If you would, find your copy of God's Word and turn to Malachi chapter 2. We're going to continue our... I think when we started this I called it a review of the minor prophets. It is a review. But we're gonna continue our study on the minor prophets. We're in Malachi. Our text this morning is chapter two, verse 17, the last verse of chapter two, through chapter three, verse six. And what you'll see is that that last verse of chapter two really belongs with the information at the beginning of chapter three. Malachi chapter two. Starting at verse 17, it says, you have wearied the Lord with your words. Yet you say, in what way 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 send my messenger and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple, even 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 launderer's soap. He will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver. He will purify the sons of Levi and purge them as gold and silver that they may offer to the Lord an offering in righteousness. Then the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasant to the Lord, as in the days of old, as in former years, and I will come near you for judgment. I will be a swift witness against sorcerers, against adulterers, against perjurers, against those who exploit wage earners and widows and orphans, and against those who turn away an alien because they do not fear me. says the Lord of hosts. For I am the Lord, I do not change, therefore you are not consumed, O sons of Jacob. When bad things happen to good people, When good things happen to bad people, when it seems like nothing happens to the very worst of people, we can be like the Israelites of Malachi's day and ask that question at the end of chapter two, where is the God of justice? Why isn't God stepping down here and setting this right, right now? And it seems like a fair question, doesn't it? When we see the wicked prosper, when the righteous suffer, when we don't feel like we're being blessed the way we ought to be blessed, when the wickedness of the world around us grows and goes unchecked by any kind of divine intervention, we start to ask, Why am I following Jesus at all? If there's really a God of justice, wouldn't he do something about all this injustice that I see? We're far from the first people to ask this. In Psalm 73, a man named Asaph expressed those feelings. He wrote Psalm 73 and in verses 12 and 13 he says, Behold, these are the ungodly who are always at ease. They increase in riches. Surely I have cleansed my heart in vain. The prophet Jeremiah expressed those feelings. In Jeremiah 12, verse one, he says, righteous are you, O Lord, when I plead with you, yet let me talk with you about your judgments. Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why are those happy who deal so treacherously? The prophet Habakkuk and the minor prophets, you may remember his frustration. He says in Habakkuk 1 verses three and four, why do you show me iniquity and cause me to see trouble? For plundering and violence are before me. There is strife and contention arises. Therefore the law is powerless and justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous, therefore perverse judgment proceeds. So Asaph and Jeremiah and Habakkuk and here Malachi voices the words of the Israelites, all of it expressing this common confusion of watching evildoers flourish and wondering if God knows, if God cares. Why do we see a world that's growing in wickedness and that evil is unchecked? Why don't we feel like obedience to God is paying off for us? And yet as we look at this text in Malachi this morning, we'll see that God does know, God does care, God does have a plan he is bringing to fulfillment even at this moment. And those spoken or even unspoken thoughts that we have that question God's justice are, according to chapter two, verse 17, a weariness to him. Chapter two, verse 17 says, you have wearied the Lord with your words. Now this text is filled with symbolic language, beginning with that first statement. In a literal sense, we understand we cannot weary God. Isaiah 40, verse 28 calls him the everlasting Lord, the God, the creator of the ends of the earth, and he neither faints nor gets weary, right? You can't. You can't do anything to make God tired. He is all-powerful. He is inexhaustible. But the symbolic language here tells us He is weary of this grumbling attitude. Like a parent who gets tired of their child's constant complaining. When we constantly criticize his management of world affairs that is exhausting to our all-powerful creator. Worse yet, we worry him with this complaint and then we pretend that we don't. Oh, I don't say that. I don't think that way. Look at verse 17 again. You have wearied the Lord with your words, yet you say, in what way have we wearied him? No, no I haven't. And the answer to that question, in what way have we wearied the Lord, it is by saying, everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord and he delights in them. Or, where is the God of justice? the two conclusions reached by the children of Israel here first, is that God seems to them so indifferent to the evil in the world that maybe he's actually happy with it. They say, delights in the evildoers. That leads them to secondly question the very existence of justice or God. Whereas the God of justice is either saying, We've been told that God is just, but it sure doesn't seem that way. Or it's saying, since there is no justice, there really is no God. The children of Israel were close. They were very close to embracing a form of practical atheism. The Lord answers their complaints in verses one through six of chapter three. As his answer unfolds, it shows that God wields his justice thoughtfully, purposefully, and mercifully through Christ Jesus. God wields his justice thoughtfully, purposefully, and mercifully through Christ Jesus. First, I want you to see in God's answer two messengers of justice. The end of verse 17 asks that question, where is the God of justice? Verse one answers, He is coming. Look at verse one, 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, even the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight. Behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. There are two messengers of justice in view in verse one. If you are reading