Malachi, but similar to what we've done in previous weeks, I'd like to invite your attention to prior passages of scripture that will give us the backdrop and the context for what we will focus on in the book of Malachi. So please open your Bibles first to the book of Exodus, Exodus chapter 32, and we'll read 10 verses from that chapter. Exodus chapter 32 verses 21 through 30. And what we're looking for in this passage is particularly the role of the priest among the covenant people of God. The background to this chapter is that awful incident with the golden calf, where Moses is up on the mountain receiving the law of God. And yet, even as he is receiving God's law, God's people are rebelling against that law, having fashioned the golden calf to worship the true God in a false way, committing idolatry before him. So Exodus chapter 32, and we'll read beginning in verse 21. Exodus 32, starting in verse 21. Hear now the word of the living God. And Moses said to Aaron, What did this people do to you that you brought such a great sin upon them? So Aaron said, Do not let the anger of my Lord burn hot. You know the people that they are set on evil, for they said to me, Make us gods that shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him. And I said to them, whoever has any gold, let him break it off. So they gave it to me and I cast it into the fire and this calf came out. Now, when Moses saw that the people were unrestrained for Aaron had not restrained them to their shame among their enemies, then Moses stood in the entrance of the camp and said, whoever is on the Lord's side, come to me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together to him. And he said to them, Thus says the Lord God of Israel, Let every man put his sword on his side and go in and out from entrance to entrance throughout the camp, and let every man kill his brother, even every man his companion, every man his neighbor. So the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses, and about three thousand men of the people fell that day. Then Moses said, consecrate yourselves today to the Lord, that he may bestow on you a blessing this day. For every man has opposed his son and his brother. Now it came to pass on the next day that Moses said to the people, you have committed a great sin. So now I will go up to the Lord. Perhaps I can make atonement for your sin. And now please turn to the book of Numbers. A few books over, the book of Numbers, and we'll look at chapter 25. Once again, the people of God involved in great sin, and the priests of God, at least one priest of God, rising up in response. Numbers chapter 25, and we'll look at verses 1-13. Again, hear God's Word. Now Israel remained in Acacia Grove, and the people began to commit harlotry with the women of Moab. They invited the people to do the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods. So Israel was joined to Baal of Peor, and the anger of the Lord was aroused against Israel. Then the Lord said to Moses, Take all the leaders of the people and hang the offenders before the Lord out in the sun, that the fierce anger of the Lord may turn away from Israel. So Moses went to the judges of Israel, every one of you kill his men who were joined to Baal of Peor. And indeed, one of the children of Israel came and presented to his brethren a Midianite woman in the sight of Moses and in the sight of all the congregation of the children of Israel who were weeping at the door of the tabernacle of meeting. Now when Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose from among the congregation and took a javelin in his hand. And he went after the man of Israel into the tent and thrust both of them through, the man of Israel and the woman, through her body. So the plague was stopped among the children of Israel. And those who died in the plague were 24,000. Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Phinehas, the son of Eliezer, the son of Aaron the priest, has turned back my wrath from the children of Israel, because he was zealous with my zeal among them, so that I did not consume the children of Israel in my zeal. Therefore, say, behold, I give to him my covenant of peace. And it shall be to him and his descendants after him a covenant of an everlasting priesthood, because he was zealous for his God and made atonement for the children of Israel. Now turn with me please to the book of Malachi, the last book in the Old Testament. You will see that the acts of the priests, both in Exodus and Numbers, those priests who were zealous for God's glory, were no longer done among God's people. Times had changed and had changed very much for the worse. Malachi chapter 2. And we'll look at verses 1 through 12. Malachi 2 verses 1 through 12. Again, this is God's word. And now, O priests, this commandment is for you. If you will not hear and if you will not take it to heart to give glory to my name, says the Lord of hosts, I will send a curse upon you and I will curse your blessings. Yes, I have cursed him already because you do not take it to heart. Behold, I will rebuke your descendants and spread refuse on your faces, the refuse of your solemn feasts, and one will take you away with it. Then you shall know that I have sent this commandment to you that my covenant with Levi may continue, says the Lord of hosts. My covenant was with him one of life and peace, and I gave them to him that he might fear me. So he feared me and was reverent before my name. The law of truth was in his mouth and injustice was not found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and equity and turned