Transforming Truth: As a follower of Jesus, you are called to be part of a royal priesthood.
The story of the Bible is the history of God's good creation gone bad through humanity's sin and God's subsequent plan of redemption through Jesus Christ. Throughout this narrative, the nation of Israel had been at a height of prosperity when the people were obeying the Law of God. When the Israelites went into rebellion, God disciplined them by sending them into exile at the hands of foreign nations. God in His kindness also promised restoration for the repentant, which took place after the Babylonian exile under the leadership of men like Ezra, who rebuilt the altar of worship that had been destroyed, and Nehemiah who rebuilt the walls of defense around Jerusalem. Unfortunately, by the time Malachi arrives on the scene, abuses had already begun to reappear in the community. God uses Malachi to return people to the commands of God by reminding them of their identity, their responsibility, their first love and the only true God that they should be seeking.
Your Identity and Responsibility
Jesus gives you a priestly identity so that you can become like him in person and mission.
Malachi 2:1-9 “And now, you priests, this warning is for you. If you do not listen, and if you do not resolve to honor my name,” says the Lord Almighty, “I will send a curse on you, and I will curse your blessings. Yes, I have already cursed them, because you have not resolved to honor me. “Because of you I will rebuke your descendants; I will smear on your faces the dung from your festival sacrifices, and you will be carried off with it. And you will know that I have sent you this warning so that my covenant with Levi may continue,” says the Lord Almighty. “My covenant was with him, a covenant of life and peace, and I gave them to him; this called for reverence and he revered me and stood in awe of my name. True instruction was in his mouth and nothing false was found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and turned many from sin. “For the lips of a priest ought to preserve knowledge, because he is the messenger of the Lord Almighty and people seek instruction from his mouth. But you have turned from the way and by your teaching have caused many to stumble; you have violated the covenant with Levi,” says the Lord Almighty. “So I have caused you to be despised and humiliated before all the people, because you have not followed my ways but have shown partiality in matters of the law.”
A priest is one who both worships and facilitates the worship of the one true God who was without predecessor or repetition incarnate in Jesus Christ.
How the Priests Became Priests
Those who were appointed to serve at the temple did so at the intersection of God's choosing and their holy zeal against loved ones to turn them from sin (Exodus 32).
When you belong to Jesus, you've become part of a royal priesthood.
1 Peter 2:9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
The knowledge and instruction of a priest are to lead people to a righteousness that comes by faith in Jesus.
There are two types of righteousness by faith: 1) Saving faith which is imputed (ascribed by exchange) to you when you believe the gospel of Jesus (Romans 3), and 2) Persistent faith which is imparted to us as we continually avail ourselves to Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives (Colossians 2:6). More is expounded about these two types of faith in R.T. Kendall's book, Holy Fire.
As a priesthood, we are to call people into both.
You will not fear calling people out of sin if you know it is for their good and is the mission of Jesus. John the Baptist, the forerunner preparing the people for the ministry of Jesus said it this way:
Matthew 3:8-10 Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.
There is a hyper-grace heresy today akin to antinomianism that says that because Jesus paid for all of our sin on the cross, there is no need of ongoing confession and repentance of sin. This leads to a diluted view of the severity of sin and our need to turn from it. It also diminishes the sacrifice of Christ and the price He had to pay for our forgiveness. In this way, we never truly understand the depth of His love.
We begin to compromise the commands of God when we lose Jesus as our first love.
Your First Love
To live out that identity, Jesus needs to define every other love in your life.
Malachi 2:10-16 Do we not all have one Father? Did not one God create us? Why do we profane the covenant of our ancestors by being unfaithful to one another? Judah has been unfaithful. A detestable thing has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem: Judah has desecrated the sanctuary the Lord loves by marrying women who worship a foreign god. As for the man who does this, whoever he may be, may the Lord remove him from the tents of Jacob—even though he brings an offering to the Lord Almighty. Another thing you do: You flood the Lord’s altar with tears. You weep and wail because he no longer looks with favor on your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands. You ask, “Why?” It is because the Lord is the witness between you and the wife of your youth. You have been unfaithful to her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant. Has not the one God made you? You belong to him in body and spirit. And what does the one God seek? Godly offspring. So be on your guard, and do not be unfaithful to the wife of your youth. “The man who hates and divorces his wife,” says the Lord, the God of Israel, “does violence to the one he should protect,” says the Lord Almighty. So be on your guard, and do not be unfaithful.
People often do not want God to speak into their romantic life and relationships.
God puts His hands in your stuff like you do with a puppy's bowl of food when they are young while they are eating so they will learn who is really in charge and from whom the good provision really comes.
What type of spouse should I be looking for? What type of spouse should I be? 1) One who is not an idolator, putting money, relationships or career above Jesus; 2) One who provokes you into kingdom purposes for your family and life (Matt. 6:33); 3) One who will be happy, and with whom you can see yourself, raising godly offspring who will also follow the Lord in this way (natural and spiritual).
If you are single, God is still looking for godly spiritual offspring from you, and who knows about adoption.
Does your romantic life encourage idolatry or greater holiness in your life? How is your significant other provoking and leading you to a greater love for and obedience to the Lord Jesus? This is the point of being equally yoked, and you should settle for nothing less because it leads to the life God has called you to. I would not commend a man of lesser stature to my daughter or a woman to my sons. Your Heavenly Father will not do that for you either.
"If you cannot trust God for the temporal, how dare you trust him for the eternal?"
- Charles Spurgeon
The Lord You are Seeking
We must be messengers to lead people to Jesus.
Malachi 2:17-3:5 “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 refiner’s fire or a launderer’s 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 who 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 to put you on trial. 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 the foreigners among you of justice, but do not fear me,” says the Lord Almighty. You have wearied the Lord with your words.“How have we wearied him?” you ask. By saying, “All who do evil are good in the eyes of the Lord, and he is pleased with them” or “Where is the God of justice?”
You can desire to be so inclusive in your idea of religion, that you exclude the only living God who made exclusive claims about Himself to truly be inclusive of all people (John 14:7).
To truly be preaching the gospel, you need to call people out of sin, and to Jesus.
To be sure, it is solely our trust in the atoning, propitiary, substitutionary death of Christ on the cross that will save us; however, we become like Jesus and useful in the hand of the Father for His holy purposes through our ongoing purification. This is worship as we honor God and reflect His glorious design for relationships, family, work, use of wealth and stewardship of His creation in the earth. As a priesthood of believers, we are to walk in the reality of our cleansing by the blood of Jesus and the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. We are also charged to lead others to that place of repentance and faith.
You can only do this effectively if you lead people to the person of Jesus and the grace shown through His cross.
The truth is there is right and wrong before God. Our culture tries to blur those lines, but Jesus does not.
Jesus is our great high priest. We should have His same attitude as we live as a priesthood of believers today.
If your fundamental is a man dying on the cross for his enemies, if the very heart of your self-image and your religion is a man praying for his enemies as he died for them, sacrificing for them, loving them - if that sinks into your heart of hearts, it's going to produce the kind of life that the early Christians produced. The most inclusive possible life out of the most exclusive possible claim - and that is this is the truth. But what is the truth? The truth is a God become weak, loving and dying for the people who opposed him, dying forgiving them.
-Timothy Keller
Remember your own redemption. Through this you will both offer and see others receive the kindness of God that leads them to true life.
Romans 2:1-4 You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. So when you, a mere human being, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?
Second City Church- Famous Last Words Sermon Series 2014