Longing for the True High Priest

This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

The Longing for Christ Before the Incarnation

Well, if I have you turn to Malachi chapter 2 and verse 1 already. On this Christmas Eve, our brother Sam and I were going over what we could do. Should we do a special Christmas, to quote our brother, a special sermon for Christmas?

Or do we continue our series in Malachi and in God's good providence, it seemed that Malachi chapter 2 and verses 1 through 9 was actually perfectly in line, dovetailed providentially with the occasion as we relive the anticipation, if we can say it that way, of Christ's incarnation leading up to Christmas.

And as we approach our text today, I want you to see something with me. I want us to do a bit of an exercise so that we can put ourselves into the shoes of the God-fearing Jew on the other side of the incarnation.

Now, for many of us modern Christians, we take for granted the unspeakable blessing that it is to live on this side of the incarnation, at least as it refers to the timeline of history. For many of us, we live with a knowledge of Christ's person and work as a past historical fact.

And yet, I think that for most of us, I know for myself, even as I was considering this sermon, that has become old hat, if I can use that expression, for many of us. It is old news that Christ has come in a physical body, that he lived a perfectly righteous life, that he died an atoning death on the cross, and that it happened 2 ,000 years ago.

But if we can go back in time for a moment, imagine with me what it would be like to be a man or a woman living before the first coming of Christ. Imagine what it would be like, for a moment, to live as a God-fearing Jew.

If you can think back to the early chapters of the Gospels, like Simeon or Anna, true worshippers of God, and yet to live as them just one day before Christ's birth. If you were in that position, no doubt, I have every reason to believe that you could still be faithful, that you could still belong to the true people of God, who lived by faith.

But picture what it would be like as a God-fearing Jew. Yes, you could go to the synagogues each Sabbath to hear the word read, and you could make your offerings year after year after year in the temple, at great personal expense, and yet with no cleansing of the conscience.

You could long for the coming of the Messiah, God's anointed one, who would one day ransom the nation of Israel. You could hold fast to all of the promises of the Hebrew Scriptures. But imagine with me, for a moment, what it would be like to live in a day where there was no New Testament, where there was no historical Savior, ever.

Imagine what it would be to live in an era where there was no certainty, no ability to have certainty of peace with God, apart from works, and that any notion of that was little more than a wish-dream.

Imagine what it would be, for a moment, to live in a world where there was no gospel yet, and no knowledge of Jesus Christ. John Calvin says about that sorry state of being, he says, without the gospel, all was useless and vain.

Imagine what it would be like to live in a time when everything, almost always, seemed fruitless and hopelessly vain. Such was the cultural climate leading up to Christ's first advent, and such was the cultural climate in the days of Malachi.

If we can go 450 years, then before Christ. And already in our study, we have seen a little bit of the flavor of this hopelessness. Yes, some 50 ,000 people we know had returned from exile into the promised land.

Jerusalem was being rebuilt, the walls were being restored. And yet, in every direction that the people of God could look, and there were a million different reasons, a million different reminders, that all was not yet well in the nation.

As we've already seen over the last two weeks, one of the areas where this fallen state of the people of God was most clearly visible was in the priesthood. Last week we heard how the priests had grown tired of their ministry in the courts of the Lord.

We know that passage, that better is one day in the courts than a thousand elsewhere. Unless, of course, you were a priest in the day of Malachi. And we heard how, instead of giving their very best offerings to God, in fact, they gave their very worst.

And how they offered their lame and their sick and their blind lambs as a sacrifice. And how they found that these were altogether unacceptable to God. And then such then was the climate that we find ourselves entering into today as we begin Malachi chapter 2.

A hopeless and a Christless world. And God, as we'll see in this chapter, has a word for the nation through his messenger Malachi. It is a word of judgment. It's interesting, on Christmas Eve you don't normally hear a sermon about a word of judgment.