many away from iniquity. For the lips of a priest should keep knowledge, and people should seek the law from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts. But you have departed from the way. You have caused many to stumble at the law. You have corrupted the covenant of Levi, says the Lord of hosts. Therefore, I also have made you contemptible and base before all the people. Because you have not kept my ways, but have shown partiality in the law. Have we not all one father? Has not one God created us? Why do we deal treacherously with one another by profaning the covenant of our fathers? Judah has dealt treacherously and an abomination has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem. For Judah has profaned the Lord's holy institution, which he loves. He has married the daughter of a foreign God. May the Lord cut off from the tents of Jacob, the man who does this, being awake and aware, yet who brings an offering to the Lord of hosts. Let's pray now and ask God's blessing on the proclamation of his word. Our Father, your word is holy and it is infallible because you are holy and infallible. We thank you for giving us your word and we pray, Heavenly Father, that your spirit would be active among us now, that your word would penetrate and pierce our hearts, that we would be convicted by the searing heat of your law, that we might be able to repent and bask in the glowing light of the gospel. Heavenly Father, grant now that your word would be proclaimed in truth and that it would be received with faith and love. For we pray this in the name of Jesus Christ and for the sake of his glory and his righteousness. Amen. How is love for God shown? It is an easy thing, and it is often a frequent thing, among people who claim to know God, to claim love for God. Love for God, reverence for God, honor and fear before the Lord is easily claimed, but how is it proven? Well, the Lord Jesus Christ tells us in John 14, verse 15, If you love me, you will keep my commandments. Now, you might be tempted to look at that passage as a bit of an ultimatum. Jesus there saying, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. But the passage is not so much an ultimatum as a simple statement of cause and effect. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. Cause and effect. True affection for God, true reverence for his holy name is expressed in affection for his holy commands. And affection for his holy commands, his law, results in the action of obedience. And so, in short, to love God is to love God's law. And it's easy to see, if we look at it, the link between God and his law and why loving God is ultimately a matter of loving his law. You see, God's commands, God's law, which factors so prominently in our passage this morning, His statutes are expressions of his perfect character. And we can see the connection. For instance, why is it wrong to murder? Well, it's wrong to murder because people are made in the image of God and because God is a God of life. And we dare not strike down the life. We dare not murder an image bearer. Why must we observe the Sabbath? Why must we observe the Lord's Day? Because God himself observed the Lord's Day. He set aside the seventh day in creation as a day of rest for himself. You see the connection between God and his law, and we see that, therefore, affection for God's law is ultimately affection for God, because it is inextricably bound to his character. Well, the priests in the days of Malachi did not love God. By and large, they did not love God. They did not revere Him. As we've seen over the past several weeks, they did quite the opposite. They despised Him. They despised His name. They despised His ordinances. And here, in our passage, particularly Malachi 2, 3-9, We see the expression of that lack of reverence for God, that expression of that lack of love for God in the fact that the priest did not teach God's holy law. They did not preach and they did not teach God's holy law. Four times in these seven verses, the term Torah is used. God is calling his people to faithfulness to his law, and the people who should have done that proclaiming and done that preaching, the priests, were not doing it. People were not hearing the law from the priest's mouth. Rather, they were being made to stumble at the law because the priests were not proclaiming it. If you love me, the Lord says you will keep my commandments. And for the priest, it wasn't just a matter of keeping those commandments. It was a matter of teaching them. But they refused to do it. They did not teach the law correctly, they did not teach it at all. They despised the law because ultimately they despised God and their descendants. As a result, those priests who would come after them were cursed. Now, because the priests in the days of Malachi did not preach God's law, they were disqualified from pointing the people to God's grace. They were disqualified from pointing the people to salvation in the Lord. The sacrificial system, and we'll talk more about this as we go, but the sacrificial system was designed in order to remind people of their need for God's grace and that great sacrifice who would come, the Lord Jesus Christ. And thus, because the priest did not preach God's law, God disqualified them from offering the right sacrifices. And so the people as a whole were not pointed to grace. They were not pointed to the Lord Jesus Christ himself. Unless you understand the law, unless you understand the law of God, you cannot understand the grace of God in Jesus Christ. And so friends, what does that mean in our day? Or rather, how