Prepared for Two Advents
Malachi 3:1 – 4
As of today, Christmas is 20 days away. Twenty days from this very time families from all over the world, will be gathered around their Christmas tree opening the gifts that Santa has brought to them. Friends are you prepared for that day? You have had fair warning, you have experience, you have done it before. Advent and Christmas come every year and yet we never seem to properly prepare early enough or maybe not at all. So, I ask again are you Prepared for Advent?
As we noted last week, the church lectionary, the suggested scriptures for each Sunday of the year that were given to us for first couple of weeks of Advent are not the typical preparation for Christmas, they don’t really speak directly about peace of mind, joy to the world and about love for one another but rather they are intended for us to be introspective and self-challenging.
For instance, today both our Gospel lesson from Luke and our message lesson from Malachi speak of purification and judgment, themes not associated in the popular imagination of Christmas. Nevertheless, as we discussed last week Advent is, of course, a preparation not only for a remembrance of Christ’s first coming as a baby, but also as a preparation, a purification of ourselves, of our souls for Christ’s second coming, in power and glory. Friends we live are living between Two Advents! Are you Prepared?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor, theologian, anti-Nazi dissident, writes of this theme of purification and judgment in an Advent sermon he preached in 1928:
It is very remarkable that we face the thought that God is coming so calmly, in previous times people trembled at the thought of God coming. Job wanted to see him, face to face as you recall, but then trembled and was humbled when He came to him.
Yet we have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love of God’s through a baby meek and mild coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God’s coming should arouse in us.
We have become indifferent to the message, casually taking only the pleasant and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of the universe draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us.
The coming of God is rightfully not only cause for glad tidings for the people of God but should also be frightening news for everyone who has a conscience because judgement is coming the second time.
Only when we have felt the terror of the matter, can we recognize the incomparable kindness in it. God comes into the very midst of evil and of death and judges the evil in each of us and in the world. And by judging us, God cleanses and sanctifies us, comes to us with grace and love. Friends we live between Two Advents, are you ready?
At Advent, we as Christians are aware that God is coming to be with us on earth. God came as a baby in Bethlehem on Christmas, but our scripture lessons today are intended to remind us that Jesus has and will come with not one but two purposes in mind.
The first was to prepare all of mankind for His righteous acts of saving grace on the cross and the other purpose is to prepare us for his second coming when he will judge the quick and the dead, as we recited in the Apostle’s Creed earlier. It is the work of Christ in his first Advent that he will use to Prepare us for the second Advent. Friends we need to Prepare for Two Advents!
The author of our message lesson today, Malachi, is the last of the Old Testament prophets. Malachi is writing to the Jews about a hundred years later after they have returned from their 70-year captivity in Babylon. As the last of the prophets of this era, much of what God directs him to write and speak was intended for those that listened to him, to look ahead, look beyond where they were, beyond even the words of Jeremiah that we read last week, to where God was going to take them next!
Consequently everything in our lesson from Malachi this morning is in the future tense, looking forward. Everything God was going to do was going to happen later, much later in fact. From the Jews perspective it would be more than 400 years before God would begin to bring these prophecies and promises to completion. But from our perspective we, you and me, we are still waiting for only part of the full realization of all that God promises through Malachi. Remember we are living between two Advents!
Our lesson in Malachi begins with two promises from God, “See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me.” Both of these, promise people that are being sent, the first is of course is referring to John the Baptist, the one called “my messenger” is the forerunner of Christ, John the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth that we read about in our Gospel lesson. John was called on to proclaim the law, to point out the people’s sins and to lead them to repentance.
The second promised person is of course Jesus, who is referred in the scripture by the pronoun “me” which identifies Jesus’s inclusion within the Triune God. According Luke, John the Baptist’s mission was to prepare the people for the Lord who was coming to “give the knowledge of salvation to his people through the forgiveness of their sins and calling them to repentance”.
Malachi is challenging the people by saying that a soul with imperfections, with impurities, cannot stand in the presence of perfection; meaning a sinner cannot stand before the Holy God. He asks them to consider their sinful nature when he asks “who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears?”