from a New King James Version this morning, you'll note that that first word, messenger, whom God says is my messenger, that is in lowercase. The second messenger, the messenger of the covenant, is in an uppercase letter. That's a sign from the translators that they recognize these messengers are two different messengers. The first messenger is coming and the description is, he will prepare the way before me. The second messenger comes and his arrival is seen when the Lord, whom you seek, suddenly enters his temple. This first messenger is a promise of John the Baptist. The second messenger, the messenger of the covenant, is the Lord Jesus Christ himself. So let's talk about these messengers for a moment. First, John. Throughout the Old Testament, We see promises of the coming Savior Messiah. But a handful of times, we also see a promise of a man who would be sent by God to prepare the way for the coming Messiah. One of those promises are right here. Behold, I send my messenger, you will prepare the way before me. Another of those promises is actually found in Malachi chapter four, verse five, where he says, behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. Another of those promises is found in Isaiah chapter 40, verse three, which describes John the Baptist as a quote, voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Now when the New Testament opens, there is this old priest named Zacharias, who is ministering in the temple and he has sent an angelic messenger to tell him that in his old age, he and his wife Elizabeth are going to have a son. He is to name that son John and that son would be the fulfillment of this promise of a messenger to prepare the way before the Messiah. In fact, later on, when John is born, Zachariah prays over John and says in Luke 1, verse 76, you, child, will be called the prophet of the highest, for you will go before the face of the Lord to prepare his way. When John the Baptist grew and began his ministry, he did so out in the wilderness, just the way that Isaiah said that he would, Jesus said that he came in the spirit and power of Elijah, just like Malachi promised that he would. The Gospels uniformly apply these Old Testament passages of a preparer of the Lord's way, a messenger to prepare the way for the Messiah. They uniformly apply those to John the Baptist. John came preaching. repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And he prepared the way for the ministry of the Lord Jesus. In this way, John the Baptist is a messenger of justice. He's declaring the messenger of justice is coming. Maybe think of it this way, if you've ever been in a courtroom and you've seen the courtroom bailiff, the bailiff does have some authority, does have some responsibility, but the authority that's vested in him is to come in and make that announcement of all rise for the judge. And that's when the real authority enters the room. John the Baptist is essentially the courtroom bailiff who's shouting, all rise, he is the preparation, he is the messenger of God who is preparing the way for true justice to take center stage. That's where the rest of verse 1 comes in. 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. Even the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. Just think of this within the context of Malachi's time. The people had returned from captivity. They had rebuilt the temple. They found that temple to be underwhelming because it wasn't as glorious as Solomon's old temple that had been destroyed. But the Lord had sent multiple prophets to them, encouraging them in that project and promising them that the glory of this new little temple is going to be even greater than the glory of the former temple that had been destroyed. If you remember, The prophet Haggai, for example, delivered God's message in Haggai 2, verses 7 through 9, that God says, look, I will fill this temple with glory, says the Lord of hosts, and the glory of the latter temple will be greater than that of the former. Here, Malachi tells us that the promise is going to be fulfilled when in verse 1, the Lord whom you seek will suddenly enter his temple. All right, so John comes as that messenger to prepare the way for the coming Messiah. He comes and he prepares the way for Jesus and then Jesus steps forward and he comes into the temple and he does it suddenly. He comes into the temple and he is turning over money changers tables, he is scattering the sacrifices for sales, he's running out the merchants with a homemade whip. And the reason he's doing that is because he is God's messenger of justice, right? The question, where is the God of justice? The answer is literally, he is, he's coming. For the children of Israel who saw the wicked prosper, who saw the righteous suffer, who questioned why it is that God's not addressing that, the answer here is that God is addressing that. God's answer to the wickedness and evil in this world is sending Jesus Christ his son and you need to be ready for him. In fact, I wanna point out something to you. Look at the people's accusation in chapter two, verse 17, and God's answer in verse one, and note that there is a subtle repetition of a word that's easy to miss. In chapter two, 17, the people say of the Lord that everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord and he delights in them. And what they're saying there is something that's really contrary to God's nature. Why does it seem like he delights in these evildoers when they are contrary to his nature? And in return, God answers them and promises this coming messenger of the covenant in whom, God says in verse one, in whom you delight. And I think that comes with a not so subtle return barb at them. Who do you think you delight in? You think that you delight in the coming Messiah, but the reality is the one that you're delighting in is entirely contrary to your nature. You wanna know where the God of justice is, well he's coming, and he's coming suddenly, and he's coming in justice, and are you ready for that? Or in the words of verse two, can you endure the day of his coming? Can you stand when he appears? So the two messengers of justice in verse one, then give way to two purposes of justice in verses two through five. If the Lord Jesus is God's answer to the problem of evil and wickedness in the world, what kind of solution does Jesus bring? We find two purposes of justice described here at the coming of Jesus. First, he purifies his people. Look at verses two through four. 