The Messenger of the Covenant
Dr. Kevin DeYoung, Senior Pastor
Malachi 2:17-3:5 | June 15, 2025 - Sunday Evening,
Please turn in your Bibles to the last book of the Old Testament to the book of Malachi, chapter 2:17 and Malachi 3:5. I love morning and evening worship, it’s what I grew up with in the church that I went to in college, the church that I went to in seminary, every church that I’ve had the privilege to serve has had morning and evening worship and I love being here on Sunday night. I will say, one of the, it’s really about me as a sinner. One of the difficult things is sometimes I will admit and my children can sadly testify that after the evening service the hours when you get home, the remainder of Sunday evening can feel like some of the hardest couple of hours of the week, at least in the pastors house, had at least a little bit of a nap during the afternoon, it’s been a big push to get ready for Sunday morning and to come home and to have some food and clean up and a little rest and get people here and get home and by the time we get home it might be 8:00 o’clock and then there’s still more food. That’s the thing with kids, they eat a lot, three times a day often, and then there’s cleanup. It’s a little better in the summer, you’ve got more daylight, it’s not as much pressure, you don’t have school riding hard on you on Monday morning, and yet my wife and I have sometimes come to the end of a Sunday evening ready to tap out and we have said that we are ready to finish parenting before the kids are ready to be done with the parenting that they need, the older ones can pretty well take care of themselves, but for the younger ones we have gotten to the end, at least I have gotten to the end of some of those evenings and feel like, I am worn out and you beloved children are wearing me out. Now this is just an experience once in a very great while I’m sure for all of you beloved parents here to get to the end of that day and feel like you are wearied, wearied by the work to be done, wearied by the questions that come at you, wearied by the lack of immediate joyful obedience. This text speaks of the Lord being wearied by his people. Now I need to hasten to add that we as human beings have that experience and it is usually one that is mixed up with sinful frustration and anger and of course that would be blasphemous to ascribe that to the Lord. Also the Lord does not feel things in the way that we feel things, so we need all of the appropriate caveats to understand God as God, and yet we don’t want to neuter what this text says that God’s people here in Malachi have wearied Him.
Here’s what we read.
17 dYou have wearied the Lord with your words. xBut you say, “How have we wearied him?” eBy saying, “Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and he delights in them.” Or by asking, f“Where is the God of justice?” 3 g“Behold, I send hmy messenger, and ihe will prepare the way before me. And the Lord jwhom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and kthe messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. 2 But lwho can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For mhe is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap. 3 He will sit nas 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 oofferings in righteousness to the Lord.1 4 pThen the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former year.
5 “Then I will draw near to you for judgment. I will be qa swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those rwho oppress the hired worker in his wages, sthe widow and the fatherless, against those who thrust aside the sojourner, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.
Let me remind you where we are with this study in the Book of Malachi. It’s the last book in the Old Testament so we’re coming to the end before we have those silent years before the New Testament. If you want to have a rough chronology of the Old Testament in your head, think of these four words, Abraham, Moses, David, Babylon, and you can put to those four words roughly time stamps in increments of 500 years. It will at least get you in the ballpark. Abraham 2000 B.C., Moses 1500 B.C. give or take, David 1000 and then the exile to Babylon 500. Just put those four words, Abraham, Moses, David, Babylon, AMDB, very easy to remember, always memorize da Bible, AMDB, so we are here on the other side of Babylon, God’s people have not been brought back into the promised land and they have rebuilt the temple and here in the last book somewhere around 430 or 450 B.C. this is the last word that the prophet Malachi which means, my messenger, is giving to his people and this book is very neatly and obviously divided. There are six arguments. This one here is the fourth of those arguments.
