Good morning church. My name is Michael. I am the lead pastor here, and I'm a little froggy in the voice today So if you notice that I don't sound like I normally do that's why but I feel great I just don't sound as great as I normally do I guess So we're doing a series in the book of Malachi and today we're going to talk about the priesthood the, and particularly corruption in the Old Testament priesthood.

And so, we have a lot of ground that I want to cover today to really give us a good picture of what the Old Testament priesthood was about. So, let's get right to it. And I want to begin by just asking you a question and see if you know the answer to this. Have you ever wondered why we don't have priests in the New Testament church?

Is that something you ever thought about? Why don't we have priests in the New Testament church? That's going to be my introduction to the sermon because Malachi chapter 2 is a rebuke of the corrupt priests, but to give us a picture of what was going on, we need to understand what the priesthood was and how that's different from the New Testament time.

So, we're going to begin a little unusually. I want to begin with a detour in the book of Hebrews and talk a little bit about the priesthood. And no, Hebrews was not an Old Testament coffee shop, in case you were wondering. Dad joke, here you go, thank you, ba bum chung, but, alright, book of Hebrews.

Alright in Old Testament Israel the priests were ministers of grace. So, the priests were the ones who administer God's grace by being stewards of the covenant and they would administer the covenant of grace as God put them in charge. And this is because sin prevented people from having access to God.

And mediated by animal sacrifices that the priests took care of. They administered that. And so, they perform these on behalf of the people. And because of that, then they, that they would be sprinkled clean or considered clean from their sin so that they could come into God's presence and worship the Lord.

But priests were also sinful, right? So, they're human. And like all humans, they were sinful. And so, they themselves had to be consecrated before God or consecrated to God with their own purification rituals. And then they would perform sacrifices on behalf of the people. And then after doing so, they would be able to represent the people to God and God to the people.

So, they acted in you could say as mediators, the priest acted as mediators between God and his people. And they mediated a relationship with the blood offered in sacrifice. I have several texts. I want to just go through with you here quickly. We'll start here with Hebrews 9 22, which says indeed under the law, almost everything is purified with blood and without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins.

So that's what the animal sacrifice was for. Priests were appointed and trained and how to do sacrifice properly so that the blood of the sacrifice could be offered to God for purification of sin. Now, the book of Hebrews also teaches that blood sacrifices do not actually remove sin.

They don't actually remove sin. Only the blood of Christ could do that, and of course Christ had not come yet in the Old Testament. Here's another text, Hebrews 10 chapter 4, or chapter 10 verse 4, for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. So, the animal sacrifices didn't actually remove sins.

They were a sign that would point ahead to the Messiah who was to come. And whenever the Messiah would come, then he would remove sins fully. So, the point here is that the Old Testament sacrificial system was not enough to remove sins. And then since animal sacrifices under the old covenant did not actually take away sins, they had to be offered over and over again.

They had to be repeated. And ironically, we read that during our liturgy earlier today. We read about this, and I think I'm going to quote the same verse here in a moment. But the Old Testament sacrificial system was put in place to point ahead to a final sacrifice that would actually take away sin fully.

And then whenever Christ came, he instituted the new covenant in his blood. So, the blood of Jesus Christ instituted the new covenant, which fulfilled and brought to a close the old covenant, rendering the old covenant obsolete. Hebrews 9 verse 15 says this, therefore he, talking about Jesus, he is the mediator of a new covenant so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance.

Since a death has occurred, referring to the death of Christ on the cross, a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. So, Christ fulfilled what the old covenant and the Old Testament sacrifices pointed to. Jesus Christ accomplished them himself.

Therefore, in his death on the cross, Jesus brought the Old Testament sacrificial system to a close. Now, since the blood of Christ does remove sins, his death is sufficient to remove all sins of all of his people who have faith in him for all time. The blood of Jesus is sufficient. The blood of Jesus accomplished God's purpose.

The blood of Jesus, one sacrifice of one man who was the perfect great high priest, the God man was sufficient to remove all of our sin from all of God's people for all time. That is what Jesus Christ accomplished for us. And so, Hebrews nine verse 24 says this for Christ has entered. Not into holy places made with hands, meaning a human temple in Jerusalem or somewhere, which are copies of the true things.

