SPEAKER_02: This morning, we're going to be looking at Malachi in chapter three.
SPEAKER_02: If you were here a couple months ago, you might remember that we began looking at the first two chapters of this book of the Bible, and over the next three weeks leading us into Easter, we're going to finish the book of Malachi together.
SPEAKER_02: So whether you were there two months ago or you're new, I trust that the Word of God this morning will be used by the Lord to do his work in your hearts as we study it together.
SPEAKER_02: So let's begin by reading from God's Word.
SPEAKER_02: Look down in your Bibles.
SPEAKER_02: Malachi, beginning in chapter two, verse 17.
SPEAKER_02: Follow with me as I read from the Word of God.
SPEAKER_02: You have wearied the Lord with your words, but you say, How have we wearied him?
SPEAKER_02: 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?
SPEAKER_02: 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, the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight.
SPEAKER_02: Behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.
SPEAKER_02: But who can endure the day of his coming?
SPEAKER_02: And who can stand when he appears?
SPEAKER_02: For he is like a refiner's fire and like fuller's soap.
SPEAKER_02: 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.
SPEAKER_02: Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord, as in the days of old, and as in former years.
SPEAKER_02: Then I will draw near to you for judgment.
SPEAKER_02: I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired worker and his wages, the widow and the fatherless, against those who thrust aside the sojourner.
SPEAKER_02: And do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.
SPEAKER_02: This is the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: The Prophet Malachi was raised up by God to speak to a people who were very different from us.
SPEAKER_02: People of Israel in Malachi's day were those Jews who had returned from the exile in Babylon.
SPEAKER_02: You remember in the history of the people of Israel, there was a time in the 6th century BC in which the imp the Babylonian Empire had destroyed Jerusalem and burned the temple to the ground and taken the surviving peoples captive into Babylon, where they were held for nearly a hundred years, until the Persian Emperor Cyrus gave them opportunity to come back to the Promised Land and rebuild the temple.
SPEAKER_02: And some of the people of Israel did that.
SPEAKER_02: They went back to the Promised Land and rebuilt the temple.
SPEAKER_02: And as they did that, they were urged on by the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, whose prophecies are preserved for us even in the Bibles we hold in our laps this morning.
SPEAKER_02: And the prophecies that those prophets gave the people encouraged them and urged them and compelled them to build the temple because they said that the Lord promises he's gonna come to earth.
SPEAKER_02: And he's gonna reveal his glory, and he's gonna purify you, the people of Israel, and through you, he's gonna rule a universal kingdom on this earth, in which there's righteousness and justice, and all the peoples of the earth worship God as one.
SPEAKER_02: So naturally, those people were encouraged, and they had great expectations of what God was gonna do through them.
SPEAKER_02: And by the time of Malachi, a couple generations had passed, and none of that had happened.
SPEAKER_02: And the people in the time of Malachi looked around at their circumstances and their experiences, and they found that there was no universal kingdom reigning through Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_02: There was a Persian Empire, and Judah was just a tiny little province of the Persian Empire.
SPEAKER_02: And in fact, an impoverished one at that.
SPEAKER_02: They looked to the north, the Samaria, to their enemies around, and they found that those pagan provinces around them were actually doing better than they were.
SPEAKER_02: And even within their own society, those who were unfaithful to the God of Israel, who perverted worship, who exploited others, seemed to be getting ahead and prospering.
SPEAKER_02: And those who tried to be faithful to God's covenant were experiencing suffering, injustice, hardship, poverty.
SPEAKER_02: Naturally, the people in the time of Malachi were people largely characterized by disillusion.
SPEAKER_02: A people who had experienced unmet expectations, unfulfilled desires.
SPEAKER_02: They were beginning even to doubt the character of God.
SPEAKER_02: And so Malachi was raised up to speak to a people who were very different from us, at least externally.
SPEAKER_02: But internally, I don't think they were really all that different at all.