does that translate into our life situation? For we have a day in which the broad evangelical church does not love God's law and does not preach God's law. In fact, an entire section of the Bible, the biggest section of the Bible, is left out from many preaching services, from many preaching philosophies. We have pastors, preachers who will not preach God's law, who will not preach his righteous demands. And in our own hearts, we are often greedy for forgiveness. We are greedy for grace. But we are not hungry for obedience to God's law, the result of grace. And so this passage challenges us as to our affection for God by causing us, particularly those who are called to gospel ministry and preaching the word of God, by causing us to evaluate our affection for his word, for his law. All of us are called to love God's law. Some of us are called particularly to preach vocationally God's law, but all of us are called to proclaim it and to be conscionable hearers of God's law. Our affection for his law is our affection ultimately for him. And we'll see this developed as we go through the passage. Now, again, the priest had failed miserably to preach God's law. And their sin is summed up by God in this passage by saying that they had corrupted God's covenant with Levi. Please look back to Malachi chapter 2 and look particularly at verses 7 and 8 once again. For the lips of a priest should keep knowledge, and people should seek the law from his mouth. For he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts, but you have departed from the way you have caused many to stumble at the law. You have corrupted the covenant of Levi, says the Lord of hosts. That's a summary of what these priests had done. They had corrupted the covenant of Levi. Well, what was this covenant and with whom was it made? Well, the passage is not dealing so much with a covenant made with one specific person, with Levi himself, but rather the entire tribe of Levi, and in particular, those priests from that tribe. The covenant that God speaks of here in this passage is his covenant with the priesthood. As we looked at last week, the priests were meant to preach and teach God's word, to offer up sacrifices on behalf of God's people. The Levites were the tribe chosen by God to represent him to the people and to offer those sacrifices, to preach and to teach God's word. Now, when then was this covenant made? Interestingly, there is no specific covenant making ceremony recorded in the Old Testament regarding this covenant. There's no specific formal act of covenant between God and the tribe of Levi recorded. Now certainly the requirements for consecration to the priesthood are recorded and they are spelled out in exacting detail, but no formal act of covenant making is found. However, Language similar to that idea of covenant making is used, and it is used particularly when the priests of God are seen standing for the Lord against the sins of the people. When, as we read in the book of Exodus and in the book of Numbers, when the priest stood for the law of God, And when they carried out God's dictates against the sinful people, then they are being described as being consecrated or set apart for the Lord. The terms of a covenant. Again, we saw that in Exodus and Numbers. These were shining moments for the priesthood. And those were relatively rare shining moments in the Old Testament, but they did happen. The priest on those horrible days of idolatry, those horrible days of sin, rose up in defense of God's honor, in defense of his righteousness, and they executed God's justice among the people. Those kinds of moments, those kinds of actions are reflected in the language of verses 5 and 6 of our passage, what the priest should have been doing all along. Verse 5, my covenant was with Him one of life and peace. And I gave them to Him that He might fear me. So He feared me and was reverent before my name. The law of truth was in His mouth and injustice was not found on His lips. He walked with me in peace and equity and turned many from iniquity. When the priests of God, like in those situations we looked at, were living up to what they had been called to do, those shining moments, those rare shining moments in the Old Testament, than they kept before the people the covenant that God had made with Levi. So it was in Exodus and in Numbers in those instances. But as you read those passages, as you read those passages in the book of Exodus and in the book of Numbers, when you read about the priest glorifying God, when you read about their zeal for his name, were you disturbed at all? Were you disturbed by what the rest of the passage indicated? What the priests actually did in standing for the Lord? They slaughtered thousands of people. And God was honored in that display of their zeal for His glory. Remember the violence of those passages, especially with Phineas, who drove a spear through a couple literally as they were in the act of physical adultery. Were those things disturbing and is the connection between those things and the priest standing for God's law and God delighting in them disturbing. Now, it's one thing to get queasy at those kinds of passages and to recognize the violence there and to be unsettled by the violence in and of itself, and certainly that's legitimate. And we should not take a perverse pleasure in violence in and of itself by no means. But were you offended by what the priest did? Did you think that it was unjust? And if so, why? One thing to remember as we think back to those passages and what the priest did in standing for the law and the righteousness