You’ve heard me say before that the prophets were often like prosecuting attorneys, sometimes defense attorneys, but with God’s people they were usually prosecuting attorneys and especially so with Malachi. He comes with six different arguments against God’s people, and they follow this same refrain, you have done something and then they ask the question. So, we see in chapter 1:2, “I have loved you says the Lord, but you say how have you loved us?” And it goes on and on six times, this is number four. “You have wearied the Lord with your words, but you say how have we wearied the Lord?” Now if you were watching this as a movie or you were reading this for the first time knowing what you know about God’s people, you should be cringing and say, “Don’t, ah, you ask the question.” And now you’re going to get the answer by saying, there’s two pieces of evidence that Malachi has against them. You are saying number one, everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord and in number two you are asking this question, where is the God of justice. They were saying, and this is a perennial question, why in their minds are these bad things happening to good people and they’re understanding themselves to be the good people. They are looking around and in their eye, they see everyone who does evil gets ahead in life. You don’t even care. We’ve got cheaters in school and they’re getting all the awards. You’ve got fakes in ministry and you know what those men are like behind closed doors and yet they’re getting all the accolades or maybe you say they are schemers at work and I know how they’re getting to the top or you look out and you say the media puffs up all the wrong people, you think to yourselves, the bad guys are getting ahead and they’re getting away with it and to make matters worse you don’t think God cares and not only that He doesn’t care, but see what they’re saying there in verse 17, He delights in them. God, they say, you are rooting for the wicked, you’re against us, we’re your people, we’re the good guys, we’re doing the right things, and you are there cheering on the bad guys. Whatever happened to the God of justice, that’s what they’re asking, where’s the God of fire and brimstone. They’re thinking to themselves, where’s the God of Sodom and Gomorrah, we could use that right now, where’s the God of the ten plagues, how bout the God on Mount Carmel with the prophets of Baal who just licked them up with fire, where have you gone oh God of justice, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you. You have wearied the Lord with His Words.
Let me make an important point here because you may be thinking, wait, there’s a lot of Psalms, there’s a lot of language in the Bible of God’s people voicing their earnest cries and complaints, so which is it, are we supposed to cry out to God or are we supposed to just keep silent. Well, here’s one way to think of it. There is a difference between groaning and grumbling. You need to get this as God’s people. There’s a groan which is, God why, I don’t get it, I don’t sense it, I don’t know what you’re doing, there’s a groan that goes in faith toward God, an honest expression of the heart and then there’s a highhanded grumble, so think of it perhaps the difference between a sick child moaning in bed, asking for a cup of water, mommy, daddy, can you bring me a cup of water, oh my stomach hurts again. There’s a groan and as a parent you hear the groan, and your heart goes out and you show compassion, and you want to hear from your children in their groaning and then there is the grumbling. Stick with the parents analogy, maybe a child who got sick because he or she did not listen to the warning, don’t roll around in poison ivy, and then not only is it a groan, but really they blame you, mom, dad why did you get me sick, you hate me, you are a terrible parent. We can see the difference, a groan, heartfelt expression, and a grumble. This is certainly in the category of a grumble, oh God what are you doing, where is the God of justice?
Look at the reply in chapter 3. “Behold, I send my messenger.” Now there’s a lot going on here. Who is the I that is speaking, it is the Lord God almighty. And who is the messenger that He will send? Jesus gives us this answer in Matthew 11:10, speaking about John the Baptist Jesus says, “This is the one about whom it is written I will send my messenger ahead of you who will prepare the way before you so we know from the New Testament that this is specifically fulfilled with the ministry of John the Baptist who will prepare the way for Jesus. He is the messenger that Malachi foretold, he is the Elijah to come in Malachi 4, though at one point John is going to deny that because he’s not the physical reincarnation of some Elijah, but he is in the spirit of Elijah, he is the messenger who prepares the way. But look at what else Malachi says, “The messenger, he will prepare the way before me and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to its temple, the messenger of the covenant whom you delight, he is coming says the Lod of hosts. So, he is preparing the way before me.” Who is the “me?” The me is the same person as the I, it’s the same person we’re going to find in verse 5, I, that is the Lord God Almighty so don’t miss this, the Lord God Almighty, Yahweh, the covenant God of Israel says, “I’m sending a messenger of the covenant to prepare the way for me I am coming.”
Now we know as Christians Jesus Christ is the one who comes. So, this means Jesus is not merely some prophet or teacher, but He is the covenant God of Israel himself come in the flesh. He is the one who has come, and John prepares the way before Him. Now you look at what Malachi says and the initial response you have to imagine that God’s people were feeling pretty good. Verse 2, “Who can endure the day of His coming?” And they’re probably saying, yeah that’s right, we want to see the God of justice who can endure, who can stand when He appears. He is going to pound us out like silver, He’s going to come and refine, He’s going to come, this God is going to come with great justice and with judgement. Who can stand, you imagine that maybe God’s people were giving some high 5’s, some fist bumps, they cried out to the Lord, “Where’s the God of justice?”, and Malachi says, “Well there’s a messenger coming, he’s preparing the way and when he comes oh boy, the enemies are not going to be able to stand.” And they’re thinking to themselves, this is exactly what we’re talking about, this is what we wanted to see, the God of justice is finally coming.
