Let's turn in the Word of God to the book of Malachi in the chapter 3. Malachi, as you know, is the last prophet of the Old Testament, the last prophet to Israel for the next 400 years. There is complete silence. Jonathan Edwards puts it this way, thus the lights of the Old Testament go out on the approach of the glorious Son of Righteousness. That's a nice way of putting it, I think. The lights of the Old Testament, they're all going out. They're all going out deliberately in the plan of God, that the Son of Righteousness might be most glorious to us. The canon of the Old Testament is, of course, complete and sealed by Malachi, and the Spirit of prophecy ceases. And after Malachi, in that intervening period from Malachi to the Incarnation, you get the rise and the fall of the Greek Empire, that in itself was so important in history, and the rise of the Roman Empire, and of course with it, the subjugation of Judea by the Romans. It is subjugated, simply becomes a province of the Roman Empire. The only word that is left to Israel in all of this time is Malachi. And in this message to Israel from Malachi is this, behold, I will send my messenger. Matthew in his Gospel records the announcement that John is that messenger, raised up for the one reason that he may declare the Messiah, Jesus Christ, Matthew 11 verse 10. But you know, as you read these verses, there is something troubling about them. It's a glorious announcement, but there's something troublesome about it. Who may abide the day of his coming? Who shall stand when he appear? For he is like a refiner's spire and like filler's soup, and he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver. That gives rise to our subject. An uncomfortable announcement. An uncomfortable announcement. Let's note, first of all, as we work our way through these verses, firstly, a supernatural coming. A supernatural coming. If you study carefully the language here, you will notice two things that are on the surface. First, that the words are spoken by the Lord. saith the Lord of hosts. And second, the Lord speaks of the Lord whom ye seek. Here is something quite astonishing. The Lord speaks of the Lord who comes. God, Jehovah, speaks of the Lord appearing in the temple. A supernatural coming. You know, if you take away the supernaturalness of Christianity, it simply diminishes to a man-made religion like all the religions of the world. But this language by Malachi, the Lord whom you seek shall suddenly come And this word is spoken by the Lord of Hosts. God speaks of God. As I say, this is not unusual language. The church has sung such language for centuries before Malachi was even born. Psalm 110, verse one. In our metrical version it is, the Lord did say unto my Lord, sit thou at my right hand. So the language of the church is the language of Malachi. The language of Malachi is the language of the church. For centuries the church has already sung this, that the Lord said unto the Lord, and that Christ is fully gone is testified throughout the New Testament. The old liberals were wont to say that the New Testament nowhere says that Christ is gone. And then of course the church rightly replied, but doesn't it say so in Romans 9? Fine, whose are the fathers and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all God blessed forever. Here Paul is stating categorically that Christ in the flesh is God. So God came, he took a human form. And in 1 Timothy 1, and in verse 1, that well-known language of the apostle. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the commandment of God our Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ, which is our hope. See how he instructs the sentence, God, And Lord, who is this God our Saviour? It is the Lord, Jesus Christ, which is our hope. And of course, in Titus 2 and in verse 13, looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Paul is saying here, who is coming again? In reference to the second coming, he says, God, our Savior, is coming the second time. He's the great God and our Savior. And of course, Peter likewise, in 2 Peter 1 verse 1, he speaks of the righteousness of God and our Saviour, Jesus Christ. So the New Testament unashamedly affirms the language and the truth of the Old Testament. The New Testament affirms what the Old Testament says. The writers of the New Testament unashamedly say that Jesus Christ, our Saviour and Lord, is God. He is our God and our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. So it is a supernatural coming. And as I said a moment ago, if we take away the supernaturalness of Christianity, you have destroyed Christianity in its entirety. It isn't worth anything. It is its supernaturalness that is central to it all. The whole gospel rests upon the supernaturalness of it all. That God, has come into the world. That gap, as it were, that distance between God and the sinner has been bridged by the incarnation. That God, Emmanuel, has come into the world. And so this expectation throughout the Old Testament was an expectation that God would come into the world. a supernatural coming. But then secondly, Malachi speaks of a sudden coming. The Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple. A sudden coming. In the first place, it may seem strange to speak of the Lord's coming as sudden When the believers had been waiting for him, it says, Whom ye delight in. So believers throughout the centuries had