you believe, and how you choose to live will impact how you view God.

And when you embrace a life that rejects what is true, good, and right according to God’s word, it will not be long before you begin saying things about God that are not true.

I am sure that you can think of personal examples of how someone’s embracing of sin led them to say distorted things about God.

And God says that this has wearied him.

That word “weary” is a Hebrew word that is used for physical exhaustion, but God doesn't grow weary in the physical sense.

instead, in this context, it's being used to describe God's relational frustration.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t like when people are inconsiderate in ways that impact other people.

Talking on speaker phone in a crowded lobby so that we have to listen to your conversation.

Txting at a light so that you don’t see it turn green… And then you speed through after it turns red again, leaving everyone else back at the light.

A group of people in Costco spreading their carts across the aisle so you cant get past.

Not returning the shopping cart and just leaving it in the parking space.

Clearly, I might have some things to work through

It just bothers me

And sometimes you try to give subtle hints, but there comes a point where you just have to say something. It has gone on too long and you can’t take it anymore.

That is what is happening here.

The image that we're getting from this verse in Malachi chapter 2 is that there has been a pattern of this attitude of God's people over a long period of time.

The verb tense of weary is ongoing. God has been listening to this for a long time and he is tired of it.

He is going to do something about it now

Why?

Because they are questioning his very character

God has never changed, just the people’s attitudes about him

It is a heart issue, not a justice issue.

To ask, “Where is the god of justice” is to say “God you are not who you said you were. Since I see it differently then what your word says, I guess your word is wrong.”

Church family…. When we determine whether or not God is just based on what we see happening in the world or in our lives, we have already started in the wrong direction because we are drawing conclusions about God from the world, rather than drawing conclusions about the world from God.

And when we do this, when we ask, “God where are you” we are revealing more about our own hearts than we are about God’s justice.

And that kind of heart attitude is exactly what the people of Israel are doing here.

But if we will acknowledge that God's justice exists because of who he is as a god of truth, goodness, righteousness, then we can say God, I trust you, even though I don't understand.

So let me ask you: What injustice do you feel you're facing right now? Either in your personal life or what you're just observing out in the world.

Because a just God exists, then true justice exists.

So you can trust him, even if you don’t understand why things are the way they are.

You don’t need to take matters into your own hands

You don’t need to force a solution

You can believe what God says, seek to do things God’s way, and trust that God’s justice exists.

It isn’t about our perspective or experiences - It is about who God is he is a just God so his justice really exists.

That’s the first fact about God’s justice.

Second fact: God’s justice…

Acts (3:1-4) - 21:00

God is not passive. He is not absentee. He is active and involved in the lives of his people and all of the details of the world, so his justice is not just an idea. It is something that actually comes to bear on the world.

The people said, “Where is the God of justice?”

God responds, “Don’t you worry - I’m coming”

God starts his response in chapter 3 verse one with the word “Behold”, which in Hebrew is a word that is calling attention to something new or unexpected.

God is going to bring justice, just not in the way that they were expecting.

And there are two primary ways that we see act according to his justice in these verses.

The first action of God’s justice is that…

He Prepares his People

Look at verse 1

Malachi 3:1 “Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me.”

Now, in the ancient world, a king or a ruler would send a messenger to declare that the king was on his way, that way the people knew the king was coming so “You better get right. Whatever you got going on because you think the king isn't coming around, you better fix it because he's on his way.”

And so God is going to send a messenger to prepare the people

So who is this messenger?

Matthew, Mark, and Luke all quote this verse to say that God was talking about John the Baptist, the one who preceded Jesus.

John the Baptist prepared the people of Israel for the arrival of Jesus Christ, the son of God, God in human flesh.

God was coming, and his name would be Jesus.

This is why the prophet Isaiah said that people would refer to him as “Immanuel, God with us.”

When Jesus arrived, that would be God bringing justice to his people

So how did John the Baptist prepare the people for the coming of God?

Through preaching repentance.

If you go to Matt. 3, Mark 1, or Luke 3, John calls the people to repent in preparation of the coming of Jesus

John prepared God’s people for Jesus’ arrival by preaching for life change that reflected God’s commands.

The people were living in unrighteousness, demanding justice.

Jesus, as the incarnate word of God, the word who became flesh and dwelt among us, would come to bring righteousness as justice for God’s people.

Listen: The first step toward true justice in our lives is for our own lives to change according to God’s word.

If we desire for God to bring about justice, we must then allow our lives to be conformed to his commands.

Whatever you are facing today, God’s word needs to be your first step in engaging it, as his word prepares your heart.

Sometimes we need God’s word to show us what it looks like to pursue justice

Sometimes we need God’s word to show us that we are actually the ones who did the injustice because of our own sin

Regardless, it is always God’s word that prepares our hearts for true justice.

Going anywhere else for a solution (looking for validation, slandering the other person to your friends, seeking vengeance or retribution - Doing things the world’s way) will not lead to true justice, but to a distorted view of justice.

Since true justice starts with the people of God, it must first start with us as God’s people being open, receptive, and submissive to the whole of God's word as he prepares our hearts.

Only then can our hearts be prepared for the second way that God’s justice acts…

He Purifies his People

Malachi 3:1 “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…. (jump down to the end of v. 2) For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ 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.”

In the ancient world, the way that that precious metals were refined is that they would be put in a in a crucible in a stone bowl and then heated up to the melting point and the hotter and got the more the impurities rose to the surface and then we swept away and so you would get pure gold or pure silver because it was heated up to the melting point so that all the impurities came to the surface so that they could be taken away.

He extends the metaphor also to soap.

The cleaning of blankets and rugs was a violent process where they would beat the rugs and spread soap on them and beat them more until all of the impurities came out.

