Advent 2
Malachi 3:1-4; Philippians 1:3-11; Luke 3:1-6
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I.
The words I would like to focus on today are from Malachi 3:3.
“...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, till they present right offerings to the Lord.”
I would like to examine the specific phrase, “he will purify the sons of Levi.”
The word that jumps out here is purify.
Who wants to be pure?
The answer, I should think, is all of us. After all, the word pure has good associations. Pure gold. Pure as the driven snow. Pure food. Pure water.
But the word the prophet Malachi uses is purify: “he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, till they present right offerings to the Lord.”
There, I think, is the dilemma. Each of us should like to be pure, but not a single one of us looks forward to being purified.
But that is the plain meaning of today’s text. We must be purified.
The sons of Levi will be purified and refined, like gold and silver, until they bring right offerings to the Lord.
That, of course, means there was something wrong with their previous offerings, something less-than-pure.
The Church in every age must examine what it is she brings to the Lord. Is her offering right? Is it pure? Will she submit to having her worship and her doctrine and her discipline refined? Does she want to be purified?
The answer is almost invariably, no. The church does not want to be purified. She does not want to be refined.
She would rather develop and refine her own doctrines, mold them to her own liking, offer worship that satisfies her own longings and makes her attractive to the world.
Such a church is happy to – takes pride even – meeting sinners where they are but will go no further with them. She is content to leave them unchanged, no better off, sometimes after decades of church membership, than when they first joined.
Such a church dares not make any effort to purify the sinner or refine the manners of the world in which God has placed her.
Such a church is irrelevant.
Such a church will be surprised, caught off guard, when the Lord whom she purports to seek, suddenly comes to His temple.
II.
Let me put the problem to you another way.
The parsonage came with a very nice oriental rug that we’ve put in the living room.
For the past week and a half, my wife has valiantly attempted to clean this rug. She has vacuumed it, on both sides. She bought a steam cleaner, but each time she runs the cleaner over the carpet, the cleaning solution turns to mud and fouls the machine.
She’s spent more time cleaning the cleaner than cleaning the carpet.
“...and he will purify the sons of Levi...”
You see, the sons of Levi were the steam cleaners in Old Israel, or, at least, they were supposed to be.
They were the priestly tribe, and it was their vocation to safeguard and maintain the purity of the congregation of Israel.
But Israel became foul and muddy from the sin of idolatry, and instead of opposing that false worship and purging it from Israel’s midst, the sons of Levi became contaminated themselves, just like my wife’s steam cleaner.
But the situation is worse for the sons of Levi.
Fortunately, we were not expecting any company last week at the parsonage. The sons of Levi were not so fortunate, and Malachi warns them that “the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple.”
If this “messenger of the covenant” arrives before they are ready, that is, before they have time to clean themselves up and make their offerings presentable to God, then they will be destroyed, for “who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?”
The point is that the sons of Levi need to prepare for the Lord’s coming, but, given that their offerings are currently unacceptable to God, it is unlikely that they can prepare themselves, let alone the rest of the congregation of Israel, adequately.
They themselves need to be refined, before they can do any refining.
And so it is that the church finds herself in most epochs, times, and places.
Consider the sorry state of affairs Luke describes in Chapter 3.
“In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tibe′ri-us Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Iturae′a and Trachoni′tis, and Lysa′ni-as tetrarch of Abile′ne, in the high-priesthood of Annas and Ca′iaphas….”
This is a litany of abusive leaders, from the drunk and sex-crazed Tiberius to the corrupt Pilate, the illegitimate Herod, and the conspiratorial Caiaphas.
Yet into this mess “the word of God came.”
It came to John the Baptist. It came to “John the son of Zechariah.” It came to John in the wilderness, where a man could go, where a man can still go, to escape the corruption and rot of the world.
And this man John “...went into all the region about the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”
“A baptism of repentance.” John begins the hard and tedious work of purifying the people.