SPEAKER_02: The primary reality that Malachi addresses is a people who are experiencing disillusionment, people who are experiencing unfulfilled expectations, unmet desires, people who feel like life just isn't the way that it's supposed to be.
SPEAKER_02: Now, if you are here this morning and you can say, I've never experienced that, just live a little bit longer.
SPEAKER_02: That's a human reality, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02: A pervasive reality that we experience in life.
SPEAKER_02: And the question then arises, how do you deal with that?
SPEAKER_02: When you experience unfulfilled desire and unmet expectations when life just isn't the way you think it should be, what do you do?
SPEAKER_02: Do you ignore God and just say, you haven't lived up to my expectations of you?
SPEAKER_02: I'm just going to put my nose to the ground.
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to fix this?
SPEAKER_02: Well, what do you do when you experience that?
SPEAKER_02: Well, the word of the Lord and this text that we just read is given to us to help us get out of our own heads and reorient ourselves, redirect our hearts and minds when we experience unmet expectations and unfulfilled desires in this life.
SPEAKER_02: The text that we're going to study this morning from Malachi is intended to come into our lives and help us to reorient ourselves towards eternity.
SPEAKER_02: That's what this text does.
SPEAKER_02: Reorients our hearts towards eternity when we experience life's just not the way it's supposed to be.
SPEAKER_02: So we're going to walk through the text and it unfolds in three stages.
SPEAKER_02: First, there's a complaint from the people, and then a twofold answer from the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: So let's begin by looking at the people's complaint, and you find that in chapter 2 and verse 17.
SPEAKER_02: Look down at your Bibles at chapter 2, verse 17.
SPEAKER_02: The Lord says, You've wearied me.
SPEAKER_02: But the people say, Have we wearied you?
SPEAKER_02: By saying, Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and he delights in them.
SPEAKER_02: Or by asking, where is the God of justice?
SPEAKER_02: Do you see the two complaints that the people lodge against God?
SPEAKER_02: One is there's these evildoers, and God seems to be delighting in them because things are going really well for them.
SPEAKER_02: It seems he likes them, but he doesn't like the faithful people.
SPEAKER_02: In other words, the people are questioning, is God good?
SPEAKER_02: Is God actually good?
SPEAKER_02: Because it seems that he's being good to evil people, but he's being really unfair to good people.
SPEAKER_02: God's not good at all.
SPEAKER_02: Or another way to phrase the question that they're asking is they're asking, why doesn't God treat me the way I think I should be treated?
SPEAKER_02: I feel like I'm the one who's trying to be faithful to the covenant, and God is not treating me according to the way I think I should be treated.
SPEAKER_02: The second question that they go on to ask, where is the God of justice?
SPEAKER_02: Ask, if God's not good, is God at least just?
SPEAKER_02: Why is it that evil prospers?
SPEAKER_02: Why is it that injustice seems to reign?
SPEAKER_02: In other words, they're asking, why doesn't God treat those people around me the way I think they should be treated?
SPEAKER_02: So you see the problem.
SPEAKER_02: People are experiencing genuine, unfulfilled expectation, genuine sin in the world, genuine evil and impression in the world.
SPEAKER_02: Those realities are real.
SPEAKER_02: God's not questioning that they're experiencing those things, but he is challenging the way they're responding to them.
SPEAKER_02: Do you see what the problem is?
SPEAKER_02: The problem is that this people is judging their experiences entirely that way, through the lens of their own experience.
SPEAKER_02: In other words, this people are so caught in their own heads they can't get outside of the way they view life and ever see things objectively the way God sees them.
SPEAKER_02: And notice the way that God responds to this people in verse 17 at the beginning.
SPEAKER_02: He says, You have wearied the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: In other words, this word that's going to come is intended to be a message from outside, an external word, to pierce their experiences, to pierce their circumstances and get them out of their own heads, out of their own experiences, and to think about things God's way, to put their mind on what they know is true in spite of what's happening to them.
