Father Gods, we just thank you so much for your presence, for
what you've already said. Lord, I pray that you would use
my words to speak into our hearts again, Lord, that you
would continue with what you've already started to say, Lord,
that you would complete a good work in us.
Thank you, God. So we're continuing our series
in Malachi this morning. Malachi means my messenger,
which is quite appropriate. He's one of the minor prophets.
All of this been covered. Malachi was actually written
about 100 years after the Jewish exiles returned from Babylon and
approximately 400 years before Christ came.
Before Jesus came and before John the Baptist.
The Israelites had rebuilt the temple, they'd restored their
sacrificial worship and they'd re established community life.
However, their expectations weren't being realised.
The promises and prosperity that had been made by earlier
prophets like Haggai and Zechariah, they hadn't yet
materialised. There was a growing sense of
abandonment by God that he basically was separate to the
Israelite nation, where of course he'd promised to be a
part of it. Religious practises have become
hollow and just a routine. And Ben talked to us about how
the priests had neglected their duties and how they'd started
doing substandard sacrifices and they were forcing people to come
into the temple and to buy the animals from the temple stalls.
Skip spoke to us last week about marriage and more.
That divorce was prevalent amongst the Israelite nation at
that time. That foreign women.
Sorry. I'll just need to set my timer
going, otherwise I will have no idea how long I've talked for.
So sorry. Skip spoke last week about
marriage and about how divorce was absolutely prevalent amongst
the Israelite nation at that time.
This week we're going to speak about justice.
I'm not quite sure whether Ben planned it sort of that way, but
I have a very strong streak in me that sort of, if something
isn't right, I get really hit up about it.
And so it's probably in some ways one of those that's good
for me to speak and work out about.
We're reading from the last verse in chapter 2 of Malachi to
the fifth verse in chapter 3. If you've got your Bibles, feel
free to turn there. I'm going to put the message up
on the screen, but I'm also going to reference back to
verses, and those verses aren't in my slides.
So if you've got them in your Bible in front of you, it will
just help you. Check that I'm not speaking
rubbish. OK, Malachi 2 verse 17.
As I say, it's the last verse of Malachi 2 and then we'll go
straight into Malachi 3. You have wearied the Lord with
your words. How have we wearied the Lord,
you ask? By saying, all who do evil are
good in the eyes of the Lord, and He is pleased with them.
Or you say, where is the God of justice?
I will send my messenger who will prepare the way before me.
Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to the temple.
The messenger of the covenant whom you desire will come, says
the Lord Almighty. But who can enjoy 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.
He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.
He will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and
silver. Then the Lord will have men who
will bring offerings in righteousness, and the offerings
of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the Lord.
As in the days gone by, as in former years.
So I will come to put you on trial.
I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers,
and perjurers, against those who defraud labourers of their
wages, those who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and
deprive the foreigners among you of justice.
But do not fear me, says the Lord Almighty.
So that was then. But is God still indifferent to
the power plays going on? It's funny, this week there was
a report released by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and it was
sent to the government and in it it reported that 6.8 million
people in the UK are living in very deep poverty. 6.8 million.
That's roughly 10% of the UK population.
It's one in 10. Look around at how many people
are here. That means I reckon probably
four or five people at least. We'll get into that in a moment
because I reckon it's more than that here.
Very deep poverty. That's a phrase, isn't it?
It's that their income is 60% of the poverty line income, and the
poverty line is defined as 60% of the median household income
after housing costs. Now I did a rough ballpark.
I reckon that means that a single person to be in very deep
poverty is basically bringing in less than 100 lbs a week.
That's £400 a month ballpark. And it's not that these people
are on benefits, these people are quite often people who are
working full time hard and talk about defrauding the labourer.
It's crazy. A majority, sorry.
A major parliamentary report was released this month.
It revealed that the social housing conditions have barely
improved since COVID, since the pandemic.
Do you remember those reports on TV about people whose houses,
they were in social housing and they were just covered in black
mould and they were suffering with sort of chest infections
and so forth in January 2026? So last month about faith
leaders from about 20 countries got together at the World
Economic Forum to highlight a moral crisis.
They were saying that many developing countries are
spending more on debt repayments to wealthy countries, not to
banks and so forth to wealthy countries than they're able to
spend on healthcare or protecting their citizens from
climate disasters. The Humans Rights Watch
published their 2026 World Report and they warn in there
that 72% of the world now lives and their autocracy with
indiscriminate bombings and ethnic cleansing.