John himself is a son of Levi. He is from a Levite family. His father, Zechariah, was a priest in the temple in Jerusalem, and his mother, Elizabeth, was descended from Aaron, second only to Moses, and the first high priest in Israel.
Here is a literal fulfillment of the words of the prophet Malachi: “Behold, I send my messenger to prepare the way before me.”
It is fitting that the one sent to purify the sons of Levi was himself a Levite.
It is this simple washing, this baptism in the Jordan River, that is the outward sign of the inner purification, that change of heart, that demonstrates true repentance.
John himself is aware that the washing, the baptism, points to something greater. Though he himself is sent to purify the sons of Levi, he himself needs to be purified.
He says as much to Jesus when Jesus comes to John to be baptized in Matthew 3:14: “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”
Even the one doing the purifying needs to be made pure.
Last Sunday, I said that where Jesus is, there is righteousness. That theme is re-stated here. Where Jesus is, there is purity.
It is not the ritual that purifies, it is not the external washing, the baptism. It is the turning of one heart to another, the change that takes place in the sinner’s heart when that heart is strangely warmed by an alien love, a love that comes from outside it, beyond it, descended from heaven, as if from another world.
This is the very meaning of the name Jesus, in Hebrew, Yeshua, which means salvation and deliverance.
Quoting Isaiah, John says, “all flesh shall see the salvation of God” but he could have said “all flesh shall see the yeshua – the Jesus – of God.” In fact, that is exactly what John means.
John prepares the sons of Levi for the change that is soon to come upon them simply by calling attention to their desperate need to change, to repent.
John is sent to “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight” which tells us that the way had not yet been properly prepared.
Rome had built many roads, but Tiberius had not prepared the way.
The temple had been greatly enlarged and made more beautiful under King Herod, but this was not the preparation that was needed.
Annas and Caiaphas and all the other priests could offer daily sacrifices in that same temple but not one sacrifice ever took away the reproach of sin. No sacrifice could purify the sons of Levi.
Yet still, despite the utter lack of readiness, “the word of God came to John the son of Zechari′ah in the wilderness; and he went into all the region about the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”
This could only mean one thing. The Messiah is near. He is on the move, and the sign of His coming is John’s “preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”
The fact that preachers still preach “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” means that Christ is still close, that He is still on the move, that the sons of Levi still need to be purified.
If Christ is still that close to us, it means that we are still living in His time. We are living in the messianic age, all two-thousand and twenty-four years of it so far.
III.
Now, the question arises, who are these sons of Levi today? Where are they to be found?
Are they blood descendants, like John the Baptist from his father Zechariah and his mother Elizabeth?
Glancing ahead to next week’s reading, we learn that the answer is an emphatic no. In Luke 3:8, John tells the crowd not to trust in their ancestry or their bloodlines, for “God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.”
God does not purify His people based on criteria such as ancestry or tribe. The original sons of Levi were purified in their last generation. After Christ came, the Levites were no longer needed, just as the temple and the priesthood, and the old covenant are not needed today.
But men and women still have need of purity today.
The refiner’s fire is hot. Gold and silver are not refined without heat.
Lye is a harsh corrosive and destroys the living tissues it touches, and soap cannot be made without it.
But the son of Levi today is not the victim of a chemical spill or a house fire. The sinner is not saved by destruction, at least not his own.
The son of Levi today is the one who understands that the washing and the refining are the cure for the sins he has come to hate.
He hates his sin because he has heard the call to repentance and understands that he must be baptized for the forgiveness of sins.
IV.
But this is not a baptism a sinner can undertake for himself. He could not endure it. Neither could you. Neither could I.
In Luke 12:49, Jesus says, “I came to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled!” This is the refining fire of God. For those who hate their sins, this is the refiner’s fire. For those who insist on being defined by their sins, this is the fire of destruction.
But the fire, whether it refines or destroys, does not come before Christ undergoes His own baptism by death.
