PREPARE TO BE SURPRISED
Suppose your good friend tells you that she is going to throw you a surprise party but doesn’t tell you when. This is very exciting. You feel great appreciation for the honor your friend is paying you.
Days pass. Days turn into weeks and then months. Your expectation begins to flag and your doubts mount that this party in your honor will ever take place. You have given up walking into darkened rooms wondering if people are going to pop out and yell your name. Has your friend forgotten about her promise? Was she full of hot air?
Years go by. You remember the promise bitter-sweetly but it is a pale memory. Life goes on. You have really lost faith that there ever will be a party. Hoping that it will come is futile. Trusting your friend again is challenging; that too seems futile.
Can you imagine such a promise? How would it feel to be told a surprise is coming at an unknown date and time? How would you prepare for such an event? Would you even know what to look for?
The season of Advent is a season of expectancy. The prophets of old had seen a day when the Messiah would come but the people didn’t know what to expect. If the season of advent is a season of expectancy for us as well, what is it we expect? We have Jesus, yet we wait for him to come again. He will come when we least expect him. Are we prepared to be surprised?
1. Signs of a waning faith
In the days of Malachi the prophet expectancy was at an all-time low. Israel’s faith in God was growing cold. People were becoming cynical and unbelieving.
Let’s put this in perspective. After generations of disobeying God’s laws, God sent Israel into exile in the land of Babylon. Their temple was destroyed; their way of life in ruins. After 70 years of exile the Israelites were allowed to go back to the land of Israel and rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and the temple.
The temple was a central icon in the faith of Israel. When a Jew saw the temple he was assured that God was with his people. With God on their side they were invincible, the y believed. The temple symbolized “God with us.”
So they rebuilt the temple but from what their grandfathers told them the original temple was glorious. It was a beautiful thing to behold. In comparison, the second temple was functional but gray and drab – anything but beautiful.
Their grandfathers also told them how God was present in that temple. Read 1 Kings 8:10-11. When Solomon dedicated this first temple the cloud was so thick the priests could not perform and God’s glory stopped them in their tracks. There must have been some visible manifestation that continued to remind the Jews of God’s presence thereafter.
Now with this second temple, the people expected God’s glory to return to their midst. But it didn’t. The prophets assured them God would return, but he didn’t. Disillusionment had followed the rebuilding of the temple because, though decade after decade passed, no supernatural event marked the return of the Lord to Zion.
The Jews felt that they had been obedient and done their part, but God had failed them. His delays brought on apathy. God, they thought, favored the wicked.
Malachi responded to the people. “You have wearied the Lord with your words. ‘How have we wearied him?’ you ask. By saying, ‘All who do evil are good in the eyes of the LORD and he is pleased with them’ or ‘Where is the God of justice?’” (Mal 2:17).
God is wearied by their words? Does God grow tired of his people? He does when they keep raising doubts about his fairness. People were saying that the wicked do evil and grow rich. Why do the wicked prosper when the faithful grow hungry? God must favor the irreverent. So the people decided that being faithful didn’t carry any advantage for them. Let’s break God’s rules, live carelessly, forget our covenant relationships (marriage), because God is not just anyways. It makes no difference anyways. This kind of talk wearies God.
I think we can relate. We get tired of waiting for God to act on our behalf. And when we see the unbeliever get whatever they want without praying, without waiting upon God, and without faith, we lose hope. We don’t expect God to answer our cries. Spiritual lethargy sets in, spiritual laziness.
Some of the warning signs of lethargy are these: when worship and your church life become a matter of taste and preference or duty; when faith is not at the top of your priority list in making life-long relationships; when injustice in society doesn’t faze us; or when giving becomes a chore. These are specifically results from Malachi. And we can see them in our generation too.
2. The Lord is coming to His Temple
When the Jews were in the process of rebuilding the temple their prophets encouraged them. Haggai said, “I will shake all nations and the desired of all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory,’ says the LORD Almighty,” (Hag 2:7). And Zechariah too said, “Shout and be glad, O daughter of Zion. For I am coming, and I will live among you,’ declares the LORD,” (Zech 2:10).
It was some decades later when they started losing hope. To be looking for God to do something greater than they had yet seen was a natural reaction. How many of us have prayed, “Lord, show me yourself today. Encourage my faith”?
Malachi echoed the prophets with his message, “See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,’ says the LORD Almighty,” (3:1).
Here is something Isaiah (40:3) alluded to but Malachi says even more clearly: a messenger will prepare the way. Look for him. At the end of Malachi we get a clue that this messenger is an Elijah-figure. When you see him, the Lord is close behind.