of God is that this was not a matter of vigilante justice. This was not just any citizen taking up the sword in his hand and pursuing his own vendetta, his own vengeance. You see, the priest in those days had the power of the sword. They were given the authority of the government. In essence, they were the government over the people of God. And so they had both the authority to proclaim God's word as well as to execute the justice that the people deserve for disobeying it. Broadly speaking, the government was the church. God had given them that right, and they were acting on his judgment. So this was not an issue of vigilante justice. This was sanctioned by God, and the priest had the authority to act in that manner. And so given that fact, What then would be the source of offense taken at passages like that? If we are offended at what the priest did, knowing full well that they have a God-sanctioned right to do it, why would we be offended? Would it not be that we thought the punishment did not fit the crime? We offended by that notion of the priest striking the people down because we think, well, that's way too harsh. I mean, what an unjust punishment that goes way beyond what those people deserved. If so, and if we do take up that offense, then we have betrayed the fact that we do not understand the depth and the seriousness of sin. I remember what was happening. Remember, even in the case of Phineas, those two people caught in the act of harlotry. That union that existed between those people in that moment was a graphic display of the union of God with an idol, a foreign god. The people of God had joined themselves, and in that case, quite literally, with the daughter of a foreign god. It was the essence of harlotry. It was idolatry. It was blasphemy. It was spitting in God's face, right in the presence of God and his people, even in the place where they were to worship him, in the tribes of Israel. And so this was the utmost evil being portrayed. And so was that evil not worthy of judgment? And yet, friends, as we read passages like that, do we not recoil? And if we recoil, is it because we are offended at God's law and that we do not recognize the depth and the seriousness of sin? Think of it as a culture. Wouldn't we be outraged if such a high standard of justice was forced upon us? Wouldn't we be terrified and even indignant and angry if those same civic laws that were seen in the Old Testament were hoisted upon us today and were pressed upon us? We would be outraged. We would be indignant. We want our freedom. We want our Bill of Rights. We want the ability to defy God and we want it guaranteed in writing. In fact, as a culture, we want that freedom to defy God so bad that we are willing to kill for it. And that is indicated by our national obsession with killing babies. We want freedom and autonomy from God's law so desperately that we will kill the most defenseless people among us, and we will scream like banshees when someone threatens that so-called freedom. And so it's interesting to note that it's not violence in and of itself that offends our culture. We kill millions of babies a year. It's not violence that offends our culture, but it is submission to God's law that really offends us. And speaking of our culture broadly, but speaking as a church, as the people of God, the Church of God in America, we may not fare in our hearts any better than our culture. You see, much of our contemporary Christian culture is clamoring for the Ten Commandments to be put back in the public schools. But are we willing as a church to bow beneath the weight of those commandments ourselves? Do we truly acknowledge that these commands of God are righteous commands, that they rightfully rest in condemnation over all of those who are in violation of them? Do we recognize that disobedience to such commands are worthy of death? As a broad evangelical church, we're okay with the Ten Commandments being posted somewhere as basically a historical artifact. We're okay with the Ten Commandments as long as they have no teeth behind them in this life, as long as there is no real threat to us in terms of obeying them. We think it's good to have them posted on the walls of a school, but by and large, we do not want them in our hearts. We don't want to recognize the full impact and the demand of God's law. And the fruits of that lack of attention, lack of reverence for God's law are evident in the broad church. There is very little, if any, preaching on God's law in the broad evangelical church today. Sin is not taken very seriously. There are situations in which even worship leaders in churches are committing adultery, and it's known by the church, and yet they still are allowed to lead those people in worship. God's law is not taken seriously. There is little, if any, talk about hell and the fact that hell is a reality. We don't even like to talk about the entire Old Testament. We think of the Old Testament because of passages like we read as indicative of a God of wrath, a mean God who's obsessed with violence, as opposed to the kinder and more tolerant God in the New Testament. And so we deep six the Old Testament and focus only on the new. We even produce Bibles that have nothing but the New Testament in them. Without the very foundation for it, the Old Testament backing it. In short, as a whole, and speaking broadly, we hate God's law. We resent it. We think it far too harsh. And remember, friends, to despise God's law is to despise God himself. This is what God says to the priests over and over in the book of Malachi. You have despised my