But look at verse 5, “Then I will draw near to you.” Oh, remove the high 5, fist bumps, fall to the ground, wait a minute, we asked for the God of justice, and you said that he is coming, and no one can endure, but now the hook at the end, be careful what you pray for, be careful, you might just get it. Before any of us go, oh God, would you come and would you destroy the wicked, God, would you come take care of the sinners in our land. Just be careful if you pray that, God might do it, and so he does here. “Yes, there’s a God coming and I will come for judgement, but listen, I am coming first of all for you.” He lists seven sins, seven as a representation of the totality of their sins we see there in verse 5. One, they’re involved in sorcery, so divination, magic. Two, they’re adulterers. We saw that last week, breaking faith with one another, engaging in sexual immorality. Three, perjurers, they’re liars, they swear dishonestly, they take the Lord’s name in vain. Four, they are treating their workers unfairly. They are promising them a wage, they are getting the work and then they’re not paying them. Five, they are disregarding the widow and the orphan which means in Biblical terms, they’re taking advantage of the needy. Six, they are pushing aside those travelers who are passing through their land who should have been the objects of their hospitality just like they had been strangers in Egypt, and they are pushing them away and they finally, number seven, do not fear me.
Here’s the profound irony if you look at this list. They were basically guilty of two things, doing evil as if it were good, and acting unjustly as if God didn’t care. That’s the two things they’re doing, going evil as if it were good, acting unjustly as if God didn’t care and I say that’s ironic because these are the two things they charge God with in verse 17. God, here’s what we have against you, you are letting the wicked do evil as if it were good and you’re turning a blind eye to injustice. There’s a reason that Jesus says, “Remove the plank from your eye before you can see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” Not that we’re always the one to be blamed in every circumstance or every conflict, but because it is our fallen human nature to see so much more clearly all of the sins in other people. As I mentioned before, there’s a famous essay from C.S. Lewis, The Problem with X, and he says have you ever had conversations and you find yourself talking with your friends, you say you know what the problem with X is, and you fill in the blank of some friend or some pastor, some politician, or some child or something, you’re talking, you know what the problem with X is, and Lewis says very perceptively, “Just beware that you’re the X in someone else’s conversation.” Likely there’s some other group of people saying, ya know what the problem with that Kevin DeYoung guy is, much more adept at seeing the faults of others than our own and so were God’s people here, they want God to come with justice, they want the day of the Lord, but they did not imagine that the God of justice coming to them would be a God to visit them with judgement.
Amos 5:18. “Woe to those who desire the day of the Lord.” Be careful when you say if only God would come with all the fire and the brimstone, if only He would show up and He would wipe out all the sinners. They didn’t think that they were among that group and they in fact had been leading the way. Malachi 4 will tell us that this day of the Lord is a great and dreadful day, but notice the hope, He will be like a refiner’s fire. This famous verse, “A purifier of silver.” So the Lord will be like launderer’s soap to remove all that is dirty and filthy so he says to his covenant people, “It’s not merely a word of judgement to come and wipe you out, but like a metal worker who pounds and pounds the sword on the anvil until he can see his reflection in it, so the Lord must pound and pound us.” I don’t know about you, but Kevin DeYoung needs a lot of pounding out on the anvil of God’s severe mercy. If you want to shine, if you want to resemble God in this world, it’s gonna take God giving you a painful bath, pounding you out on the anvil of His mercy. He was coming in justice and coming for judgement, but in His mercy, it wasn’t ultimately to wipe out His people, but to purify them, to refine them, to make them into worshippers, that we might say with David in psalm 119, “It was good for me to be afflicted so I might learn your decrees.” That’s a hard one, isn’t it? It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees.
I said this morning, and we know from the Book of Jobe that hard things in your life does not automatically mean that you’ve done something wrong. Jesus, no one had harder things in His life than Jesus and no one was perfect except for Jesus, so it’s not a 1 to 1 correspondence, but here’s surely what all of us should be asking and whatever affliction, whether it’s discipline or whether it’s a providential mercy from the Lord, every time we have an affliction it is an occasion that we might learn the decrees of God. What are you doing in my life in this affliction that is a mercy to me. So, the messenger of the covenant will prepare the way that Jesus himself might come, and He might join to Himself and make a new people. That’s why John came baptizing, a baptism of repentance and what was the fundamental message of John, to repent. What was the summary of Jesus’ message, repent and believe in the Gospel. If you wanna be pure, if you wanna be pounded out in the anvil of God’s mercy, if you’re ready to turn from your sins, John said there’s one coming who can do this. Jesus said, “I’m the one that you have been waiting for”, and the work of the pastor in this church and every church represented and this evening as we think about the church plant that will begin in Monroe, the glorious work and privilege of the pastor is to announce that good news, to give that sober warning and to announce that good news, both of those things.
