Malachi 3:1–5 ¹ “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. ² But who can 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. ³ 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, ⁴ and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the Lord, as in days gone by, as in former years. ⁵ “So I will come near to you for judgment. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive aliens of justice, but do not fear me,” says the Lord Almighty.

In Advent we prepare. That was also what the messenger promised here in Malachi would call people to do. And that promised messenger was fulfilled with the coming of John the Baptizer. He prepared the way for the Lord, the “messenger of the covenant,” Jesus Himself. Jesus would not only fulfill the covenant that God had made, but he would establish a new covenant, a new testament, which was also promised in the Old Testament.

Jeremiah 31:31–34 ³¹ “The time is coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. ³² It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. ³³ “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. ³⁴ No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

Getting back to John the Baptizer…his job was to tell the people to get ready. Prepare yourselves. Something awesome, something you have been waiting for a long time, is about to arrive. Jesus had already been born and lived for about three decades, but now it was time for Him to being what we know as His “public ministry.” He had already been living a life without sin, but now He was making Himself known as God’s promised Messiah. He was calling out sin and offering forgiveness. He would be the sacrifice to pay for all sin. This was what the world needed, what God’s people had long awaited.

The message to prepare during Advent reminds us to get ready to remember and celebrate the arrival of that Messiah in Bethlehem. God with us, come to save us. Because of Jesus, God forgives our wickedness and remembers our sins no more. The promise fulfilled. Prepare.