RCL Year C:
December 5, 2021
2nd Sunday of Advent
Highlighted Text: Malachi 3:1-4
Check out our video discussion of the text with our writer Austin D. Hill.
Summary of the Text
Ancient Lens: What can we learn from the historical context?
Malachi’s Context: The book of Malachi, the last book in the OT canon, is often dated to some time in the first half of the 400’s BC. This time period is after both the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah have been conquered by the Assyrians and the Babylonians. With the Persians in power, the people of Judah were allowed to return. Around the time of Ezra and Nehemiah’s work, Malachi was written. There are varying opinions about more specific timing of this prophecy. For example, Elizabeth Achtemeier, in the Interpretation commentary series places this prophecy as likely before the time Ezra and Nehemiah[i], while David Baker, in the NIV Application Commentary describes the timing of Malachi as after the rebuilding of the wall and the people of Judah have lost their initial passion they had when returning home.
In either of these settings, we find a people who still are in need of hope. They are cynical, questioning God’s presence and faithfulness. And Malachi, who’s name means “My messenger,” is developing a sort of court room case for the people of Judah. There is a series of cases made against God, God makes cases back – all through the perspective of this prophet. Achtemeier makes the claim that Malachi is drawing from Deuteronomic law, where the a priest would hear a court case in the temple. The Judeans will quickly see that while they think God is in the wrong, the tables will soon be turned…
Judah’s Ongoing Refinement: Our passage, verses 1-4 of chapter three, while often used as a part of Advent liturgies, are part of a slightly larger unit. Commentaries often begin the passage in verse 17 of chapter two and will go a few verses later in chapter three. This passage, then, starts with the case of Judah against God. The prophet says God is wearied by Judah’s words. Judah has been claiming that God is absent. The proof of this, say the Judeans is the lack of justice. People who act wickedly seem to get away with it. “Where is the God of justice?” the people of Judah ask.
In short, God’s response to Judah, through Malachi, is who are you to determine justice? Judah should be careful for what they wish. God will send a messenger, and when this messenger comes, it will be like the refiner’s fire. In fact, God will put Judah on trial! The tables have turned. This messenger will make things right, will bring justice, but that justice will also include an accounting for Israel and Judah. Judah has neglected the poor working class, the widows, the orphans, and the aliens. However, even as this messenger brings justice, God is the same faithful God. God will continue to be faithful to the covenant made with his people.
[i] David W. Baker, NIV Application Commentary: Joel, Obadiah, Malachi, ed. Terry Much (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006), 207-210.
Ἰησοῦς Lens: How do we point to Jesus?
Who’s the Messenger? This passage can be interpreted at various levels. Each of these layers of interpretation add different potential ways of understanding who this “messenger of the covenant,” this Malach in Hebrew, from verse 1 actually is.
Some interpreters read this passage as describing God himself. In this sense, God as the messenger of the covenant, is the same faithful God of the covenant described throughout the Old Testament. The people Judah, who’ve been living as if the God of justice does not exist at all, will actually meet this God. And it will be like the refiner’s fire when the meet the very God they’ve ignored.
Other interpreters view the messenger as John the Baptist, preparing the way for the coming of Jesus. Matthew 11:10 and Mark 1:2 quote this verse from Malachi 3 to make this claim. In this sense, we connect these words to the ministry of Jesus, as described in Matthew 4:17 “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” In Jesus, a new kingdom has come, a kingdom where the oppressed are freed, the lost are found, and the blind can see.
There is yet another layer of interpretation to this passage, as well. In this interpretation, the coming “messenger of the covenant” is Jesus in his second coming. The Gospels allude to this image in places like Mark 13 and Matthew 25. In this second coming, Jesus can be viewed as the messenger of the covenant, putting creation to rights, restoring justice.
The Refining Messiah Who Makes All Things New: Seeing Jesus as the messenger of the covenant, we see a portrait of the Messiah who will refine us. As Jesus inaugurated the kingdom of God with his ministry on earth, we await his return to fully establish the kingdom. Before Jesus’ return, through the power of the Holy Spirit, we become more like Jesus. We continue to be refined as we strive to partner with God in his work in the world. We pray for God’s kingdom to come. This is the kingdom described in Malachi 3, where the poor, widow, orphan, and alien are cared for, where there is no adultery, sorcery, or perjury.
This is ultimate trajectory of God’s work in God’s creation. Matthew 25 describes it. Revelation 22 does as well. While we await this coming kingdom, we strive to be like Christ, being refined along the way. The beauty of Malachi three is that the refiner’s fire is not all consuming. We are not completely consumed in fiery wrath. Rather, we are refined, made to look more like Jesus. We are refined in the waiting.