Jesus Himself testifies to this baptism in Luke 12:50, “I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how I am constrained until it is accomplished!”
This is the baptism that Jesus can endure, but that we cannot endure, apart from Him. This is because Jesus, being purity itself, the very definition of pure, the purifier who Himself is pure, cannot be corrupted by death.
Peter, preaching in Acts 2:24, said, “God raised him up, having loosed the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.”
How is it that the smallest and weakest of God’s creatures often have the strongest shelters, the Puritan preacher, Richard Sibbes, wondered?1
Here we are, weakened and crushed by sin, good for nothing but to be set on fire, but the moment we begin to grieve our sins more than the punishments they bring, the fire of judgment becomes the refiner’s fire.
It is the same fire, but its effect on us is wholly different, just as our relationship to the one who kindles the fire is completely changed.
Christ is no longer our judge but has become our salvation. He removes us to safety and shelters us while He works to repair us. As the purified sons of Levi, we learn quickly that there is more mercy in Christ than sin in us.2
V.
Now, what you’ve got to do to see this mercy work in your life is you’ve got to get over your fear of the flame.
You’ve been told all your life not to touch the hot stove, but the heat is only dangerous if you’re foolish.
That is to say, if you keep on insisting that you’re doing just fine, that you’ve got this little sin under control, or that this other one lies safely forgotten in the past.
God forgets nothing and we will give an account of everything to Him.
What the heat of the flame is really there for is to prepare a fine meal, a banquet even, prepared by Christ Himself.
He’s invited you. In fact, you’re the guest of honor, the whole feast is about you. It’s a wedding feast after all, for the purified sons of Levi – but now we know to call them the saints, the elect of God’s church – which is His own bride. The Church is the bride of Christ.
But you’ve got to let Him do His work. We’re meant to spend eternity together which means we’d better let go of the things that don’t belong there: earthly desires, passions, and lust. All of which make us ashamed.
Shame is a feeling fit for hell. Let those who are hell-bound have their fill of it. Next week, John the Baptist will teach us several ways we can put away our shame as he continues his work to purify the sons of Levi.
“The flame shall not hurt thee, I only design, thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine,” as the old hymn goes.
“He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, till they present right offerings to the Lord.”
Let us pray:
Merciful God, who didst send thy messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Preached on December 8, 2024 at the First Congregational Church, Woodbury, Connecticut.
Questions for reflection and discussion:
Pure, purity, and purify have ____________ associations.
The sons of ____________ will be purified until they bring right offerings to the Lord.
The ____________ in every age must examine what it is she brings to the Lord.
The Levites were a ____________ tribe.
It was the Levites vocation to safeguard the ____________ of the congregation of Israel.
The sons of Levi needed to ____________ themselves and Israel for the Lord’s coming.
John the Baptist was from a ____________ family.
John’s mother, Elizabeth, was a descendant of ____________, the high priest.
The coming of John the Baptist meant that the ____________ was near.
The son of Levi today is the one who understands that the washing and the refining are the cure for the sins he has come to ____________.
The smallest and weakest of God’s creatures often have the strongest ____________.
Shame is a feeling fit for ____________.
Parents and Grandparents, you are responsible to apply God’s Word to your children’s lives. Here is some help. Young Children – draw a picture about something you hear during the sermon. Explain your picture(s) to your parents or the minister after church. Older Children – Discuss with your parents one or both of the following: 1) Describe a time you got very dirty or made a mess you couldn’t clean up. Who helped you? 2) Think of something that can seem both good and bad at the same time. What makes it seem good? What makes it seem bad? How do you decide which one it is?
(1) good; (2) Levi; (3) Church; (4) priestly; (5) purity; (6) prepare; (7) Levite; (8) Aaron; (9) Messiah; (10) hate; (11) shelters; (12) hell
Richard Sibbes, The Bruised Reed, Puritan Classics (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 2020), 12.
Sibbes, 13.
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