God’s Priests
April 8, 2010 | Posted by Paul 
Malachi 2:5-7 (ESV)
5 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. 6 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. 7 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.
In this passage, the Lord was rebuking the priests of Malachi’s day because they had strayed so far from God’s covenant with Levi. These verses describe the original priests as a model for all priests. God was contrasting the way it should be with they way they had become.
True instruction is literally “instruction of truth” which was understood to mean the clear teachings in the Torah. Good priests are to faithful convey the word of God to guide the people, to turn them from sin. They don’t water down the message to fit the ever changing culture. They guard the unchanging word of God from the pressures of men to compromise its demands.They should be the one place we can go to get the straight story, unadulterated by trends and popular ideas.
The Lord calls the priests messengers of the Lord Almighty! Malak (messenger) is a term that was used for angels and prophets, but here at the end of the Old Testament, God is applying it to those who convey the word of God. Since the Old Testament was almost complete, the messengers then became the ones who convey what is already revealed, and they must do it as faithfully as the ones that first delivered it. Malachi means “my messenger”. In the early church, the one that delivered the exposition of the Word was called “The Angel” and thus the letters to the 7 churches are addressed to the angel at the church of…
How careful we should be then, to deliver the Word of God as it is. We should be clear when something is our opinion rather than expressly stated in the Word. We should also not shy away from speaking what is clearly in the Word as so many tend to do in this day when culture is shifting away from the Word.
Tomorrow I will share the contrast of these good priests with those in Malachi’s day.
5 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.
6 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.
7 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.
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4 Comments »
Paul. the more that i read your material the more that i like you.
Certainly there are some preachers/elders by title, that do not have the Spirit. It should be rather obvious to a believer if that is the case.
1 Corinthians 2:4-5 (KJV)
4 And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: 5 That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.
John 4:22-24 (King James Version)
22Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews.
23But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him.
24God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.
it would be a good thing for preachers to have recieved the gift of the holy ghost.
???
“beautiful on the mountain are the feet of the one bearing the words of truth…”