been waiting for him coming, and yet here is God saying, he will come suddenly. In the second place, it may seem strange, when he is identified in direct relation to the covenant, even the messenger of the covenant. What is it that singled out Israel from everyone else? It was the covenants. The rest were strangers to the covenants. Israel was the inheritor of the covenants. And Christ is the messenger of the covenant. That is why Reformed theology is often referred to as Covenant theology. The Covenant is what Murray calls the architectonic principle, the way of arranging Scripture itself. It lies at the very heart of Scripture. The Puritan John Ball said, God speaks to none but by way of Covenant. So Christ is the messenger of the covenant. But how can it be said that he shall come suddenly? And in the third place it may seem even more strange given that Malachi himself in these words is quoting Exodus 23 20 alongside Isaiah 40 verse 3. And yet God, through Malachi, says, He shall come suddenly. The whole of the Old Testament is pointing forward to His coming. The Covenant speaks of His coming. The prophets have spoken of His coming. Moses himself spoke of the coming of Christ. He wrote of Christ. Yet God says, He shall come suddenly. But this, of course, is the precise point. They waited and waited, but when He came, they did not want Him. John 1 says, He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. They waited for His coming, but when He came, they did not want Him. Not this Jesus, not this Messiah. We have it illustrated for us in Luke chapter 19 in that very solemn parable and narrative and incident that we have, Luke 19 verse 14. But his citizens hated him and sent a message after him saying, we will not have this man to reign over us. They waited and they waited and they waited And the prophets prophesied, but when he came, he did not come when they wanted him to come. He did not come the way they wanted him to come. He did not come in the manner in which they wanted him to come. He came onto his own, and his own received him not. His own rejected him. He came when he was least expected. He came in a way they did not expect. Everything about His coming, it surprised them. And yet not all, of course. But everything about Him was a surprise to them. That's quite remarkable, isn't it? They had the whole canon of the Old Testament. And yet when he came, his coming was a surprise. When he came, the manner of his coming, what he did when he came, it all surprised him. We read in Matthew chapter 2, for example, Matthew 2, verses 1 to 6. Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he that is born king of the Jews? For we have seen a star in the east, and are come to worship him. When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born. And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet, And thou, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, art not the least among the princes of Judah, for out of thee shall come a governor that shall rule my people Israel. So it was all there in scripture, under a coding of course, the Old Testament prophet to that effect. And yet when he came, they didn't want him. He did of course come at a decreed time, Galatians 4 verse 4, when the fullness of time was come. He came at the precise moment, but it wasn't their moment. He came in a particular manner, but it wasn't their manner. For many, Of course, they were happy at one moment in time to say Hosanna to the king. Then they wanted to make him a king to overthrow the Romans. When that didn't happen, they turned against him. When he began to preach and to minister to them, great multitudes came to him and then he turned to the multitude and he began to lay down the conditions of discipleship and what happened? The multitudes turned away and he even turned to his disciples and he said to them, will ye also go away? Are you going to go too? The cost of discipleship. was too much for the multitude. And in the end, it is that multitude who were happy to cry out, crucify him, crucify him. They preferred Barabbas to Jesus Christ. And yet down through the centuries, The Old Testament prophets constantly bore witness to the Lord to come, that God would come into the world. Indeed, the very title of Christ was the coming one. The title that John uses when John sent word to the Lord, art thou that coming one, that one who should come into the world. He says, go and tell John, and he quotes the prophet. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, and so on. But for many, many Jews, the Messiah was not the one they really and ultimately and finally wanted. He came suddenly to the temple, unexpectedly, at a moment they didn't think it possible. He came in a way they did not expect. And when they looked at Him, they turned against Him. As the prophet Isaiah puts it, they saw no beauty in Him. They saw nothing in Him that was in any way attractive. They saw a man of sorrows, unacquainted with grief. That's not the Messiah we expected. That's not the one we were waiting for. Constantly, they had to be redirected back to the scriptures. That's why Matthew, you see, spends so much time going through all those proofs of the Old Testament. Thus it was fulfilled, that which was spoken by the prophet. It's as if he's saying to them, did you miss that, Titus? Did you miss that? Did you miss the other? It's the very same person. But then