Audio Transcript

Today, God has blessed us with countless numbers of faithful men who lead churches well. And we praise God for each man who closely guards his life and doctrine for the sake of his own soul and for the sake of the souls entrusted to him (1 Timothy 4:16). Such faithful men will go unnoticed by the world, and maybe even under-thanked for their work by the people they serve. But we thank God for you men. Many of you listen to this podcast.

At the same time, one of the most painful topics we see pop up in the inbox regularly is the fallout over the sins of unfaithful pastors. Pastors can fail their people by not watching their lives and doctrine. These situations are tragic and very painful and often devastating. The heartbreaking stories we hear bear this out. No church is immune. Compromise happens in huge suburban megachurches and in very small rural country churches. And it was a problem among the priests of the Old Testament, calling for the stern warnings we read in the Prophets. In fact, God reserves some of the harshest language in the Bible for priests who morally fail, as we will see today in Malachi 2:1–9. This text remains relevant for pastors today, as Pastor John explained in 1987, in a sermon from about 34 years ago. Here’s Pastor John.

We noticed in Malachi 2:7 that that wasn’t the only task of the priest (namely, to sacrifice): “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 other words, priests were teachers and not just sacrificers, and that’s why the text is relevant today: this text addresses ministers of the word, and it shows that they can fail miserably and grievously and that they can succeed gloriously. That’s what the text is about, and that’s why it’s so relevant, because it’s all around us today: ministerial failure and success.

Greater Strictness

I ended with an overview last time and began what I want to begin with this morning — namely, a list of these failures — and then we’ll turn to the success of the ministry.

Let me give you that overview again: Verses 2, 8, and 9 give us five failures in the priestly ministry, five pastoral failures. Verses 5, 6, and 7 describe the success of the ministry of the word, what it’s supposed to look like. And the thing I didn’t mention last week was the threats made against the priests, the pastors, to sanction the commands in verses 5–7 and to redeem them and get them to clean up their act with regard to their failures. Those threats are found in verses 2, 3, and 9. And it may be well to begin right here. Let’s just start with the threats. And we start here because they’re given, mainly, not for themselves, but to awaken these failing priests, rescue them from destruction, and bring them to success.

Here’s the lesson I get from these threats before I look at them in detail: pastors, ministers of the word, will not be spared judgment in the last day. It’s occurred to me this week as I’ve pondered this that, when I stand before Christ at the last day, every one of these sermons will be thrown on the table before the judge, and Romans 2:21 will be read in the courtroom as I stand before Christ: “You then who taught others, do you not teach yourself?”

Think long and hard before you envy your pastors at the last day. James said, “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness” (James 3:1).

Four Priestly Threats

Now, let’s read these threats in verses 2–3, and then I’ll drop down to verse 9.

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. . . . And so I make you despised and abased before all the people, inasmuch as you do not keep my ways but show partiality in your instruction.

Now, there are four threats in those three verses.

1. “I will curse them” (verse 2).

2. “I will curse your blessings” — that is, I think he means, “The words that you speak, which are intended to be the blessing of the people, I’m going to turn them into a plague upon the people” (verse 2).

3. “I’m going to rebuke your offspring” — or “your crops,” perhaps. The word seed could go either way there. In other words, “The curse is going to spread far beyond you, whether to your children or to your land.”

4. “I am going to smear the dung of these mangy, broken-legged, blind sheep in your face.” Or as verse 9 explains, “I’m going to make you despised and contemptible among people.”

“Nothing is more horrible to imagine than the beauty of holiness turning against you with omnipotent rage.”

Now, why is God so angry? You know he’s angry, don’t you? I mean, when you talk about smearing dung in somebody’s face, you’re not dealing dispassionately with some minor disobedience; you’re on the brink of rage. Nothing is more horrible to imagine than the beauty of holiness turning against you with omnipotent rage, which is what’s happening in these verses toward the pastors of Israel.

Five Priestly Failures

He is angry because of five failures. Let’s look at them.

1. The failure of listening to God, or failing to listen to God: “If you will not listen . . .” (verse 2). It’s a failure because you can’t herald what you can’t hear.

2. The failure to have a heart for the glory of God: “If you will not take it to heart to give honor to my name, says the Lord of hosts . . .” (verse 2). And that’s the root of the matter, brothers and sisters. We’re going to see more clearly than ever this morning as we move to the success that that’s the root of the matter. A pastor who has no heart for the glory of God is a failure, no matter how full his church is or wide his ministry.

3. They have turned aside from the ways of God and live out of sync with the teaching of God. Look at the first line of verse 8: “You have turned aside from the way.” And look again at verse 9: “I [will] make you despised and abased before all the people, inasmuch as you do not keep my ways.” So, the third failure is the failure of practicing what they preach. Their lives, they’re way over here. They’re not walking with God. They say one thing, and they’re doing another thing.