So, the temple of the Old Testament was a copy of the true temple, which is in the heavenlies, which God built himself. So, Christ is entered, not into holy place, into holy places, made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.

So just think about this right now. Anytime you sin, anytime you do something wrong, anytime that you've violated some of some commandment of God or you sinned against God in some way. Christ is there in the presence of God, interceding for you, standing in your place and advocating for you before the father.

He is in the heavenlies right now on your behalf, nor was it to offer himself repeatedly. So, Christ did not need to offer himself repeatedly as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood, not his own. For then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world.

But as it is, He has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. That's what Jesus has done for us. That's, so he accomplished in his one sacrifice, his one death on the cross, he fulfilled all that the Old Testament sacrificial system anticipated and pointed ahead to.

So, Jesus paid it all, and the sacrificial system of the Old Testament of animals, it's not necessary anymore. Hebrews 8. 13 says, in speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. We don't need the old covenant anymore. We don't need the Old Testament sacrificial system anymore because Christ fulfilled it.

He did what it was pointing to. And so, Jesus Christ is, he is our perfect sacrifice. He is a divine mediator that mediates between God, a holy God and sinful man. He is our great high priest. And for this reason, human priests are obsolete. You don't need a human man other than Jesus Christ, but you don't need a fallen human man to stand in your place and to mediate and offer sacrifices of dead animals on your behalf in order for you to be able to have access to God.

Rather, you have access to God directly through faith in Jesus Christ because, Jesus Christ, if you're a Christian, Jesus Christ, he is your high priest. He is the sacrifice and the blood that was shed on the cross 2000 years ago was shed for you on your behalf. So, he now is your mediator, and he is now your priest.

So, we don't need priests that will mediate our relationship with God. Jesus Christ accomplish it all for us. Hebrews 7, 23 and 24 says the former priests were many in number. So, you had all kinds of priests all, all over the place that were performing sacrifices and were doing this work of mediation because you had sinners all over the nation of Israel.

And so, you had priests that would perform sacrificial duties and offer up these in the place of people for the atonement of their sin. Former priests were many in number because they were prevented by death from continuing in office. So, they would die. So, you would need another priest to come up and take his place.

And this went on for generations. But he, Jesus Christ, holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever. Jesus Christ lives forever. Jesus Christ will never die. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is true God of true God. He is from everlasting to everlasting. And he now is your priest that intercedes for you forever.

One more here. This is from 1 Timothy. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and man. The man, Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time. That's why New Testament churches don't have priests. Christ is the perfect sacrifice.

Christ alone is a mediator between us and God. Now, if you're familiar with the Catholic church, you know that they do have priests and the Catholic church. And I want to talk about why and why that is not appropriate. The Catholic church teaches that the mass, which is, what we call it communion whenever we take the bread and the cub, and the Catholic church is called mass.

And the Catholic church teaches that is literally. and blood of Jesus Christ. It's called transubstantiation. So, when you put it in your mouth, it becomes literally the flesh of Jesus. And there's a whole reason why it doesn't taste like a human flesh, but that's, I know that's weird to think about but there's a whole theology.

Why that they don't, or why does it taste that way? But they teach that when you ingest. The body or the bread and the wine that it becomes the physical flesh of Jesus. And so basically Christ is being sacrificed once again for human sin every week when you take the mass. And since the bread and wine is literally considered the body and blood of Christ, Christ is being represented as a sacrifice.

He is being re sacrificed. So, every time the mass is celebrated, Jesus Christ is sacrificed again. In a sense, he is being sacrificed again. And that's why Catholics have priests, because you need priests who can administer that sacrifice and you need priests who will be the mediator between sinful humans and a holy God.

That's why priests are, Catholics will go to a priest for confession because they need to go to someone who can be a mediator for them and who could intercede on their behalf for their own sin.

And that's why we're not Catholic. Catholic theology implies that the Christ's sacrifice and his priesthood and his mediation are insufficient because it has to be done again and again. But we read earlier that Christ sacrificed once. We don't have multiple priests. We have one great high priest, and we don't have multiple sacrifices week in and week out.

There's one sacrifice that covered all sin for all time, and that is the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. So now when we come to the table, we come to remember what Christ did. And Jesus said, this do in remembrance of me. We're remembering something. We're not re sacrificing or re-creating or re-presenting a sacrifice.