For fifth century Jews these words tell them that even though through His grace and mercy God has restored Israel as His favored people, they still remain a people that have problems with disobedience to the Law and again have become complacent in their worship of God. Despite their promises to be renewed subjects of God, their humanness leads them astray again but Malachi, like Jeremiah last week, offers them hope!
Malachi tells them that “the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come” so you must prepare yourself to stand in righteousness when He comes. And for more than 400 years they wait and prepare themselves for the Messiah that comes on that first Advent.
But for Christians, for us, living after the Christ event, the words of Malachi are not words simply regarding a past event or a past expectation. For us here today, as we prepare to celebrate the first Advent, we must also prepare ourselves for the second of Two Advents, the return of Jesus when he comes to judge us all. Friends we are living between Two Advents, and we must be prepared. These words that Malachi writes must jolt us awake from our comfortable and dangerous spiritual slumber and urge us to become netter prepared.
Malachi uses metaphors that the fifth century Jews would understand, but they are also relevant for us 2500 years later; refiner’s fire and a launderer’s soap. Jesus will sit as a refiner and purifier, he will purify the faithful and make them as valuable as gold and silver.
When you get a nugget of gold out of the ground it’s worth something, but it’s impure. So how do you get rid of the dirt and other contaminants? The refiner’s fire that’s how. You put it under great heat so as to liquefy the metal, raise the temperature to a point that everything but the metal burns off. When it cools you’re left with pure gold.
The purpose is to enhance the precious qualities of the metal and to bring out the intended nature of what is being refined. God’s “purification and judgment” is about refining us to remove impurities that keep us from being all that we were meant to be, and instilling qualities that shape us into the image of Christ.
You see God sent Jesus once and He will send him again to burn away all the evil within us and remove the stains that sin leaves on us in order that what He leaves behind is a purified, cleansed and sanctified church.
Friends, what we attempt to do to make ourselves holy, righteous and acceptable in the sight of God is temporary and ineffective at best but the refining and cleaning that we allow Jesus to do to us and for is effective and eternal. Jesus is the refiner and launderer of our souls.
Along with the working of the Holy Spirit, they create faithfulness in our hearts. Jesus’ work is permanent. When Jesus removes sins, they are gone. When he cleans you, you are clean forever. When you are refined by him, you are pure through eternity.
Hear the Good News my friends………
One Advent has come and gone but Christian, another Advent still awaits us. On the final day, when we all stand before our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ, he will finish the task of refining us, removing our impurities, enhancing the beauty God created in each one of us, we will be set free from all that keeps us from being the person God intended for us to be, and being transformed into the image of Christ.
Then we will not have impurities, we will be pure, and then we can approach God and stand in his presence with confidence and thankfulness. He will have refined us and He has cleaned us as pure as the holy Lamb of God himself. Then our offerings will be acceptable to the Lord
Going back to the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God comes into the very midst of evil and of death, and judges the evil in us and in the world. And by judging us, God cleanses and sanctifies us, comes to us with grace and love.
One last story, some years ago a group of women were meeting in their Bible study when they puzzled over words in our lesson today. After some discussion, they decided to call on a silversmith and learn what they could on the subject to understand the meaning of the scripture. The silversmith readily showed them the process. “But, sir,” said one, “do you sit while the refining is going on like the scripture says?”
“Oh, yes, indeed” he said. “I must sit with my eyes steadily fixed on the surface, for if the time necessary for refining is exceeded in the slightest degree, the metal is sure to be damaged.” At once they saw the beauty and comfort of the Scripture passage.
As they were leaving, the silversmith called after them, “Oh, one more thing! I only know when the process is complete when I can see my own image on the pure, reflective surface of the silver.“
That, my friends, is what the Lord Jesus wants to see in you and me as He refines us by fire, then waits patiently and lovingly to see His own blessed image reflected in us. Our Lord and Savior is coming again dear ones, to sanctify and purify our souls through the heat of the trials that we face. Dear ones I will ask one more time; are you Prepared for Two Advents? Amen.