I wonder whether you’ve given any thought during the week to what we saw last week as we looked at Malachi 1. It was quite challenging wasn’t it? Were you conscious, as you exercised your various ministries for God this week, of the things that motivated you? Were you conscious of the need to focus on the glory of God rather than on your own needs? Were you seeking to offer God the best sacrifice you could muster, whatever that sacrifice happens to be? When you gave him thanks, was it from the bottom of your heart? When you wrote out the cheque that was going in your offering envelope, or got onto the computer to do your regular bank transfer into the St Theo’s account, or as you thought about whether you should increase your regular transfer amount now that we’re into a new financial year, did you do it with a thankful heart or begrudgingly? As you went to your small group were you looking forward to what you’d learn about God this week, or were you just thinking about having a pleasant time with your friends?
Well today we hear a bit more about the need to reflect God’s glory through our ministry to one another.
These first 9 verses of Chapter 2 are addressed to the priests whose service has obviously become second rate. Last week we saw that the people were finding worship a bit dull and repetitive, and now we see where that attitude has come from. The priests have let them down. By their actions and their inaction they’ve failed to provide the lead that they were put there to give.
But before you all turn off because this isn’t addressed to you, let me remind you how God thinks of us who live under the new covenant: (1 Pet 2:9) "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light." & (Rev 1:5-6) "5To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, 6and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever." You see, the things we find written here are as much addressed to us as they were to those priests of the 5th century BC, even if our context is quite different. We need to listen to God’s word here just as much as they did.
In fact that’s how it begins isn’t it? Look at v2: "If you will not listen, if you will not lay it to heart" It wasn’t a question of whether they’d heard God word. They heard it every day. They read it out; probably chanted it. In fact they’d most probably memorised it as Jewish rabbis still do today. But hearing isn’t enough. You also have to listen. We too need to listen. I could preach the most outstanding sermons ever written but if no-one pays attention, if no-one makes a decision to change their life as a result of hearing God’s word preached then I’m wasting several good hours of my time, aren’t I. What’s more you’re wasting a beautiful Sunday morning sitting here while I speak.
No, they’re to listen and to lay it to heart. You know, there are people around who are extremely well educated in theology, who know the ins and outs of all the arguments of theology, but who have little or no personal experience of Jesus Christ. Some of the most influential figures in the liberal part of the church are extremely well read when it comes to theology, yet they’re the ones who would argue against the basic tenets of Christianity - the bodily resurrection of Jesus, Jesus’ death as a means of taking away the punishment we deserve for our sin, Jesus miracles, etc. So we need to do more than just hear, we need to listen and lay it to heart. We need to put our beliefs into action. And what he says they need to lay to heart is the glory of God. Their ministry needs to be focussed on God’s glory not their own glory or comfort.
We talked last week about the danger of exercising ministry for the sake of our own self esteem, or our own glory didn’t we? Here the seriousness of the problem is highlighted by the warning that God gives of what will happen to them and their ministry if they ignore his warning. If they ignore his warning their ministry will be destroyed and that destruction will happen at two levels.
Look at v2: "I will send the curse on you and I will curse your blessings; indeed I have already cursed them, because you do not lay it to heart." The thing that makes their ministry useful to people, a blessing to people, will be turned on its head. Because of their rebellion their blessings will turn out to be curses and no good will come of them. So first of all their ministry will be destroyed because the good things they should be doing will be spoilt and only bad will come from them.
But worse than that, God will inflict a terrible, though ironic punishment on them. "3I will rebuke your offspring, and spread dung on your faces, the dung of your offerings, and I will put you out of my presence." The dung or offal that’s removed from the animal before it’s sacrificed, because it’s unclean, is going to be spread on their faces. It’s a fairly gross picture isn’t it? But it isn’t the fact that its so disgusting that makes it so terrible. It’s the fact that if they’re covered in dung or offal, they’re unclean, ritually impure and therefore excluded from ministry.
I was talking to someone during the week whose mother had had been sexually abused by an Anglican priest when she was young and as a result she hadn’t been back to church since. That priest had destroyed everything good he’d ever done, through his inability to control his desires. In fact that’s been the story in countless cases where Christian ministers have had affairs, have stolen church funds, have abused their power in various ways with the result that they’ve been excluded from God’s service.
Again, this is a warning to us, not to take for granted our position in God’s service. As we’ll see in a moment, God expects the highest standards from his servants. Whatever level of ministry we’re involved in, our behaviour needs to be exemplary so it brings glory to God not embarrassment.
So how should we behave? What’s the model we should use if we’re to avoid having our ministry spoilt and ourselves ruined?
The Model for Authentic Ministry
He reminds them that he has a covenant with Levi; that is with the tribe of Levi. Now, there’s actually no record of a Covenant with Levi other than a passing reference here and in Jer 33. But most likely he’s referring to the Covenant of Peace that God makes with Phineas, Aaron’s son, in Numbers 25. That covenant promised that his descendants would form a perpetual priesthood. The Levites weren’t given a region of Canaan in the distribution of the land because they were to be spread out among all the tribes and were to be provided for by each tribe because of their service to God. This covenant was granted to Phineas because of his godly character. Listen to what he says in v5: "My covenant with him was a covenant of life and well-being, which I gave him; this called for reverence, and he revered me and stood in awe of my name."
Reverence towards God
So here’s the first element of this model of Godly Service. His service was characterised by an attitude of respect and honour given to God. It meant that his service of God was done carefully, with attention to detail, never flippantly or in a sloppy manner. He understood the greatness of the God he served: "he stood in awe of my name." Sometimes I wonder whether the fact that Jesus has lowered himself to become one of us means that we treat him with a bit too much familiarity. It’s a fine line isn’t it, between being so in awe of God that we fear to come near him and being so familiar with him that we give no thought to just how awesome, in the true sense of the word, he really is.
