It is like a purifying fire – Biblical Studies

You have wearied the LORD with your words. “How have we tired him?” you ask. By saying, “All who do evil are good in the sight of the LORD, and he is pleased with them.” or “Where is the God of justice?” “Look, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you seek will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant will come, whom you desire,” says the Lord Almighty. But who can bear the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? Because he will be like a purifying fire or laundry soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the LORD will have men to bring offerings of righteousness, and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the LORD, as in former days, as in former years. “So I will come to you for judgment. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers, and perjurers, against those who defraud workers of their wages, who oppress widows and orphans, and deprive the justice of the poor.” strangers, but do not fear me, says the Lord Almighty, “I, the Lord, do not change. So you, descendants of Jacob, will not be destroyed. (NIV)

It doesn’t say in verse 2 that he is like a forest fire, or like an incinerator fire. He says that it is like purifying fire. A forest fire destroys indiscriminately. An incinerator consumes completely. But verse 6 says, “I am the LORD, I change not; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed, you are not destroyed.

A word of warning Y a word of hope

He is a purifying fire, and that makes all the difference. . A refiner fire does not destroy indiscriminately like a forest fire. The fire from a refiner does not consume completely like the fire from an incinerator. The fire of a refiner refines. Purify. He melts down the silver or gold bar, separates out the impurities that ruin its value, burns them, and leaves the silver and gold intact. He is like purifying fire.

It says FIRE. And therefore, purity and holiness will always be something terrible. There will always be a proper “fear and trembling.” in the process of becoming pure. We have learned it since we are little children: never play with fire! And it is a good lesson! Therefore, Christianity is never a game thing. And the passion for purity is never frivolous. It is like fire and fire is serious. You don’t play with it.

But he does say, he is like a REFINING fire. And therefore this is not merely a word of warning, but a tremendous word of hope. The furnace of affliction in the family of God is always for refinement, never for destruction.

Four questions about this text

Now, to unfold this text, let us Let me ask you four questions and point you to their answers in the Scriptures in the time we have.

1. Who is like the purifying fire?
2. Why does it have to be like the purifying fire?
3. How can we experience his fire as a refiner and not a consumer?
4. How is life in the refining fire?

1. Who is like purifying fire?

Verse 3 gives the answer. As I read it, look for three individuals.

Behold, I send my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he comes, says the Lord of hosts.

Three individuals mentioned

The first individual mentioned is “I”—”Behold, I send . . . ” This “I” is identified at the end of the verse: “Says the Lord of hosts.” The speaker is Jehovah, God the Father.

The second individual mentioned is Jehovah’s messenger who prepares the way. “Behold, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me.” Who? Well, the New Testament quotes this very verse to identify John the Baptist, the one who came to prepare the way for Christ (Matthew 11:10; Mark 1:2; Luke 7:27).

But you don’t need to read from the New Testament that this is a type of prophet whom God would raise up in the last days. He says in Malachi 4:5, “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet, before the great and dreadful day of the Lord comes.” So the first messenger mentioned in 3:1 that God will send to prepare his way is a kind of Elijah or one like Elijah. That is why Luke 1:17 says that John the Baptist went before Jesus in the Spirit and power of Elijah.

The third individual mentioned in verse 1 is “the Lord who comes to his temple.” “And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight.

The Identity of the Third Individual

This is another messenger, different from the first. Who is this person? Three things point to the divine Son of God and Messiah.

1. He is called “Lord,” a term that Malachi would not apply to Elijah or John the Baptist. This person is someone greater.
2. It is said that the temple belongs to him: suddenly he will come to “HIS temple”. Who could you say that he is the owner of the temple of God?
3. This person seems to be almost identical to Jehovah, not only because Jehovah’s temple is his temple, but also because he seems to take the place of the word “I” in the first half of the verse. He says, “Behold, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before ME.” . . ” But then it changes without any difficulty and instead of saying: “And suddenly I will come to my temple”, it says: “And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple”. It seems as if “I” -Jehovah- were virtually interchangeable with this other person called the Lord, who owns the temple of God.