We're remembering what Christ has done. So even though we don't have priests in the New Testament, we do have elders, but it's not like you just have a same office, new name. In the New Testament, we have elders, they're not priests, they're not mediators. They are shepherds. Meaning, so the elders, their job is to lead us back to the cross of Christ so that we can remember and apply what Jesus did for us.

Elders do inherit the leadership duties of the priests. So, there are leader things that they do, but Christ himself performs the priestly duties for us. And he is our priest forever. Now, keeping these things in mind, we go to Malachi chapter two. God has extremely strong words for the priests.

And now that we've talked about what priests are responsible for what they're doing, it gives us a little better idea of what their offense was. So, I'm going to, I'll read from my paper Bible here and then we'll go through a verse at a time on the screen. Malachi chapter two, verses one through nine.

And now, oh priests, this command is for you. If you will not listen. If you will not take it to heart to give honor to my name, says the Lord of hosts, then I will send the curse upon you and I will curse your blessings. Indeed, I have already cursed them because you do not lay it to heart. Behold, I will rebuke your offspring and spread dung on your faces, the dung of your offerings, and you shall be taken away with it.

So shall you know that I have sent this command to you that my covenant with Levi may stand, says the Lord of hosts. My covenant with him was one of life and peace, and I gave it to him. It was a covenant of fear, and he feared me. He stood in awe of my name. True instruction was in his mouth, and no wrong was found on his lips.

He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and he turned many from iniquity. For the lips of a priest, should guard knowledge. And people should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the Lord of Hosts. But you have turned aside from the way. You have caused many to stumble by your instruction.

You have corrupted the covenant of Levi, says the Lord of Hosts. And so, I make you despised and abased before all the people, inasmuch as you do not keep my ways, but show partiality in your instructions.

Two big headings for two big points. I want to start with four lessons from bad priests and then three lessons of good priests. So, I want to talk about bad priests and lessons from them and then good priests and lessons from them. Okay? So, let's look at verses one through three once again. And now, O priest, this command is for you.

So, here's the priest and the command is for them. God is speaking to the priests. If you will not listen, if you will not take it to heart to give honor to my name, says the Lord of hosts, then, so heaven, if then if you will not, and then if you will not, then I will send the curse upon you and I will curse your blessings.

Indeed, I've already cursed them. Because you do not lay it to heart. Behold, I will rebuke your offspring and spread dung on your faces. That's vivid and don't the dung of your offerings and you shall be taken away with it.

So, we know that the Old Testament sacrificial system has been anticipated and then fulfilled in the ultimate final sacrifice of Christ. But the terms of the covenant that he's referring to here, the old covenant stipulations were in effect at this time before Christ came. And so, the stipulations of the covenant were spelled out in the book of Deuteronomy.

So, it's not like this was hidden. It was not obscure from them. And basically, it was like, okay, God is a God of mercy. God is, God has forgiven them and called them to himself as a people. And within that context, if you follow my commandments and obey me, things are generally going to go well for you.

And if you don't follow me and obey my commandments, things are going to go badly for you. That's pretty much the basic idea of the covenant. Of what the blessings and curses what those things meant. The priests then were responsible for administering the sacrificial system to deal with the sin in the nation, but they were also responsible for teaching and enforcing what the covenant obligations were to make sure everybody knew and were well instructed in what they were supposed to do while they lived in the land so they can enjoy God's blessing and avoid the curses that the covenant warned, but they failed to do it.

The priest became corrupt. They failed in their responsibility and corruption at the top. It always trickles down and it finds its way to the bottom to the regular people. And their failure was so catastrophic. All the people followed the example of the corrupt priest and then God judged them. And God said the warnings that I warned you about in Deuteronomy, the curses that would happen if you didn't obey, they're now coming due.

It took many centuries for those things to play out, but God is true to his word. God does not make idle threats. And so, from God's rebuke of the priests, there's some lessons that we can learn here. And I've got four of them that we can learn about the effects of sin. So, God's warning here to the priests, there are four things we can learn about the effects of sin.

Here's number one. Number one, sin hurts you in the long run. Sin hurts you in the long run. So, in the short term, sin is appealing. That's why people do it. People sin because there's something that is appealing about it. It's a shortcut or some, something that feels good or whatever it is. You were, we desire sin for some reason, but in the long run, sin always hurts.

