December 10, 2006 Sermon

God’s Tough Messenger
Malachi 3:1-4

Baseball manager Whitey Herzog said he had to act like a magician to get one particular pitcher to come out of a game. “I would distract him with words and wave my left hand around up by his face,” Herzog reported, “then kind of grab the ball with my right hand while he wasn’t looking.” Nobody likes to be told he’s losing.

After his victory over the British on Lake Erie During the War of 1812 Commodore Perry wrote Army headquarters, “We have met the enemy, and they are ours.” But after his defeat at Gettysburg , General Robert E. Lee wired his President, Jefferson Davis, “Let the tent be struck.” It was their prearranged signal that their army had suffered a decisive loss. Which message would you rather receive?

God has always used prophets to give us news both good and bad. In fact, God usually had the prophets give news that combined good and bad. Malachi gives us one example in the passage we just read. “The messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight—indeed He is coming, says the Lord of hosts,” the text tells us. Yet it immediately adds, “But who can endure his coming?” This “messenger of the covenant,” will purify the people as a silversmith uses fire to draw off the good metal from the bad. He will cleanse the people with powerful soap.

God will send a Savior. But that Savior will run the people through the mill before presenting them back to God. This prophecy fits perfectly into God’s pattern of good news/bad news. God sends tough messengers with tough messages. Prepare your heart to hear God’s prophecies. Open yourself to all of God’s message.

We know next to nothing about Malachi. The name means “my messenger”. The writings under that name first appeared around 475 years before Christ. In that era the Jews had come back home to the Promised Land after their enslavements in Assyria and Babylon . They had rebuilt Jerusalem and the Temple within it. They had restored their national and religious lives. But foreign armies continued to threaten. The Jews felt the shadow of the great powers in the Middle East . They looked for a charismatic man to lead them to total freedom.

Malachi’s prophecy predicted the rise of just such a man. Yet the Messiah God prophesied did not quite match the Jew’s dreams. The Greeks would soon steamroll that part of the world under the hand of Alexander the Great, a charismatic, brilliant and brutal leader. He looked like the kind of Messiah the Jews wanted. They did not get one. Instead, they would get precisely what God told Malachi to proclaim: a man who would refine, purify and then lead the people into spiritual freedom.

When Jesus of Nazareth walked out of his village and started preaching, he fit the prophet mold. He preached not power, but purity. He preached not wealth, but self-sacrifice. But he healed people, body and soul. He promised peace to those who followed him. He constantly quoted the words God the Father had put into the ancient prophets’ mouths, prophets like Malachi. By the gift of God we have faith that Jesus is the very Messiah whom Malachi predicted.

But we must take seriously the two-edged sword of the message Malachi and Jesus preached. Our Messiah purifies and cleanses, as well as heals and saves. Prepare your heart to hear Jesus’ full message.

Jesus purifies. Malachi used the image of a silversmith. Have you ever watched a silversmith at Greenfield Village or Colonial Williamsburg? If you have you know the first thing the smith does when working silver is to melt it. Remember the song Spirit of the Living God? Its lyric includes the words, “Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me.” When we truly follow Jesus he melts us. He breaks us down. Next, he removes our impurities. Only then does he pour us into new molds, shaping us as he desires.

Malachi also uses the image of fuller’s soap. I can just remember the Fuller Brush Man, the door-to-door salesman who peddled hairbrushes, soaps, and all sorts of grooming items. The word “fuller” comes from the Anglo-Saxon word for “to whiten”. Cloth makers used fuller’s clay to scrub their product before selling it. This clay had abrasive qualities that wore away all dirt and oil. In the same way, God’s Messiah will abrasively, completely cleanse us.

The Messiah melts, molds and scrubs God’s people. The process can be painful. Few of us would volunteer for it. But not to accept the words of God’s messengers, not to open our hearts to the Messiah, means excluding ourselves from the peace of Christ. We can even help make this molding and scrubbing happen by observing the discipline of confession. When we honestly, humbly confess our sins to God, we experience the refining and the cleansing of which Malachi speaks. It hurts, occasionally quite a lot, but the outcome more than overcomes the pain. When we truly confess we feel the burden of our guilt lifted from our shoulders. We feel free. We come to know the peace of Christ.

Confession, and any other way we might experience the refining power of our Messiah, brings us Good News, not bad. This is the twist, the surprise ending to the prophecies. For God has always had us in mind and in heart. God has sent prophets from of old to show us the path we must take, the path to Christ and the peace he offers. Hear the Good News, the Good News of the Gospel and of the prophets: in Jesus Christ, we are forgiven. In Christ, we know peace. Praise God for the refining fire of faith! Praise God for the cleansing power of grace! Amen!