Advent: Preparing the Way

Good morning and welcome to another week of church here at the bridge. I am so glad that we are able to be here together and celebrate this morning another week of advent. I have said it once I will say it again. I love this season. It is a reminder of all that we have to look forward to in the coming of our lord and savior. This morning though we need to talk about something that is really important.

Preparation

Nothing makes me think of preparation more than cooking/baking.

Preparing the Recipe

Now it is important to remember that there is a big difference between cooking and baking. Cooking in my opinion, is easier to experiment with. The Recipe is less about rules and more about guidelines. Baking is a totally different monster. It is more about knowing the science behind what is happening before you can openly experiment with the measurements because you need to understand what is happening.

However, both share something in common. You have to approach any recipe with preparation. You can’t come into a recipe without knowing you have all the ingredients our frankly you aren’t going to make the correct dish.

They even have a fancy french saying for it.

Mise en place

Mise en place is french for “putting in place”.

This is an important step in preparing to cook. It makes it less stressful and easier to finish a dish without the stress of trying to figure out where you left the salt, or the oregano.

All this preparation had me thinking though about a dish that is served during the holiday season that requires a lot of preparation and planning to make it properly. I am also willing to bet that many of you have not had a proper version of this Christmas tradition. Of course i am talking about everyone’s favorite door stop.

Fruit Cake

This desert has a bad wrap in my opinion. I believe that many people don’t like it because they either buy commercially made fruitcake or they don’t put the best effort into it.

The thing about fruit cake is it takes time, this is the first mistake often made in making fruit cake.

It takes preparation and it takes patience. Many of these things people run short of during the holiday season. You see the truth is that if you make a proper traditional fruit cake, and you want to give it to someone for Christmas you needed to start making it about a week ago. Fruit cake is supposed to age this of course is done mostly through the use of alcohol. Fruit cake after it is baked is supposed to be wrapped in a cheese cloth and spritzed with either Whiskey or Brandy every few days. It soaks in those flavors and yes gets a little boozy.

Now I don’t drink never have never will. This makes it so i have a little less time cure my fruit cake because i don’t get the preservation power of alcohol. Yet, good fruit cake still takes a couple days.

The second mistake that is often made is quality ingredients. I saw some interesting responses to my question the other day about fruit cake. People were putting mint gum drops in it which i thought was strange. I have to admit i am also not a fan of the nuclear cherries. Candied cherries are just textually weird and i believe there are better options.

A good fruit cake requires fresh dried fruits (there are a lot of options you can go with here) and fresh nuts. Too often we pull out dried fruit that we have in our cupboard that has been sitting there since last Christmas and think yeah these will work. If you love the people you are making this for buy some fresh ingredients.

If you avoid these mistakes you have the start of a great desert. It takes time and a lot of work but you end up making something that is fruity and sweet and very tasty.

Now I have spent way too much time talking about a desert and not enough about the scriptures. Let us turn to the word this morning.

Malachi 3:1–4 NIV

1 “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. 2 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. 3 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, 4 and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the Lord, as in days gone by, as in former years.

The need for a Messenger

Malachi is presenting to us a time that is filled with a bleak prospect. To really understand this passage you have to understand the context. Malachi was in a time where there was a lot of negative outlook on the promises of God. The people were living in a time where Jerusalem and the temple had just been rebuilt and they felt that they were not seeing the promises of God being fulfilled. This caused many to start to question and to become disillusioned with God. They didn’t see God’s love, grace, peace, and even Justice. This caused them to question. We see this made clear for us in...

Malachi 2:17 NIV

17 You have wearied the Lord with your words. “How have we wearied him?” you ask. By saying, “All who do evil are good in the eyes of the Lord, and he is pleased with them” or “Where is the God of justice?”

Where is the God of Justice was their cry. They saw evil people receiving the benefits and joys of life and the people of God were suffering. They were not where they thought they should be in the world. I think this lies the first problem.

They saw their position and what was going on around them as God abandoning them. They wanted their promises on their time instead of on God’s time.

This is why there is such a need for the messenger to come. The messenger is the herald of the coming justice. We need to messenger to help us see that the coming moment of promised justice is upon us. This is important because the truth of the matter is that no man can escape the reality that we will stand before God. Thankfully he gives us warning through his messenger when this is going to happen if we are open to hearing the message.

It is time to Wait

I shared earlier that one of the things that makes fruit cake so different is the fact that it is aged. It takes time. It takes patience. That is where we find the commonality we share with the audience of Malachi.

Here is the community of Judah sitting and waiting for God and they feel that they have no hope. They are losing belief in God. They have forgotten the promises that have been made and no longer want to honor him the same way. They are a people that not willing to wait.

It is in these times though that we must buckle down and we must grow closer to God not push him away. It is in the uncertainty and the times of weariness that the only source of sustenance is in God. It is in this time that we must realize that we have something to do while we wait.

While we are waiting

While we are waiting for the divine promise we must allow for the refiner to do his work.

Malachi 3:2–3 NIV

2 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. 3 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,

While we are Waiting

This is the classic image that we hear so often about the refiner’s fire. I sometimes think that when we read these kinds of passages or try to understand this passage we fall really short of what the fire is like. We think of yeah fire is hot we know that it burns and it hurts. I think sometimes when we think of the fire we think of the cooking area of the fire. This is the area above the flames it is not the internal part of the fire.

On average the area above a fire or the thermal plume area can be around 500 to 600 degrees Fahrenheit. The internal part of a fire can reach up to 1650 degrees. its only about 1000 degrees difference. Think about that. Do you want to know the temperature that silver is refined at. Approximately 1450 degrees. Think about that for a moment. when we are refined we aren’t put in the thermal plume area or the cooking area. We are put into the heart of the fire. It is at this point that we have to trust the creator the refiner to watch us carefully and to trust him to know when the right time is to pull us from the fire.

This passage though we take it as a personal aspect and application is also directed at the Levites. The Spiritual leaders of the people. It is a calling for them to allow God to work and to create better leaders to call the people forward. This is the charge that i couldn’t escape while writing this message.

The truth is that it shows us that the people then while waiting for the promised coming of the bringer of Justice and righteousness. We wait for the coming day of Christ’s return we can look to what Malachi was calling the people to remember that...

God wants a transformed Holy people Lead by transformed Holy Leaders

This is why we must be prepared for the coming of the King because God doesn’t want us to lose sight of the coming promise. He wants us to remember the coming promise and have faith that he will fulfill it. Yet, while we wait for that promise we must be diligent and we must be put into the heart of the fire to be refined, and to trust in his diligent and steady hands to purify us.

Let us pray.