But here, the Lord has a word of judgment for his people. It is a word of covenantal accountability. And more than that, in the midst of the judgment, in the midst of the covenantal accountability, there is a word of hopeful anticipation at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so in this account that we're looking at together today, in Malachi 2, we find a picture of a dire situation. And we see what the priesthood should have been. And then as we look at this passage, and that's what we're going to do today, we're going to go from an Old Testament lens to a New Testament lens on an Old Testament passage.

As we look at this passage through a New Testament lens, we will see what the priesthood was to become in Jesus Christ. And so in a sense, this passage and this sermon is all about Christmas Eve, in that it takes us to a place of hopeful and longing anticipation at the coming of the great high priest, Jesus Christ.

It becomes a beacon pointing us to the gospel and to the Christ who was to come. And so in Malachi 2, what I want to do is give us three different points that we're going to look at together. We're going to look at the dire situation that was the Levitical priesthood in Malachi's day.

After we do that, we're going to look at the covenantal ideal, what the priests were to be. And then when we look at all of that, which in essence is law and law, looking at it through the lens of the New Testament, and what we know about Christ, and what we know the scriptures say about Christ, then we will see law and law, and then the gospel, the coming of Jesus Christ.

And so together, let's read verses 1 through 4. I'll read verses 1 through 4, and then verses 8 and 9. This is God's word to us. And now, O 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. And then to verse 8. 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. So I will make you despised and abased before all the people, inasmuch as you do not keep my ways, but show partiality in your instruction.

The Dire Situation of the Unfaithful Priesthood

So of the three truths that we're going to look at, the first one that I want to draw our attention to is this. The dire situation. As I've already laid out over the last several weeks, the nation of Israel had barely returned to the promised land, when they had already found themselves in a desperately bad situation.

And again, the Lord, as we saw last week, he is going to lay the lion's share of the responsibility at the feet of the priests. In verse 1, he makes it clear that his main contention is with the spiritual leaders of the people.

And right away, this demonstrates, I think, an important principle in the spiritual lives of God's people in general. As I've heard our brother Stephen Lawson say, as go the leaders, so go the people.

The people will rarely rise above the spiritual lives of their leaders. And that God has real accountability for the lives of not only his people, but the leaders of his people. And so God, in this passage, goes after the priests.

And he declares that he has given them a command. And we find part of that command, if we think back to last week, in chapter 1, in verse 14. And there, if we look at that again, this command that God was to be regarded as a great king, worthy of the nation's best, and the people were to fear him.

But neither the people nor the priests approached him with the reverence that was due his name. But as we saw last week, instead, they despised his name. And the priests caused the people to stumble, both by their instruction and by their lifestyles.

And so in doing, they corrupted their covenant with God. That word covenant, we're going to see pop up more and more and more in the book of Malachi. It is pivotal to our understanding of this book, and of our understanding of the whole economy of God.

That when God relates to his people, he relates to them through covenants. And even in this situation, the nation of Israel had violated that covenant. They had broken covenant with their God. And so the dire situation, it seems, was brought on by not only this covenantal violation, but then by the priest's own misconduct.

And if we were to cross-reference, you can go there if you'd like with me, to Nehemiah chapter 13. In Nehemiah chapter 13, we know from the history of these books, that Nehemiah was a contemporary of Malachi.

And Nehemiah begins to paint a picture of what it looked like amongst the priests in Malachi's day. In Nehemiah 13, in verse 4, we read how one of the priests, and probably in collusion with some of the other priests, actually took all of the offerings out of one of the chambers in the temple.

And in that same chamber in the temple complex, they moved a man named Tobiah, who was an Ammonite, into that room. And furnished a beautiful room for a Gentile in God's temple. Much to this dismay of Nehemiah when he returned.

And then later on, I think it's closer to verse 10 and 11, we read how the priests themselves abandoned their service. The priests, the Levites, and the singers abandoned their service in the temple, so they could work in the fields and make their own profit.

Here the nation of Israel was being led by a group of corrupt hucksters. Matthew Henry says,. Nothing profanes the name of God more than the misconduct of those whose business it is to honor his name.