4. They have shown partiality in teaching. Verse 9: “You do not keep my ways but show partiality in your instruction.” Now, what does that mean? It means that they are doing the very same thing with the word of God that they did with the sacrifices of God. Do you remember what that was? They gave just those animals to God that would leave maximum money in their pockets — broken-legged sheep, blind sheep, mangy sheep. You can’t sell them, so give them to God and keep your pockets full.

“A pastor who has no heart for the glory of God is a failure, no matter how full his church is or wide his ministry.”

And that’s exactly what they’re doing with their teaching. They give precisely that teaching to their congregations that will keep their pockets full. They play to their audience. They tell Daddy Warbucks what he wants to hear. They say, “‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace” (Jeremiah 6:14; 8:11). They do what Micah 3:11 describes: “[Jerusalem’s] heads give judgment for a bribe; its priests teach for a price; its prophets practice divination for money.” When the glory of God no longer satisfies the heart of a preacher, he can do two things: leave the ministry or stay and preach for money. Would that they all left.

5. The failure of what results from all of this — in the middle of verse 8, you see it: “You have caused many to stumble.” Let me ask you this: Do you think the sins of pastors, Christian leaders, are more grievous than the sins of others? I do. But not because a sin in and of itself is of a different nature or quality; rather, because the sin of Christian leaders is compounded by the fact that the weight of public responsibility should all the more have hindered it, and he didn’t let it hinder it.

I don’t know if you’ve opened up yet this week’s Christianity Today. It’s in our library. I commend it to you. There are two or three articles on the sins of Christian leaders and whether they can be restored, and there is a short article by David Neff, the associate editor. And here’s what he says:

The leader who philanders has broken a trust placed in him by a wide community — trust in his vision, reliability, wisdom, and veracity. And the essence of leadership is that trust. So a leader who violates trust in a fundamental and public manner is ipso facto no longer a leader. (“Are All Sins Created Equal?”)

And I believe he’s right.

God Hates Ministerial Hypocrisy

Now, I want to turn so badly to the success of the pastoral ministry, but before we get there, I want to apply what I’ve said so far to those of you here today who have been victims of priestly failure. I have in mind people who have seen in ministers of the word enough hypocrisy and expediency and inconsistency and worldliness and partiality and greed and cowardice and pettiness and harshness and insensitivity, that you have stamped a big question mark over the whole Christian enterprise. You have built a wall, perhaps — in your soul, in your heart — that keeps out anything from the Christian world, because you just aren’t sure you want to have anything to do with that mess anymore.

Now, there is a word in this text to people like that here this morning, and I want to paraphrase it as best I can. Let me paraphrase what I think God is saying to that kind of person here this morning, to the victims of priestly failure. Here’s what he’s saying:

I hate ministerial hypocrisy ten thousand times more than you do, and I intend to spread dung on the faces of ministerial hypocrites — those who have forsaken my glory, departed from my ways, teach for hire, and cause people to stumble. “Vengeance is mine; I will repay” (Hebrews 10:30). Don’t carry it; it is mine, and I will repay with vengeance vastly worse than you can imagine in your little vindictive moments.”

What a tragedy it would be this morning if anyone turned away from the glory — the unimpeachable glory — of Jesus Christ, the King of kings, because of a hypocritical demeanor or a failure of one of his messengers, when God himself intends to spread dung on the face of that minister, because he loves you and hates it when his glory is profaned. Wouldn’t that be an ironic tragedy if you let that hypocrite drag you to hell with him? Don’t let that happen. Don’t let Satan use his lightning-cloaked ministers of the word to drag you to hell with them. That’s what he’s saying in this text to victims of priestly failure.

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast. As you page through the new APJ book, you’ll see some of the ways we’ve talked about election and predestination over the years. The fallout of this doctrine of God’s sovereignty over who is saved in the end leads to many, many questions about whether this is fair or unfair and whether election excuses the non-elect from their unbelief. You’ll see those themes compiled on pages 355–64.

We’re right back into this theme today in an email question from a listener named John. “Hello, Pastor John! I have often heard nonbelievers blaming God for not electing them and giving them a new heart to have faith. How can I persuade them that it is not God’s fault but their own unbelief? My friend’s son professed to be a Christian and even evangelized people and led people to God. But later, while in college, he realized he was not a true believer and left the faith. He now blames God for not electing him. How would you counsel this young man?”

Well, let me clarify immediately that I do agree with the premise that there is such a thing as unconditional election by God — namely, that everyone whom God decisively saves, whom he brings out of darkness to light, brings out of the bondage of sin and unbelief, he does not decide to do that on the spur of the moment, as though there were no plan. Rather, he saves in accordance with his infinite wisdom and plan, which he has had in mind forever. Ephesians 1:4 says, “[God] chose us in [Christ] before the foundation of the world.” So, when he saved me, he saved me according to an electing plan.