Sin always causes pain. And so that's God warned them. And so, he, we have here in verse two I will send the curse upon you. I will send the curse upon you. Because of sin. So, God basically warned them in Deuteronomy, he's going to block every artery of blessing. And if I were to read all of Deuteronomy chapter 28, I'll read a couple of verses, but if you would just read the whole chapter of Deuteronomy 28, it's all the curses.

And it's just like one after another of examples of what bad things will happen to make it very striking. So that they would remember it would stand out that I don't want to act the way that this warning tells me, because if I do these horrible things will happen. And so, God would open the floodgates of disaster and every aspect of their lives will be plagued with trouble.

Let me just give you two verses here as an example. Deuteronomy 28, 20, the Lord will send on you curses. And now this is if you disobey, the Lord will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration in all that you undertake to do until you are destroyed and perish quickly on account of the evil of your deeds, because you have forsaken me.

Skip ahead to verse 45. Now, all these curses shall come upon you and pursue you and overtake you till you are destroyed because you did not obey the voice of the Lord your God to keep his commandments and his statutes that he commanded you. God made himself very clear to them, very clear that if you do not obey God, then bad things are going to happen.

But the priests presumed on God's grace. And they were corrupt. They, we talked about some of this last week. They corrupted the worship. They corrupted the sacrifices. They did not follow through with their obligations and their failure to obey affected the people they were leading because the pain came due and there was much pain that they suffered.

That's the first lesson. The second lesson, sin has a blast radius. Sin has a blast radius. A lot of times we think that if we do something sinful, that it's like, if there's pain, that pain is going to be limited to me. I'm going to be the one that experiences the pain and the fallout from my own sin.

But that's not what we see happening here. Sin has a blast radius. There's a ripple effect beyond the one who sinned. And we see this in verse three. So let me just go back here. Verse three, behold, I will rebuke your offspring. So, it's not merely you will experience consequences for your sin, but your sin is going to hurt your kids.

That hits you in a different place, especially those of you that have children, you know that's a different equation, that there's a new layer of motivation for parents that love their children. The sins of the fathers get passed down to their kids. The effects of sin are never just limited to you.

There's always a blast radius. There's always more that gets caught up in it. More people are hurt. Those in the orbit of the person sinning, they get caught up in the painful consequences of that sin. And even though they're innocent, even though they did not do the sin, the people that are in the blast radius, they're still hurt anyway.

Every parent experiences this, and there's nothing worse. than seeing your sin affect your children. I know as a father, it's I don't know if some of you have talked about this, but whenever you've got a particular thing about yourself that you don't like, and then you see that thing that you don't like about yourself, you see your kids doing that very thing.

And it's maybe it's genetic, but maybe they're just following your example. But either way, it's like there, there are times when I've seen that happen in my own kids, I'm like, man I know why they do that. It's because I do that. It's like that this problem that they have, this thing that I don't like about them is the thing that I do, the thing I don't like about myself.

And that's because there's a blast radius. There's a, there, there are the consequences and also just the sin itself brings them down and other people get caught up in the same sin that the father commits. So, on the one hand, every parent, fathers especially, but every parent needs to recognize this is a fundamental thing.

By nature, children will sin. And many of their sin patterns will be learned behaviors that they see in their parents. So that's just, that's the way things are. It's the way God made the world. That's on the one hand. On the other hand, we also need to keep the grace of God in view. So, we don't want to let that be determinative of the future of the, of your children because we, God is a gracious God and Jesus Christ of the grace is all the more manifest.

Amen. And so, we don't want to, we don't want to be fatalistic and assume that just because your sin pattern shows up in your child, that child has no opportunity to repent, and that child will be forever locked into this pattern. It's no, God is a gracious God. And through Jesus Christ, he has given us power to overcome sin and temptation.

So, we've got to keep the grace of God in view. We've The priest's job was to be ministers of grace. They offer sacrifices in order to administer this covenant of grace that God had for his people. The old covenant was a covenant of grace. It wasn't like they're saved by works in the Old Testament and saved by grace in the New Testament of God has always been a gracious God, but the administrations of that grace, it varied in the Old Testament fulfilled in Christ.