It's one thing to disobey God and to rebel against him as a believer. And it is another thing altogether to do that as one of the leaders of God's people. And that is exactly what the priests were doing.

And so in verses 2 and 4, God issues a stunning warning. Or in fact, you could say three stunning warnings. A series of warnings. To thrust then these priests out of their complacency. And so in verse 2, God tells the priests, and we'll look at each of these three warnings in succession.

He says, if you will not hear this commandment, it's actually language that's plucked right out of the Shema in Deuteronomy chapter 6 and verse 4. That the nation of Israel was to hear, they were to listen.

As we see that language used in verse 2. That the Lord your God, the Lord is one and you shall love the Lord your God. With all of your heart and with all of your soul and with all of your mind. And so God tells the priests, if you will not hear this commandment, the first warning, I will send the curse upon you.

And I will curse your blessings. Indeed, I have already cursed them because you did not lay it to heart. Now in order to understand this statement, this is what's so good about studying Old Testament prophets and Old Testament books.

We begin to see not just how the New Testament works, but how the Old Testament works as well. That in order to fully understand the statement, we need to understand the fundamental nature of Old Testament covenantal theology.

And how as part of that covenantal theology in the Old Testament, there was a blessing-curse dichotomy that was often employed. And so the basic principle was this. Something that we understand well, especially if we've been raised in an orderly household.

That when God's people obey his word and keep his covenant, then there was an expectation of blessing for obedience. And that similarly, when God's people disobeyed, there then was a fearful expectation of judgment, of God's curses for disobedience.

And perhaps this is no more clearly seen than in the book of Deuteronomy. The main thrust of the book of Deuteronomy, it really is all about covenantal obedience. And there is a picture in that book of Deuteronomy in chapter 27 and 28.

Perhaps you're familiar with it. It's a dramatic scene where Moses is telling the nation that when they are to enter the promised land, they're to take one group of the ambassadors, if we can call them that, figureheads of the nation of Israel, and they are to go on to Mount Gerizim.

And then another group of the ambassadors of Israel are to go and stand on Mount Ebal. And there, as the nation comes into the promised land, they're to read all of the blessings that come with covenantal obedience to God.

To those, figuratively, on Mount Gerizim, who will inherit the blessings of God because of their covenantal obedience. But then for those who are on Mount Ebal, all of the curses that fall on those who break covenant with God.

In many respects, and I don't want to get ahead of myself here, but this itself points to the gospel and to Jesus Christ. In Deuteronomy chapter 28 and verse 3, we read some of the covenantal blessings that came to the nation.

It says,.

This is for those who obeyed God's covenant. Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb, and the fruit of your ground, and the fruit of your cattle, increase of your herds, and the young of your flock.

Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out. The basic premise was this, that for those Israelites who entered into the promised land and loved and obeyed their God, there were only blessings, life, and peace that awaited them.

But to those who broke covenant with God, in Deuteronomy 28, those who were standing on Mount Ebal, representing those who would defy God's covenant, it says in Deuteronomy 28, 20, 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.

And so what God was telling His people and telling His priests is that because of their disobedience, He was going to put a curse on one of the most important symbols. We see that symbol in verse 2. I've cursed them.

I will send the curse upon your blessings. He was going to curse one of the most important symbols in the nation's relationship to God. And that was when the Jews met together and the priests were leading the procession, as it were.

They would pronounce a blessing upon God's people. And God says, even that blessing I will curse. One commentator says, the priestly blessing was the most solemn part of the priest's service and ultimately came to be, think of this, if you want to talk about what it's like to live before Christ, the only occasion on which the divine name was actually pronounced in Israel.

So to threaten that the blessing be turned into a curse was to undermine and overthrow the fabric of institutional religion in Israel. What this means is that if you were a Jew in that day, listening to the priest, perhaps learning from the law, hearing the word of the Hebrew scriptures read, and then the priest were to pronounce the blessing, that would be the only time in your week that you would hear God's name spoken.