thirdly, verses two and three, the challenge of his coming. But, verse two, who may abide the day of his coming? And who shall stand when he appeareth? Malachi four, verse one. Behold, the day cometh that shall burn as an oven, And all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly shall be stubble, and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. You know, throughout the Old Testament, the people of Israel, they had a phrase upon their lips, the day of the Lord, the day of the Lord. And that phrase was used in connection to this particular coming. And yet, the day of the Lord had a dark side to it, a troublesome side to it. For the believer, the day of the Lord would be glorious, but for the rest, it would not be. Prophet Amos chapter 5 verses 18-20 Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord! To what end is it for you? The day of the Lord is darkness and not light, as if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him, or went into the house, and leaned his hand upon the wall, and a serpent bit him. Shall not the day of the Lord be darkness and not light, even very darkness and no brightness in it? It's a very striking illustration that the prophet uses. Here is a man. He sees a lion. He runs from the lion only to run into a bear. He escapes the bear. He runs home. He puts his hand against the wall. You know, probably panicking, breathing. Thankfully, he's inside the house. He's escaped a lion and a bear. And what happens? He gets bitten by a serpent. Just when he thought he had escaped. And God says to these people, you keep talking about the day of the Lord. I'll tell you what it's going to be like for you. It's going to be like that man. not the glorious things that you expect, but a time of judgment for you. We turn into the New Testament, Matthew chapter 3. And we read from verse seven. But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits, meat for repentance, and think not to say within yourselves, we have Abraham to our father. For I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. And now also the axe is laid onto the root of the trees, therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire. I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear. He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire, whose fan is in his hand. He will throughly purge his floor and gather his sweet into the garner but he will burn up the child with unquenchable fire." Here the point being made is this. These people are saying, in our lineage, we can look back to Abraham. We have done our family tree, goes all the way back to Abraham. John says, that's not enough to have the lineage. Here's the real test as to whether you're children of Abraham or not. Have you repented of your sin? And is that repentance proven and demonstrated in your life? Some of us like genealogy. But of course, you know what happens when you're doing a family tree. You find all the crooks and rascals in the country and you want to try and rub them out so that you can circumvent them for all the nice ones in your family tree. Well, these people had a family tree. They're bypassing themselves in this family tree. They're saying, Abraham, Abraham's my ancestor. Because he is my ancestor, I am fine. No, says John. It's not the lineage that will save you. It's not the bloodline that will save you. Do you have the faith of Abraham? Have you repented of your sins? Do you prove that repentance in life? Let me put it in context of Gentiles. It's not enough to say, oh, my grandparents are believers. My parents, my grandparents, my great-grandparents, they were believers. They will not get you into heaven. If your parents are believers, that's a wonderful privilege, but they will not get you into heaven. You must repent for yourself. You must come to saving faith for yourself. You must prove that you're in the same lineage as them with repentance and faith. In Matthew chapter 21, And verses 31 to 44, whether of them twain did the will of his father they say unto him, the first Jesus saith unto them, verily I say unto you, that the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came onto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not, but the publicans and the harlots believed him. And ye, when ye had seen it, repented not afterward, that ye might believe him. You see what he's saying to the very same people. He says, John came to you, he preached to you. What did you do with his message? You rejected it. But they who saw their sin, Pelagans and Harlots, who saw their sin, they believed. they entered the kingdom of heaven. What did you do when you saw these other sinners coming to saving faith? Instead of you then repenting, you continued in your sin. You continued unrepentant. Hear another parable. There was a certain householder which planted a vineyard, haged it round about, digged a winepress in it, built a tower, let it out to husbandmen, went into a far country. When the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits of it. And the husbandmen took his servants, and beat one, and killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other servants, more than the first, they did unto them likewise. But last of all he sent unto them a son, saying, they will reverence my son. For when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, this is the heir, come, let us kill him, let us seize in his