God's Love Is Here
1. Where Is God?
Malachi 2:17 — You have wearied the LORD with your words. But you say, “How have we wearied him?” By saying, “Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the LORD, and he delights in them.” Or by asking, “Where is the God of justice?”
Where is God? A question asked many times by believers and unbelievers alike. Unbelievers look at the suffering in the world and ask, where is God? It seems those who do evil are good in the sight of God and He delights in them. And so they conclude that there is no God. Believers see the evil and suffering in the world. They see how wicked people prosper and seem to be blessed, and how good people suffer and are oppressed. And so they ask, where is the God of justice?
In Malachi’s time, there was a problem with God’s people. They questioned the existence of the God of justice because it seemed that the wicked were being blessed instead of cursed. They saw people sinning, but not being struck down by God. They saw the wicked prosper, so they assumed that God delighted in the wicked. Their focus was on others, not on God. They envied worldly success. Those who were sinning and getting away with it were trading on God’s patience and forbearance. And those who were observing them were confusing God’s patience with God delighting in evil. This was a deep mistake about how God works and his character. Their theological thinking was leading them away from God, not to God. They relied on their own flawed, human observation and not on God’s self-revelation in his Word. They forgot what God’s love has done for them so many times in the past. They should have known better. They should have known that God is a holy God, that He is a patient God, but that He is also a God who judges sin and sinners.
Thus, by saying, “All who do evil are good in the eyes of the Lord, and he is pleased with them” they have everything backwards and upside down. They call evil good and good evil. Their spiritual lives were all out of whack. And again, as always, we must examine ourselves also in light of God’s Word and Israel’s experience. Their experience is not unlike our own sometimes. It’s amazing how easily we can live in spiritual complacency for years and not even know it. We live in a spiritual drift where we do “church” things out of habit because it is the Christian and right thing to do but our heart is not in it.
We can track the spiritual state of God’s people in Malachi. It started with their worship practices, which God said had become defiled. Their worship was sloppy and careless. They were supposed to bring their very best to God. Instead, they brought the leftovers. The people—including the leaders and the ministry workers—straggled in with bored looks on their faces. They thought that God is okay with their lackluster, passionless approach to worship.
Worshipping God should be the most exciting thing we get to do all week long. We should be tripping all over ourselves to hear God’s word, to learn, to grow, to catch a glimpse of God’s glory, to welcome those who don’t know Christ, to teach our children, to give our lives as living sacrifices all day long, every day. It should be an incredible privilege. Instead, God’s people were bored out of their minds. When God’s people were treating their spiritual lives with careless contempt, when they were unmotivated and uninspired, bored and distracted, yawning in the face of God, they needed a serious wake-up call. And God gives that wake-up call in his answers to their question, where is the God of justice? He gives four answers. God’s love is coming. God’s love is a refining fire that purifies. His love is a consuming fire that comes in judgment. God’s love does not change.
2. God’s Love Has Come and Is Coming
Malachi 3:1 — “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.
God’s love has come in Jesus Christ. It is coming to us every day as Christ comes to us and lives in us by his Holy Spirit. His love is coming when Jesus returns on the final day of judgment and ushers in his new creation where his love will be with us forever.
God sends his messenger ahead of him to prepare the way. This prophecy was fulfilled in John the Baptist who prepared the way for the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is the Lord who came to his temple, and He is the messenger of the covenant. He came to the temple right after his birth. He visited the temple, and He came to the temple right before his death. As the mediator of the new covenant (Heb 12:24), He came to replace the temple and its sacrifices. God in the Lord Jesus Christ came to save and judge. The cross stands as a proclamation of both judgment and salvation. For those who repent, return to the Lord, and believe in Christ it is salvation. For those who persist in sin and do not return to the Lord, the cross is judgment.
3. God’s Love Is a Refining Fire
Malachi 3:2-5 — But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the LORD. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the LORD as in the days of old and as in former years. “Then I will draw near to you for judgment. I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired worker in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, against those who thrust aside the sojourner, and do not fear me, says the LORD of hosts.
God’s people have been whining and complaining about God’s apparent absence. Unbelievers deny God’s existence unless He comes and shows himself. Both demand that God show up and do something. Well, be careful what you ask for. God is coming, and when He comes no one can endure, and no one can stand when He appears. God’s love is fierce and fiery like a fire. Fire is both purifying and destructive. Therefore, God’s love is both a refining fire and a consuming fire. The question is, are you going to be refined or consumed by his fiery love? God’s love saves and refines the faithful. God’s love judges the unfaithful and unrepentant.
