Purified or Consumed?

Malachi 3:2-5 ESV

2 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. 3 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. 4 Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years. 5 “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.

Something that I have always liked to do that other men here this morning may also do is shave while I’m in the shower. I keep my shaving cream and my razor, along with a little mirror that I can hold in the shower and I shave away.

But though I like to do that, there are a couple of problems with shaving in the shower. For one, if you keep a mirror in a shower, then that mirror not only gets foggy, but it also gets permanent water stains on it that you just can’t get out for anything. So, I’ll look really hard in my little mirror to make sure that I shaved all of the excess hairs on my face, but looking into that mirror, there’s a good chance that I won’t see them all and miss a few.

That’s why sometimes whenever I get out of the shower, I will bring my razor with me and look in the bathroom mirror to make sure that I got all of my unwanted hairs. But again, that mirror will also be foggy, and sometimes even when I wipe the mirror off with my towel, I still can’t see in it that well, so even then there is a chance that I won’t see if I missed any unwanted hairs.

But after that, I will be satisfied and proceed to get dressed. But the worst thing that happens at times is when I get in my car and I’m heading down the road, only to look in my mirror and see that I missed a bunch of unwanted hairs, usually close to my beard line, so it makes my beard on one side of my face look bigger than on the other side.

And so, at that moment, I realize that my car mirror didn’t create the flaws that I now see on my face, it simply revealed to me what was already there to begin with. And so, thanks to my clear mirror in my car, I can clearly see what needs to be corrected.

As we said in our first sermon in this series, and what we will continue to look at today is how at the end of chapter two of this prophecy of Malachi, the Lord had spoken of how the people of Israel had cynically cried out “Where it the God of justice?”.

What the people assumed was that the Lord’s presence would confirm them, vindicate them, applaud them.

Well, the Lord told the people through Malachi that yes, He is coming. He said that He would send His messenger before Him to prepare the people, and that after the ministry of the messenger was complete, He would appear to the people.

But while the people thought that the coming of the Lord would be beneficial to them since they believed that they were righteous in themselves, the reality is that the coming of the Lord is like the revelation that my car mirror gives me when it shows me that I failed to adequately shave.

What the coming of the Lord will signify is that none who are counting on their own professed righteousness, were ready for the coming of the Lord. For while many who believe themselves to be righteous “good people”, what the coming of the Lord will prove is that there is none good, as everyone’s sins will rise to the top.

This is expressed at the very beginning of our reading, as the Lord asks, “But who can endure the day of His coming, and who can stand when He appears?”.

So, while the Jews claimed to long for the Day of the Lord, the day when He would bring forth His judgment and justice, the fact of the matter is that none of them can endure His fiery judgment.

He says, “Who among you is so inherently righteous that you are able to withstand the scrutiny of My righteous judgment? Who among you is able to meet the required standard of holiness? Who among you can legitimately claim to be deserving of everlasting reward according to your own feeble efforts?”

Well, the simple answer to those questions is one and the same: No one can!

But the Lord draws on this further as He says here in the latter part of verse two that “He is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap”.

What the Lord draws on here is the work of the gold or silver refiner in the purifying process. The refiner puts the metal in the fire to separate any worthless dross or any other impurity from the metal that may be found in it as the impurities rise to the top after passing through the fire.

But then there was another man who was called a “fuller”. The fuller’s job was to, after the precious metal had been refined in the fire, to wash the metal with soap and wipe away the impurities that were found in the refining process.

Now, in this sense, God the Father is the Refiner Who will bring everyone’s sins to the forefront on the Day of judgment. All who trust in their own “righteousness” will stand before the Lord with their sins brought to the forefront and they will be declared guilty in the sight of God and deserving of everlasting punishment.

But also in this sense, God the Son is the Fuller. Remember, we said that the job of the fuller is to clean the metal and wash away the impurities that the refiner discovered. Well, for those who have placed their absolute trust in Christ Jesus and what He has accomplished for them in His life, death, and resurrection, Christ will wash away their sins with His own blood, just as the fuller would wash away the impurities found by the refiner.

And apart from the Son’s washing, none can survive after the fire of refining judgment.

