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Grace Driven Justice

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• 2:17, You have wearied the Lord with your words. “How have we wearied him?” you ask. By saying, “All who do evil are good in the eyes of the Lord, and he is pleased with them” or “Where is the God of justice?”

• 3:15, the evildoers prosper, and even those who challenge God escape.

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• 3:1a, “I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me.

• Jesus identified this messenger as John the Baptist.

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• 3:1b,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 messenger is not John.• This messenger is Christ who

will make the new covenant with us.

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• 2 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. 

• The day of his coming is a reference to both Christ first and second coming.

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• The fire is not judgment. • The fire is a means of grace to

remove the things that hinder us from coming to God.

• The refiner’s fire will burn these things away and you will experience the lost of material wealth, health, the lost of loved ones, the broken relationship.

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• 3 He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver.

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• V3b, Then the Lord will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, 4 and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the Lord, as in days gone by, as in former years. 

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• After the purification …• We can offer our bodies as

living sacrifices (Rom 12: 1); • We can offer our singing as

sacrifices of praise (Heb 13:15); • We can offer our giving to

ministry as a fragrant offering; an acceptable sacrifice pleasing to God (Phil 4:18).

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• 5 “So I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers,” … says the Lord Almighty.

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• The people asked, “Where is the God of justice?”

• In the near future (in about 400 years) Jesus will come to show that God is just.

• Jesus is just and his justice is grace driven.

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• Jn 8:3-11, The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group 4 and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5 In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?”

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• 7 when they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” … 9 At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first,

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• until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. 10 Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” 11“No one, sir,” she said. “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

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• Didn’t God say he will judge the adulterer?

• How is it that this woman is getting away with adultery?

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• The woman broke the law of God by committing adultery and according to the just law of God she should be punished for her sin. However, Jesus in his grace and mercy would soon take her sin upon himself at the cross. Therefore, he could justly set her free.

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• The justice of God is not miscarried because justice was done at the cross.

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• 5 “So I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, but do not fear me,” says the Lord Almighty.

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• In his first coming he came to demonstrate the justice of God by taking upon himself the punishment that we deserved at the cross.

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• In his first coming he came to demonstrate the grace of God by dying for our sins and setting us free so that we can go and tell all nations that their sins can be forgiven.

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• In his second coming he will display his justice to all unrepentant sinners who rejected God and His gospel.

• In his second coming he will pour out his wrath on unscrupulous businessmen who oppressed and exploited the poor.

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• In his second coming he will show his divine justice on all who ignored the injustice that the foreigners suffered in our community.

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• Deut 1:17-18, God defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the aliens (foreigners), for you yourselves were aliens in Egypt.

• Ps 10:18, The Lord is defending the fatherless and the oppressed.

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• Ps 68:5, God is a father to the fatherless, a defender of widows.

• God is often introduced as the defender of the oppressed & powerless.

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• Christ is coming soon and today is a good day to repent of our sin of not defending the poor, and not helping the aliens, foreigners or immigrants in our community.