SPEAKER_02: That's the way the Lord deals with us when we experience unfulfilled expectations.
SPEAKER_02: Is he wants to reorient us away from the temporary circumstances in our life and reorient us towards eternity.
SPEAKER_02: That's what he's going to do in the following text.
SPEAKER_02: And he begins to do that in verse one by giving them a promise.
SPEAKER_02: And the promise in verse one is that I'm going to do something.
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to act.
SPEAKER_02: And you need to take your eyes off yourself and put your eyes back on me.
SPEAKER_02: And look at what the Lord says he's going to do in verse one.
SPEAKER_02: Behold, I'm going to send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me.
SPEAKER_02: So God says, I'm going to act in history.
SPEAKER_02: Take your eyes off your circumstances and put your eyes back on me and what I'm going to do.
SPEAKER_02: And he says he's sending a messenger.
SPEAKER_02: And we should ask the question So who is this messenger?
SPEAKER_02: And if you listen closely to the text, I will send my messenger and he'll prepare the way before me.
SPEAKER_02: That should sound familiar.
SPEAKER_02: This is common language in the ancient Near East that if a king is going to arrive, some kind of potentate, you would send forerunners before him who would prepare the way.
SPEAKER_02: And this is a familiar phenomenon, even in the modern world.
SPEAKER_02: When the American president, for example, goes to visit a destination, there'll be staff that go before to make sure everything is ready.
SPEAKER_02: They'll go to the hospitals and make sure the hospital has plenty of his blood type on supply, just in case.
SPEAKER_02: Certainly in the ancient world, when a king would go somewhere, they would prepare the way.
SPEAKER_02: And the Lord says, I'm going to send a messenger and he's going to prepare the way for me.
SPEAKER_02: And if you've read scripture before, you've heard that somewhere else in the book of Isaiah, hundreds of years before Malachi, Isaiah said the same thing.
SPEAKER_02: A voice cries in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert, a highway for our God.
SPEAKER_02: So Malachi is reaffirming what Isaiah said was going to happen, it's still going to happen.
SPEAKER_02: It's just not happening now.
SPEAKER_02: So when did it happen?
SPEAKER_02: And the New Testament writers are not confused about when this messenger came.
SPEAKER_02: The Gospel of Mark begins with these words.
SPEAKER_02: Now that's actually not Isaiah.
SPEAKER_02: What I just read, that's Malachi 3.1.
SPEAKER_02: I send my messenger before your face who will prepare your way.
SPEAKER_02: And then he quotes from Isaiah chapter 40, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.
SPEAKER_02: In other words, Mark says that Malachi and Isaiah were speaking with one voice, one prophetic voice coming from the same spirit.
SPEAKER_02: And he quotes them as coming from Isaiah, because it was convention to just speak of the more known prophet.
SPEAKER_02: And Isaiah's book is much bigger than Malachi's.
SPEAKER_02: And so he could say, Isaiah said, but Malachi said the same thing, because the prophets were speaking with one unified voice about the Lord's work and history.
SPEAKER_02: And here is what they said was going to happen a messenger would come, and who is that messenger?
SPEAKER_02: Well, the next verse in the book, the Gospel of Mark says, and John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
SPEAKER_02: So Mark's not confused.
SPEAKER_02: Mark says that messenger that Isaiah and Malachi said would come has come, and he was John the Baptist.
SPEAKER_02: And if you don't want to take Mark's word for it, well, the Gospel of Luke tells us that when the angel told John the Baptist's father Zechariah that he was going to have a son, to name him John, this is what he said that son was going to do.
SPEAKER_02: He will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, that messenger who will come to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and to the disobedient to the wisdom of the just to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.
SPEAKER_02: So the angel says John is going to be that messenger prophesied in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_02: And just in case you don't want to take the angel's word for it, which by the way you should, if you remember what happens in the story with Zechariah here in Luke chapter 1, it didn't go well for Zechariah when he didn't believe the angel.
SPEAKER_02: But just in case you're having trouble, how about Jesus?
