With a New Year right around the corner, and Instagram offering a new diet or workout every time I open it, and my bathroom scale blowing up since Thanksgiving, I’m wondering all over again how I lost 75 pounds 23 years ago and kept it off.

What did I do? I ask myself again for the tenth time today. My mind is cloudy. Where’s the power I harnessed and have kept harnessing since? Surely, I counted calories or carbs? Surely, I worked out a lot? Surely, I felt tortured and suffered as I starved myself?

But no, I didn’t do any of these things. The truth slips and slides inside my memory as I try to find it. It’s helping me to write it down so I can see it, and here it is: What I did was believe 2 things—I need a rescue, and I have a Rescuer. I know, I know, it’s hard to believe, but that’s exactly what I did.

Malachi tells the story of finding this Rescuer, but the shortcut is this–his name is Jesus.

Malachi 3-4 

It’s the last day of the year, and the last two chapters of the Old Testament are here.  These are God’s parting words to his people before he goes silent for 400+ years. After Malachi, there’s no further word from him until John the Baptist comes, which is just before Jesus bursts on the scene in about AD 30.

Yesterday, we listened in on the first half of God’s last conversation with his people from Malachi 1 and 2.  Today we get in on the second half. I’m intrigued about how God ends it, because it’ll be a long time before there are any new words from him and a long time to think over what he says to them afterwards.   

God’s already said “I love you, and I’m for you” in chapters 1 and 2. He’s also challenged their belief that he’s too nice to judge and that it doesn’t matter how they live as long as they keep making sacrifices at the temple. God assures them it does matter how they live. In fact, dealing with their sin problem is a big deal to him, Mal 2.

And in chapter 3, he tells them his solution for it: his Messenger is coming, the Rescuer they’ve been looking for, and he’s bringing a bar of soap with him. He’ll scrub their sin clean, from people to priests, “until they’re fit for God,” and able to give him the godly living he requires. “Then and only then” will they be pleasing, Mal 3:1-4 MSG.

“Then and only then” jumps at me. The clean-up they need isn’t one they’re able to do for themselves. While they may see things in their lives that need changing, how do they go about making them? Where’s the power to change? This is the question I’ve been trying to answer since Thanksgiving.

God says it takes the “Messenger of the Covenant,” the Savior they’ve been waiting for, who’ll come as a “white-hot fire from the smelter’s furnace” as the “strongest lye soap at the laundry” to scrub them clean, refining them so that then and only then, they can stand before God. This is where the power to change is, Mal 3:2-4 MSG.

How much of the clean up do they do? I look back in the chapter, and I don’t see one thing. This Messenger, the Refiner-Launderer, is Jesus, and he does it all. Sure, we participate. We humble ourselves and submit to it, but the actual clean up? This is work only a Savior can do, and then and only then will we be ready for a relationship with God.

God shares a list of offenders who need saving, and while the hardcore folks like sorcerers and adulterers are on it, so are run-of-the-mill liars, employers who don’t pay their workers, regular people who don’t help the homeless guy on the street corner. In other words, “anyone and everyone who doesn’t honor me,” Mal 3:5 MSG.

I’m feeling the heat here. I have trouble enough just being kind. It’s not only the really wicked sinners God calls on the carpet—it’s everybody.

But there’s a piece of mercy tucked inside verse 7: even after all their rejection of him, God still wants them. In the very next sentence after he says, “You haven’t done a thing I’ve told you,” he says, “Return to me, so I can return to you,” Mal 3:7 MSG.

Does this surprise anybody else? God doesn’t write them off. He doesn’t say, “I’ve had it. You’ve blown it too many times. The best I can offer you is a trial period. If you can prove you’re worthy, I’ll think about making another offer…”

No. God says to turn around and come home–like now. I want you back, ASAP.