Modern Lens: How does this touch my heart, life, emotions, thoughts and relationships today?
Refined in the Waiting: As we described in the first week of Advent, waiting does not have to be passive. In fact, our waiting shapes us. This passage in Malachi shows us that God is interested in our ongoing transformation. Not only for the people of Judah, we also can claim this passage for ourselves. God wants to do a new work in us. God was us to be a people of justice, and God is faithful to us in the process. We can be refined without being consumed.
During this particular season of Advent in 2021, after almost two years of hearing about large issues in the world around us, how can the individual seek justice and righteousness. How are we each seeking to be refined by our Messiah? We recognize that things are still not as they should be in the world around us. So what can we do as individuals to join with God in making all things new? How can we seek to be more faithful ourselves?
Taking an Honest Look Inward: We may be like the Judeans, looking at the world around us with judgment or contempt. In the days of social media and the 24-hour news cycle, we always hear about issues in the world around us. There are countless opportunities to judge or criticize others – and we certainly do need to hold people to account.
However, this passage reminds us of the need to also look inwardly. The people of Judah complained about the injustice or unrighteousness they saw around them, while ignoring their own issues. How often we hear a sermon, and our first thought is, “Wow, my friend really needs to hear this one!” Do we, though, look also to ourselves?
There has been much talk recently of the Great Recession. In August, 2021 alone, something like 4.3 million people voluntarily quit their jobs, roughly 3% of the total work force in the United States. Additionally the percentages of people who completely stopped attending church in 2020 as compared to 2019 skyrocketed.[i] Roughly 1 in 5 practicing Christians reported having not attended any form of church at all in the past six months in a Barna study from 2020.[ii] Trends like these can make us look at the changes in society with judgment and resentment. “Why is everybody quitting everything?” we might ask. Malachi 3 encourages us to look inwardly – what might we be doing or not doing within the church that makes it so easy for people to quit? What might we need to adjust in order to more faithfully communicated the Gospel and raise up disciples in this time?”
This passage is a humbling one for us, but it is still hopeful. The Messiah is coming to make things right. And while we often think of everything else in world that needs fixing, we’re a part of it! Thanks be to God that God gives us grace, and that God is still faithful to us as we are refined and renewed!
Themes and Ideas for Preaching:
Waiting can be a time that challenges us. It can also spur us on toward new growth and maturity. Our character is further defined while we wait. How is God shaping your character during this season?
[i] See Carey Nieuhof’s blog at https://careynieuwhof.com/one-question-every-organization-needs-to-ask/
[ii] See Carey Niehof’s blog at https://careynieuwhof.com/new-exodus-4-reasons-so-many-people-including-christians-have-suddenly-left-the-church/
Austin Hill has been the senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Fort Dodge, IA since 2013. Originally from Southern California, Austin received a B.A. in Psychology from Seattle Pacific University and his M.Div from Princeton Theological Seminary, where he met his wife, Sara. In 2017, Austin completed his Doctor of Ministry degree from Fuller Theological Seminary.
In Austin’s “free time,” he loves to fly (Austin earned his private pilot’s license in 2013) read books and play video games. You can learn even more about Austin on his blog, www.austindhill.com.
Sermon Resources
Key Quote
There are those who insist that it is a very bad thing to question God. To them, “why?” is a rude question. That depends, I believe, on whether it is an honest search, in faith, for His meaning, or whether it is the challenge of unbelief and rebellion.
Elisabeth Elliot, On Asking God Why: And on Other Reflections on Trusting God in a Twisted World, Revell.
Key Illustration
Leadership in the Forge
In 1992, my wife and I traveled to Prague, Czech Republic. One day, near the end of our trip, Beth and I walked through Staroměstské náměstí, a large central square. There in the middle of the square were two artisans who were drawing a sizable crowd to watch them ply their craft. They took pieces of scrap iron, discards, and by first heating them until they were soft and pliable, and then held securely on the anvil, they were pummeled and pounded into a new shape.
The process repeated: fire, steel, sweat; heating, holding, forming; placed, pounded, and finally, plunged into water. I watched those artisans—so physical, so purposeful, so violent with hammer and inferno, so precise and exacting. They seemed a living icon of God. For we are the raw material, scraps of hardened, resisting steel. And they, the craftsmen, are so like God in precision and purpose, using the heat of challenges, the anvil of community, and the hammer of practices to transform us from raw material into something useful and beautiful.
… What was once raw material becomes, under the hand of the smith and through the heat of the forge, a new creation that is both pure and mixed, with a new purpose but with nothing lost of its original makeup. Through an age-old process from a previous century, we find a glimpse of what must happen in our lives if we are going to be able to lead—and thrive—in leading.
