Malachi 3:1 Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts.
2 But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner’s fire, and like fullers’ soap: 3 and he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.
From Death To Resurrection
.. Why are we making so much about the cross? Because the cross is about resurrection and resurrection is that gold that’s purified and purged. That is the promise. If you only just look at death death death all the time which it is to the self life.. Our faith from death looks to the resurrection. ‘ The Cross Will Produce That Gold ‘
Never Kept In Death
This is why I always combine the two. If you just major on the cross and death all the time it will become negative – that won’t do it’s work. The Cross is about death and resurrection but we cannot run away from the death aspect which God is working. But you see He never keeps you in that state. Thank God He never kept our Saviour in that state of death..
The Cross Experience
.. It had to take death in which He was raised up in glory. So that is the hope of The Cross and it’s teaching. We know that very often they hung as victims on a cross for hours and hours waiting for death to come to escape what they were going through. And in many ways it’s the same with us when we go through these trials – these deep trials. Your longing for ‘death’ to take over because ‘ I can’t take any more ‘ it’s enough..
The Hope Of The Cross
.. God knows how much we can take. He’s promised He won’t allow us to be tried and tested above that which we’re able to endure. God knows how much we can take with The Cross experience. When He says The Cross has done it’s work – enough – then resurrection comes in like a light and takes over. The Cross has done it’s work. And what does God see – He sees gold! He sees His image in you – what The Cross has done.
Acts 14:22 confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.
2 Timothy 3:12 Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.
Hebrews 9:11 But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; 12 neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. 13 For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: 14 how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
15 And for this cause he is the mediator of the new testament, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance.
