Friday, January 9, 2009

GOD'S WORD TO JACKED UP PASTORS

We’re walking through the last book in the OT @ a2 on Sunday mornings. It’s challenging, to say the least.

One of this straight shooting prophet’s main targets is the priesthood, “professional clergy,” pastors, teachers, guys like me and maybe some of you. In Chapter 2, Malachi goes ballistic and lays out one of the most profound challenges contained in the Bible for guys and gals in ministry.

Malachi 2:5-9 (NIrV), "My covenant promised Levi life and peace. So I gave them to him. I required him to respect me. And he had great respect for my name. 6 True teaching came from his mouth. Nothing but the truth came from his lips. He walked with me in peace. He did what was right. He turned many people away from their sins.
7 "The lips of a priest should guard knowledge. People should look for true teaching from his mouth. After all, he is my messenger. 8 But you have turned away from the right path. Your teaching has caused many people to trip and fall. You have broken my covenant with Levi," says the LORD who rules over all. 9 "So I have caused all of the people to hate you. They have lost respect for you. You have not done what I told you to do. Instead, you have favored one person over another in matters of the law."


Here’s a bulleted list of a few things the prophet lays out:

The responsibility of pastors:

• Reverence and respect for God.

Worship is the heartbeat of my relationship with God. In a lot of ways, everything starts here. If I get sloppy, shoddy and slouchy in this area, it affects every other area.

Unfortunately, the guys M wrote to had gotten "bored" with God. They had lost their passion, respect, reverence and awe before a holy, sovereign, mighty and majestic God.

• Teach the truth, regardless.

Sometimes it’s tough. Sometimes people won’t like it. Sometimes someone will get angry and send hate male. Teach the truth, anyway! People don’t need another “self help guru." They’re desperate for a guy or gal with the guts to stand up week after and week and just keep teaching the life-changing truth of God’s Word.

• Walk with God.

Ministry begins here – with your walk with God and your personal life of worship. Don’t ever let ministry get “professional.” As John Piper says, “Brothers, We Are Not Professionals…”

We’re just guys and gals who desperately need God, and minister out of our personal walk with God.

• Do the right thing.

This is not rocket science. It’s simple. Just do the right thing.

• Lead people to Jesus.

Malachi puts it like this, “He turned many people away from their sins.”

At the end of the day, this is what we’re challenged to do. Lead people to Jesus.


Here’s the problem.

• A tendency to get casual and apathetic with God.

When God becomes “my boy friend” and the “big man up stairs” instead of the sovereign, mighty, magnificent God who breathed the world into existence, called me to Himself and redeemed my life from hell, I’m starting to get into deep weeds.

• Growing compromise in my personal life.

It usually starts out very, very small. But these stress fractures and fault lines usually develop into huge chasms and gaping holes that completely devour my life.

• Failure to teach truth.

Walking through Malachi, reminds me of just how stinkin’ difficult it really is to teach truth. This book doesn’t really care about what’s en vogue in terms of political correctness or cultural acceptability or southern propriety. It just says it like it is. For instance, check out Malachi 2:2-3.

“…because you have not taken my warning seriously. 3 I will rebuke your descendants and splatter your faces with the dung of your festival sacrifices, and I will add you to the dung heap.”

Anybody need a translation? God says, “I’m so ticked off at you guys and the polluted and tainted worship you keep trying to offer me, I’m just going to take some of the crap from your sacrifices and smear it on your faces. Then I’m going to throw you on a pile of crap.”

When's the last time you heard your pastor say something like that? It's not nice. Not sensitive. It's straight forward and in your face. It probably made somebody more than just a little bit mad, but M had the guts to say it.

• Failure to keep your word.

I’ll talk about this Sunday. But so many of us are prone to cash in our promises for the sake of convenience. We may not think it’s a big thing. God says, “It matters, BIG TIME.”


Here’s the result.

• We lose respect.

• We foster anger, angst and disdain in the eyes of the watching world.

Romans 2:24 (MSG), "It's because of you Jews that the outsiders are down on God..."

• We cease to be effective.

• We reproduce who we are, not what we teach.

Scary thought.

• Ultimately, we make hell a little bigger, and heaven a littler smaller.


Here's the point: the stakes are sky high!

That’s why, as pastors, daily we need to be on our face pleading with God for help. Jesus said it, “…apart from me you can do nothing (John 15:7).”

And that's just the first nine verses of Malachi 2. We'll tackle Verses 10-16 this Sunday. See you this weekend. By the way, bring your crash helmet.

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