God’s love is a refining fire that comes and purifies us. God wants to change us. A refiner’s fire is a slow, patient, controlled process of transformation. You can’t rush a refiner’s fire. God’s love separates the unfaithful from the faithful remnant. His love separates those who fear the Lord from those who don’t, those who serve Him from those who don’t serve Him. His judgment will burn away the sinners (4:1) but his faithful, who revere his Name, will rise with healing (4:2).
God’s love is like a fuller’s, a launderer’s soap. However, this soap was tough stuff. It was not the nice soft and fragrant soap we buy today. This was actually alkaline, bleach. It was used to wash the hands of blacksmiths or the deep dirt out of clothing. A refiner’s fire is hot and untouchable, but laundry soap is intimate and close. Malachi gives us this picture: God is like a tribal mother washing her family’s clothing in a stream until everything is fresh and clean. It’s a hands-on labor of love.
God’s love is like the refiner’s fire—hot, intense, passionate, burning away all that is not gold in our lives. God’s love is like a launderer’s soap. He takes us in his hands and plunges us into the soapy water, churning and turning until the dirt in our lives has been washed out. How does God refine us and wash us? Suffering, trials, and tribulations. These are placed in our lives by the hands of a loving heavenly Father. We may not like this process. We may resent it and rail against it. However, through trials and suffering, God is testing and growing our faith, disciplining and teaching us. The refining fire of God’s love is changing us to become like Christ, transforming us into children of God.
And the outcome? We are healed and restored. We worship God as we should. We live as his kingdom people in this world proclaiming his love to the world. We daily give our lives as living sacrifices, glorifying Him in everything we do.
4. God’s Love Is a Consuming Fire
However, God’s love is also a consuming fire that comes in judgment against evil, sin, unbelievers, and those who do not fear the Lord. Those who do not fear the Lord do not love others. They treat others badly, they practice sorcery and idolatry. They commit adultery. They bear false witness and lie. They pay unfair wages, and they do not provide for widows, orphans, outsiders, and refugees. God himself will testify against them, against all those who are unrighteous.
This happened with the first coming of Christ. The cross is God’s judgment on all evil and sin. It proclaims that the holy and righteous God will judge and punish sin. It’s a warning, a call to repent and turn back to the Lord. If not, they will receive God’s punishment for their unfaithfulness. This will happen on the Lord’s day when Christ returns, and the final judgment will happen. On that day God’s love will change into a consuming fire. They will receive their eternal punishment, the second death, the spiritual death that means the eternal removal and separation from God’s love and presence.
And God’s people, his faithful will be vindicated. They will not be destroyed. They will be blessed, saved, and enter his eternal kingdom and the new creation where they will experience God’s love every day for eternity.
5. God’s Love Doesn’t Change
Malachi 3:6-7 — “For I the LORD do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed. From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the LORD of hosts. …
Malachi begins his book with the words, “I have loved you.” Now God says, “I the LORD do not change.” God’s love does not change. It’s patient and merciful. God delays his final judgment because of his mercy. He wants to give people time to repent. He is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Ex 34:6). If that were not so, and if God executed his judgment, the world and we would have been already destroyed by his consuming fire. Since the wages of sin is death, if we died in the moment of our sin, we would have no time to repent. But the Lord is patient with us, “not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance” (2 Pet 3:9). Thus, the reason that God delays the return of Christ and his judgment, is so that the gospel may be preached and more people might repent, believe and be saved.
God tells us, “I have loved you and my love does not change.” We are loved and we are chosen. We are loved before we are confronted; we are chosen before we are challenged; we are embraced and accepted before we are told to change. We see God’s steadfast, unchanging love at the cross of Jesus. It is the place where God displayed his holy judgment on our sins and at the same time displayed his holy love for us. He loved us while we were still sinners. Love is the best motivation for change, not guilt, not pressure, not demands or manipulation, but unconditional, sacrificial love. The gospel is all about feeling safe before a holy God in Christ. There is nothing to hide because God knows it all. Jesus died to forgive it all, and the Spirit lives within you to reveal it all.
Therefore, repent and return to God and He will return to you. And the refining fire of his love will purify you, refine you to be a child of God, and live the kingdom life for his glory.
Questions — think and pray about these:
Do you know that you are deeply loved? Malachi is a tough book about a God who wants to burn away the dross and wash out the dirt in our lives. He will even allow suffering in our lives for the ultimate goal of our holiness and deep happiness. That is not an easy process. But God does it because he loves us.
Do you know how much he loves you?
Do you want to let God change you, refine you, wash you? Do you ask for it and expect it?
And lastly, Do you give God your very best?
God’s love is here and present with us. Receive his love. Live in his love and live out his love to others.