inheritance. And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him. Thus far you can see what the Saviour is teaching. Israel, of course, is the vineyard. He has given to the vineyard all the privileges and all the blessings. And He's put them in charge, as it were, of the vineyard, of all the things that He gave them. But then in due time, husband man, the owner of the vineyard, he came to them for their fruits and for the reward of all the labor. What did they say to him? And he sent his servants. They beat his servants. They killed some. He sent more. They did the same. Then he sent his own son. And instead of bowing to the son, they killed the son. You see what's happening here. God is saying He sent His Son into the world. What did they do to Him? Instead of bowing to Him, they crucified Him. He sent them prophets before them. They killed the prophets. They jailed the prophets. They persecuted the prophets. And having despised the prophets, they despised the Son. When the Lord, therefore, of the vineyard cometh, what will He do unto those husbandmen? they say unto him, he will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruit in their seasons. The kingdom of God shall be taken from you and given to a nation, bringing forth the fruits thereof. And that happened, didn't it? God took away The Jews, he took away their kingdom and their nation. He took away the gospel from them and he sent it amongst the Gentiles. That's what has happened. That's why you are privileged to hear the gospel. Luke 7, 23, Luke writes, blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me. This coming of Christ, was a challenge. It is still a challenge. Will you reject Him or receive Him? Who may abide the day of His coming? Will you reject Him or will you receive Him? Will you submit to Him or rebel against Him? Will you trust Him or refuse Him? Will you follow Him or flee from Him? And you know what's interesting? How the New Testament It takes the words of Malachi and applies it to the first coming of Christ. It also applies it to the second coming of Christ. Who may abide the devil's coming? In the first coming of Christ, there were those who hated him. They rebelled against him. And Christ destroyed the nation. In the New Testament, as I've said, the same truth is applied to the second coming of Christ. Who shall abide the day of his coming? They who refuse to bow in faith will be made to bow in his wrath. Who may abide the day of his coming? Who shall stand? It's the great question that runs through the Old Testament itself. Psalm 15.1, here's the very song of the church. Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? Who shall dwell in thy holy hill? There's the psalmist, he goes to the tabernacle. He sees all these people who have come to the means of grace. And then he asks this very important question, of all these people who have come to this tabernacle, how many of them are for heaven? And he takes the second table of the law, verses two to five, and he applies it as a standard, a public standard to test every worshiper at the tabernacle. If they fail that test, they have no right to say, we are for heaven. The church also sings in the words of Psalm 130 and verse 3. Psalm 130, of course, is a great theme of redemption. But in the very heart of it, verse 3, if thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? perhaps the illustrator for the benefit of younger ones. It's like when you're at school and you're called into the principal's office for something and you think you're very brave and you go in there and you put your chest out and you're going to defend yourself. But by the time the principal has finished reading out all your faults, you come out with your head down. When you thought that you could defend yourself on a point and the principal says, well, Yesterday you did this, this and that and the other, and in fact last week we have a record of the following five things you did, and the week before that, and the week before that, and don't you remember we had to send a note home to your parents? So by the time they finished reading out the charge sheet, you realised, I wish I'd never come. If thy Lord shouldest mark iniquities, who shall stand? If the Lord were to stand before every one of us, and to pull out the charge sheet, we wouldn't want anyone else to hear anything. The mention of the very, just one sin out of the list is enough to cause us to hang our heads in shame. Thy Lord shouldest mark iniquities. And that question runs right through scripture and is repeated in Revelation 6 verse 17, the great day of his wrath has come and who shall be able to stand. It's the words of Malachi chapter 3. But what we do know is this also, he shall purify the sons of Levi. That phrase the sons of Levi, refers to those who belong to him, those who worship him. The Levites were singled out for service in the tabernacle. As believers, in a sense, we are all Levites. offering the sacrifice of praise, they who worship God, the triune God, shall be purified, sanctified, and made fit. Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto the Lord, as in the days of old, as in the former year. the coming of the Lord. It has a bright side, it has a dark side. It's an uncomfortable announcement. Well, let's come to application. First of all, looking for the right Christ. The Jews, as I said, waited a long time for Christ, for the Messiah. And yet when he came, they didn't want him. They wanted a political king to deliver them from the Romans. They did not want a spiritual king to deliver them from their sin. But you know, the Jews are not alone in those false expectations. That's why you have the sporting Christ, the Christ of athletics, the Christ of football, the Christ of the boxing ring, the Christ of politics, the entertaining Christ, the Christ who tells jokes, He makes no demands upon anyone's life. The friendly Christ, the Christ who doesn't embarrass people in front of their friends and colleagues. They all want to reshape Jesus Christ into their own image, so they're not embarrassed when they meet their friends. A Christ who makes no demands upon them. And that's where we've come to, haven't we, over the last generation, of remaking Christ into the image of celebrities, football stars, entertainers. How few want the true Christ, the Christ who said, he that hateth not father, mother, brother, sister, cannot be my disciple. He that hateth not his own life also cannot be my disciple. He that taketh up his cross and followeth me cannot be my disciple, unless you bear the cross. Oh no, they say, that Christ is too narrow. too demanding, too divisive, too unpopular, too discriminating. But let me remind you, Christ was never popular or unpopular Lord Jesus. He has never been popular. What is popular is the remaking and the re-imaging of Christ. But this Christ has never been popular. He wasn't popular with the Jews. He still isn't popular. He isn't popular with Gentiles. He isn't popular with the media. He isn't popular with the world's religions. Lots of religions want to kill you for confessing this Christ. They will not kill you if you deny this Christ. Take Islam for example. If you deny what the scripture says about Christ, the Muslims won't kill you. But the greatest sin, shirk, in Islam. is the sin that says Jesus Christ is God. That's the greatest sin. For them, that means death for the infidel, death for the Christian. The world's religions will have any Christ, but not this Christ. The Mormons, the JWs, all the rest of them, they all want a different Christ. Let me ask you, What kind of Christ do you want? Do you seek? The sinner whose sins are pardoned wants this Christ. He who is the saviour of sinners. Secondly, the necessity of Christ Why is Christ so necessary? We have it here in verse one, and the Lord whom you seek shall suddenly come to his temple, saith the Lord of hosts. The Lord Jesus Christ is the only representative of God to us. In his person, he is the essential image of God. In the face of Jesus Christ, God shows himself to us. In Christ alone, we see not only God, but we see all that we need to have of God. We see, of course, his glory and his majesty, his power and his wisdom, his goodness and his mercy. The foundation of Christianity The rock upon which the church is built is upon this very truth. The ground of our salvation is this, that Jesus Christ reveals both the nature and the will of God to us. In Christ alone Do we have clear, distinct views of the glory and the excellencies of God? The whole way of salvation is shown to us. And he alone is the appointed representative of God to us. And nothing less than this is the gospel. It's the very heart of the gospel. that Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God. And seeing Christ, we see the Father also. Friends, this is so fundamental. To reject it makes all other truths taught in the Christian faith useless to our souls. If you take this away, everything else that the Bible teaches, everything else that Christianity teaches is useless to your souls. That's how necessary this is. And then thirdly and finally, the marks of grace. The marks of grace. What is the evidence of having Christ? Well, we can draw two from this passage. The first is sanctification. He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver. He shall purify the sons of Levi and purge them as gold and silver. What is the first mark of grace? It is sanctification. As John puts it in his epistle, 1 John, he that had this hope in himself, he purified himself. Sanctification is a mark of grace, a mark of salvation. The idea that you can be justified and not sanctified is false. Where there is justification, there will also be sanctification. Just because you must distinguish between justification and sanctification does not mean you separate them so that you can have one without the other. Justification and sanctification are together. So here's a test for you. If you profess to be Christian, is sanctification evident in your life? Are you being sanctified continually? What is called progressive sanctification, growing in holiness. The second mark of grace is worship, that they may offer on to the Lord an offering in righteousness. Acceptable praise. How do you know a Christian? Here are two marks, sanctification, and worship. They delight to worship God. Friends, if your attitude to worship is half-hearted, one is delighted at all that have come this morning. One will be equally delighted that all will come this evening, and be equally delighted that all will come in the midweek. But the point is, a mark of grace is a desire to worship God. The transformative power of the Lord Jesus Christ in the life of a sinner has these two marks, sanctification and worship. May the Lord bless his word to our hearts.