SPEAKER_02: Is he authoritative enough for us?
SPEAKER_02: Jesus says in Matthew chapter 11, for all the prophets and the law prophesied until John, and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah, he is that messenger who is to come.
SPEAKER_02: So the New Testament has no confusion.
SPEAKER_02: The messenger that Malachi speaks of is John the Baptist.
SPEAKER_02: What's John the Baptist going to do?
SPEAKER_02: He's going to make way for the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: Look at the next part of Malachi chapter 3, verse 1.
SPEAKER_02: I send my messenger, he will prepare the way before me.
SPEAKER_02: And then a second figure will come.
SPEAKER_02: The Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to his temple.
SPEAKER_02: And that Lord is the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight.
SPEAKER_02: Behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.
SPEAKER_02: Now who is this second figure?
SPEAKER_02: Notice carefully the language of the text.
SPEAKER_02: The messenger who's coming, this is God speaking, says, the messenger is going to prepare the way before me.
SPEAKER_02: So God's coming.
SPEAKER_02: God's following the messenger, right?
SPEAKER_02: And then that the following figure who follows the messenger is the Lord whom you seek.
SPEAKER_02: The Lord God, the Lord God who's identified as the Lord in chapter 1, verse 6 of this prophecy of Malachi.
SPEAKER_02: So it's the Lord who is coming.
SPEAKER_02: The Lord is going to follow.
SPEAKER_02: But the Lord is also described in the end of verse 1 another way.
SPEAKER_02: That Lord is the messenger of the covenant.
SPEAKER_02: The word translated messenger here is the same Hebrew word that is usually translated as angel, Malach.
SPEAKER_02: So is the Lord an angel?
SPEAKER_02: Is God an angel?
SPEAKER_02: Maybe.
SPEAKER_02: When you read the Old Testament, you will find a number of instances in which the angel of the Lord sure seems to be God.
SPEAKER_02: Joshua chapter 5, among a number of examples.
SPEAKER_02: Joshua 5 meets the commander of the armies of the Lord of hosts, and when he realizes who he is, he falls on the ground and worships him.
SPEAKER_02: But it's a little bit of tension here, isn't there, between the Lord Himself, God Himself, who's going to follow the messenger and come into his temple and reveal himself, and that God is also a messenger sent by God on a mission for God.
SPEAKER_02: Wouldn't it be nice if there was a follow-up word from the Lord to resolve that tension?
SPEAKER_02: Oh, we do have that, don't we?
SPEAKER_02: It's called the New Testament.
SPEAKER_02: And the New Testament resolves that tension this way.
SPEAKER_02: For example, the beginning of the Gospel of John says that the Lord Jesus Christ is the one who followed John the Baptist.
SPEAKER_02: He's the one, he's the messenger, come to his temple, he's the messenger of the covenant.
SPEAKER_02: And he was in the beginning with God and was God.
SPEAKER_02: He is the identity, shares all the identity of God.
SPEAKER_02: He is the God of Israel.
SPEAKER_02: All of God's glory is in this Messiah, Jesus Christ, who followed John the Baptist.
SPEAKER_02: And yet he's distinct from God, sent from God on a mission to achieve God's purposes in the world.
SPEAKER_02: So what we have discovered in chapter 3, verse 1, is that the prophet is sent by God to speak into the lives of disillusioned people with this announcement that God is sending Christ.
SPEAKER_02: Reorient your experiences around the reality that God is intervening in human history to send Christ.
SPEAKER_02: And what is Christ going to do when he comes?
SPEAKER_02: Well, the text says in verse 1, he's going to suddenly come in his temple.
SPEAKER_02: And so you might ask, well, when Jesus did come, John the Baptist proclaimed him, he identified him as the Lamb of God.
SPEAKER_02: And then in John chapter 2, we find that Jesus goes into the temple and clears out all the bad guys, makes a whip, and goes to town.
SPEAKER_02: Is that what this text is talking about?