Taken from Tempered Resilience: How Leaders Are Formed in the Crucible of Change by Tod E Bolsinger. Copyright (c) 2021 by Tod E Bolsinger. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
or
A Wrong Understanding of What This Life is Supposed to Be
The problem sincere Christians have with God often comes down to a wrong understanding of what this life is meant to provide. We naturally and wrongly assume we’re here to experience something God has never promised. More than perhaps ever before in history, we assume we are here for one fundamental reason: to have a good time—if not good circumstances, then at least good feelings.
We long to feel alive, to sense passion and romance and freedom. We want the good time of enjoying godly kids, of making a difference in people’s lives, of involvement with close friends, of experiencing God’s peace. So we invent “biblical” strategies for seeing to it that our dreams come true. We call them models of godly parenting and disciplines of spiritual living and principles of financial stewardship—all designed to give us a legitimately good time. What’s wrong with that? But when we uncover the deepest motives that drive our actions, we discover a determination to feel now what no one will feel until heaven.
… Sometimes all that separates Christians from non-Christians is our understanding of how to produce those good feelings. The pursuit of soul-pleasure remains primary. It continues to be the aim behind our choices rather than an occasional and welcome by-product of a higher aim: the aim of glorifying God as the object of our deepest, most passionate desire.
We continue to want something or someone more than God. We don’t think that’s our biggest problem, but it is. As long as our purpose is to have a good time, to have soul-pleasure exceed soul-pain, God becomes merely a means to an end, an object to be used, never a subject rightfully demanding a response, never a lover to be enjoyed. Worship becomes utilitarian, part of a cunning strategy to get what we want rather than a passionate abandonment to someone more worthy than we.
Larry Crabb, Shattered Dreams, The Crown Publishing Group, 2001, Kindle Location 550-554; 569-571.
Additonal Sermon Themes
Liturgical Elements
Call to Worship
Adapted from Malachi 2 and 3
Has not the one God made you?
We belong to God in body and in spirit
And what does the one God seek?
To be on our guard and to be faithful.
The Lord will send his messenger,
The Lord, whom we desire, will come.
O Lord of Hosts, prepare us for that coming.
Austin D. Hill
Call to Confession
The prophet asks the Lord’s people, “Who can endure the Lord’s coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap.” Let us come before Almighty God in humility, confessing our sins.
Prayer of Confession
Holy God, we claim to be without fault, meanwhile we neglect the orphan, the widow, the destitute, and the stranger. Like the people of Judah, we care only of justice when it impacts us. We assume that your covenant faithfulness allows us to live however we want. Refine us, O Lord. Mold us and shape us. Purify us through the saving power of your Son, Jesus, as we silently confess our self-centered ways to you now.
Austin D. Hill
Affirmation of Faith
Taken from The Confession of 1967, PART I “GOD’S WORK OF RECONCILIATION”
The reconciling act of God in Jesus Christ exposes the evil in men and women as sin in the sight of God. In sin, men and women claim mastery of their own lives, turn against God and their fellows, and become exploiters and despoilers of the world. They lose their humanity in futile striving and are left in rebellion, despair, and isolation.
Wise and virtuous people through the ages have sought the highest good in devotion to freedom, justice, peace, truth, and beauty. Yet all human virtue, when seen in the light of God’s love in Jesus Christ, is found to be infected by self-interest and hostility. All people, good and bad alike, are in the wrong before God and helpless without his forgiveness. Thus all people fall under God’s judgment. No one is more subject to that judgment than the one assumes they are guiltless before God or morally superior to others.
God’s redeeming work in Jesus Christ embraces the whole of human life: social and cultural, economic and political, scientific and technological, individual and corporate. It includes humanity’s natural environment as exploited and despoiled by sin. It is the will of God that his purpose for human life shall be fulfilled under the rule of Christ and all evil be banished form his creation.
Biblical vision and images of the rule of Christ, such as a heavenly city, a father’s house, a new heaven and earth, a marriage feast, and an unending day culminate in the image of the kingdom. The kingdom represents the triumph of God over all that resists his will and disrupts his creation. Already God’s reign is present as a ferment in the world, stirring hope in men and women, preparing the world to receive its ultimate judgment and redemption.
Assurance of Pardon
In the midst of pronouncing judgment, Malachi reminds Judah that God does not change. God is still faithful, even when God’s people are not. Friends, hear the good news today: God’s grace is sure. Your sins have been forgiven. Thanks be to God! Amen.
Benediction
As you continue in this season of waiting, may your waiting refine you. May you grow in the likeness of Jesus each day while we await his return.
And may the love of God, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you this day and forevermore. Amen.