““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 (NIV)
In Matthew 11:10 our Lord identifies John the Baptist as the promised messenger whom the LORD has sent ahead of Him to prepare the way for Him to come to His temple. Our Lord had a very high opinion of John, actually it is an amazing revelation of His humility that Jesus spoke the highest of John when John was at his lowest in regards to his faith in Jesus.
The Lord not only identifies John with this quote, but also identifies Himself as LORD, for John’s ministry immediately preceded the ministry of Jesus, and therefore if John is the messenger sent by the LORD, than Jesus is the LORD who is coming to His temple. This view of Himself and His own deity gives Jesus the ability to state that John is the greatest of all those born of a woman, for Jesus is both God and human.
Malachi 3:1-5 is a sobering prophecy of the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. Here we have the Lord coming to His temple, the One that the Jews supposedly desired and sought and yet who was able to stand His coming? He truly came as refiner’s fire, burning off the religious dross and ending with just a few believers refined and purified, the priesthood of believers restored, offering acceptable and righteous offerings.
There can be a lesson for us here if we choose to accept it. We long for the Lord to come, to make all things right, but are we truly ready for His coming? Will we stand when the Lord appears as Judge? Or are we the unrighteous dross who will be burned away? We need His fire today burning away the sin in our lives, in order to be ready for His coming.
Friend let us humble ourselves before Him today and ask Him to purify our hearts, that we would be ready for His coming.
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