As verse three goes on to tell us, 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 so, again, we see that the Lord is both the refiner and the purifier. He brings sins to the forefront and for those saved by a gracious salvation, He also washes their sins away.

And we read that He will actively do this refining and purifying to “the sons of Levi”. Now, what could this mean? Who could the Lord be talking about here? Well, who are the sons of Levi? Israel’s priests. The tribe of Levi was the priestly tribe. So, is God talking about the Levitical priestly tribe here? Some think He is, I personally don’t.

Look at what Peter says concerning believers like you and I over in chapter two and verse five of his first epistle. He says, “you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”

We are being built into a holy priesthood! We are the ones being purified! We are the sons of Levi mentioned in this verse! We have been purified by the blood of Jesus and now serve as holy priests to Him.

In this way, the Lord says, we “bring offerings in righteousness to the Lord”. Now, look again to what Peter says, we are being built up to be a holy priesthood, “to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ”.

Now, let’s think about what is being communicated to us here. The offerings of the Israeli priests in the days of Malachi were unacceptable. They were unacceptable because they were first of all, far from ideal. They were the leftovers of the flock, the sheep that were good for nothing anyway. But they were also offered by priests who weren’t even right with God. How could such an offering be accepted by God?!

But God says that when He purifies for Himself a holy priesthood, made up of believers who actually were right with God, then as verse four tells us “the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years”.

So, when God purifies His people, then the offerings brought to Him will be pleasing to Him. Then our lives can truly be lived in service to God. Then will He truly look on us in favor.

And all of these things won’t be pleasing to God just because He’s purified us, no, they will be pleasing to God because, as Peter says, they will be made through Jesus Christ.

Because of Jesus, because of what He has done for His elect people in all ages, we actually can do things that please God. Without Him, without the purifying effect of His blood which washes us clean, we only stand before God as condemned, we only stand as the one whose impurities are brought to the forefront by the refiner. But because of Jesus, those impurities, those sins are washed away.

But those sins are washed away only from those who implicitly trust the Lord Jesus for their today, for their tomorrow, and for their eternity.

And so, as we move on to verse five, the last verse in our reading for this morning, we return to the cynical question that the people put forth in chapter two and verse seventeen, when they said, “Where is the God of justice?” and the Lord says here in verse five, “You will find out soon enough!”.

The Lord says that “then” that is, after the Messiah comes, establishes His kingdom, and ascends to the Father, “then” He will come again to the earth in His second advent.

And when He comes all people, in all times will behold “the God of justice” as He carries out His justice to the fullest extent in judgment.

And when He comes, all those who scoff at Him, all those who thought that God was not worthy enough for their worship and service in this world will face God’s judgment as He draws near to judge them.

He says that He will stand as witness against them, He will testify against them. Against sorcerers, adulterers, those who swear falsely, oppressors of all kinds, those who mistreat and exploit foreigners, and in general, everyone who does not fear the Lord.

And the judgment, God says, will be swift. Those of the world who are counting on their worldly success or who are willfully ignorant, suppressing the truth about God by knowing that there is a God Who they are accountable to yet living as if there were not, trying to put such things out of their minds will be suddenly judged by the God Whom they are accountable to. One moment they will enjoy and indulge in their carnality, the next they will stand before the righteous King and be cast into the Lake of Fire.

And so, our reading for today leaves us with a sobering truth; that truth being that none of us can endure the day when the Lord comes as a refiner’s fire. As the refining fire brings the dross and other impurities to the surface, so will our impurities be brought to the surface as we stand before the most righteous and holy God.

But for the one who has fled to the Lord Jesus as his or her sanctuary, He will wash those sins away before the judgment seat of God. And thus, though God stands against us as Judge and as Witness to pronounce that we naturally deserve condemnation, so does He stand as Witness that the blood of the only Son of God has cleansed us from all of those impurities.

So, the call of this text is not to trust in our righteousness, for we have no righteousness, but to rest confidently and securely in the righteousness of Another.

Christ alone enables sinners to stand before a holy God. Thus, my friends, I plead with you as your pastor, as your friend, and as one who was plucked clean from the fire, to cling to Christ Jesus by faith, to submit yourself to His refining work—confident that the One Who judges is also the One Who saves.

Amen?