And God says, I will even curse that time because of your disobedience. It is a picture of what it means when Scripture says your sin has made a separation between you and your God. That even the priest's attempts to bless the people would serve as a stark reminder that the people were not blessed of God, but they were accursed of God because of their own disobedience.

But more than that, there's not just one warning, there's three. The second warning then, he says this, I will rebuke your offspring. Now this is more than what we think when we maybe have a picture of God going and delivering a verbal rebuke to their children.

It's more than that. What it signified was that God was going to cut off the whole family line of the unfaithful priests.

And again,.

This curse finds its roots at the foot of Bounty Ball in Deuteronomy 28. In verse 18,.

It says,.

Curse shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, the increase of your herds and your young flock. In Psalm 37, in verse 28, the psalmist says, For the Lord loves justice. He will not forsake his saints.

They are preserved forever, but the children of the wicked shall what? But the children of the wicked shall be cut off. And that is what God means when he says, I will rebuke your offspring. I will bring death to the camp.

The priest separation, or the priest sin, excuse me, not only made a separation between them and their God, but it would result in death to all their family lines. And so we have separation from God and death, thus far the consequences of sin.

But then more than that, in verse 3, we see another warning. Perhaps the most graphic of warnings. Some might say, not appropriate for a Christmas Eve service. That God would spread dung. The dung of their offerings on their very faces.

This was a graphic, brutally graphic depiction of how the priests would both be disqualified and deposed, disposed from their offices. They had made themselves unclean. And so as those which are, those things which are unclean, they would be taken outside of the camp to be left in the refuse.

You see,.

When the priests made their offerings, they were instructed in the Levitical law to take extra care to remove all the unclean parts of the animal and to take those unclean parts of the animal and to cast them out of the camp.

To cast them out because they were unclean. And they brought ceremonial uncleanness to the nation. In Leviticus 4, in verse 11,.

We're told,.

But the skin of the bull and its flesh and its head and its legs and its entrails and its dung, what was to be smeared on the priests' faces. All the rest of the bull, the priests shall carry outside the camp to a clean place, to the ash heap, and shall burn it on a fire of wood.

On the ash heap, it shall be burned up. So what God is saying here is that the priests are to be thrown away, just like the unclean parts of their offerings. They are no longer fit, not only to offer sacrifices to their God, but they are to be treated as unclean and put out of the camp.

It was a dire situation in Israel. Sin had ruined the people's relationship with God. In fact, not only that, but it was now cutting off their offspring, who were doomed to die. And they had made themselves unclean.

What we read about in Galatians 3, in verse 10, became true of these people. Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all the things written in the book of the law to do them. So this was the dire situation in Israel.

But God isn't finished yet. As I've said, He's given them law. He's given them judgment. But there's more to come. In the midst of pronouncing judgment on the people, He paints a picture of what the priests should have been like.

The Covenant of Life, Peace, and Instruction

And so if you're following along in your insert, you'll see the second truth I want us to see. It's not just the dire situation, but the covenantal ideal. What the priests ought to have been, should have been, but were not.

In verse 5, the Lord says, My covenant with him, speaking of Levi, was one of life and peace. And I gave them to him. But 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 righteousness, 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.

When God initially, before all of this took place, when God initially made his covenant with Levi and with Aaron, it was, see this with me, it was not a covenant of curses and of death, but it was a covenant of life and peace.

This was God's intended design for the Levitical priesthood. It was a covenant made with Levi and his descendants who were to be a people wholly devoted to the service of God, and to enjoy an esteemed place, oh, an esteemed place of great responsibility and of great blessing.

Now some have looked at this and said, we don't see a covenant with Levi. Where is this covenant of Levi? Now the Lord himself knows that he has made a covenant with Levi. I think we see glimpses of it in Numbers chapter three, verses 44 and 45.

It says there, the Lord spoke to Moses saying, take the Levites instead of all the firstborn among the people of Israel, and the cattle of the Levites instead of their cattle. The Levites shall be mine.