And now there's a new administration of that grace through Jesus Christ, but it's always been grace. And the sacrifices were a reminder that God is merciful to us whenever we sin, whenever we fall short. The old covenant made provision for sin, everybody, including the priests, so they could receive grace.

So as a father, I need God's grace every day, all the time, because I see so many ways that I fall short. I see ways that my, my failures affect my family and how my failure gives permission for my kids to, to do what their dad does. And so that if I can't keep my anger under control, then I'm, shouldn't be surprised if my kids can't keep their anger under control.

And so that we affect other people by our sin. And as a pastor, all the more, is that something that I keep before my mind, and I try to remember. So, I need God's grace all the time. And so do you. There's lots of people in your life that are in the blast radius. They're in your orbit. And your sin will have consequences for them and it will also could just lead them into more sin.

And we all need God's grace for ourselves and also God's grace to account for the people that are affected by our sin. Number three, sin is uglier than you think. Sin is uglier than you think. We tend to minimize sin. And we do that to cope with the fact that we don't want to face just how ugly it is.

And so, we find ways to make it small to minimize it, to disregard it. But Christ has given us a way to cope with sin, right? And it's not minimizing it. The way that we cope with our sin is we deal with it. We face it squarely and we were brutally honest about our sin. And then we take it to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ where we can find mercy and grace in the time of need.

And so, we have to be honest about our sin and we have to be honest about how ugly our sin is. And we don't, we have every reason to be honest, even about the ugliness of our sin, because we know we have a merciful savior who promises by his own blood that he will forgive us of all of our sins whenever we confess to him.

But sin is uglier than you think.

Verse three, I will rebuke your offspring and spread dung on your faces. I that's gross. That's just a really vivid, disgusting picture. Why? Why would God give them such a disgusting picture? It's because God wanted them to be vividly appalled. God wanted them to have something that they can associate with just how repulsed God is by the wickedness of their sins.

If you ever have a puppy, you ever have a puppy, you're trying to house train the puppy, and a puppy makes a mess on the house thing. I don't this may not be standard. practice here, but when I'm trying to train a puppy and the puppy drops a turd in the living room, I take the puppy and I try to put the puppy's nose right up to that turd.

I'm like, this is what you're in trouble for. I'm like no. And I like put the puppy there. Of course the dog, trying to push it away. It's like the dog knows it's gross. The dog doesn't want to have its nose right up next to it. And it's it seems like that's what God is doing.

It's I want to spread dung on your faces. And what he's referring to, if you remember from last week, there was corruption in the way that they handled the sacrifices. So, they were off the context here is the corrupt ways that they were practicing animal sacrifice. And so, whenever they would offer sacrifice, the, there were parts of the body, the entrails and the waste that was in their digestive system that you would not put on the altar for sacrifice.

because the priest would consume the meat. So, you wouldn't put it all there. There were parts that you would, and the priests were trained on what to do. And so, the entrails, the dung, you would cut that part out and you would take it outside the camp because it's defiled, it's unclean. You would take it outside the camp, and you would bury it there.

And God is saying that, that disgusting stuff that smells horrendous, that, that you just, you're, you feel so filthy whenever you touch it, that I'm going to spread that on your faces. And so, God, the message here is very clear. Your sin is repulsive. Priests. Now I'm not saying all sin is equal. Not all sin is not equally heinous.

The Westminster confession talks about this, but all sin is repulsive. All sin is disgusting. And we just need to be able to face with a heart full of faith and the grace and mercy of God. We've got to have the faith to, we can face the most horrendous sin that we've ever committed when we have a heart full of faith that we have a merciful savior.

So don't miss that. This is a warning we have here in verse two. If you will not listen, if you will not take it to heart, then I will do these things. Amen. Amen. The warning is that God is extending an offer of grace, right? God is saying if, the if implies there's an alternative, and the alternative is repentance.

And God is saying, hey priest, if you do these things, and you don't repent of your sin, then you're going to have this dung, I want to spread this dung on your face. Who knows if the Lord, if that actually happened physically, but the symbol is powerful, nonetheless. We say, if you turn away, then this won't happen to you.

That's what's implied. God is offering them mercy. He said repent of this. He starts here. And now priest, this command I give to you, I'm talking to you, priest, repent of this nonsense. He's telling them what we can learn from this is that our sin is ugly, and we can have by the grace of Jesus Christ confidence to face even the most heinous of our sins.

