WEDNESDAY, 24 February, 2021 “God’s Justice?”

Hello my dear “Walking with Jesus” friends,

Would you pause for a moment and just consider what “injustice” looks like all around the world today? In Asia, factories with children working 12 hour days or some young girls sold by their own families into sex trafficking just to survive. In Africa, where AIDS has ravaged millions of families and corrupt governments have ravaged millions more. In Central Asia, where militant Muslim groups terrorize towns or in South America, where drug cartels control everything in life for millions of people. Injustice is everywhere… does God see it?

Today please join me in Malachi 3:1. God, speaking through His prophet Malachi, about 420bc in the city of Jerusalem. He is speaking both to the Jews in Jerusalem who are hungry for hope, who have many questions and doubt… but miraculously God is also speaking to us today, in February 2021, no matter where you live around the world!! That’s the miracle of God’s Word which Hebrews 4:12 explains.

Malachi concluded chapter 2 with a question which God was hearing often from Jerusalem, and I believe God hears today, from everywhere in our world… “Where is the God of justice?” Do you often find yourself looking at the widespread injustice, dishonesty, corruption in our world and asking that same question? Do you long to see God intervene, turn the tables, shed His light of truth on all the evil which seems to have permeated every segment of society in every country of the world?

So let’s hear God’s response: “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. 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… So I will come to put you on trial.” (Malachi 3:1,2)

So if you lived in Jerusalem in 420bc, what would that mean to you? If you lived in Jerusalem in 30ad or in Rome in 60ad what would it mean? Or if you live today in Mexico City or Tokyo or Kabul or Nairobi or Moscow or New York or Los Angeles or Paris or Chicago or Miami… what does it mean today? Let’s look closely, for these words are great words of HOPE in troubled times, no matter WHEN or WHERE you live!!

First the statement: “I will send My messenger, who will prepare the way before Me.” Almighty God was again predicting something very special. God had said it 200 years before, through the prophet Isaiah. “Comfort, comfort My people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem…a voice calling in the desert, prepare the way for the LORD, make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God… And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all mankind together will see it.” (Isaiah 40:1-5)

Then God said it again 400 years after Malachi, through the angel Gabriel when he appeared to Zechariah in the Temple in about 6bc “Do not be afraid Zechariah, your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to give him the name John. He will be a joy to you and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the LORD… he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from birth. Many of the people of Israel will he bring back to the LORD their God. And he will go on before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah… to make ready a people prepared for the LORD.” My friends, that appearance by Gabriel the archangel, was the message from God to His people which broke the 400 year silence which followed Malachi.

So who was Malachi, Isaiah and Gabriel talking about? Who is this man named John who would go on before the Lord? Of course it is John the Baptist, the man whose entire life purpose was to announce Jesus Christ, Immanuel, God among us! John was the fulfillment of Malachi 3:1a, the messenger who prepared the way for God in the flesh, Jesus, and His life and ministry here on earth!

Of course the people in 420bc to whom Malachi was speaking, couldn’t possibly imagine that God would need someone to prepare the way for HIM, because no rational person would ever imagine God would leave heaven and actually come to live here on earth!!! So Malachi continued…

Look at the next line: “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.” This is the only place in the Bible Jesus is referred to as ‘the messenger of the covenant’. Malachi was making it clear. God was going to respond to the question “Where is the God of justice” by coming to earth, living here among us, actually going into that Jerusalem Temple, declaring God’s truth, and revealing Himself to be the One who made God’s covenant with Moses, and Abraham and every generation of Hebrews since!

But for those folks in Jerusalem in 420bc, that seemed preposterous, just like it seems preposterous to most of the people living in your city in 2021!

So Malachi continued, making this remarkable prediction even more amazing. What would God’s visit to earth be like? “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… So I will come to put you on trial.” (Mal. 3:2-5) And that’s what Jesus did, isn’t it? Jesus spoke God’s truth and identified without question, the evil, the corruption, the deceitfulness, of every segment of sinful normal humanity, but He also identified it in the hypocritical religious leadership as Matthew recorded in his chapter 23. Jesus condemned evil and injustice wherever He encountered it.

But Jesus also proved His power over Satan by rebuking and controlling demons and even casting them out of the people they mercilessly oppressed. And Jesus proved His power over death by raising dead people to life, several of them. We have the accounts of three of them in the Gospels… Jairus’ daughter in Matthew 9:18-26, and the widow’s son in the town of Nain, recorded in Luke 6:11-17. And of course the resurrection of Lazarus recorded in John 11. This power over death set Jesus apart from any sorcerer, any magician, any apparent miracle worker of His day. No human being could reverse the curse of death and bring dead people back to life!

And Jesus very clearly, repeatedly, predicted there will be a final day of reckoning when every person will stand before God in accountability for the life they have lived. And there they will be judged according to God’s holy standard of perfection, and Justice will be done, once and for all. (Matthew 25) Evil will ultimately be destroyed, and Satan and all evil doers will be thrust into the lake of fire for all eternity (Rev. 20:10)

For the people in Malachi’s day in 420bc, his words seemed unthinkable, preposterous, beyond reason. But a little more than 400 years later as people listened to Jesus speak, and watched Him do the miracles, and especially watched Him raise dead people to life, they began to believe Malachi’s prophecy to be true. God was a God of justice and God, they thought, just might be able to bring justice to the injustice of their world in the Roman empire time. And so they waited and watched and hoped… but Jesus didn’t!

Have you ever considered how many people were disappointed by Jesus? People hoping He would be the Messiah, the deliverer to set them free from Roman domination, as Moses had led their ancestors out of Egyptian slavery! But that was not Jesus’ purpose at that time, not His mission. In fact for those who watched Jesus die on that cross, Malachi’s words seemed confusing and meaningless. They lost hope.

But for those who saw Jesus during those 40 days after His resurrection, and those who watched Him ascend from the Mount of Olives up into the sky, oh my, hope returned in a new and bigger way, a global way!

God had not come to earth in the person of Jesus only for Jews, but for ALL people, everywhere. Jesus had not come only to help cripples and blind people, poor people and orphans, Jesus had come to pay the sin price for every person on earth, in every generation, so every person could be reconciled to Holy God with their sin forgiven, because Jesus had paid for their sin with His death on the cross!

No person ever need live in fear of Satan and evil again, for Jesus had defeated Satan by His resurrection from the dead. Every person can look forward to a reckoning day where God’s Justice will finally be applied to every person of all time when each person stands before God.

And for all of us who have been told the stories, through the historical record, the Bible, we understand Jesus will return, perhaps very soon, and then the words of Malachi will finally come to full accomplishment.

Oh we have so much more to discover in Malachi’s short four little chapters, and we’ll continue tomorrow, but for today I just invite you to spend some time thanking God that He came, in the person of Jesus, as Malachi predicted. And then spend some time talking to Jesus today. Tell him what your life would be WITHOUT Jesus and thank Him. Here’s a song that might help you. . .

Today’s Scripture is Malachi 3.

Choose below to read or listen.

Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.

Have a comment or question about today’s chapter? I’m ready to hear from you, contact me here.

Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)

Archived back issues of “Walking with Jesus” and other resources are available by clicking here to open our ‘home page’ (or go to HOME at upper right of this page).

Share with friends. Subscribe below for daily “Walking with Jesus”.