I am the Lord. And then Leviticus eight and nine, we see the careful consecration of the priests and their preparation for ministry. And I'm not sure about you, but when I read about the Levites in my first reading through the Bible, I was thinking about it, marveling, almost two decades ago now, reading about the Levites and their service in the temple.

I remember thinking to myself how if I lived in ancient Israel, think about this for yourself, if you lived in ancient Israel and you could belong to one tribe, what tribe would that be? Would you want to be in the tribe of Judah where the lion of the tribe of Judah was to come?

Would you want to be from some lesser known tribe on the other side of the river? When I would read about the Levites, it actually set my heart aflame to serve God with all of my life. In some ways, I credit reading about the Levites as one of the passages that the Lord used to call me into ministry because I would read passages like Deuteronomy 10 and verse 9.

Therefore the Levite, we're told, has no portion or inheritance with his brothers. Well, that doesn't sound very good, does it? That all the other brothers get their own land, they get their own cities, they get their own everything.

But he says, therefore Levi has no portion or inheritance with his brothers. The Lord is his inheritance, as the Lord your God has said to him. And I remember thinking as I would read about the Levites, the other tribes, they got the land, but the Levites, they got the Lord of the land.

And what were the Levites to do with this blessing? Oh, they were to fear God. They were to stand in awe of his name. And in verses 6 and 7, lay out the specifics of their, some of their responsibilities.

We're told that they were to give instruction in the law. Leviticus 10 and verse 11. They were told, and you are to teach the people of Israel all the statutes that the Lord has spoken to them by Moses.

We're told that the Levites were to guard the knowledge of God. Almost as we see in the New Testament, as stewards of this truth that has been entrusted to them. Stewards of the very oracles of God. And some priests, some priestly schools took this very seriously.

You read about some of these priestly schools where the children, think about this kids, who were 10 years old. 10 years old, and by 10, they had memorized the whole Torah. Do you know how many books that is?

A lot, it's five books. To put that into perspective, that might not sound like a lot. They memorized that much of the Bible by the time they were 10 years old. Some priests took that very, very seriously.

But more often than not, it was not taken seriously at all. And we see that lived out in the life of Josiah, the king. If you think about that in 2 Chronicles 34, as they were taking the money out of the temple, what did the priest discover?

But a copy of the book of the law. And when they read it aloud to Josiah, does anyone know what he did? He tore his clothing, realizing that they had dishonored their God. That they had disobeyed their God.

And whose fault was it? I think Malachi would say, I think the Lord would say, the responsibility fell at the feet of the priests who were, as it says, those responsible to guard the knowledge of God.

The keepers of the law. Those who were to teach the law. And those who were to guard the law. But more than that still, they were to serve as messengers of the Lord of hosts. Deuteronomy 31 goes on about that.

How they were to teach the law, read the law before all Israel in their hearing. How they were to assemble the men and the women and the little ones and the sojourner too within their towns. That they may, it says in Deuteronomy 31, 11, 12, and 13, that they may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God.

And be careful to do all the words of his law. And yet, the Lord said through Hosea 4 and verse 6, my people are destroyed because of a lack of knowledge. It reminds me of the days, there was a day in the New Testament times where something very similar happened.

If you were in England just after the Reformation, there's a story of Hugh Latimer. I shared that during Reformation Day. I think our brother read a biography about him not too recently. And in the life of Hugh Latimer, what he found as a Catholic priest was that he knew very little about God.

And as he heard the confessions of one man who was coming to a discovery of the gospel, he was convicted and even converted through this man's confessions. And one of the first things that he did was he went to the priests.

And I can't recall now if this was when he became a priest in the Church of England. But he found that many of the priests were illiterate. And almost no priest had a copy of the Bible. No copy of the law.

And so what he did was he made sure with the limited means that they had that each priest at least had one copy of the Bible that they could read and understand and teach. This was a picture of what the land looked like in Malachi's day.

There was a famine in the land for the word of the Lord. And so what God does here is he gives them the law in the form of judgment. That they have violated God's commandment. And these are going to be the consequences.

