While I was preparing a message on Mark 11:12-26 I came across this passage from Malachi 3:1-5 which certainly gives us some food for thought.
““See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to His Temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the Lord Almighty.
But who can endure the day of His coming? Who can stand when He appears? For He will be like a refiners or a launderers 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 will bring offerings in righteousness, and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the Lord, as in days gone by, as in former years.
“So I will come near to you for judgment. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud labourers of their wages, who oppress widows and the fatherless, and deprive aliens of justice, but who do not fear me,” says the Lord Almighty.”
It is a passage which predicts a specific Messianic event which Mark records for us following the Triumphal entry. Our Lord comes suddenly to His Temple as the messenger of the covenant. Within one week of this event the Lord Jesus Christ will establish a New Covenant in His blood upon the cross. He comes to His Temple to refine His people. His actions cleansing the Temple, and everything which happened afterwards which seemed so much like a judgment was in fact a refining. Its ultimate purpose is to restore and to cleanse a people who will bring worship which is acceptable to God.
As Mark describes it this promise of God was definitely fulfilled. The Disciples, along with each and every one of us are called to have active and continuous faith in God. No matter how impossible it might seem God’s will come to pass. Sunday morning we will be reflecting on this great truth. God says it and then He does it. Malachi prophesies it, and then God does it in the person of His incarnate Son. We must never double the infinite power of God to fulfill His promises to us.