So I conclude that the messenger of the covenant, the Lord, the owner of the temple of God, is none other than the Son of God, who is with God and is God, and who came into the world and made himself known to us personally in Jesus Christ.

So when verse 2 goes on to say, “But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears, for he is like a purifying fire”? I conclude that he is about the Son of God who came to us in Jesus Christ.

2. Why must it be like a purifying fire?

The answer is implicit in the word itself. It must be like a refiner because we need to be refined.

We need to be refined

We were created in the image of God with the potential to revere and trust and obey and glorify God, but in iniquity we were born, and in sin our mothers conceived us. We are pierced by the impurity of rebellion and unbelief, and we fall short of the glory of God again and again.

You can check it out for yourself in many ways. For example, you can notice how easily your heart turns to those things that will show your strengths to other people, and how resistant your heart is to communing with God in solitude.

So we are impure by nature and by practice. But God will not have alloys in heaven. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” And yet he will have someone in heaven. He will have a redeemed people. His banquet hall will be full. And therefore it must be purifying fire. If he was just a forest fire, the sky would be empty. If he were just a burning fire, the sky would be empty. And if it wasn’t fire, the sky would be empty.

Why God will not abandon impure people like us

But how do we know that heaven will not be empty? Or to put it another way, how do we know that God will not simply abandon impure people like us? Do we not deserve salvation? Why aren’t we just consumed? Why does Christ come as a purifying fire and not as a forest fire?

Does verse 6 give the answer? “For I, the Lord, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, have not been consumed. But by itself that makes no sense. What if God was immutably bent on being a forest fire? What if What would happen if it were immutable in its unrelenting rage? What kind of immutability is it that guarantees that we will not be consumed?

It is the immutability of the fulfillment of the pact. According to verse 1, the Lord comes as “the messenger of the covenant.” The reason Jesus is a cleansing fire and not a wildfire is because God made a covenant. And Jesus is the emissary of that covenant. He confirms it and seals it with his blood. That is why his blood is called in Hebrews 13:20, “the blood of the everlasting covenant.”

The book of Malachi begins with a statement of how the covenant began. “‘I have loved you,’ says the Lord. But you say, ‘How have you loved us?’ ‘Is not Esau Jacob’s brother?’ saith the LORD. ‘Yet I have loved Jacob!'” (1:2). This is what never changes: God’s free and sovereign choice to save sinners. “‘I have loved you,’ says the Lord . . . “And I, the Lord, do not change. Therefore you are not consumed.'” Therefore, Jesus is a purifying fire and not a forest fire.

3. How can we experience his fire as a refiner and not a consumer?

Verse 5 makes it clear that when God comes, not everyone will be refined. Some will be consumed.

Then I will come to you for judgment; I will be a quick witness against sorcerers, against adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the wage earner, against the widow and the orphan, against those who despise foreigners and do not fear me, says the LORD of The armies.

This is not the work of refinement, but the final judgment of damnation. It’s getting clearer in 4:1,

For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the proud and all the evildoers will be stubble; the day that comes he will burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, and he will leave them neither root nor branch.

So when the Lord comes, some will be refined and some will be consumed. How can we be sure to experience the fire of God as a refiner and not as a consumer?

which cannot be the answer

Notice very clearly what the answer cannot be! The answer cannot be: get rid of your own sin. If you got rid of your own sin, you would not need to refine yourself. Refining is for sinners! It cannot answer the question, How do I qualify to be refined? saying: Get rid of your sin! Is that what refining does? Does your sin begin to burn? But then how does a sinner qualify to have his sin burned up? If the merciful fire of God is needed to destroy the rebellion of sin, what can a man do to have that mercy?

The Whole Bible Answer

And the answer of the whole Bible is: Trust in the purifying God of mercy! Or to put it as Malachi says it over and over again: fear God, which primarily means fear in order to dishonor him with unbelief. Fear of the irreverence of mistrust. Fear the urge to jump from the refining fire of mercy to the forest fire of judgment because…