You Should Not Have Asked

Intro: There’s a scene in the 1992 two movie ‘A Few Good Men’ where Tom Cruise’s character is questioning Jack Nicholson’s character as a lawyer questioning a witness. At the end of an outburst he says “I deserve the truth.” Nicholson responds and in that response he makes a statement that I thought of when I reading the passage for this week’s message. His response is “You can’t handle the truth.” There are three places in the scripture that I have that response play in my mind with God as the one in the witness box. The first is when God asks Job 40:7 where God says to Job “Now gird up your loins like a man; I will ask you, and you instruct Me.” The second is the passage we will look at this morning. The third is while Jesus is on trial before Pilate for the second time, here’s how John records it: “Therefore Pilate said to Him, “So You are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say correctly that I am a king. For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.” Pilate said to Him, “What is truth?”” In the silence from Jesus I can hear Him say “You can’t handle the truth.”

Yet elsewhere Jesus told His disciples that “and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” John 8:32. Then some time later Jesus said “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” John 16:6. Jesus clearly thinks that we need to know the truth, even if sometimes we don’t want the truth. Let’s read Malachi 2:17 – 3:5 this morning. It may just be me, but I can hear God after the questions of verse 17 saying to the people, “You can’t handle the truth. But since you asked, I’ll give it to you.” Then adding, in the words of Jesus “the truth will set you free.”

Malachi 2:17–3:5 NASB95

You have wearied the Lord with your words. Yet you say, “How have we wearied Him?” In that you say, “Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and He delights in them,” or, “Where is the God of justice?” “Behold, I am going to send My messenger, and he will clear 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 smelter and purifier of silver, and He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, so that they may present to the Lord offerings in righteousness. “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; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers and against the adulterers and against those who swear falsely, and against those who oppress the wage earner in his wages, the widow and the orphan, and those who turn aside the alien and do not fear Me,” says the Lord of hosts.

I. The Question(s)

A. Why does evil seem to be winning?

1. Why do those who do what you’ve condemned so far seem to be the one’s winning?

2. Although, I sense that they have other evil practices, or peoples in mind

3. Or could it be, that they are asking about someone who is committing one of the sins that God is condemning but not the one they are committing.

4. So the one who is divorcing his wife is concerned about the ones offer up awful offerings.

5. Maybe the one who knows the Torah and is twisting ig is asking about the one who is marrying women committed to idolatry.

6. Maybe we ask the same questions about the sins that others commit but not our own. My sin is justifiable, theirs isn’t.

B. If God is good, where is He?

1. They have heard about the God of justice

2. God isn’t fulfilling their expectations of what God would do if He was really just.

3. We ask the same question

a. Where was God when the Tsunami hit Indonesia?

b. Where was God when the driver ran the stop sign and caused the accident that took the lives of two young boys?

c. If God is good why is there evil in the world?

d. Even the saints in heaven ask “How much longer?”

And God answers their question, and ours; “He is coming, but who can endure the day of His coming? Who can stand when He appears?”

II. I Am Coming

A. The timing

1. It is interesting that God does not answer when!

2. One commentator noted “Behold I am going to send” is constructed with “Behold plus a participle is a way of expressing the imminent future.” So, very soon but that was 400 maybe close to 500 years before the fulfilment of the time prophesied.

3. We take what He has said and try to predict, or rather force God, the coming will be.

4. 2 Peter 3:9 – This becomes important as we see the reasons for His coming

2 Peter 3:9 NASB95

The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.

B. The Reasons – John 3:16 - 21

John 3:16–21 NASB95

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. “For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. “He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. “For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. “But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.”

1. Purify His own

a. Launderer

i. Cleansing at baptism

ii. We are sanctified

b. Smelter

i. Cleansing after baptism

ii. We are being sanctified

c. He will cleanse us at His second coming

d. We are made righteous at baptism, so we could live as righteous (Paul calls us holy) sacrifices to God, and pursue becoming righteous until Jesus comes and we are made completely righteous.

e. Future cleansing at the 2nd coming

f. Cleansing now for service as a royal priesthood.

g. Future cleansing for entrance into the New Jerusalem

2. Bring judgment on the wicked

a. 2 groups of three

i. Sorcerers, adulterers, and liars

ii. Oppressors of wage earners, widows & orphans and aliens

iii. Mostly they do not fear (obey, reverence, honor or worship) YHWH

b. James 1:27

James 1:27 NASB95

Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

c. Matthew 23:23

Matthew 23:23 NASB95

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others.

Even though, as Allen Ross states it “it seemed to them that God must be approving the evil that people were doing because he was not judging it.

There are a number of reasons why God would delay judgment, apart from the fact that he is slow to anger. God often postponed judgments to give people a better chance to put their lives in order—meaning, to repent and prepare spiritually. We also read in the Bible that our Lord has other sheep to bring from other sheep folds, and he must bring them. Thus, judgment is delayed. But also, in the divine plan of redemption, the Messiah had to come and pay for the sins of the world so that judgment would be poured out on him on behalf of people.

But the prophet told his audience that their request was presumptuous. If they really wanted the justice of God then they too would be in trouble, for no one could stand up under divine scrutiny. Everyone was accountable.

Therefore you need to, I need to, allow God to sanctify you (continually) and do works of justice because He IS coming again. When He does, He WILL judge and He says to those who have done justice in His name “I know you, welcome home.” To the others He will say “I never knew you, welcome to your new home,” as he points them to eternal judgment/eternal separation from God.