Burning like a Furnace

Transcript

The first thing that maybe sticks out to us about the

prophecy of Malachi is its literary features, namely the fact that it's comprised in the main out of dialogues. It's a book in which God speaks and Israel speaks in a kind of dramaticized fashion, and various issues are hashed out between the two speakers. You can see that right from the start of the book. The book opens with God asserting that he has loved his people, but his people respond, how have you loved us? Debates of that nature, in which either the people ask a question and God provides an answer, or God makes an assertion and it is debated, make up the bulk of the book. I believe there are six of these dialogues in question, but the primary effect of this structure is that it gives us a very developed sense of what the problem is. We get a very developed sense of the problem is for God, and a pretty decent sense of what the problem is for Israel, and we see that these problems are related. You can always kind of build up a picture of the context and the immediate problems answered by the prophecies of the Bible, but it's particularly easy in Malachi because we get some very plain description about what the problem is. For God, the problems are mainly about honor, that Israel does not honor God, and they show this in that they offer impure offerings, that they are faithless, they disrespect the covenant of marriage, and they speak falsely against God. However, we also get a sense of some of the issues that underlie Israel's poor behavior. So the Levitical system has become burdensome to them, and God is not accepting their sacrifices, which is an obvious problem. You'd like to have the sense that God was listening, that your sacrifices were working. God intends to remove them from his presence. Again, a large problem, particularly if

you take the assumption that Malachi is a post-exilic book. It's after the re-gathering of the people at roughly the same time as Ezra Nehemiah. This notion that God intends to remove them from his presence would particularly worrisome to a community that has only just been re-gathered, and they claim that God is not punishing the wicked. You can see in these dialogues that there's a real crisis of perspective, that God and Israel are not seeing things on the same page. Most of this really relates to the Levites, and we see that the solutions that God has in store for these issues also dwell on the Levites. The questions really are all about the sacrifices, whether or not the current system is succeeding or not, and whose fault that is. God is refusing to accept the sacrifices, problem. God's refusing to accept them because they're impure, problem. They're impure because Israel's failing to honor God, problem. Israel's failing to honor God because the Levitical system has become burdensome, problem. We've got multiple issues stacking on top of one another, which is creating all sorts of crises. It may seem, based on this focus on the immediate that Malachi might not have a large-scale applicability to us, but actually the problems that we see in Israel's worship at this time have a surprising ability to be connected to our own experiences, and the problems that Israel has fallen into at this time are very much problems that we can fall into as well. Furthermore, Malachi is a prophecy which is of immense importance to the New Testament authors and plays a huge role in developing their picture of Jesus's ministry, and particularly of the ministry of John the Baptist, as we'll see shortly. So having seen the problem, all of these issues regarding the Levitical system, regarding Israel's inability or unwillingness to honor God, regarding Judah's faithlessness to the covenant, their false perspective on God, and this crisis about God removing them from his presence or not punishing the wicked, we've got this problem of whether or not God will visit justice, and how he will visit justice, and when he will visit justice. And so naturally the solution involves a visitation of and this happens by God sending various figures and by the coming of other figures. And so if you turn with me to Malachi 3, in the first verse we read, So we've got multiple figures doing different things, and then when we get to the end of the book we read, this is verse 5 of chapter 4, So we've got various figures coming and various figures being sent. So first the two figures being sent are my messenger, behold I'm going to send my messenger and he will clear the way before me. So God's going to send this messenger before he intends to come himself, and behold I'm going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord. So Elijah the prophet will be sent before the day of judgment. So we've got a sending before a coming in judgment, and also certain figures who come. So we've got the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple, and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. Now the challenge with all of these figures is that are is totally ambiguous, and we have a number of interpretive challenges in figuring out who's who and what's what, and sometimes the Bible helps us. Regarding my messenger it's stated that he will prepare the way before me, and the Bible makes a number of explicit claims about the fulfillment of this verse that John the Baptist prepares the way before Christ. So Matthew 11 10 Mark 1 2 Luke 1 76 and also 7 27 and John 1 23 all claim that John is the messenger who will prepare the way before Jesus. So we have an inversion already in that Jesus is is taking up the role of God in the prophetic statement. So Jesus is coming and John has gone out before him, and this prophetic interpretation is often paired with the verse in Isaiah 40 verse 3, a voice is calling, clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness, make smooth in the desert a highway for our God. So again we've got a preparatory figure making room, making clear the way for God to arrive, but we see in the New Testament the way that that's interpreted is not really concerning an explicit coming of God, but the coming of God by way of the coming of his son. So we have some very interesting layers to this already in what is debatably the easiest one of the figures to interpret. Now next we have the Lord whom you seek. The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come into his temple. There are no explicit biblical claims of fulfillment, and we have a number of interpretive challenges. Is the Lord the Lord? Well so in this verse it's said and the Adonai the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come into his temple, but this is not the same as the name of the Lord. This is not the covenant name. Now this is a title that can be used of God and is used of God in several passages, but we're not obliged to assume that it is God, but if it isn't God how is the temple his? So that's