They note that this is being met with uneven global action.
Bringing it closer, let's talk about Blackpool.
Blackpool has one of the highest low paid, seasonal insecure jobs
market in the country. Blackpool still has the lowest
average earnings in Lancashire recently.
Recent data in 2025 and 2026 shows that in some
neighbourhoods in Blackpool, like Bloomfield, nearly 60%,
well nearly 63% of children live in income deprived households.
In some micro neighbourhoods that's almost 100%.
Men in Blackpool have the lowest life expectancy in England.
A boy born today in Blackpool is expected to live 10 years less
than someone born in the South. In a wealthy part.
Blackpool is currently dealing with a homeless rate that is
more than twice the national average.
Where is the God of justice? God answers in Malachi.
He says. My messenger is coming.
It's probably not what they were expecting, right?
Certainly not what I would have expected God to respond with.
They wanted God to show up and to fix things.
They wanted him to fight for them, to come and judge their
enemies, to restore their fortunes.
In the ancient days, if a king was to come and visit Blackpool,
he didn't just turn up unannounced.
He sent a forerunner, someone to clear the roads, fill in the
potholes. That's a big job.
Tell the people to get their houses in order.
The messenger is sent as an act of mercy.
God's messenger is going to come, is going to prepare the
people for his personal return. If God showed up without that
messenger pre sort of, then his perfect justice, his unfiltered,
absolute blinding holiness, no one would be left standing.
He'd judge us just as He would judge our enemies.
The messenger is the one who gives us a chance to change
before the king arrives in verse 2, Malachi reports.
But who can endure the day of his coming?
The Israelites desired the Lord to come, but were they seeking
Him? See, they wanted the Lord to
come on their terms. I'm challenged by that.
Am I just looking for God to show up and sort out my issues?
Am I expecting him to turn up but have pre set expectations
about how and what he can and can't do?
Or am I seeking his presence? Am I sold out for God's presence
or nothing? Am I saying God?
If you don't go with us then don't send us.
We want God to bring justice to the world, to deal with those
big sins, the corporate greed, the political lies, the
corruption. But we aren't ready for him to
judge us for our gossip, our greed, the way we ignore those
who are sleeping in the doorway or struggling to eat and heat
their home. It's easy to say how dark the
world is, how Blackpool has so many problems, but to fail to
recognise that we walk past the homeless outside Tesco's or
outside the station, or that we don't actually like the kids in
church because they're too noisy, or, heaven forbid, if we
had gay people come amongst us, I they're just too far gone.
God save us. God says that he will come
suddenly, like a thief in the night.
Justice often feels like it got stuck in traffic, right?
It's like the proverbial bus for the You're waiting for a bus and
then three pitch up. It feels like the bad guys are
winning, but there are no consequences to doing wrong.
But the delay isn't because God is lazy or indifferent.
The delay is there to allow us time to act to the messenger.
Historically, of course, when you look at Malachi, the
messenger that is first spoken about is John the Baptist, and
that's 400 years before, sorry, 400 years after Malachi spoke,
first spoke that message, yeah, that's a huge amount of time.
But the Lord is not slow, as some understand slowness.
Instead, He is patient with you. That's two Peter 3.
See, John came and he was the messenger that pointed to Jesus.
And that's the second messenger that's mentioned in Malachi 3.
The messenger of the covenant gives you some idea about why
Jesus came. But today, who's that messenger
to us? It's the prophetic voice of the
Holy Spirit. Yeah.
And it should be the voice of the church, too.
Get ready. God does care about the poor.
He does care about the injustice.
Injustice. He does care about when things
are sort of not done right. He's calling to his people and
saying wake up. Oh, Sleeper, rise from the dead.
Nice to see you're awake now. That's Ephesians 5, but that's
the call. I wonder what you think of when
we mention the word word justice.
Maybe it's the judge and the gavel.
Certainly that's what comes straight to my mind.
And about punishment. Yeah, but God uses 2 very
different images, the fire and the soap.
They have the same goal though. See the fire and the soap come
not to destroy the object, they come to destroy the dirt on the
object. See the refiners fire.