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 launderer's soap. He will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver. He will purify the sons of Levi and purge them as gold and silver that they may offer to the Lord an offering in righteousness. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem would be pleasant to the Lord as in the days of old, as in former years. The description here is when the Lord Jesus arrives as judge of all the earth, there is a sense in which he purifies his people. In verses two and three, it describes him as a refiner's fire or as launderer's soap. The intent of both of those symbolic processes is to purify, not to destroy. to purify by fire involves burning away all that does not belong. Actually, the process in the ancient world would be, it would require a silversmith or a goldsmith to heat the precious metals with fire until the impurities called the dross either burned away if they were flammable, or they would bubble to the surface and the refiner would take this little net ladle and scoop the impurities off of the top, removing the dirt and grime and pebbles, all the stuff that doesn't belong, because the pure metal was more valuable and more useful. When that process was done, it was said that a refiner, a good refiner, could say, look down at the silver and see his face reflected in the surface. Similarly, the refining work of the Lord Jesus is to bring to our lives fire that burns away the impurities of sin until we reflect his image. The launderer's soap, or as the King James says, Fuller's soap, is a similar process. Look, I don't know if any of y'all ever got to experience old-fashioned lye soap. It is powerful and effective. I always joke that lye soap doesn't so much remove dirt as it removes the skin that the dirt is attached to. It leaves you clean, painfully clean. It is harsh enough in its process that even in ancient Israel, the strongest sub was typically reserved for a fuller or a launderer to utilize. The symbolism here is that when the Lord Jesus comes, he is going to insist on purity. He is like a refiner's fire. He is like launderer's soap. To be clear, Malachi is not addressing here the role of the Lord Jesus in establishing his people in righteousness through salvation. We understand it's through the work of Jesus that we are cleansed from the power and the penalty of sin. And yet we find ourselves still plagued with the presence of sin in our lives. That is unless, of course, some of y'all have achieved some standard of righteous perfection and I just haven't noticed it yet. The Lord Jesus purifies us in this life by at times using a harsh, a difficult refining process, but that is a sign that we are in fact his people. Hebrews 12.11 describes it as chastisement and says, "...No chastening seems joyful for the present, but painful. Nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it." Through faith in the Lord Jesus, we have a promise that someday we will see Him face to face. We will be conformed to His image. We will be perfectly purified. We will be saved from the penalty and the power and even the very presence of sin. For believers, the fiery purpose of the Lord Jesus is to refine us. The first purpose of Jesus in justice is to purify his people. The second purpose of Jesus in justice is to bring judgment against wickedness. Listen, a fire can be purifying, but a fire can also be destructive. And the description in verse five is, I will come near you for judgment. I will be swift against sorcerers, against adulterers, against perjurers, against those who exploit wage earners and widows and orphans, and against those who turn away an alien because they do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts. Now remember where this started. The people of Israel were looking around at the world outside of their borders, and it was run amok with wickedness, and they are thinking, well, God must delight in those evildoers out there. If not, then why isn't he doing something about it? Where is the God of justice? God now answers back on them that he does not have to look outside the borders of Israel to find wickedness worth judging. I will come near you for judgment, says the Lord. And what immediately follows is a representative list of sins that are worthy of condemnation and wrath of God. It's not a comprehensive list, but it is a representative list. It is a list of those things that existed within the nation of Israel at the time. He begins with sorcery or witchcraft. The use of occult practices violates the commands of God and it rejects the authority of God. Contrary to your favorite story from Oz, Glinda is not a good witch. There is no good way of doing a bad thing. All sorcery or witchcraft either embraces false idols and rejects God, or it presumably pretends to control God in the name of being good. There is no good way of doing a bad thing. He continues with adultery. Adultery is an act of treason. It violates the sacred commitment that you made with your spouse and don't forget you made that commitment in the sight of God and in the name of God himself. It is an act of treachery against him. Perjurers are liars, or it describes it in the King James as those who swear falsely in order to cover truth or to bend the truth. It's specifically talking about those occasions where someone would do this as a witness during some kind of trial, that they would conceal truth, that they would give untrue testimony, and in the process, they would They would make it so someone is unjustly abused by the system or in the process, someone else is unfairly overlooked by the system because they deserve to be judged. Imagine someone who would be a witness, go into a courtroom, give false testimony, manipulate the truth in that way, and then dare ask the question, where is the God of justice? He lists also on this representative list of sins those who exploit hirelings or wage earners. The idea is a day laborer who does the work but then doesn't get the pay that's coming to them. There's also others who don't get what's coming to them. He talks about exploiting widows and orphans. Look, they didn't have to work. They had a