another question that we might want to think on. Now the messenger of the covenant is we're given a lot more detail about his work and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight behold he's 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 a fuller's soap. He will sit as a smelter and a purifier of silver and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver so that they may present to the Lord offerings in righteousness. We have no biblical claims of fulfillment and there's an intriguing possibility with the combination of these last two statements so the Lord will suddenly come into his temple and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight this and could possibly be interpreted even so the Lord will suddenly come into his temple even the messenger of the covenant in you delight behold he comes. So it's possible that we've got multiple titles for one figure that's a possibility and we'll notice in this language of refining that John the Baptist is exactly what comes to mind isn't it that John the Baptist prophesies of a Jesus who comes in fiery judgment who baptizes in fire. I think he's actually described using that language of refiner's fire and fuller's soap and we get also that that host of agricultural refinement imagery that John the Baptist so likes to use across all of the all of the gospel presentations concerning him. And then lastly at the end of the book we have Elijah the prophet. Behold I'm going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord. He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers so I will not come and smite the land with a curse. Now we have a biblical explicit claim of fulfillment that John the Baptist is the Elijah who is to come and Matthew asserts that in verses 13 and 14 of chapter 11 and verse 10 to 13 of chapter 17 where it's explicitly stated that John the Baptist is this Elijah to come. But we can see here that the interpretations concerning John the Baptist in Christ are not total and they are not actually an interpretation which represents the success