SPEAKER_02: Well, let's look at verses two through four and see the description of the kind of work the Lord's going to do on his coming.
SPEAKER_02: Look at verse 2.
SPEAKER_02: But who can endure the day of his coming?
SPEAKER_02: And who can stand when he appears?
SPEAKER_02: He is like a refiner's fire and like fuller's soap.
SPEAKER_02: 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.
SPEAKER_02: That's strong language.
SPEAKER_02: Describing the work of the Messiah as that of a refiner, speaking of the blasts of an intense heat from a furnace that would melt metal so that you could scoop away the dross and the impurities.
SPEAKER_02: Or like a fuller is an ancient launderer who would use lye, which was like a burning chemical agent, and put it into the fabrics of your clothes, and it would essentially burn away the mud and the grime and your fibers.
SPEAKER_02: So this is describing the work of the Messiah to as a fire, as a burning chemical agent, to burn away the dross, to burn away iniquity, to burn away sin, and leave a people that are pure in his presence.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 4, then the offering of Judah in Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old, as in former years.
SPEAKER_02: So listen to the language of the text.
SPEAKER_02: You have a pure people, a worshiping community.
SPEAKER_02: God is among them, delighting in them.
SPEAKER_02: That's not exactly what happened when Jesus kicked out the tax collectors in John 2.
SPEAKER_02: This is kingdom language.
SPEAKER_02: This is the pulling the strings of all the prophecies that preceded Malachi, speaking of the great culmination of the day of the Lord when God will bring his kingdom from heaven to earth and establish justness that will live forever, and God will be the king over all of his people.
SPEAKER_02: That's what this text is talking about.
SPEAKER_02: Just one of the texts in Zechariah that describes this as Zechariah 2.10.
SPEAKER_02: And Malachi is picking up the promises from those previous prophets and saying, God is still going to achieve that work.
SPEAKER_02: But he didn't do it the first time Messiah came.
SPEAKER_02: The first time the Messiah came, the Messiah did the work to qualify people to actually share in the kingdom he'll bring the second time.
SPEAKER_02: All of that's going to happen.
SPEAKER_02: But in order for that to be true, you have to be spiritually fit to come into that kingdom.
SPEAKER_02: And none of us are fit to come into that kingdom.
SPEAKER_02: So the first time that Jesus came into the world, he did all the work that was necessary to make us spiritually fit to come into the kingdom.
SPEAKER_02: And the second time when he comes, he'll establish that kingdom, and everybody who is in covenant relationship with him will dwell in that kingdom with him forever and ever.
SPEAKER_02: So John the Baptist, the messenger that's prophesied in chapter 3, verse 1, kicks off the ministry of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: And Jesus comes and achieves the work that's necessary to make you suitable to come into God's kingdom.
SPEAKER_02: And one day he is going to come again.
SPEAKER_02: He's going to bring that kingdom.
SPEAKER_02: This prophecy, then, uh, is intended to have the same function in our lives as it was intended to have in the lives of the people of Israel.
SPEAKER_02: And the people of Israel, this prophecy was to tell them, look, you're really enduring hardship.
SPEAKER_02: It's real.
SPEAKER_02: God sees it.
SPEAKER_02: There really is iniquity, there really is injustice, there really is oppression in the world you live in.
SPEAKER_02: That's real.
SPEAKER_02: God sees it, God knows it.
SPEAKER_02: But He's calling you to reorient your mind around eternity and put your hope on the certainty that God is going to bring a perfect kingdom where you'll dwell with Him forever and ever in righteousness and bank your hopes on that.
SPEAKER_02: Because we, like the Israelites, stand on this side of that kingdom, this prophecy is supposed to function the same way in our lives.
SPEAKER_02: It's supposed to reorient us to put our hopes in the coming kingdom that our Messiah will bring.
SPEAKER_02: But there's a difference between us and Israel in the way we relate to this prophecy.
SPEAKER_02: Because we stand between the two comings of the Messiah.