But where do they begin? They’re overwhelmed by the sin of all the years that they’ve killed their babies as offering for idols, had sex with prostitutes at his temple and called it worship, bowed down to moon and stars and cows and trees, consulted witches, murdered God’s prophets. These are some heavy-hitting sinners, so after all this, it’s understandable that they ask him, “How do we come back?” Mal 1:7 MSG.

“For starters, be honest,” God says. “Stop robbing me.  You rob me…by not bringing a full tithe to the temple,” so bring a generous offering, and “test me in this, and see if I don’t open up heaven itself to you and pour blessings beyond your wildest dreams,” Mal 3:8-12 MSG.

It’s an incredible promise, but it’s one they don’t quite believe, because the word on the street is that serving God doesn’t bring benefits. Those who don’t obey live just as well as those who do, and they have a better time in the process, “they break all the rules and get ahead anyway,” Mal 3:13-15 MSG.

But God says those who honor him do get “special treatment,” just as the child who honors her parents does, “you’ll see the difference it makes…between serving God and not serving him,” Mal 3:17-18 MSG.

I love how God doesn’t get his back up. He’s not touchy that they don’t gush over his offer of more goodness than they can dream up. He lets them challenge him about how he lets the wicked prosper. He doesn’t say, “Well, that’s my business, and you’ll have to trust me.” He says, “I’ll make good on this promise: one day, you’ll see the difference.”

The good living he wants from us, benefits us. Clean living is its own reward. He doesn’t need our righteousness, we do. If the money we give him comes back in “blessings beyond our wildest dreams,” we can be sure that every other thing we offer him does, too. This is how God operates, Mal 3:10-12 MSG.

But money’s not the only thing he asks for. At the end of chapter 4, he reminds them to keep all the laws of Moses. And my heart sinks—have you read Leviticus? Mal 4:4.

But God already knows they can’t keep his laws. They never have, and neither can we, if we’re honest. So in the very next verses, he says what he’ll do: he’ll send Elijah–who we know was John the Baptist–who’ll pave the way for God’s Big Day when Jesus comes. John will get their hearts ready and convince them they need a Savior, even for something as simple as loving their own children, Mal 3:1, 4:5-6.

Jesus is the perfect Son who kept all the laws of Moses, even Leviticus. He’s the Brother who gives us his flawless report card. He’s the Launderer who scrubs and changes us. He’s the Refiner who brings the heat to burn off what holds us back. Jesus is the Savior, who presents us to the Father as beloved sons and daughters, bought with the price of his very own blood.

Our sin doesn’t scare God off. He’s got it covered. He’s already paid for it. If that doesn’t free you from guilt and worry, I don’t know what does. Sin isn’t something we have to agonize over or try to deal with. We can’t. If we could, Jesus came for nothing. It took a sinless Savior to deal with it, and as he did it, he said, “It is finished!” No further payment needed, Jn 19:30 NIV.

You mean I can get off the hamster wheel and down from my ash heap and start living? I don’t have to zero-in on my issues and try to fix them? My debt is paid, and I’m free to live a new life of gratitude? Yes, yes, and yes.

This last conversation of Malachi before God went silent sounds a lot like the one we’d want to have with our own loved ones before we leave them–“I love you. I’m for you. Life is hard and you’re gonna mess up, but here’s the secret to getting through it–trust Jesus.” 

The relief of this washes over me this morning.  I don’t know about you, but I’m still walking out of my Christmas funk–and slowly.  But the power I need to turn around as I face a New Year comes from my Savior, who is Jesus. Freedom like this makes me want to run to obey him,

“I run in the path of your commands,
for you have set my heart free,”
Ps 119:32. 

Prayer

God, I don’t have what it takes to live the life you want me to live, but you give me your power to do it. Thank you for reminding me, all over again, who does the saving around here, and who doesn’t. I’m ready to restart.

In Jesus’ name.

*for the rest of my story of losing 75 pounds without dieting click here.

Passages in Malachi, Revelation, Psalms and Proverbs are selected for today in The One Year Bible.