of Malachi's prophecy. In fact we kind of see an inversion in that Elijah comes but he is mistreated and Jesus comes but he is mistreated and the Levites are not refined rather the Levites are instrumental in the death of Christ and what happens as a result of that is we see the prophecies against the land of Judea in the Olivet prophecy which in a way kind of is smiting the land with the curse and again a dispersion of the people as a result of the revolt and a military action of AD 70 which causes the people to be dispersed, the temple to be destroyed and so on and so on. So we see even though we have biblical fulfillments claims that Malachi's prophecy has got an application, it's very difficult to say that those examples are total. So we still have this kind of carryover significance that we haven't seen yet. We haven't seen a restoration of the Levites. We haven't seen the great and terrible day of the Lord actually arrive in its fullness. We haven't seen the Lord come into his temple in this successful way. We saw Christ come into the temple and overturn it but this is not the perfection of worship that we see implied throughout Malachi. We're dealing with partial fulfillments here and so we've got to be open to multiple fulfillments to one utterance here but there are a few connections within the book that I think guide us and can help us in understanding the significance of these various prophecies and this is something that we can find by meditating on one or two of the specific details which show up in the prior material before chapter three and four and that's in the echoes of the wilderness story within the prophecy of Malachi. There's a number of turns of phrases which draw our mind to books like Numbers, Deuteronomy, Exodus and Leviticus throughout which I suppose is natural when we're meditating on the perfection or imperfection of the practice of the covenant and of the law and of the sacrifices. In the rebuke of divorce it's written Judah has dealt treacherously and an abomination has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem for Judah has profaned the sanctuary of the Lord which he loves and has married the daughter of a foreign god. As for the man who does this may the Lord cut off from the tents of Jacob everyone who awakes and answers or who presents an offering to the Lord of hosts. Now this profaning of the sanctuary reminds me of the offering of Nadab and Abihu, the offering of strange incense which precedes the inauguration of the day of atonement ritual which is a pretty firm link back to this wilderness episode but specifically in the language of marrying the daughter of a foreign god and cutting off from the tents of Jacob there's one particular story that comes to mind for me which is the incident of Baal Peor in in which number is 25 it's written then behold one of the sons of Israel came and brought to his relatives a Midianite woman and then skipping ahead a little bit when Phineas the son of Eleazar the son of Aaron the priest saw it he went after the man of Israel into the tent and pierced both of them through so that the plague on the sons of Israel was checked the name of the Midianite woman who was slain was Cosby the daughter of Zer who was the head of the people of a father's household in Midian that's numbers 25 so we don't have quite explicitly the daughter of a foreign god but we have a really concrete and offensive example of how intermarrying has a relation with false worship we've got a a story in which Israel is worshipping the Baals and committing adultery with foreign women and this story involves the righteous action of Phineas who is a Levite and who is praised for his work Phineas the son of Eleazar says God the son of Aaron the priest has turned away my wrath from the sons of Israel in that he was jealous with my jealousy among them so that I did not destroy the sons of Israel in my jealousy therefore say behold I give him my covenant of peace and it will be for him and after him a covenant of a perpetual priesthood it's quite a tongue twister that a covenant of a perpetual priesthood because he was jealous for his god and made atonement for the sons of Israel so there's some interesting there's some interesting terms in there a covenant of a perpetual priesthood is a is a a phrase of particular intrigue but we have we have two phrases in here that are of particular interest to Malachi's prophecy and the most obvious is my covenant of peace because in chapter one where it is spoken about about the covenant with the priests that you will know that I have sent this commandment to you that my covenant may continue says the lord of hosts my covenant with him is one of life and peace and I gave to them gave them to him as an object of reverence so he revered me and stood in awe of my name true instruction was in his mouth and unrighteousness was not found in his lips and he walked with me in peace and uprightness and he turned back many from iniquity for the lips of a priest should preserve knowledge and men should seek instruction from his mouth for he is the messenger of the lord of hosts

and this is this is written in the early verses of chapter two from verse uh from verse four

to seven in which the question the question is whether or not uh whether or not god is intending to do away with the the the levites uh because of the the ineffectiveness of their service and god's answer is certainly not and hence his his plan his solution in sending the messenger the lord in whom you delight the messenger of the covenant and this elijah the prophet the purpose is to restore and and reinvigorate levi uh but this particular language of covenant of peace uh i don't recall an occasion where it it is actually applied to levi or a levite other than the occasion where it is applied to phineas the son of eliezer because of his zeal and so this maybe gives us gives us a hint of the type of that god has in mind and this interestingly actually puts us in a position where we can begin to understand elijah more and why elijah the prophet phineas and elijah are both men of zeal phineas as we read was jealous with my jealousy or it may be translated zealous with my zeal in numbers 25 13 and elijah himself asserts i have been very zealous for the lord the god of hosts in first kings 19 verse 10 and 14 he asserts it twice and phineas is phineas's work stays the plague it prevents the the wrath of god being fully outpoured upon the people and it's written of the coming of elijah the prophet who is to come so that i will not come and smite the land with a curse and so the work of this elijah and the work of this phineas have a have an interesting link and this this carries a particular interesting this is a particularly intriguing nugget when we consider a quite a quite interesting rabbinic association between these two figures as early as as philo's biblical antiquities which is the first century or prior it's that we have concrete

accounts of the character of phineas and elijah being associated to such a degree that many writers are actually thinking it's the same person which is very peculiar to us and doesn't really have very much basis on on hard biblical statements but it is it is an intriguing it's an intriguing statement and it's a powerful it's

