Malachi 3:2 Commentary and Bible Study

‘But’ – and it is a ‘but’ that contradicts all the imagined delight that the Jews had in the coming of Messiah – ‘who may abide the day of his coming?’ That day is going to be so different to what so many of the Jews imagine. The constant refrain put into the mouths of the people by Malachi – ‘Yet ye say …’ – shows how little they understood what the Lord was saying to them, and yet the Messiah would reinforce the same message. This is his first coming of course, not His second coming, although the same words can be applied to his second coming. It is His first coming. How do we know? Because it comes straight out of the prophecy of the coming of John the Baptist and then the coming of Christ. 'But who may abide the day of his coming?' It is not logical that now the prophecy would fly directly to the end of the world. It is the first coming of Christ 'and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiners fire, and like fullers' soap.' What a wonderful description of the ministry of Christ. ‘Ye hypocrites’, he said to the chief priests, and the scribes and the Pharisees’, and they hated him. They plotted; they schemed; they formed new alliances against him; the rehearsed their most difficult questions; they studied minutely his answers and his ways and the ways of his disciples. Their hatred grew so strong that it led them to murder him. They couldn't stand the coming of Christ, and the challenging of their morality and their unbelief. You see what these words mean is, you as a nation are going to be thrown into the furnace, and you are going to be scrubbed down as the fuller scrubs and washes the new cloth making it fit for use and for sale. God is going to go through you as a nation. But you see the refiner does not destroy everything, neither does the furnace. The furnace gets the dross off and leaves the purified metal. Perhaps it is only a tiny portion of the ore but that tiny portion comes out of the refining process. Likewise, the fuller makes a tremendous mess with lather and filth everywhere, but a piece of cloth comes out of it according to the ancient method of cleansing and preparing the cloth – beautiful pictures of Christ forming his church out of Old Testament Israel.