Physically Free, Morally Bound

So, the question being asked is this: Why are people whom God does not save according to his purpose and plan nevertheless accountable? That is, they are not able to relieve themselves of the responsibility to believe and trust God because God has not planned to save them.

“God has his wise and holy reasons for why he does not overcome the rebellion of everyone.”

Now, I think a helpful place to begin in talking about the accountability of people to embrace and treasure the truth of God that they have access to is to distinguish two kinds of inability, because the kind of objection we’re dealing with here is that someone is saying, “I am required to believe, but I don’t have the ability to believe. And not having the ability to believe means I’m not responsible to believe.” These two kinds of inability that I’m talking about are moral inability and physical inability.

Physical inability is when you’re required to do something, but you do not have the physical ability to do it. For example, you’re chained to a pillar in a burning house, and you’re commanded to realize there’s a fire and to get out, but the chains physically keep you from moving. So, in that case, we would say that you are not accountable for remaining in the house. You may have wanted with every will in you to move and get out, but you were physically unable.

But there’s another kind of inability, which we call moral inability. You’re not physically limited or restrained, but your moral preferences — what you experience as good and bad, pleasing and displeasing, desirable and undesirable — are so strong in one direction that you may be unable to act contrary to those preferences. So, this time, you may be in the burning house, and you are not physically restrained at all, but you love what you’re doing in this house at this moment. You love it so much, you prefer it so much, you desire it so much, you find it so pleasing that you will not even believe every credible testimony that the house is on fire and you must get out, and you die.

So, you are physically free, but you are morally bound. You are in bondage to act according to those overpowering desires and die.

God’s Sovereign Grace

Now, I think the Bible teaches that if you are not free in the physical sense, you are not responsible to act according to the truth. You are physically unable to see or do (Romans 1:18–23, if we had time to talk about it — I’ll let you look it up). But if you are not free in the moral sense because your desires are so corrupt and so contrary to truth, you are nevertheless responsible to act according to the truth (Romans 2:4–5). Responsibility to forsake sin and trust Christ is not nullified because of our sinful desires, because they’re so strong that we are morally unable to turn away from sin.

In election, God freely chose, graciously chose, to set people free from this bondage of moral inability — to set people free from loving evil so much that they are morally unable to choose the good. None of us would be saved if God had not done this for us. The final and decisive answer to why I or you believed in Jesus and were set free from our bondage to the love of self and sin is the sovereign grace of God. As the apostle Paul said, God made us alive when we were dead (Ephesians 2:5). God granted us to believe (Philippians 1:29). God overcame our hardness against him (Ephesians 4:18). God gave us the ability to see the glory of Christ and the true and desirable Christ hanging on the cross (2 Corinthians 4:6).

“You cannot use non-election as an excuse for loving the dark more than the light.”

He does this for millions of people, and it is owing to nothing in us. It is free. God has his wise and holy reasons for why he does not overcome the rebellion of everyone. The fact that God does — in his mercy and the freedom of his grace — overcome the sinful corruption and rebellion and resistance of many does not mean he’s obliged to do it for anybody. Nobody deserves it, and nobody has a right to complain if he does not do it for them.

Final Verdict

So, let’s imagine a person coming to me as a pastor and saying to me, “Pastor, I believe that God has not loved me and has not set me free from my sin and my unbelief because I am not elect. And therefore, I believe God is to be blamed. He’s guilty of evil.” I would say to him, “How do you know that you are not among the elect?”

Now, perhaps he would say, “Because he hasn’t taken away my rebellion,” to which I would say, “But that does not prove you’re not elect, because he might take away that rebellion in the next hour or the next day or year. So really, how do you know that you are not elect?”

“Well,” he might say, “maybe I don’t know for sure I’m not elect, but if I’m not elect, then I’m not responsible to believe,” to which I would say, “Why don’t you believe and receive Jesus right now? You can’t say it’s because you’re not elect — you don’t know that. And you can’t know that ever, till the day you die. You can never say with any authority, ‘I’m not elect.’ You don’t know. But you can know that you are elect because only the elect receive Jesus. So, tell me right now, why don’t you believe and so prove that you are elect?”

Now, I don’t know what he’s going to say at this point. He might be honest and say, “Because I don’t find him very attractive. I don’t find Jesus compelling.” Or “I don’t find his way of life that he requires of me to be desirable.” Or “I don’t like Christians.” Or “I don’t think the Bible is true.”

I will say, “That’s right. That’s right. And if those are your last words, they will be your condemnation at the last day — not the fact that you are not elect. That fact will not enter into your judgment at all. You were presented with Christ — the most valuable, beautiful person in the universe — and you did not find him to be true or desirable. That will be the case against you at the last day. You cannot use non-election as an excuse for loving the dark more than the light. You will be self-condemned.”

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15666541/five-reasons-for-marital-faithfulness