Christ Lutheran Church
Cleveland, Ohio
December 8, 2024
by: Rev. Dean Kavouras
Advent 2C
Redeemed and Refined
“He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi, and he will refine them like gold and silver, so that they might bring to the LORD righteous offerings. Malachi 6:3
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Advent is a season of repentance. It is like Lent, only shorter.
The liturgical color is purple which is a significant theological color utilized by God’s people for ages. It is a combination of red and blue, of heaven and earth, which represents the union of God and Man in Christ – and that is what Advent is.
Though it is a season of repentance, it is also the season of the Promise. The time when we celebrate that God comes to earth as a Man to reconcile God and Man by the blood of the cross. The blood by which we are sprinkled in baptism, and which we factually drink in the most Holy Supper.
This union is everything. Those who have it are alive, those who do not are dead even while they live. But it is open to everyone so do not despair. The union is necessary because Man divorced his God in the Garden by marital unfaithfulness. By “having an affair,” if you like with the Serpent. But the suffering of Jesus brought an end to the war between strong-willed, narcissistic man, and thrice holy God. By Christ the two are reconciled, and the New is better than the original.
How did this come about? Grace. By our heavenly Father’s unbounded love for his Wondrous Creation. We are that Creation. That Bride. Those children. We are the object of God's grace, mercy and peace, and it is grace that undergirds the entire Christian enterprise. Indeed, all that exists.
In an act of great, unsolicited mercy God’s Love trumped his Justice so that he: gave his One and Only Son so that whoever would believe in him should not perish. Not perish! But have everlasting life beginning now and moving forward to the ages of ages.
There is a brilliant word spoken by God through the prophet Malachi. When the prophet is done preaching a sermon that would get him run out any church in the country, because Man can only handle so much truth, then the Lord says, “For I the LORD, I do not change, and so you children of Jacob are not consumed.” (Mal. 3:6) Or said another way:
“God loved the world so that he gave,
His only Son the lost to save.
That all who would in him believe,
should everlasting life receive.”
Today we have zeroed in on Malachi 3:3, however, “ … and he will purify the sons of Levi, and he will refine them like gold and silver, so that they might bring to the LORD righteous offerings.”
The Levites were Israel’s priests. Their job was to offer sacrifices day and night to God for the sins of the people. This is not to say that personal repentance, faith and a life that produced the fruits of repentance was not necessary. It was. But then, as now, such repentance, faith and good fruit proceeds from the Great Sacrifice of The Great Son of Levi, Jesus Christ our Lord who is the Great High Priest, who liturgizes our God for us in the heavenly tent. (Heb. 8:1-2).
Or said another way Jesus sits at the Right Hand of the Father always interceding for us. And without the “plan of salvation” that God instituted in Old Testament Israel – and fulfilled in the New Testament – any personal faith would have been impossible.
Now every Levite priest that ever lived was a prophecy pointing to Jesus the Great High Priest who made his Advent into the world. The Levites of the day were not pure. Zephaniah the Prophet says of them that they were, “fickle, treacherous men … who profaned what is holy; and did violence to the law.:
And that is why, that as often as they “showed up for work,” for their appointed shift in the Holy Place, they first offered sacrifices for their own sins, and then for the sins of the people. Moreover every one of THOSE sacrifices, be it a bull or lamb or goat or pigeon was also a prophecy of the Lamb of God who would by his incarnation, take away the sin of the world.
Apart from God’s purification of the Levites they could not offer sacrifices, because our God will only accept pure and spotless offerings, from pure and spotless people who are refined by affliction.
What affliction? The same ones we suffer today: external persecution, illness, weakness, poverty, stress, worry, a limited life span, persistent temptation to sin, the fear of death, aggression, bad habits that we might even hate, but that enslave us nonetheless. Foul minds. Foul moods. Foul mouths that get into deeper into trouble the longer they move. And so: Silence is golden, Beloved. Silence is golden!
And this should not surprise us, that all men suffer the same hardships whether they lived then, or now. Nor can we expect the future to be better in any appreciable way, except that men should repent and believe the gospel! Because when the One who baptizes us not only with water but with “the Holy Spirit and with fire,” makes his Advent known, then everything gets better.
Brilliantly better!
To be baptized with the Holy Spirit in JB terms mean’s to be born and begotten from above, from the “Father of lights, with whom there is no shadow of change.” It means to have your sins forgiven, your slate wiped clean, and your enmity and fear of God extinguished, because now you are a “child of the Light.” Now we are “Sons of God through faith” in Jesus Christ. (Gal. 3:26). Now we are taught, led, guided, comforted and nourished by God’s very own Comforter. And there is no more satisfying way to live than that.
But not to lose our theme, our Lord purifies us because Christians are the new Levites. We are the people who: offer living sacrifices holy and acceptable to God (Rom. 12:1-2). And we cannot do so unless we are first pure.
Like the Levites of the Old Testament, when New Testament Levites assemble before the LORD for worship they first pray the confessional prayer; and receive the absolution. Then, purified by the fires of affliction, and baptized by fire, we offer right worship. True worship. And we make the Offering of all Offerings to our God. The very Offering He first made for us.
He gave His One and Only Son to us and for us. And in Holy Communion we acknowledge that we receive and believe what our God has given us. His Son. Then in the Flesh, now “in with and under the Bread and Wine.” We liturgically demonstrate our faith in the Crucified and Sacramental Christ by elevating the Bread and the Cup up to heaven. And by recitation of the LORD’s own words, and by this liturgical gesture we are indicating that we are approaching our Holy Father, by His Holy Son, whom he graciously gives us today in the Blessed Sacrament.
And though we are purified by the Holy Cross, by Holy Affliction and by Holy Absolution – when the Body and Blood of the Refiner touches our lips … then we are Refined with a capital “R”; then we are pure even as he is pure (1 Jn. 3:4); then there is nothing left to say except … “Mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.”