If you're not familiar with that imagery, basically a refiner has
a Crucible of metal that he heats up and gets it really hot,
and when it heats up, it all melts and to the surface rises
the dirt, the impurities, the dross, and he then very
carefully skims those impurities, the dross, off of
the top and throws it away. He would know that that metal
was pure when he could see his own reflection in the metal.
See, God is looking to see His reflection in His people, in His
church. When the church is out there in
the community in Blackpool, the community should see the
character of Jesus in the church.
The second image is of launderers soap.
Now this isn't any ordinary household soap.
It's not a nice bar of Dove that is soft and gentle on your skin.
I don't know if any of you are like me, whether you came across
something called Swarfinger. As a kid.
I'd be sent out to clean my bike and of course it was really
mucky 'cause, you know, I went everywhere on it and that chain
would invariably be really dirty and really oily.
And I get sort of in from having cleaned it and my hands would be
covered. Not to say that everywhere else
wouldn't be covered in dirt and oil as well, but and ordinary
soap just wouldn't cut it. I couldn't get rid of all the
oily grime. And so I got the special
swarfiger, which was kind of magic.
It just removed oil stains. But we're not even talking about
Swarfinger here. We're talking about Londra's
soap. This is something that is harsh.
It's abrasive. It's alkali.
If you're a chemist, that to me speaks immediately about acids
and alkalis and sort of really rough stuff.
You know, it's the kind of stuff that's going to really sort of
harden your skin. It was used to scrub raw wool to
get the grease and the filth out.
See, true justice is clean, but it's rarely comfortable.
Sometimes for justice to happen in the community, things have to
be scrubbed, Systems have to be challenged.
If we want a clean town, a town free of prostitution, a town
free of child poverty, a town free of corruption, then we need
to be go to be willing to go through the scrubbing of God's
word. We frequently think about
justice being a universal held concept.
Yeah, but it isn't. It comes from God.
It starts at God's altar and it comes to us.
So it's no surprise that the first people to be touched by
God's justice are his people, the Levites.
That's what we hear in verse 3 and 4.
I had Andrew and I went to go and see Pete and Jane on Friday
and we had a lovely meal there. But one of the things as we
talked, one of the phrases that came out was the world is
broken. We want God to come and purify
the politicians, the CEOs, but God comes saying I'm starting
with the people who carry my name.
True justice won't start in a government grant.
It starts with the hearts of God's people when they're
refined, when we bring offerings in righteousness, when our lives
out there match the songs and the fellowship that we sing in
here. I'd be remiss if I didn't talk
about Jubilee Plus. When I'm talking about justice,
we partner with a charity called Jubilee Plus.
You'll probably have heard us mention it.
You can find out more on their website.
But they're there not as a poverty charity.
They're not solving poverty, right?
Jesus said you will always have the poor amongst you, but
they're there as a refining ministry.
They're there to help us look at the dross.
They're there to ask us, is your heart broken for the things that
break God's heart? They provide us with the soap,
the resources and the training to help us scrub and look at the
justice for the poor going on. Verse 5 of chapter 3 starts out
and says so I will come to put you on trial.
I'll be quick to testify. See, in Blackpool the labourers
are defrauded and I'm not just talking about stealing a
person's wage cheque. Yeah, or not paying someone
appropriately 0 hours contracts. How is that a thing?
There's no job security. How does seasonal work work?
And I get it for a business point of view in the natural you
go, well, that's just the way it is, that's the way it's got to
be. But God's calling us to a higher
thing. See, God says, I see the
struggle of the person working three jobs just to stay afloat.
See, the challenge is if God's going to come and judge us, are
we, are the businesses we're part of?
Are the businesses we've started?
Are they putting people first? It's quite a challenge to do
that, to have a business that puts people above a service or a
product. The vulnerable amongst us in
Blackpool. When child poverty in central
Blackpool hits 60%, that's a cry that reaches God's heart,
reaches his ears. When the elderly are afraid to
turn on the central heating and instead they go and ride the
buses or the trams, or they go and try and find somewhere that
is heated, like the amusement arcades or the casino.
Surely we can do better than that.
Are we looking at how we can support the vulnerable in our
society? Part of what we want with the
building is the opportunity to be able to address some of these
things. Those who rob the foreigners of
justice, see how do we treat the outsiders, those with social
standing? Are we open to different
cultures and societies being amongst us?
Verse 5 finishes with but you do not fear me.
The people who are doing all these things, they don't fear
God. And this is the root cause.
