Grace Lutheran Church Second Sunday in Advent, Dec 10, 2006

The Rev. Evan Gaertner

2^nd Sunday in Advent “Soap for Levis”

December 10, 2006 Malachi 3:1-4

“Thanks to Rev. Richard Anderson, International Church of Copenhagen for the Levi/Levite image”

Malachi is the last book in the Old Testament but that does not mean its message is any less important. The word Malachi means “my messenger.” It is the name of the prophet, but his name could serve not only for a way to call out to him if you saw him in a crowd, but it also is a good summary of his book. He spoke about God’s coming messenger.

Today in Malachi chapter three he gives to us the promise of the Lord that a messenger would be sent that would prepare the way before the Lord.

The messenger will be like soap for purifying the Levites. Not Levis like my favorite pair of jeans which are dirty. I want to wear them later this week. So I took some soap and started to scrub.

Malachi is not talking about the Levi jeans but Levites. Levi was one of the 12 sons of Jacob and so was the father of one of the 12 tribes of Israel. The tribe of Judah was promised that a descendant would always sit upon a royal throne. The tribe of Levi was chosen by God to be his full-time servants. The Levites that were descended from Moses’ brother Aaron served as priests, and all the other Levites helped move the Tabernacle before the Temple was built by Solomon and later helped serve the worship life at the Jerusalem Temple.

The Levites were to serve God by pointing the people in worship to the Lord God. But our sinful flesh corrupts all our works. By the time of Malachi the Levites were not serving the Lord. They needed to be scrubbed clean. So the Lord God through the prophet Malachi promised to send a messenger to come to prepare the way of the Lord. The Lord would then come suddenly into his temple and he would wash the priests and people in cleansing waters and refine them with fire.

Malachi promised a messenger would come to cleanse the Levites so they could once again faithfully fulfill their vocation.

The Soap for cleansing the Levis was the call to repentance and faith in the grace of the coming messiah, Jesus.

My Levi jeans need to be bathed in the detergent of my washing machine in order to become wearable once again. But once their clean when I wear’em people will be looking.

Now of course Malachi was not referring to the detergent in my washing machine when he said the messenger of the covenant would soap up and purify the sons of Levi.

Why is the Soap for the Levites so effective? The purifying soap of the Lord is the work of Jesus Christ. Jesus cleans us from within. The work of Jesus is not a superficial cleansing of sin.

The purifying work of Jesus is so deep and perfect that we cannot bring about this purifying of sin on our own. St. Paul promises, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do.” (Romans 8:1-3)

The Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus. God has done what we could not do. He has driven us by the spirit to repent of our sins and he washes us clean by the waters of baptism.

Malachi proclaimed that the Lord would cleanse with a refiner’s fire and fuller’s soap.” John the Baptizer urged upon those that listened to him, “Prepare the way of the Lord.” Jesus’ first sermon after his baptism was, “Repent, the kingdom of heaven is near.”

What in your life is preventing the Lord from working? What is eating at your heart like a cancer? What old sins, hatreds, angers, corruptions, or failures gnaw at your spirit?

The scrubbing and cleansing work of God is found at work in the confession of sin and receiving the forgiveness of sins.

Confessing your sins is not easy because we do not want to reflect that by word, thought, and deed with have disobeyed our Lord God. True repentance is not just remorse over being caught in our sin. True repentance is remorse over sin and knowing that on account of our sin we do not deserve to stand in the presence of God almighty.

I want us to bath in repentance and by faith in the forgiveness of sins we come clean. When we scrub the evils within with the love of God our focus switches from the anger, failure, hostility, and corruption that we have been hiding. Sin causes us to look into ourselves, but John the Baptist shows through his teaching that by the Spirit we can start to look outside of ourselves and look at others.

Scrubbed of sin, purified by grace, we are called to shine. You have been scrubbed clean by God. By faith in Jesus sacrifice on the cross you have been declared clean.

Jesus came to wash and refine the people so that they could faithfully serve.

Today we all share a partnership in the gospel. As the Levites were called as a whole tribe to serve God by pointing people to him, we are a chosen people, a royal priesthood called by God to point people to him.

When you share the cleansing Jesus gives you, you will discover the richness of a life lived by Christ.

Soli Deo Gloria

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