What Did Malachi Know?

 

“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.

—Malachi 3:1

We hear the Prophet Isaiah’s words so often during Advent because he vividly foresees the birth of Christ. For example, in Isaiah 40:3, we read:

A voice of one calling: “In the desert prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God.”

That word “prepare” is often associated with both the first and the second Advent of the Messiah.

In the New Testament, at the birth of John the Baptist—the man who would become the immediate forerunner of Jesus—his father Zechariah said, as recorded in Luke 1:76:

“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.”

John the Baptist called the people who waited for the Messiah to prepare themselves because the Messiah was beginning His ministry among them. He preached repentance and sought to have the people purified, so that they might serve Christ.

Malachi’s entire prophecy, which happened some 400 years before Christ came to earth, called the people to prepare by purifying their worship, purifying their priestly line (the Tribe of Levi), purifying their marriages, and purifying their priorities in handling their money.

I love the section from which our opening verse is taken. Malachi 3:2-4 goes on to state these words of God speaking through the Prophet Malachi:

But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s 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 who will bring offerings in righteousness, and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the Lord, as in days gone by, as in former years.

This prophecy of Malachi refers to the Levites, or those who served in the Temple. I like to think that we, as New Testament saints, are as much Levites, for we serve in Christ’s church, as the Levites served in the Temple.

Yes, our full-time ministers and priests spend time as servants in the church, but so do the church musicians, the Christian Education teachers, those who prepare the holy ornaments of worship, the individuals who set up the Communion Table and prepare the elements of Holy Communion, those people who clean the church, and those who lead the spiritual and business matters of the church. All these people serve God in the church, following the example of the Levitical service in the Temple.

We see clearly that Malachi stresses the purity of those who would serve Christ. What can we expect from the Messiah as we wait for Him during this Season of Advent?

In Joel 2:28-30, this Prophet speaks of the kind of repentance that John the Baptist called for among the people of God. He promises a new day:

I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days. I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and billows of smoke.

Even God, speaking through the lips of the Prophet Malachi, as recorded in Malachi 3:10b agrees:

“See if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.”

So, in this passage, we see that Malachi saw the coming Messiah clearly. And, Malachi warned God’s people to Prepare, to Purify themselves and to expect God to Pour Out His blessing on them.

Certainly, in the first Advent, with the coming of Jesus to earth in the manager of Bethlehem, God began His revelation to all the people of His eternal plan to bring the people He had chosen to belong to Himself out of their sin and into the wonderful relationship with Him through His Son.

As we wait for His second coming, can we see how these admonitions fit us perfectly now? We, too, wait for the Promised One to come again. We need to prepare, to purify ourselves and wait for the pouring out of God’s blessing!