This is what causes people to lose their awe of God, to lose
that reverent fear of who God is.
And when we do that, we put ourselves in God's place in the
centre. And when we put ourselves in the
centre of the universe, suddenly we turn around and say your
needs, Yeah, your poverty. Yeah, it, it doesn't matter to
me as much as my comfort. And that's the danger.
That's the root of the problem. When we put ourselves first, I
couldn't resist nicking verse six.
It wasn't in the set of verses that I have, but Shagan can
repeat it next week. So you get 2 for the price of
one. But verse 6 says I, the Lord, do
not change. So you, the descendants of
Jacob, are not destroyed. This is why we can have a hope.
Yeah, because God is consistent. His justice is predictable.
His mercy is available. See, it's easy to hear these
preachers and think, Malachi. Yeah, doesn't really apply to us
as a church. I We're OK, Jack.
Right. We've got many nations
represented here. I want more.
But we've got many nations. Yeah.
We are supporting Jubilee Plus who challenge us to help the
poor. We're all right, Jack.
I know Skip struggled last week because he was down to talk
about marriage and what I loved about his preach was that as
well as being challenged again about marriage, he brought in
about the faithfulness of God and how that relates to
marriage. You see, there are things that
we can take away from Malachi that speak to us.
Let me share something, another story from this week, hopefully
to challenge you. It certainly challenged me and
this week I've been under quite a bit pressure.
I've got quite a lot going on. I had to prepare this word.
I had to keep doing work. I didn't feel overly well.
I've got to prepare for another meeting that I've got tomorrow
evening. I've been busy doing, well, kind
of doing me, but I woke on Sunday morning early in the
morning about 2:30. It's strange how God has to wake
you up early in the morning to speak to you.
Kind of says I'm busy doing the wrong things, but OK.
And and what he said to me was you've been trying to be the
judge, the jury, and the executioner.
You've been carrying what isn't yours to carry.
In Matthew 11, I was reminded, Jesus says, take my yoke upon
you and learn from me. For I am gentle and humble in
heart. And you will find rest for your
souls. For my yoke is easy and my
burden is light. So when we were talking on
Friday and this phrase, the world is broken, yes, yes it is.
But doesn't mean that it's our responsibility for fixing it,
right? It doesn't lie with us.
In fact, we're the reason that it's broken.
But Jesus came to fix it. We get to partake in the fix for
sure. Like Ben was saying earlier,
yeah, we get to be a part of the solution.
We get to work with Jesus in what he's doing.
But it doesn't mean the responsibility is ours.
When I spent time researching, I'm outraged, Outraged by the
injustice here in Blackpool. I don't want to be someone who
says, where is the God of justice?
I want to be instead a person who is seeking Jesus.
I want Jesus's justice in my life, that I might be clean and
reflect him. I'm challenged again to live my
life for God's cause, for his Kingdom.
I was reminded of the Hillsong United.
Have a song called Hosanna and the bridge says heal my heart
and make it clean. Open my eyes to the things
unseen. Show me how to love like you
have loved me. Break my heart for what breaks
yours. Everything I am for your
Kingdom. Cause I was reading the Bible in
one year with Nicky Gumbel on Friday and it happened to come
up. And I've been struck by this.
I've done it in past years. But I was struck again by the
fact of the Hebridean revival. And they were praying for
revival, much as I suspect we are now.
And a guy stood up and he said he read Psalm 24.
Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord?
Who may stand in his holy place, the one who has clean hands and
a pure heart. And that struck him.
And he said, It seems to me just so much sentimental humbug to be
praying as we are praying, to be waiting as we are waiting here,
if we ourselves are not rightly related to God.
They sought together for God to reveal if they had clean hands
and a pure heart. They came to understand that
revival is always linked to holiness.
And it occurred to me that justice comes as a result of
revival. I'm going to finish there.
I'm going to pray. But it's a dangerous prayer.
So I want you to only Amen it if it's your prayer as well.
Father God, we thank you that you never fail to meet us.
Lord, I thank you that you spoke to us so clearly in our worship.
Lord, I thank you that we have the opportunity to worship you
without oppression. Lord, I thank you that you care
for Blackpool, that you bring justice to Blackpool.
And Lord, it's clear from what your word was to the Israelites
through Malachi that the first place to start with justice is
us. And Lord, I want to say, will
you start with me?