SPEAKER_02: We have, in fact, even more surety, even more confidence in this prophecy.
SPEAKER_02: Because we have seen that the Messiah has already come once and done all that was necessary to secure our future in that kingdom in his death and resurrection on our behalf.
SPEAKER_02: So this text calls us to say, just as sure as Jesus really did die for my sins, as he really was raised from the dead, as I really was baptized into his death and raised with him to newness of life, just as sure as I have been sealed by his spirit, and as God began a good work in me, he will bring it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: That day's coming.
SPEAKER_02: Put your hopes in that.
SPEAKER_02: And he wants to reorient us.
SPEAKER_02: But the way in which he wants to reorient us is not to say, you shouldn't be disappointed.
SPEAKER_02: He's not shaking his finger and saying, oh, you shouldn't expect anything out of life.
SPEAKER_02: Rather, he's saying that your desires, if anything, are too small.
SPEAKER_02: You're we get angry when we lose things in this world that we feel like would satisfy us, and God is saying, No, there's something even better that I'm offering you.
SPEAKER_02: Your desires are just too small.
SPEAKER_02: That's a human reality.
SPEAKER_02: You know, as soon as you become a parent, you become acquainted with this pretty quick.
SPEAKER_02: I remember when our oldest was only about one year old, we took her to the beach, went on a nice long.
SPEAKER_02: Drive, got to the beach, and she was tucked into her car seat, and she had like a little happy meal toy or something, and she was very content.
SPEAKER_02: It was a great drive, which, if you're not a parent yet, not every drive with children goes that way.
SPEAKER_02: But this was a smooth drive, and we finally got to the beach, and we opened the door, and we began to unbuckle her from her car seat, and she realized that she was gonna be removed from the seat, and the joy that she was experiencing playing with this happy meal toy or whatever it was was gonna end.
SPEAKER_02: And she went full-on apocalyptic baby.
SPEAKER_02: Screaming and kicking and how dare you!
SPEAKER_01: I've been good, I've done what you want, and you're gonna remove, take me out of here! Where's the dad of justice?
SPEAKER_02: And I looked at my wife and we were like, if only, if only there was a way to communicate to her tiny little baby mind that something so much better is coming for you.
SPEAKER_02: Yes, I am taking this away from you right now, but I'm gonna replace it with something so much better.
SPEAKER_02: I'm taking you to the beach, kid.
SPEAKER_02: Over and over and over.
SPEAKER_02: We have unfulfilled expectations, we have unfulfilled desires in this life.
SPEAKER_02: And the Lord calls us to reorient our minds around the reality that in eternity he is bringing us something even better than the beach.
SPEAKER_02: He's bringing us his very own kingdom.
SPEAKER_02: And he's calling us to put our minds on that.
SPEAKER_02: You know, there's a difference between us and you know the kid in the car having a fit.
SPEAKER_02: But God can tell us at least a little bit of what's coming.
SPEAKER_02: And he's told us in the word, hasn't he?
SPEAKER_02: You know, in the scripture, you see that God promises when you get to that kingdom, you're gonna have a position there.
SPEAKER_02: You're gonna have work to do.
SPEAKER_02: Paul says, you're gonna judge angels.
SPEAKER_02: John says, you're gonna sit down on a throne with Christ and you're gonna rule the nations.
SPEAKER_02: He also says that all of your senses are gonna be satisfied.
SPEAKER_02: There's all this multiplicity of languages described as you're gonna be up on a mountain having a feast with all the nations of the earth.
SPEAKER_02: And Revelation 20 says the kings of the earth are gonna bring their cultures in.
SPEAKER_02: There's gonna be singing and dancing and songs and art.
SPEAKER_02: All of your senses will be satiated to the full forever.
SPEAKER_02: And there's all this different language to describe.
SPEAKER_02: You're gonna experience divine glory, whatever that is, and you're gonna be like Christ.
