What is the Point of Pastors?

On Father’s Day 2006, six years ago, Julie, Rachel, and I began our ministry at City Bible Church. And during these past six years we have seen God do amazing things in and through the church. We have watched God do a transformational work as He led the church through a time of transition that resulted in us becoming a church that was replanted or restarted with a new name and a new affiliation in 2010. During the past six years my role in the life of this church has transitioned and changed as well.  In that time, I have transitioned from being an Associate Pastor, to an Administrative Pastor, to an Interim Pastor, to the position I now have as Senior or Lead Pastor.

Now the reason I bring all of this history up is because I have a question for us to consider. And that question is this: What is the point of the job of pastor? What is a pastor’s job description? And how do you know if a pastor is successful? Do we measure a pastor’s effectiveness the same way that God does? This week, as we look at the book of Malachi, I find myself in many ways in a unique and potentially awkward position. I find myself in a unique and awkward position because the section of the letter that we are going to look at this week is targeted specifically at me and others like me who are pastors.

So you get to look at a passage that is written to people like me. And for many of you, this may be the first time you will be exposed to the job description that God has for those who pastor His people. And it is in this section of the book of Malachi that we see Malachi accuse the pastors of the Jewish people of his day of taking a detour. And it is in the prophet’s accusation and the evidence that he presents we will see God reveal for us a timeless detour that pastors can take when it comes to our relationship with God that results in us living a life that dishonors God.

And unfortunately, when pastors take this detour, not only does it result in the pastor’s life dishonoring God; this detour can also result in those who the pastor is responsible to lead taking a detour that results in a life that dishonors God. And for that reason, this is a message that is essential to hear, not only for me as a pastor, but for you as followers of Jesus, so that you can clearly understand what God expects of pastors and so that you would be able to clearly recognize the detour signs that will arise if pastors fail to meet those expectations. So look on as I preach a sermon to myself, beginning in Malachi 2:1:

"And now this commandment is for you, O priests. "If you do not listen, and if you do 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; and indeed, I have cursed them already, because you are not taking it to heart.

Malachi begins this section of his letter by giving a command and an if-then statement: "If you do not listen, and if you do not take it to heart to give honor to My name." The word listen here conveys the sense of hearing that results in obedience. When Malachi uses the phrase “take it to heart, this phrase, in the language that this letter was originally written in, literally means to, at the core of one’s being, determine a course of action in response to one’s knowledge or awareness of something.

The course of action that God, through Malachi, calls the pastors of his day to embrace and engage in is “to give honor to My name”. As we discovered earlier in this series, the word honor, in the language that this letter was originally written in, literally means weighty or heavy. It conveys the sense of giving one who carries weight the due that is rightly theirs. The prophet is calling the pastors of the day to fulfill the roles and responsibility that they have as pastors to make much of God in a way that gives God the glory and honor that He so rightly deserves as the One True God.

However, if the pastors failed to respond to God’s command to change the course of how they were acting as pastors so as to bring honor and glory to God; if the pastors failed to heed God’s command from the core of their beings; Malachi states that God will send a curse upon you.  But what does that mean? I mean what exactly is a curse? When we see the word curse in the Bible, this word refers to a destructive power that is sent by God as an instrument of God’s right and just response to selfishness and rebellion.

In addition, a curse, unless removed by God, results in whatever that is cursed being destined for annihilation. So, as a general rule, you do not want to be cursed by God; not a good thing. When Malachi explains that I will curse your blessings, he is revealing the reality that every aspect of their lives would become plagued with trouble as a result of God’s curse. No aspect of their lives would not be impacted. 

Malachi then explains to the pastors of his day that they should not be surprised by either the command or the consequences for not following the command, because God has already begun to curse them. And the reason that God had already begun to curse them is because they were not fulfilling the roles and responsibility that they had as pastors to make much of God in a way that gives God the glory and honor that He so rightly deserves.

Malachi is calling the pastors of his day to repent from giving God less than their best when it came to fulfilling their role and responsibility. Malachi is calling the pastors of his day to repent from being unimpressed with God that resulted in them fulfilling their roles and responsibilities out of duty and as a tiresome nuisance that gave Him what is of little value and worth. After providing the command and the immediate consequences, Malachi gives the pastors of his day a glimpse of what would happen if they failed to follow God’s command and repent in verse 3:

"Behold, I am going to rebuke your offspring, and I will spread refuse on your faces, the refuse of your feasts; and you will be taken away with it. "Then you will know that I have sent this commandment to you, that My covenant may continue with Levi," says the LORD of hosts.

In these verses, we see Malachi paint a shocking word picture to describe what would happen to the pastors of his day if they refused to follow God’s command so as to make much of God in a way that gives God the glory and honor that He so rightly deserves. To fully understand this word picture, however, we first need to understand a little about the Jewish sacrificial system that the priests were involved in.

In the Jewish sacrificial system, there were two times every day that sacrifices were made to God for the sins of the people, one early in the morning and one in the in the late afternoon at 3 p.m. The sacrificial offerings involved animals who were offered as a substitute to pay the penalty for acts of selfishness and rebellion that had been committed against God. The burnt offerings were expression of worship and thanksgiving to God. These sacrifices and offering were to be made by the pastors on the altar at the Temple in Jerusalem.

In the Old Testament, God provided the Jewish people very clear and detailed instructions when it came to when sacrifices and offerings were to be offered and what was to be offered in those sacrifices. There were some parts of the animals that were to be sacrificed, while other parts of the animals were to be discarded and not used in the sacrificial offering. For example, when a bull was slaughtered and sacrificed for the selfishness and rebellion of the people, the blood and the fat of the bull would be offered up on the altar, while the flesh, the hide, and all the internal organs, which were viewed as unclean, would be taken away to a place outside the city and burned.

Now with that in mind, here is how Malachi’s words to the pastors of his day would have sounded if they had been communicated in the language that we use in our culture today: “Pastors, if you do not repent and give Me the Honor and glory that I am deserving of, here is what is going to happen to your descendants. I am going to take your descendants and just as the unclean refuse of their offerings is carried away to be discarded outside the camp, they will have the hide, the flesh, the internal organs of their offerings spread on their faces and they will be carried away as being unclean to reveal externally what is going on in their lives internally”.

Malachi’s point here is just as the unclean refuse of the offerings was carried away to be discarded outside the camp, the pastors would be removed from serving the Lord in utter disgrace if they refused to repent from their selfishness and rebellion.

Now that sounds kind of gross, doesn’t it?  That kinds sound of harsh, doesn’t it? Yeah, it does, which is exactly how the pastors would have responded to Malachi’s words here.

Tomorrow, as Malachi continues, we will see God, through the prophet, provide the pastors of his day a history lesson when it came to how they came to be pastors…