You remember Paul in Acts 20, and he is speaking to the Ephesian elders and he says that “I have washed my hands, I am innocent of the blood of you all because I did not shrink back from declaring to you the whole council of God.” And that doesn’t mean the whole council in every sermon, thankfully, but I didn’t shrink back from telling you. That imagery of wash his hands, I’m innocent of the blood of you comes from Ezekial with the watchman on the walls, there’s an army coming and you’re under attack and the watchman does not blow the trumpet to warn the people then shame on him, he’s guilty, but if he’s a watchman and he warns and the people don’t listen, and the people don’t hear, then he is innocent of their blood. That was their fault, the watchman blew the trumpet, the watchman told the people where to go for safety, and they did not listen. So as I have said to you many times, may it never be for anyone in this church or whatever church you may be a part of, may it never be in your church that anyone could stand before Christ on the day of judgement and say my pastor never told me there was a judgement to come, no one ever told me about this day. Now you may not have ears to hear, but the pastor is a watchman on the walls to announce that day and to provide the remedy, the good news, and so let me finish this message with two questions. Thinking about pastoral ministry on this occasion for Trent’s installation, here’s the first question and it’s for the pastors among us, the pastors here at Christ Covenant, the pastors here from the presbytery.
Here’s the first question, very simple, are you the Lord’s messenger, am I the Lord’s messenger? Now of course we all want to answer yes, and I think we can, but think about that, are you the Lord’s messenger? That means that it’s not my message, it’s not the pastor’s message. I don’t get to determine what I think you need to hear and when I say, are you the Lord’s messenger, it also means that the pastor is not the Lord, the pastor is not looking to accrue to himself a bunch of followers. He is a messenger to give a word for the Lord. Pastors here, are you laboring to speak only what the Lord has said, nothing more, that’s sometimes the danger of a reactionary mindset, I think God should have given a few more boundaries here, and nothing less, that is the danger of a liberal mindset. Are you working hard to bring each time you preach the meaning and the message of the text of Scripture, does the thing brother, pastor, that you are most excited to say each week, come manifestly from the text of Scripture. We don’t want to train our people to trust us except in so far as they trust that we can be trustworthy to handle the Word of God. Should not be the people learned that, well the pastor has a good story, if the pastor starts yelling then I know something’s really happening. The most important thing the pastor must say every week should come from his most careful attention and study from the text of Scripture. And brothers, let us give the whole council of God not shrinking back from anything hard that the Lord may have to say to us and to our people. The shrinking back doesn’t, the temptation isn’t there when you can lobe it outside of your own people and it can land on someone else. Sometimes people say, “Pastor that was very courageous”, well, speaking to things that 99% of our people already believe are right or wrong. No, the courageous part and the temptation to shrink back is when you know the people right in front of you are going to have a hard time hearing this which leads to the second question for God’s people. Are you willing to receive the Lord’s message, are you willing to receive the Lord’s message, not what you want to hear, but what you need to hear. Not what will always make you feel good, but what will truly be good news for you as a sinner. Can you imagine how God’s people felt if we were just going to measure pastoral faithfulness by the immediate feelings of God’s people, I don’t think that the people here probably liked any six of these arguments. They didn’t like this one, wait, you think I’m wearying to the Lord? Well, this was the Word of the Lord for these people. Are you willing church to receive the Lord’s message? Now the man not ought to point to himself, but he is not to puff you up, he is not to leave you in your sins, he is to declare to you week by week, service by service, Sunday by Sunday, the meaning and the mood of the text of scripture, and if you have that in your church you are a people blessed.
Remember in Amos they go through all of the judgements that God is going to give and there’s gonna be blight, there’s gonna be mildew, you’re not gonna have food to eat and then just about the last of the judgements upon the people, worse than a famine of food or water, He says I will give to them a famine of the hearing of the Words of God. That’s a judgement upon His people. They no longer would have a feast of God’s Word. I do think that in the churches by God’s mercy most of our churches in the PCA and the churches in our central Carolina presbytery are providing a meal from God’s Word and I trust that you have the appetite to eat it and the ears to hear it and receive it. 2 Thessalonians 2:13, “And we also thank God constantly for this.” This is about the best thing a pastor can say, and I can say it about you at Christ Covenant. We thank God constantly for this that when you receive the Word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the Word of men, but as it really is the Word of God which is at work in you believers. Let’s pray.
Our Father in heaven, we thank you for this great task which you have given to the shepherds of your people that we might be messengers of the covenant. In some small way even like John the Baptist to point away from ourselves and to point to this Christ who has come and who is coming again, we pray that you might bless each of us, that you might bless pastor Trent with your spirit in a double measure and that you might give to all the congregations represented here this great privilege to hear your Word week after week and to know you and to love you in Jesus’ name. Amen.