We probably all have things in our lives that we're just totally ashamed that we think or have done. Amen. And you God offers you grace. You don't have to run away from him. You don't have to be like God will never forgive that. There's no way God will forgive that. Nonsense. Jesus Christ died once for all to wash away all of our sin, to purify us of all unrighteousness.

Even as ugly and abhorrent as your sin is, you have a merciful savior who died and offers you forgiveness. Number four, sin is contagious. People tend to get comfortable with sin, right? When they see other people doing it. And that's especially true whenever it's the leader, the priest doing it and it's coming from the top.

And so, the priests were leading people astray. So, there was, there's two verses at the end of this text that are relevant to the first point. So, I'll read these now verses eight and nine. Still speaking to the priest, Malachi says, you have turned aside from the way you have caused many to stumble by your instruction.

You've corrupted the covenant of Levi, says the Lord of hosts. And so, I make you despised and abased before all of the people. And as much as you do not keep my ways but show impartiality in your instruction. So, their sin was leading other people to get caught up in it because sin is contagious. When other people are doing some sin and it, it seems like they get away with it.

Then the temptation is for you to do the same because it's like they know it must be all right. It can't be that bad if they're doing it and he's a nice guy. She's a nice girl. Sin is contagious. Hosea has similar language where the prophet Hosea, God speaking through him says, my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge because you speaking to the leaders, the priest, you have rejected knowledge.

I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I will also forget your children. Same kind of idea here from the prophet Hosea. So just as God held the Old Testament priests to a higher standard because they had a higher responsibility and there was a greater effect of their lives it's the same as it translates to New Testament elders, and of course I hate saying this, right?

Cause it convicts me. It makes me more aware of a responsibility that I have before the Lord. But it's true. God, but nevertheless, God made a provision for the Old Testament priests to receive grace. All right. Now, given these realities about sin and the God appointed the priests to be able to make sacrifice to account for their sin, God compares the bad priests of Malachi's day with good priests.

and the good priest that he's talking about here. There's a few verses in the middle of this section where he's talking about what they should have been. So, here's something that is a of a, an ideal to aspire to. And he talks about Levi. Levi being the brother of Moses. And he was the head of the Levitical, the Levitical class, the little, the Levi Levitical priests.

So, we have four lessons of bad priests. Lemme show you three qualities of good priests. I'll move through these quickly. Verses four through seven, so shall you know that I sent this command to you that my covenant with Levi may stand, says the Lord of hosts. My covenant with him was one of life and peace and I gave them to him.

It was a covenant of fear and he feared me. He stood in awe of my name. True instruction was in his mouth and no wrong was found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and he turned many from iniquity. For the lips of a priest should guard knowledge, and people should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts.

Quite the contrast, isn't it? He's saying, hey, priest, you should have been, you should have been the kind of priests that were instituted in Levi's time. This is what, this is the model you should have followed. And the covenant was like, if you would have followed this and the people would have followed it, then the people of God would have flourished.

And so now the, we have three examples of things that they, that the priests did. And I think as we go through these, you'll see how they apply to all of us. Three things here. The first one is they feared God and that it's hard to, I can't overstate just how important this is. That if a man or woman has at the core of their being a healthy fear of God, then a lot of other things fall into place because you're not just taking God for granted.

But it's a healthy fear. And we saw that, here it said it was a covenant of fear, and he feared me. Covenant of fear means there's reverence and awe, there's a respect for God, and there's this sense that I do not want to offend God. I do not want to displease God. I want to honor God in what I do.

And that's good. It's good and healthy. In modern evangelicalism we've gotten so far away from this to where we think that is somehow inappropriate or out of place to have this fear of God, but we should fear displeasing God. And we should fear that there is a consequence for offending God.

I think of this just come to my mind right now, the Olympic ceremony, Friday night, and it's all over the internet and nasty things happening. And I saw two, two different responses, one response, which was my response, which is I was appalled because I fear God and I don't want to see the name of my Lord blasphemed and mocked and held in open contempt.

But then you had the actually folks. It's that wasn't the Last Supper. They weren't really meaning to mock Jesus. That was just, the Feast of Bacchum. And that was like this ancient ritual. And we respect all cultures. And that was their culture. And I'm like, that's crap.