SPEAKER_02: 1 John chapter 3 says, Beloved, what we will be has not appeared yet, but we know that when he appears, we will be like him because we'll see him as he is.
SPEAKER_02: And the greatest of all of that, you will be with Christ.
SPEAKER_02: And no one will remove you from his presence forever and ever.
SPEAKER_02: What the prophet is calling us to do is to put our minds on that reality.
SPEAKER_02: Let this external word from the Lord pierce into our experiences as really disappointing, as really painful, as frustrating as they really are, and allow the word of the Lord to reorient our hearts around the certainty that what the Lord is bringing to us is greater than we could actually imagine.
SPEAKER_02: That's the promise that he gives to the people and to us in this text, but he also gives a warning that we need to look at in this last verse in verse 5.
SPEAKER_02: So if you look down at your Bibles in verse 5, where we see the Lord saying, This, then I will draw near to you for judgment.
SPEAKER_02: I'll be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired worker and his wages, the widow and the fatherless, against those who thrust aside the sojourner, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.
SPEAKER_02: So the Lord is bringing judgment.
SPEAKER_02: What does it mean in verse 5 when it says, I'll be a swift witness, like the Lord's running real fast.
SPEAKER_02: He's got his chucks on and he's moving.
SPEAKER_02: The word swift in the context of judgment is used repeatedly in the Old Testament to speak of the finality.
SPEAKER_02: That when the Lord comes, there won't be any like get your affairs in order.
SPEAKER_02: There's going to be finality when he brings judgment.
SPEAKER_02: And what is he bringing judgment upon?
SPEAKER_02: Well, I don't know if you're counting as I read, but there are seven iniquities that the Lord pronounces judgment on in this text.
SPEAKER_02: And I don't think it's just these are the seven he really doesn't like.
SPEAKER_02: The rest of them are like, whatever.
SPEAKER_02: I think it is pretty intentional that the prophet is just casting a net to just describe all evil and oppression in the world, God is going to bring final judgment upon.
SPEAKER_02: And the reason that this is the next place he goes in this word of comfort and challenge to his people experiencing unfulfilled expectation is that he wants to reorient our lives around the reality that as real as injustice and oppression are in this world and they are real, God is going to bring a swift and final judgment that will right every wrong.
SPEAKER_02: Vengeance is mine, says the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: I will repay.
SPEAKER_02: And you can reorient your heart around the reality that God sees the evil in the world and he will judge it, and you can put your hope in that.
SPEAKER_02: No, I want you to imagine for a moment that you are a cow on a farm, just for fun.
SPEAKER_02: And on this particular farm, you find that there's a fellow cow who is no good.
SPEAKER_02: This cow is always biting the farmhands when they come to try to bring the feed, kicking the other cows and stealing their food.
SPEAKER_02: This is a bad hombre.
SPEAKER_02: He's a he's a vacamala, and you just don't like him.
SPEAKER_02: And you notice one day that the farmer is actually giving this bad cow double the feed, triple the feed, and he's skimping on you.
SPEAKER_02: And you start to think, what this devil of a farmer.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, is there no justice in the world?
SPEAKER_02: What an unjust farmer! Until one day you overhear the farmer talking to his farmhand, and he says, I want you to double again the feed that you're giving to that fat cow because I'm fattening him up for slaughter.
SPEAKER_02: That would reorient your mind, wouldn't it?
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you'd be like, have my food, fat cow.
SPEAKER_02: Do you see that the word of judgment in this text is intended to be good news to you?
SPEAKER_02: God sees the reality of evil in your world.
SPEAKER_02: And he's bringing judgment.
SPEAKER_02: But as much as it is a good word that God is going to bring judgment and right every wrong, it's also a warning.
SPEAKER_02: You notice where God goes in verse 2, go back up to verse 2.
SPEAKER_02: But who can endure the day of his coming and who can stand when he appears?
SPEAKER_02: The Bible simultaneously presents the judgment of God as good news that God is going to right every wrong, and at the same time, it will not let you escape the reality that if God is going to come and bring judgment on the world, he's not going to do it according to your standard.