a powerful confession of how closely these two characters are in jewish thought that phineas who is given the covenant of life and peace because of his zeal becomes elijah who for his his zeal and for for his work is is not a man who dies in a conventional sense but is assumed and and this is a really important part of of the expectation concerning elijah you may be familiar with the practice that many jews leave a seat open for elijah to come and it's because of this malachi prophecy but it's also because of this whole host of traditions regarding elijah which are non-biblical but kind of fill in the gaps and and speak of their the manner of their expectation and their longing for the arrival of this elijah and this reinvigoration of the of the levites of the work of the of the worship of god and so the lesson the lesson is clear that that worship must be zealous or it will not work that's the that's the the the teaching which is at the heart of malachi that the the the manner of the work the work of worship at the time of malachi had become dejected dejected it had become burdensome it had become tiresome it had become loathsome to the people and because of that they were doing it wrong which made it offensive to god which made him spurn their effort which made them feel all the more dejected and we can get into this pattern all the time now it's maybe not maybe not in examples quite as as concrete or or as obvious as a thing like presenting an offering before god but how often do we permit ourselves to say things like well what's what's really the point in having a public lecture seeing as no one shows up what's really the point in going out and preaching seeing as nobody's really going to listen to me what's the point in trying in trying to teach people about god seeing seeing as they all think we're weird where is the zeal the zeal is necessary in the performance of these tasks because it's inevitable that they become burdensome at times because they are hard work but they must be done and in the period of absence before the coming of the elijah to come before the coming of the lord who will enter into his temple before the arrival of the messenger of covenant before the arrival of the great and terrible day of the lord before the judgment and the perfection of his people the perfection of the worship there will be and there is a continual continual difficulty in providing ourselves with the motivation to worship to serve in the way that we ought and malachi is a very powerful book in reminding us how important it is that we try how important it is that we give give that special effort and this is maybe why malachi is is such a particularly powerful book in in predicting and foreshadowing the teaching of christ and the teaching of john the baptist whose message was one of the the message was seeing that the judgment is real and will come let's

act like it that's that's john's message isn't it it's repent because the kingdom of the heavens is at hand the judgment is coming the judgment is coming let's act like it and furthermore in john's message it's the messiah is coming let's get ready to accept him and christ's teaching is again the kingdom is coming the judgment is coming we need to act like it and what we see in in christ's teaching and in john's teaching and in the teaching of malachi and we really do see this across the minor prophets really powerfully is that this lesson of zeal and of appreciating appreciating the significance of god's jealousy is actually uh really really central and it's a thing that's very easy to lose really um you know jealous is an ugly word um nowadays and it's maybe difficult to think about how jealousy applies to god or uh or rather how it applies to god and is a good thing at the same time because it because it applies to god you know it's a word it's a word that we're maybe um um we're preoccupied with negative associations with that word but what comes out in many of the passages regarding the uh the jealousy of god it's that god is god is singular in the work that he has done for his people uh god stands alone in the work of deliverance god stands alone in the work salvation god stands alone in that he called his people nobody else did it nobody else protected his people nobody else caused his people to flourish nobody else gave uh his people a continued uh a continued period of prosperity and peace in the land there was no other god doing any of that and yet his people wish to divide the attention that ought to be his because of his give it to no gods give it to gods which have no role in that work who have no impact on their lives there's some there's something actually profoundly offensive to god in that and the only way we can speak of that offense is on is with these terms of jealousy and we see this really throughout uh throughout the the the minor prophets and this is why they they play such important exertational role is that they remind us that god is jealous for our attention uh you know what we do what we do with the uh with the spare hours of our time feel small and it is small you know an hour here an hour there um but there is there is something tremendously powerful about remembering that god cares about the little stuff god cares about it so much in fact that he's getting profoundly and intimately involved in telling the people how much he cares about the little things and that's really evident in the teaching of christ as well that god cares about what's going on in your head when you go about doing things god cares about your attitude to your service not just the fact of your service but your attitude unto it uh and this this is really uh this is really the the thing that um it's

not developed but it's clarified in the prophets we we see the the implications of of sacrifices which are offensive or bad in the law but we see we see an explanation of of how sacrifices become offensive how sacrifices become undesirable to god in the minor prophets particularly and it's it's it's when they become it's when they become polluted by a divided mind is a is a very common is a very common theme and we see that that pollution from the divided mind throughout malachi and so so we find we find in malachi that the priests are despising god's name as far as god's concerned he says so in verse six uh if i am a master where is my respect the lord of hosts says to you oh priests who despise my name but you say how have we despised your name you know god god is taking this tremendously personally really um and and yet the the the the priests haven't realized that it's a big deal uh

