“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; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.” (Malachi 3:1, ESV)
The Jews of Malachi’s day were quite cynical and showed disrespect to the Lord by questioning His words and answering Him back. And so He gave them a prophecy of the future, of the coming of His messenger and of the Messiah. Jesus identified the messenger as John the Baptist (Matt. 11:10; cf. Mark 1:2; Luke 7:27). He would prepare the hearts of God’s children for the Messiah. This was good news for He would make the people right with God by refining and cleansing them of all their wickedness. Yet this would be a painful process that would crush the self and the ego. He would rid His people of all their idols so that He could rule over their hearts and they would walk in obedience.
The time for getting right with God is now because the Lord would surely carry out all He has said just as He has done in the past. This is a warning for us not to get complacent in the midst of material prosperity. We may, like the ancient Jews, turn from God because we think we do not need Him because we think we have it all. We have success, money, clothes, material possessions and electronic gadgets and we mistake these for God’s blessing. The refiner’s fire will come and burn this rotten attitude of disrespect for God out of our hearts. The very economic hardships we are now enduring that threaten us and our false ideas about God and the Christian life were sent by the Lord. They are designed to bring us, His people, as well as the lost to Him. How has the refiner’s fire been working on you? Or has it? If it has not been then this is cause for alarm. Time to reevaluate and repent.
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