And then he gives them again, as it were, the law. This is what you have done wrong. These are the consequences. And this is what you should have been. And you are not. And brothers and sisters, if we were on the other side of Christ's incarnation one day before the Lord's birth, if I were to preach this on a Sabbath prior to the coming of Christ, I would finish my sermon and I would say,.

Amen.

That we are not who we ought to be. And that we stand under the curse of God as his lawbreakers. And we now are sentenced to death. And we have every expectation that God will strike our offspring. And that we, as far as God is concerned, are to be taken out of the camp and thrown out with the dung of our offerings on our faces.

That was the sermon before the Lord Jesus came. But we know, don't we, that that is not the end of the story. That, in fact, we have a New Testament. And we have a gospel. And we have the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so we're not dispensationalists, most of us. And so we can read the Old Testament, understanding what it says now in the New Testament as well. That while there was a longing, a longing for a priest who would come and make all things right, that we know now there was, there is, a priest who has made all things right.

Christ the Great High Priest Who Reverses the Curse

And so we see the dire situation. And we see the covenantal ideal. And then thirdly, what we see, when we look at the whole of the passage as Christians, is we see what was to be the future fulfillment.

A brother read it just a little while ago from Jeremiah 3, where it says, And I will give you shepherds after my own heart who will feed you with knowledge and understanding. And when you have multiplied and been fruitful in the land, in those days, declares the Lord, they shall no more say the ark of the covenant to the Lord.

It shall not come to mind or be remembered or missed. It shall not be made again. At that time, Jerusalem shall be called the throne of the Lord. And all nations shall gather to it, to the presence of the Lord in Jerusalem.

Now when I read this, one of the things that I read as an under-shepherd of Christ is that one day the Lord was going to provide under-shepherds who would feed his people with knowledge and understanding.

And it's true. But more than that, one day the Lord was going to bring a shepherd, a chief shepherd, who was to feed his people with knowledge and understanding. We see in verses 6 and 7 again, I ended up in Joshua, and I'm confused why it's not saying what I should say.

In verses 6 and 7, true instruction was in his mouth, and no wrong was found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and righteousness, 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.

That is in reference, at least in one sense, to Aaron. But let me ask you, does that find its perfect fulfillment in the man Aaron? In Leviticus 8 and 9, we see the faithfulness of Aaron. But we don't have to go very far.

In fact, we go to Leviticus chapter 10 to find his two sons, Nadab and Abihu, doing what? Immediately after they were consecrated, to serve as priests, but offering strange fire on the altar. And what did God do?

But he struck them down dead. The priesthood never was perfect from the day that it was founded. And so it looks forward to another. It looks forward to another who has, as verse 6 says, verse 7, that guards knowledge, that seeks instruction, that is a messenger of the Lord.

And Leviticus chapter 2 and verse 6 tells us where that comes from. For the Lord gives wisdom from His mouth comes knowledge and understanding. In 1 Corinthians 1 and verse 24, it says, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.

When the old covenant people of God would read Proverbs, like Proverbs chapter 8, where it says in verse 22, the Lord possessed me at the beginning. Speaking about wisdom. At the beginning of His work, the first of His acts of old.

Ages ago I was set up at the first before the beginning of the world. When there was no depths, I was brought forth. When there were no ships abounding with water, before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth.

Before He made the earth with its fields or the first of the dust of the world. When He established the heavens, I was there. This is certainly in reference to wisdom. But most, many Christians throughout the ages have also seen it as the story of the eternal generation of Jesus Christ.

Of Jesus. Jesus' generation as the Son of God. Not His creation, but His eternal existence within the Godhead. I was there. When He drew a circle on the face of the deep. When He made firm the skies above.

When He established the fountains of the deep. When He assigned to the sea its limits. So that the waters might not transgress His commandments. When He marked out the foundation of the earth. Then I was beside Him.

Like a master workman, and I was daily His delight. Rejoicing before Him always. Rejoicing in His inhabited world and delighting in the children of man. The One who is to come with wisdom and knowledge on His lips was wisdom embodied in Jesus Christ.