That is just a load of nonsense. But they're like, don't you fear God? Don't you care about the name of God? And one of the, I think one of the more interesting observations or thoughts is that you don't see any other religion being mocked that way. But it is always Christianity that is held in contempt.

I mean, we've seen what happens whenever people dare to mock the mock Muhammad, they don't live long because Muslims, and I'm not saying that we should respond the way the Muslims do. I'm just saying like they know that the name of Muhammad is something that they reverence a lot of times more than Christians reverence the name of the one true God.

The name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and savior. And they think it is somehow a mark of being progressive and open minded and gracious that we celebrate people mocking the name of our Lord. They have no fear of God. And that's pathetic. What Malachi is saying here is like these Levitical priests, the way I set it up, they feared me.

It was a covenant of fear and they feared me. And God is commending that. He's calling people to that. The zeal for the name of the Lord. should drive and animate us. We should care about the name of God, care about his reputation, care that he is not blasphemed. It is okay to be deeply offended whenever people mock the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And there was a long time where I was conditioned to think that was a bad reaction. That there was something wrong with me if I was offended. Why are you being so thin skinned, Christian? As though it is just being emotional and might know there is a righteous response whenever people mock the name of Christ.

They feared God. That was all free. That was not even in my notes, but that just came to me as we're talking about it here. But a healthy fear of God, that's not the enemy of grace. That's not the enemy of grace. And the fear of offending God is a great deterrent of sin, and it's a great animating force in our lives, because we want to see the name of Jesus honored.

Not just in artistic expressions at the Olympics, but in our own lives, the way that we live, the way that we speak. We want to see the name of Jesus honored.

Number two, they taught the truth. That's pretty straightforward, right? They taught the truth. True instruction was in his mouth. No wrong was found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness, he turned me from iniquity, for the lips of a priest should guard knowledge. So, there's he's an, he's speaking truth.

We live in a postmodern world, I'm not certain, not even remotely the first to observe this. We live in a postmodern world and what that means is that our world believes truth is relative. All truth is relative. In fact, any claim to truth is actually a power play. Because there is no truth that can be known.

There's only personal truth that can be believed by the individual. But it is not something that we know. And it's amazing how in our society, how little regard we have for truth. Because everything is spin. Whenever I read news articles. And one of the things I think is it's obvious to me, it's they're not interested in speaking what is true, communicating facts, things that are true information.

They're interested in operating in a postmodern way, which is they want to move a narrative. They want to shape opinion. They want a particular outcome. And so, they're going to tell the report the story in such a way to get their outcome. Even if there are inconvenient facts that would point in the opposite direction.

And that's all journalism is. It's a, the journalism is predicated on that idea. It is to get people to act and to think in a particular way that favors a certain ideology that's prevalent in our world. It is not to report the facts, but they tell you they're reporting the facts because they want you to believe them.

The priests of God and the people of God, that's not the way we operate. The priests, their job and, in the New Testament times, the pastor, those who preach and teach the word of God, our job is to do what it says here to speak true instruction. In our mouths that no wrong is found on our lips to where people can come for truth and instruction to learn more about what is true because we believe that there is an objective reality outside of us that can be known and discovered because God is the God of all truth.

He is the Lord of all truth, and he is himself truth. Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life. And so, we have, we believe things because God has revealed himself to us and given us minds to discover his mind. And to know things and to and that is what we communicate. That's what we believe.

We believe in Jesus Christ, not because it makes us feel good, not because it gives us some comfort in a hard time or hard world or hard life. We believe that there was an actual man who lived and walked this planet. And his name was Jesus Christ. And he is everything that the Bible says that he is and that he died.

And that he rose again, literally from the dead. It's like his heart stopped beating. And he was dead. And then three days later, his heart stopped, started beating again and he started to breathe again, and he came out and he walked around again, and people saw him and witnessed him. And then he was literally taken up to be in the presence of the father when he ascended.

Those things actually happened. We believe them because they're true, not because they feel good. And so, in this world where we have this postmodern way of thinking where truth doesn't matter, we can just swap out whatever we want to fit a particular narrative that we support. And we can't do that.

So, whenever anything in this world that we might prefer to be true isn't true, then we have to go with what actually is true and not with what we prefer. And so that is what, that's what we do as believers. So, when it comes to pastors need to be men who are willing to speak the truth. And to say things that nobody else is willing to say.