Fire and soap - They are not pleasant, but they are purifying.

The hard truth is that the unpleasant, difficult, fiery trials of our lives reveal things in our hearts that need to change.

We have embraced and tolerated various forms of unrighteousness and distorted the truth and approved of things that are not good in our own lives

And as God’s word prepares us for God’s work in us, then God uses our experiences to reveal, to bring to the surface those things that should not be there

Those attitudes

Those desires

Those impurities that need to be removed to make us look more like Jesus.

Have you ever been in a situation where something happened and you responded sinfully? With anger or vengeance or selfishness?

And when that happens we say something like, “Oh I didn’t mean it - I was just upset.”

No, that is actually the most honest version of you that you have allowed to come out.

That sin was really in there - The perceived injustice simply turned up the flame, brought the impurity to the surface and revealed that it needs to be dealt with.

God’s word prepares our hearts - Trials reveal what is in our hearts - And God uses all of it to purify our hearts.

It is all too common for us to cry out for God's justice to have its way in the world or in the situation that we're in where we feel like we have been wronged, but then we are more than happy to hold onto our sins that we prize so much.

“Fix that God - But I don’t want to change.”

But we cannot pursue true justice in the ways we have been wronged or the things we see happening around us when we are holding on to the impurity of our own lives.

To put it another way, we cannot expect God to do things in the world or in other people’s live if we are not first willing to allow him to do the same thing in our lives.

When we are in situations where we are tempted to say, “Where is the God of justice,” we would do well to instead say, “God do in me whatever is necessary to bring about your justice in this situation.”

And when that is our attitude, even those things that feel like injustice are the means by which God purifies us.

So let me ask you: What fiery trial are you enduring?

What in your life today are you tempted to ask, “God, why are you letting this happen?”

As the heat is turned up in that relationship or that situation, it will bring to the surface the impurities of your heart

And God will use that heat to sanctify you, removing the impurities, and make you look more like Jesus.

And bring about true justice in your life as he works in you and in that situation

Church family, rather than first looking out at the world and saying, “Where is the justice?” We should look at our own hearts and ask God to purify us with his justice.

Conform our minds to what is true

Help us to desire what is good

Empower us by his Spirit to pursue what is right.

True justice means God preparing the hearts of his people through the proclamation of God’s word and then purifying them through his Spirit’s work in their hearts

Only then can we be agents of true justice in homes and communities.

So those are the first two facts. And the third fact about God’s justice is that God’s justice

Judges (3:5) - 33:00

The people said at the beginning that “God delights in evil.”

But God corrects them in verse 5 that he will judge evil.

Many today, shy away from the idea of God's wrath and God's judgment and only want to talk about God's love and mercy.

But God can only be loving and merciful if he is also just and responds to evil with wrath.

There is no such thing as love that tolerates evil.

There is no such thing as mercy if judgment doesn’t exist.

And God highlights here seven examples of sin and rebellion, and he says that his response to the is to bring judgement.

And I want to focus in on the last item on this list because it serves as a summary statement of the reason behind all sin.

This list is of sins, sorcery, adultery, deceit, oppression, all of it is because the people have no fear of God

He says he will be a swift witness in judgment - He is both witness and judge in this courtroom.

You have heard me say many times that to fear God in the biblical sense is to be devoted to him and to align your life to his word.

And all sin is due to a lack of a fear of God

When we are not devoted to God, but are instead devoted to something else, the result will always be sin.

And injustice is always the product of lives that do not fear God and instead embrace sin.

And God will judge it in one of two ways

First, he has judged sin in the death of Christ on the cross.

Jesus lived a sinless life. He did not deserve death.

But Peter says in 1 Peter 2:24 “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.”

God judged sin in the death of Christ and when we follow Jesus by faith, he gives us the righteousness that Jesus earned with his sinless life.

It is what Martin Luther called the Great Exchange - Jesus took our sin so we wouldn’t have to pay for it and gave us his perfection so we wouldn’t have to earn it.

And so we can hear the words of Paul in Romans chapter 8 verse one that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, and know that those words are true

If you have placed your faith in Christ, you will not be judged for your sin because Jesus paid the penalty and took the judgment for you.

True justice leading to true forgiveness and reconciliation.

So we can walk by faith knowing that there is no condemnation.

And when someone wrongs us and then repents and turns to Jesus for forgiveness, we can rejoice and keep no record of wrong knowing that Jesus paid for their sins just like he paid for ours.

And that is just as true of justice

But the second way God will judge sin for those who do not follow Jesus by faith, will be final justice through the final judgment of God.

I know it's easy to look out in the world and see all kinds of examples of injustice and wonder where God is, but friends I can promise you that he sees, he knows, and he will judge rightly.

At the end of it all, when every person stands before God’s throne of judgment, there will be no injustice that carries into eternity.

Because God is just, his judgment is right and good.

And if you were here today, and you are not following Jesus by faith, you are not devoted to God, but instead living for yourself, and for other things, you must know that you will stand before God one day. And you will be judged by him based on either your faith in Jesus, and so your sins would be forgiven, or you will account for every one of your sins.

You can be made right with God today by confessing your sin to him, acknowledging your need of him, and believing in Jesus Christ as the only hope for your soul.

God will judge sin - Either on the cross of Christ or at the final judgment seat.

No injustice will remain.

So we can wait on him to bring it about in his time, knowing that he is faithful.

And in the meantime we can know that God’s justice exists, and it acts by preparing and purifying his people, and it judges.

[CONCLUSION]

In a world filled with injustice, you know what the world needs?

Rather than paying lip service to God while embracing the world’s definition of justice.

What the world really needs is for the people of God to pursue God’s truth, God’s goodness, and God’s righteousness in their own lives

Because true justice starts with the people of God.

Amen.