because of their absence of zeal because of their absence of appreciation for the intense the intensity of god's uh the of god's character the god's care for his people and this is also what we see um this is also what we see in uh in many of the uh the parables of christ and the teaching of christ the the the fact that the widow's might is preferable to the uh humanly speaking larger donations of of of the rich it's it's about the intensity uh of of the work it's about the intensity of the service it's about the zeal of the work and so again the lesson is very clear that we must be uh we must be servants of god but we must be zealous servants of god we must appreciate what it means for god to be a jealous god we must actually like the fact that god is a jealous god we need to appreciate this part of

our picture in many ways um in many ways really there's only there's only so much of the fullness of god's character any of us can fit into our heads at one time uh and there's always going to be bits bits that are difficult that are kind of lost on us uh you know from from from time to time there's there's some verses and there's some parts of the bible that i have a really difficult time integrating into my understanding because it just doesn't work for me because my head's too small uh i don't i don't have the capacity of of grasping who god is all at once because my character is so much smaller uh and and um the the development of my person is so much less that that uh my ability to to hold on one hand the the great work of uh the great work of mercy and of god's work at the same time as his zeal and his jealousy and his justice is is a is is a real challenge uh but malachi gives us a warning of only getting half of the picture about how how only getting half of the picture can end us get us into places that we really don't want to be it can get us into places where our attitude to work is bad our attitude to service is bad where our religion becomes merely labor and nothing more um

and this is what's powerful about having access to the whole bible we have books which are which are profoundly interested in teaching us a specific lesson concerning god and we see this really really clearly in the short books i mean they have they have a more focused message in in many ways that's particularly uh particularly true in the minor prophets they pick one thing and they go for it uh which which makes them very useful from this uh from this exhortational perspective but but also we need to we need to uh engage with with one another and we can help one another in this in that uh there are parts of god which which are lost on me which have been found by others and there are parts of god which are found uh found and received by me which are lost on others and and this is the real uh this is the real power of of a varied ecclesial body uh and and of close close relations within the ecclesia that uh by way of our our working together the work of our whole body the work uh the work of the ecclesia is not devoid of an aspect of god and this is this is uh this is a very important part of our work those of us who uh those of us who have that natural uh who have that natural zeal need need to do their part in injecting it into the body and those who have that appreciation of of the grace of god and the humility that is necessary in his face uh have have the role of injecting that into the body uh and we see we see here in the prophecies concerning these individuals who come and have this restorative role that what we look forward to uh in in the kingdom age is a reinjection or or the fullness of the injection of god's character into uh into the body which does his work in the world but we can aspire we can aspire to that end to to that well-rounded expression of the character of god in our work that our work might not be uh be lacking such an important aspect of god's character and so

when we look at the the intense statements of judgment uh when we look at these statements of of of fire of intensity uh the judgment is about refinement uh for malachi and the intensity of language the burning the burning of the furnace the the refiner's fire and the fuller soap it's about a a separation and a gleaning of that which is good away from that which is that which is not uh a separation of good from evil a separation of wheat from chaff we're familiar with many of these images um and what god is seeking uh what god is seeking in this is a is a populace which is wholly devoted and so we we prepare ourselves for that uh for that day of judgment by practicing uh the devotion which is becoming of the kingdom age uh in the present day and we do that even in the small even in the small aspects of our labor for god uh we do that we do that in our management of the smallest parts of ecclesial life we do that uh we do that in our day-to-day relations with our brethren and sisters we do that uh in the little things and we do that in the big things as well uh and there is there is clearly uh from from the prophecy of malachi no thing uh that is too small for god to care about how you do it uh and there is no thing uh that's that's too big for for god to have designs uh on its uh on its fulfillment uh there is there is a plan uh for the restoration uh and the establishment of a system which does uh give praise and honor to god and does work out his character on the earth and we can rejoice in the certainty that we're given uh by god in books like uh in books books like malachi in giving us a vision that we can we can expect uh and so uh i'm i'm eager to discuss maybe a few a few of the possible other uh other options that we can go for with the different characters uh who who might be uh might be involved at playing out those roles uh but the main thing i wanted to convey with those is is the the importance of of multiple fulfillments in um in thinking about them in that we have these biblical examples which are not total uh and we have these these kingdom fulfillments that we yet look forward to uh so uh with that maybe we can we can open with the uh on on those matters thank you