And whenever you have pastors that do that, then you end up with churches that are emboldened to do that. And it strengthens our witness to Christ. And it testifies, we believe this is true. And we collectively believe this, and our shared corporate testimony bears witness to who God is. The third one is they walk in integrity. They walk in integrity. Priests would a lot of times they would settle disputes. It's like they acted as judges in cases and to settle disputes between people. And there was a reference in verse nine, I read a moment ago about them not showing partiality.

That's, it's like that they were, they participated in the justice of God's people in the Old Testament times. And they did that by, by giving right application and instruction in the law of God. And they said, you know what this is what is right. Even though I prefer, I prefer to go the other way.

If there's some case or dispute, I would rather go her way. But actually, given the law, given the way God's law, what it says, it's gotta be this other way. That's impartial. You're not swayed by your opinions. And that's what the priest did. And that's what, in the New Testament what Christians are supposed to do broadly, including pastors.

We walk in integrity. We live a particular way.

The effect of that priest integrity was, he set an example for others to follow. And so now there's one other little wrinkle I'm going to share here and then we'll wrap up. In the new covenant time, I've said before that there are no priests. And that's true, but it's true with an asterisk.

And that is in the New Testament time, we don't have priests, but we do have a priesthood. And the priesthood of the New Testament is all y'all. That's a, the Southern standard version, all y'all are priests. According to the Southern Standard Bible. But it's like everybody, like we are a priesthood of believers.

So let me read to you this text. This is first Peter two, nine and 10. Now he's writing to the church, but you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession that you that's all y'all, you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

So let me just conclude with this, connecting a few dots here under the old covenant, they needed priests. And the priest administered the mercy of God and the mediated access to God through animal sacrifices. But now in the new covenant time, Jesus Christ has come, and he is both great high priest and sacrificial lamb who died once for all.

So, he fulfills the priestly role. The priesthood is now belongs to Christ. So, we don't have priests anymore because Christ is our priest. Christ is our mediator. Are you with me? The leadership duties of the Old Testament priests are handed down to the New Testament elders who I, who you know, oversee and shepherd and provide oversight to the flock and they teach.

But there is an a priesthood that we see here that is instituted and that priesthood is something that we all participate in. So, we participate in the priesthood of Christ as the church, and it's a royal priesthood of all believers. It's not an office, it's not a special class of Christians that some get to be priests, and some don't.

It's if you are in Christ, then you participate in his priesthood and then together we all follow and obey what a priest should do. So, we fear God, we speak the truth to one another. We walk in integrity. We set an example to follow. We don't show partiality. We live our lives in a particular way that testifies to the greatness of our God and King the Lord Jesus Christ, who is also our priest.

And then together we participate in this priesthood. So, it's a status upgrade where we live according to new covenant promises. We preach the gospel. So, we tell each other about the grace of God that is available to us through Christ. Both remind believers of it, and we proclaim it to non-believers. And then we also walk it out.

We live it. We walk in light of holiness. And not in the darkness of worldliness and sin, but in the power of the spirit. We live in such a way that we exemplify what the priests should have been in the Old Testament because now we have the power of the spirit to walk and live accordingly. So, we have a greater priest in Christ, a greater sacrifice, which is his blood, a greater promise, which is eternal life.

They have a greater power to obey, which is the Holy Spirit. And that's good news. Amen. Alright, let's walk in that power today and we'll close now with prayer. We thank you, God, that just to be able to look at the priesthood and what it meant, and also just to rejoice and to see what Christ has done on our behalf.

Thank you, Father, for sending your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to be the propitiation for our sin, to die in our place, that we can be forgiven, that we can know that we have a God who is our advocate with the Father, the Lord Jesus, who lives to make intercession for us. Thank you. Thank you for your forgiveness and that even as we face the ugliness of sin and we consider that, that we know that we are purified also by faith.

And so, we thank you God that I'm grateful that I live in a new covenant era that we have the power of the Holy Spirit that is at work within us, and we have newer and greater promises and then we live according to a greater covenant, and we have greater hope of eternal life. So, thank you for all these things.

And Lord now as we come to the table, we thank you that as we remember what you did for us. So, we ask for your blessing now as we come to the table, feed us, nourish us by the bread and the cup. We pray in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.