right under the law to expect generous consideration from the rest of society because of the naturally vulnerable position they were in as widows and orphans. Some in Israel, however, were clearly refusing to pay the workers that they hired and neglecting to provide for the needy that they saw around them. And he finishes this list with those who turn away an alien. Look, that's not a space alien. The King James Version uses stranger, and that also leads to some confusion. It's best to think of this word as a foreigner. It is a word describing someone who is living in a country that is not their country. It's the same word that's used in the law of God in Exodus 22 verse 21, when the Lord commands, you shall neither mistreat a stranger nor oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. All of these sins, sins among the Lord's people in that day and today, are sins that are rooted in our hearts. Listen, for any of us who are guilty of some of the sins on those lists, we should take a long look at the list of people who we are categorized with here. Sorcerers, adulterers, perjurers, abusers, see that the root cause of all of this is because according to God there in verse five, they do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts. There is no real respect or reverential awe for the Lord God and those guilty of those sins regardless of who they claim to be. It should be telling to us that this list is addressed specifically by God to those people who claim to be His people. Within the community of individuals who claim to be children of God, the description here is that the God of justice is coming in the person of Jesus Christ, and he is going to, for some, refine and purify them, but there are those who will meet justice and wrath. the consuming fire of Christ's justice. Even this morning, if you are here and you are claiming to be a part of the people of God, you need to know with certainty which side of this equation you are on, which side of the Lord Jesus' justice are you facing. Because through repentance of sin and faith in Jesus Christ as Savior, you can be confident that Jesus' purpose and justice is to refine and purify and perfect you. But without him, the description here is that there is no fear of God in you, and you are facing the consuming fire of God's wrath. So what's the answer to their question at the end of chapter two? Where is the God of justice? The answer is he's coming. But the people of Israel were asking this derisively. Like why isn't God showing up to smash those guys over there? They think, they think they want a God of justice who is essentially standing over the world with his big wrath hammer, ready to just play divine whack-a-mole wherever he sees wickedness pop up. And if you, like me, are tempted to wish for the same thing, then ask yourself, if God did that, what would it mean for you? Could you, in the words of verse two, endure his coming? Could you stand, or the idea is stand your ground when he appears? You know the answer here, you could not. And so instead of asking the question, where is the God of justice, why don't we simply rejoice that we have a God of everlasting mercy and justice? Look at verse six. For I am the Lord, I do not change, therefore you are not consumed, O sons of Jacob. He is the Lord and He does not change. The God of justice is coming in the person of Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Our God does not change. He is a refining fire. He is like launderer's soap that changes us, but He does not change. And if your view of God is that the only way he can administer justice is by playing that divine game of whack-a-mole and hammering away on wickedness wherever he sees it, what will he do when he sees the wickedness in you? Y'all, I love, I love how God ends this argument by essentially telling them, if I was the kind of God that you insist on, I would have destroyed you a long time ago. But he's not that way. Therefore, you are not consumed, O you sons of Jacob. He calls them here sons of Jacob in order to remind them, I think, where the whole message of Malachi started all the way back in chapter one. Remember how Malachi started? God saying, I have loved you. How have I loved you? Well, do you not remember my love for Jacob? Jacob, that sniveling little mama's boy. Jacob, the liar. Jacob, the cheat. Jacob, who is the father of a bunch of generations of lying cheats who are exhausting God by whining and stomping their feet and saying, where is the God of justice? As if God doesn't have the right to show mercy wherever he wills. As if, if he was ever, ever, anything less than the good and gracious God of Jacob, that these children of Jacob would have any hope of enduring till morning. Where is the God of justice? Well, this is him. He is a God of justice and mercy and grace and love, and in his eternal, unchanging goodness, he is accomplishing his divine plan of love to address the problem of sin in the world. The very problem that we look at and say, where is the God of justice, he has a plan to address that, but more importantly, he has a plan to address the problem of sin that exists in your heart that you don't want to look at. He will not change. He will not come and smash wickedness at your commands, but he will come and change you. He's made that divine plan to send a messenger to prepare you. Think of how this worked with John the Baptist. God did not just come, as he describes in verse one, to suddenly come into his temple because the people would not have been ready for that. He sent a messenger to prepare the way to say, repent, the Lord is near. And He has done the same for us. Look, the God of justice is coming in the person of Jesus Christ when He returns to this world in judgment. You should be thankful that through the gospel of Jesus Christ declared to you, the Lord sent a messenger to prepare you before He comes. To tell you to embrace Him, to turn from your sin, to be cleansed by the work of Jesus like a launderer's soap that takes your filthy stained clothes and turns them white as snow, to love Him and to respect and reverence and fear Him, and to be thankful that He is unchanging in His mercy and justice, that He's provided a plan to preserve your life. God wields his justice thoughtfully, purposefully, and mercifully through Christ Jesus.