The police officer rang the doorbell. It was 3 a.m. He had tried to call the family, but all he could get was the answering machine. He knew that his appearance at this hour would frighten them, but he needed to talk to them. They answered the door, and before he could explain his presence, he could see the look of horror in their eyes. They were simply not prepared for the awful possibilities that his early morning presence suggested.

He tried to explain as quickly as he could. "Your daughter," he began. "Oh no!" the mother cried out. The officer tried again. "Your daughter has been in a serious car accident." "Dear God no!" the father moaned. The officer jumped in again as quickly as he could. "But she’s all right. We offered to take her home, but she’s pretty shaky and wanted you to come out to the car and get her."

In the presence of this officer who was the designated messenger that night, the parents had experienced the ultimate horror of death and the overwhelming joy of receiving their daughter back from the dead.

The relationship between the parents and their daughter changed that night. They cherished one another more deeply. They expressed their love for one another more often. And although from time to time they may have absentmindedly taken one another for granted, it certainly happened less frequently. One might say that they lived very differently from that night on.

Through the prophet Malachi, God promised to send a messenger who would bear a twofold message. John the Baptist was that messenger who proclaimed a message of Law and Gospel and so was the fulfillment of God’s promise. The preaching of John and his Baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins prepared people for the coming of the Savior.

Today, through the message of Law and Gospel, we are also brought from death to life, and we are, we become, a people prepared for the second coming of our Savior. Today we are called to examine ourselves and, by God’s grace and mercy, to live as a forgiven people who are prepared for his second coming.

We are not prepared if we do not confess our sins and our sinfulness. It is our sinfulness that separates us from God. It was sin that caused God to drive man out of the Garden of Eden and made him work the ground from which he was taken. The Jews to whom Malachi wrote had become faithless to the Lord and to one another and had forgotten the covenant of their fathers. They had become an abomination and had profaned the sanctuary of the Lord.

John the Baptist called the crowds that came out to be baptized by him a "brood of vipers." You see, they pretty much thought that because they were descendants of Abraham, they could do no wrong.

Of course, in our day and age, it’s not popular to talk about sinfulness. Many people derive the way they understand human nature from Oprah or Dr. Phil, who maintain that we are not conceived in sin and that there’s some basic good in all people. Others say there’s no such thing as sin, just bad choices. Still others say that talking about and confessing our sin is harmful to our self-esteem.

But not confessing our sin has eternal consequences. When we don’t confess our sin, when we don’t think that we are sinners, we make God out to be a liar and the truth is not in is. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? The Lord of host’s says "Then I will draw near to you for judgment. I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired worker in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, against those who thrust aside the sojourner and do not fear me."

But to borrow a phrase from Solomon, there’s nothing new under the sun. Halfhearted confessions or denial of sin were as rampant in Malachi’s day as they are today. But when one denies sin and sinfulness, how is it possible to endure the day of His coming?

God promised to send a messenger who would prepare people for the coming of the Savior by calling them to repentance. The messenger calls us to confess our sins. It took the messenger Nathan to get King David to confess his sins. David saw the depth of his sin and asked God in his mercy to blot out his transgressions. We too need to recognize our inability as sinful people to stand before the holy God.

You see, where there is confession, there is forgiveness. Forgiveness is the very reason God sent his messenger in the first place. "Behold, I send my messenger and he will prepare the way before me." Without a messenger, we might be caught unprepared for the Lord’s coming.

David wrote in Psalm 32, "I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity; I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin." John, the disciple and Apostle of Jesus wrote that if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

And God is constant, true to his Word. Not only did God keep his promise of a messenger, fulfilled in John the Baptist, he kept his promise to come himself. This was the point of it all. The Lord himself, coming to earth in the person of Jesus, to purify us by his perfect life, his death on the cross as payment for our sins, and his resurrection, which assures us of our own resurrection at the end of the world.

As a pastor, I’m sometimes asked "How do I know I’m prepared to meet my Lord?" Say a Christian dies suddenly in a car accident or from a heart attack. People ask, "Was he ready? Was he prepared to meet God face to face? What if he was thinking ill of a fellow worker at the moment of his death? What if he was telling a lie when the car crashed?"

The wonderful truth is this: We are indeed prepared as we receive through faith the forgiveness of sins won for us on the cross and offered to us freely through the Means of Grace.

Like I said a moment ago, God is faithful. Christ will return. But now his return is not something we need to be afraid of. Since Christ has atoned for all our sins, we will not be consumed. Instead, we will live with him and serve him forever as a people purified.

What he has begun in us, he will bring to completion. We are tied to the death and resurrection of Jesus through our Baptisms. All of mankind’s sin has been paid for, sins of the past, the present, and even the future, and even the sin that we might be committing at the moment of our death. Paul wrote that God’s grace is sufficient in all circumstances.

As a people prepared through faith and the power of the Holy Spirit working in our hearts, our response is to bring offerings in righteousness to the Lord. God has redeemed us. Like the girl and her family that I talked about a moment ago, our relationship has changed. As a people who have been prepared, we are called to put aside our sin and every evil and to offer up our lives as living sacrifices to God and our neighbor.

"Then," God says in verse 4 of our text – that is, when our sacrifices are motivated by faith and we are prepared by Christ’s death and resurrection – "then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord."

The writer to the Hebrews describes it so well; "Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with every good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever." Amen.