True Instruction, Guarding Knowledge
"6True instruction was in his mouth, and no wrong was found on his lips." When he taught the people his teaching could be trusted. It was accurate, pointing them in the direction of God.
One of the things that these priests may have forgotten was that one of their primary tasks was to teach the people the ways of God. They weren’t there simply to offer sacrifices. That was only a small part of their work. In fact without the teaching the sacrifices became a meaningless ritual. One of the things we’re called to do as Christians is to teach one another the ways of God. We’re meant to teach and admonish one another in all wisdom (Col 3:16). It’s not just the paid ministers whose job that is. It’s the job of every one of us. That means we all need to be students of God’s word so we can share our study with one another. And notice that they’re to guard knowledge. Not in the sense of keeping people away from it, but in the sense of making sure that the knowledge we’ve been given isn’t corrupted. This is what’s so terrible about those ministers I mentioned who distort or explain away the revelation of God simply because it doesn’t fit their modern scientific worldview. They’re keeping people from the truth about God and distorting what they actually hear.
Integrity & uprightness
Next he was a man of integrity. Roy explained this to us last Sunday night. Integrity refers to an unbroken wholeness. It’s the characteristic of the person whose internal life matches their external life; the person who "talks the talk and walks the walk." This is the person whose uprightness of life, whose righteousness isn’t feigned but is integral to their whole personality. This is the person whose hidden thoughts match their external words and actions.
In Titus 2, Paul tells Titus how he’s to instruct the various members of his congregation in their Christian witness. But it’s interesting that he doesn’t just tell them what to say. Instead he tells them to live in such a way that their lives model what they want people to do. He says to Titus: "7Show yourself in all respects a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, gravity, 8and sound speech that cannot be censured; then any opponent will be put to shame, having nothing evil to say of us." The practice of his life was as much a teaching tool as were his words.
St Francis of Assisi is reported to have told his followers "Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary use words." In other words the practice of ministry is just as important, if not more so, than the words that go with it.
And of course the message of this passage is that failing to maintain integrity could mean the loss of ministry opportunities. It might also mean not just a loss of opportunities but the negative outcome of people who are actually turned away from Christ because of our failure.
Well let’s think briefly about our own ministry.
Our Ministry
I hope you’ve worked out that everyone of you has a ministry as part of your membership of God’s church. Have you worked that out? Do you know what your ministry is? Of course it could be that you’re someone who doesn’t realise that you’re ministering to people a lot of the time. You may have thought you were just doing your bit, being a good corporate citizen, or a thoughtful friend, but in fact many of the small actions we do for one another are part of our ministry for God.
But let’s think about how you exercise those ministries. As we did last week, I want us to think about where our minds are focussed when we minister to others. Are we focussed on the glory of God or on something else? What is our motive for ministry? Remember that severe warning in v2: "If you will not listen, if you will not lay it to heart to give glory to my name, says the LORD of hosts, then I will send the curse on you and I will curse your blessings."
I have lots of opportunities to minister to people in my position. People come to see me and confide all sorts of things to me. Often they’re things that they think are shocking but, still, they’re willing to open themselves up to me, to make themselves vulnerable in my presence because they trust me to listen without judging and to maybe provide some counsel as to what to do in their situation. Now that presents me with a number of problems doesn’t it. First of all, I can’t tell anyone what’s gone on in that conversation. I mightn’t even feel free to mention that I’ve seen that person because they don’t want anyone to know. The temptation for someone like me, or like you, if you’re someone who’s involved in pastoral care at some level, is to drop into the conversation that you’ve been seeing so and so to help them with a problem they’re dealing with. I might even include it in the prayer points at a prayer meeting somewhere. But if I do that, what’s my motivation? Am I doing it for the glory of God or am I doing it to build up my own ego?
But it gets worse than that, because what happens to my ministry if the person I’ve been counselling gets wind of the fact that I’ve mentioned that they’d been to see me? Well their trust in me goes down the chute doesn’t it? They’re not going to open up to me again, take the risk of vulnerability when they can’t trust me to shut my mouth and keep it confidential. My ministry is weakened by my lack of integrity at that point.
So too when I’m talking to someone and I gradually see what they need to do to fix their problem. My natural inclination is to tell them straight away. I want to solve their problem, not for their sake but for my own. I’m a problem solver and it annoys me to have things not working properly. But often the time isn’t right. If I tell them at that moment they won’t be ready to listen. I need to wait until they work out the answer for themselves or at least are ready to listen to my suggestions. I might even need to let them find a different answer to mine. I need to remember that I’m not doing this for my glory but for God’s.
On the other hand there can be times when I’m so concerned for the person’s pain that I don’t say something that I need to; when my love and concern for them overrides the truth that I can see about them. You see this all the time don’t you? Someone is experiencing some crisis and their good friends assure them that everything will be OK. Even though they know it probably won’t be? There are times when I actually need to confront someone about some sin in their life that they need to deal with. At that moment the important question needs to be "Who am I serving, God or this person?" If I’m serving God then I might need to tell them the truth, perhaps to remind them of their need to repent, to change their behaviour, even if it causes them some pain. In other words, your love of the person mustn’t override your love of God at that point.
We could talk a lot more about this but our time has gone. Let me just finish by reminding all of us that ministry must be directed to God first and foremost. If we minister for our own sakes or purely for the sake of the person we’re ministering to we’ll fail, our ministry will be undermined and we’ll probably crumble under the strain. God’s glory must be foremost in our minds whatever ministry we’re involved in.
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