We know who this is: John the Baptist. When John was born his father, Zechariah, found his voice after months of silence and possibly deafness. He sang about his son, “And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High; for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him” (Luke 1:76). His job was to turn the hearts of the people to God in repentance before the Lord comes. Think of it, from Malachi’s day to the birth of John there were 400 more years of delay. If you read the spiritual history of the Jews in those days there was a real spiritual deadness among them. John was the messenger of the Lord sent to wake them up.
Then the Lord will suddenly come to his temple. Jews were expecting great glory; pomp and circumstance. But when the Lord finally came to his temple for the first time since the promise, he came as a nondescript, ordinary, little baby. And how glorious is that!?!
Few saw it. An old man named Simeon saw it (read Luke 2:29-32); an old woman named Anna saw it (read 2:38). But they saw it; they saw the glory of the Lord!
Who would have expected this visitation? It’s like that one day you walk into a party and you have no idea it’s for you. Something glorious has happened and we missed it.
This is the messenger of the covenant – the promise. Jesus is the response of God to the question, “When and where will we see the glory of God in the midst of his people?” The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being (Heb 1:3).
This says so much I haven’t got time to share it all. When you look for the flash, you may miss the ordinary. Glory may not be what you think it is. And a baby in your arms? Think of it: When God showed you his glory in the baby Jesus, he showed you a human being. Hold a child in your arms and you behold the image of God, marred but still the image. Jesus came as one of us, the perfect image.
Suddenly, the Lord will appear. What do you expect that will be like?
3. To be made holy
Trouble and hardship come in many forms: sickness, money woes, relationships. At the root of most, if not all, of our troubles is spiritual difficulty. We fail to understand God and so we don’t understand why we suffer. This is why we lose hope. If we could see life just a little clearer we might understand what God is doing, why he delays, or what he has in store for us.
Malachi asks who can endure the coming of the Lord or who can stand when he appears. These are battle terms. However, the battle with Jesus is not a swordfight; it is a battle of holiness. Who can stand and endure the holiness of Jesus? Who can engage him and not be changed by him?
Two images are employed to help us understand this. The first is launderer’s soap. The Messenger is the launderer and he comes to clean us up, to make us presentable for the Lord. But they didn’t have soap in those days, so don’t think of Tide. Think alkali. This stuff took the colors, or stains, right out of the cloth and made it white. It removed impurities. Think white like the transfiguration of Jesus – shining white!
The second image is of a refiner. The Lord sits and refines us as silver. Here’s what this means:
A certain woman was curious how the refining process worked. So the woman called up a silversmith and made an appointment to watch him while at work.
As she watched the silversmith work, he held a piece of silver over the fire and let it heat up. He explained that in refining silver, one needed to hold the silver in the middle of the fire, where the flames were the hottest as to burn away all the impurities.
The woman thought about God holding us in such a hot spot, and then she thought again about the verse, that "He sits as a refiner and purifier of silver."
She asked the silversmith if it was true that he had to sit there in front of the fire the entire time the silver was being refined. The man answered yes, that not only did he have to sit there holding the silver, but he had to keep his eyes on it the entire time it was in the fire. If the silver was left even a moment too long in the flames, it would be destroyed.
The woman was silent for a moment. Then she asked the silversmith, "But how do you know when the silver is fully refined?"
He smiled at her and answered, "Oh, that’s easy--when I see my image in it."
Now we have come full circle. God is not pleased with evil-doers or when the wicked prosper, as some were saying. Only people made righteous and pure by the refiner’s fire and who reflect the image of Christ are acceptable to God.
Being a Christian today is not easy. At times it is just downright hard. Waiting on God takes patience and trust, especially when we see others take shortcuts and get what they want right now.
Preparing for the advent of Christ the first time was a long wait. From the moment God pronounced judgment on Adam and Eve following their sin, God also made a promise: that a descendent of theirs would crush Satan’s head. It took several thousand years before Jesus came to his temple. Waiting required faithful living in the meantime.
Preparing for the advent of Christ again has been a long wait. Christmas time is a reminder not so much of angels, shepherds and wisemen, but that when Jesus came the first time it was a surprise. The church has waited 2000 years for Jesus to return and we continue to wait.
The message of Advent/Christmas then is this: don’t lose hope. Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
Has God forgotten you? Certainly not. He is staring at the fiery trial of your life, not allowing it to destroy you, but holding on until he sees his image in the molten silver of your soul.
Paul was confident of this truth, “…that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus,” (Phil 1:6).
AMEN
