“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.Malachi 3:1 NKJV
The prophesy is clear from Malachi, Prophet of the Lord in Judea of Persia, perhaps shortly before his death in about 486 B.C. History of the next five centuries leading up to another Prophet in the wilderness and the Messiah would be tough times for God’s chosen ones.
What main course awaits Priests, Rabbis and a defeated people of Israel?
Repentance!
Malachi 3: ESV
2 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 fullers’ soap. 3 He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver…
Surely the LORD can do this. He can bring repentance to the life and purity to the heart of any man. Yet how we resist: Priest (sons of Levi) or Rabbi (teacher), or common one who knows the Lord and continues in the impurities of sin.
The LORD is going to send a fuller’s soap man to the Jews to purify their hearts and prepare the Temple.
Malachi 3:5 excerpt I will be a swift witness against
- the sorcerers,
- against the adulterers,
- against those who swear falsely,
- against those who oppress the hired worker in his wages,
- (those who oppress) the widow and the fatherless,
- against those who thrust aside the sojourner, and
“I will be a swift witness against … those who do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts. Mal. 3:5
A mere mortal would come along in time to accuse a Jewish King rightfully of adultery. He would accuse officials of the Temple and teachers of the Law of their leavening of God’s word. Like Prophets before and John the Baptist, who would follow five centuries later, Malachi warns that God requires repentance.
7 From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts.
The Lord indicts us of our sin through the words of the Prophet Malachi. Note that some, not all respond.
The Book of Remembrance
16 Then those who feared the Lord spoke with one another. The Lord paid attention and heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared the Lord and esteemed his name. 17 “They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, in the day when I make up my treasured possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him.
Malachi 4:
The Great Day of the Lord
4 “For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.
2 But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall.3 And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act, says the Lord of hosts.
4 “Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and rules that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel.
5 “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. 6 And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.”
Five Centuries Later
Luke 3:
John the Baptist Prepares the Way
3 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, 2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3 And he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
7 He said therefore to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Bear fruits in keeping with repentance.
As humble as the Lord Christ Jesus IS, born in a manger, baptized by John though He is righteous, and sacrificed on a cross for our sins; He IS King and Lord yet to return on the clouds in these last days to call up the dead to judgment and the living to new and eternal life.
Repent!
Turn back to your Father, the Lord. Bear the fruit of righteousness, fellow sinner condemned.
Or meet your Maker as He separates the wheat from the chaff.
Even the Chosen of God and christians only claiming Christ are lost without repentance, a turning of our hearts back to the Lord our God.
Isaiah 33:
10 “Now I will arise,” says the Lord,
“now I will lift myself up;
now I will be exalted.
11 You conceive chaff; you give birth to stubble;
your breath is a fire that will consume you.
12 And the peoples will be as if burned to lime,
like thorns cut down, that are burned in the fire.”
Are the warnings of God through the Prophets not more urgent to sinners in these last days?
Therefore, repent! The Lord IS come.
13 Hear, you who are far off, what I have done;
and you who are near, acknowledge my might.
14 The sinners in Zion are afraid;
trembling has seized the godless:
“Who among us can dwell with the consuming fire?
Who among us can dwell with everlasting burnings?”
To be continued…
These messages highlight the scripture of the coming of the Messiah, Christ Jesus, Who IS and was and will always be. Prepare your hearts in this year of our Lord, 2015, for Christmas and for the day when the Lord will return.
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