SPEAKER_02: If God is going to come and bring judgment on this world, if the judge of all the earth will do right, and he will, then he's not just going to judge the evil outside of you that you don't like, but he will also judge the evil inside of you that you do like.
SPEAKER_02: And if we're honest with ourselves before such a God, who can stand?
SPEAKER_02: Who can endure the day of his coming?
SPEAKER_02: None of us.
SPEAKER_02: So how then can the reality of this judgment and the kingdom to follow our coming be good news for any of us?
SPEAKER_02: We'll look back up at verse 1 at the way the Lord is described in his coming.
SPEAKER_02: He is the Lord who's coming suddenly to his temple, and he is the messenger of the covenant.
SPEAKER_02: Now, when the Lord Jesus Christ came, what covenant did he bring?
SPEAKER_02: Jesus answers it in the Last Supper when he's celebrating the Passover with his disciples, and he says he's come to inaugurate the new covenant of his blood.
SPEAKER_02: That is, Jesus is saying that yes, the Messiah's work is to bring final judgment, swift and total final judgment, exhaustive judgment, in which he will judge all evil, all iniquity comprehensively everywhere.
SPEAKER_02: But before he comes to do that, he came a first time.
SPEAKER_02: And the first time he came, God's judgment did not come down on us, it came down on Christ.
SPEAKER_02: Paul says in Galatians 3.13, Christ redeemed us by becoming accursed for us.
SPEAKER_02: The reason that we can have hope that we will enter through God's judgment into that everlasting kingdom is because when Christ came first, he endured God's judgment in our place.
SPEAKER_02: On the cross, the heavens opened, and all of God's judgment came down upon Christ, he exhausted all of it, resurrected from the dead, and is ascended and seated at the right hand of God even now, inviting all people to put their trust in Him and become members of this new covenant, to repent of your sin and believe in the God who cannot lie, and receive the assurance that when this Christ does come again as a burning, refining fire, you'll find that that refining fire is there to usher you into paradise with the Messiah who died in your place.
SPEAKER_02: See, the two great realities that this text wants to reorder our minds around are these.
SPEAKER_02: One, you have a future inheritance that is greater than you have possibly begun to imagine.
SPEAKER_02: And two, you are so much more undeserving of it than you have ever begun to understand.
SPEAKER_02: That's supposed to leave you in a place where your life would be reordered, not around your present ex present experiences, but around the great realities outside of you, namely God and Christ and his kingdom that is coming for you.
SPEAKER_02: In fact, the New Testament writers go here over and over and over.
SPEAKER_02: They say if you understand the reality of what Christ has done to secure your place in God's everlasting kingdom, it's gonna shape the way you live.
SPEAKER_02: You're gonna live a life not of worry and fear, but a life of eager expectation that Jesus would come.
SPEAKER_02: Author of Hebrews says this just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with our sins, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.
SPEAKER_02: May this word of the Lord reorient you so that you are found in that day, eagerly waiting for him.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: Let's go to the Lord in prayer.
SPEAKER_02: Oh God, we are grateful for the great realities that you reveal to us in your word.
SPEAKER_02: Realities that we are conscious that we are entirely unworthy of.
SPEAKER_02: Reality that you, before all of eternity, designed to save a people for yourself, to secure for them an eternal inheritance.
SPEAKER_02: And that inheritance now is imperishable, unfading, kept in heaven for us.
SPEAKER_02: For a little while we are tested by various trials, but we know, Lord, that by your keeping and sustaining power you will bring us through, so that the press tested genuineness of our faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though tested by fire, will prove to result in praise and glory and honor for the name of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_02: We pray that you would give us expanded hearts to love you more and to trust you more because of the things that we have seen in your word today.
SPEAKER_02: We pray this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now, for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_00: If you're in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: location, go to tms.edu.
SPEAKER_00: I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with all of us.