name. How have we despised your name? Because you consider the performing of the law. You consider the worship rituals that he had ordained a burden, a wearisome toil that was not worthy of their greatest affection and attention. They despised God's law. They did not preach it. They did not teach it because they despised God himself. Now, we are very quick to criticize the Israelites in this regard. It's easy to look at the priest of the days of Malachi and say, what a horrible thing. It's easy to look at the Israelites and the incident with the golden calf and to say, this is so awful. I mean, can you imagine people who are so stubborn, so rebellious that as the very law of God is being given on the mountain, they are literally just maybe 100 yards away defying that law in open sight of the God giving it to them. What an awful thing. What a horrible thing. And it is. But friends. How would we do? If, as a society, we were held to the same standards that they were. How would we do as a church in America or even the church here or even within our own hearts, if breaking the Ten Commandments was punishable by the civil government? Well friends, the character of God has not changed. In fact, our book Malachi proclaims that. I am the Lord. I do not change. Malachi chapter 3. He is no more tolerant of sin in our day than he was in the Old Testament era. Now our situations are different. We as the church are not the same civic entity that Israel was. And so when we're thinking this way, and when we talk about what to do as a result of our sin, we're by no means advocating that the church takes up the sword and begins punishing people through the sword and through physical coercion for sin. No, the weapons we fight with are not the weapons of this world, as we looked at last week. But make no mistake, brothers and sisters in Christ, we are at war. Prince in a war that is every bit as deadly and every bit as violent, though maybe not physically so as what the priests in the Old Testament were involved in. We are called as Christians, we are called as the bride of Christ to expose sin by proclaiming God's word. We are called, and some of us particularly, are called to preach God's righteousness with the backing of the authority of the Church. And all of us are called to battle sin in our own culture and to battle sin by God's grace in our own hearts and lives. We are at war with sin. Well, how do we fight? What are the weapons of our warfare? We fight by proclaiming God's word. All of it. The whole counsel of God, Old and New Testament, law and gospel, everything together is necessary as the weapons of our warfare. Now, think of the language of the New Testament when it describes the gospel. It often describes the gospel and the word of God going out into the world in military terms, in combative terms. After all, what is this book called? It's called The Sword of the Spirit. And as the gospel goes out into all the world, it subdues the hearts of sinners as it has done for us, for every one of us who knows Jesus Christ. The spread of the gospel is described in military terms, 2 Corinthians 10, 4 and 5. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but they have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God. And we take every captive. I'm sorry. We take every thought captive to obey Christ. In Revelation, Jesus is described as this great and avenging judge. He is riding on the horse, he is coming back for judgment, and out of his mouth proceeds a sharp two-edged sword, which, of course, is the Word of God. And with the Word of God, he makes war with all of those who have rebelled against it. And he brings judgment upon them. And Revelation describes that in graphic, bloody detail, as we read back in the Old Testament, a similar detail. And so, yes, the weapons that we fight with are not physical. The church does not have the power of the state to coerce belief, to attempt to do that. But this war is real and it is deadly. In fact, it is even more real and more deadly than any physical war waged in this world. Jesus said in Matthew 10, 28, do not fear those who kill the body, but who cannot kill the soul. Rather, fear Him who can destroy both body and soul in hell. We, as the Church, are called to proclaim the law of that God and to call people to faith and repentance, to grace in Jesus Christ, that Judge. Brothers and sisters, we are called to battle for our Savior, to proclaim His Word to a world that hates it, to battle sin in the culture and in our own lives. Do you, brothers and sisters in Christ, take that call seriously? Especially those of you who are called to the gospel ministry, those of you who are in the process of discovering perhaps that call on your life to authoritatively stand before God's people and to proclaim his word. Do you take that call to arms seriously? Or for all of us, does the fact that we are not called to physical warfare allow you to feel less urgent in spiritual warfare? Do you recognize, friends, the seriousness, the life and death nature of battling sin in your life, battling by the grace of God? Or have you, as the Israelites in Exodus and Numbers and in Malachi, have you compromised with the enemy? Friends, how can we wage war against the flesh when we are sleeping with the enemy? When we are flirting with and committing adultery with the very thing that we oppose, sin, unrighteousness, that which defies God's law. That takes us back to the time of Phineas, when God's people were doing just that, even physically and literally. And friends, our sin is every bit as serious as that which was portrayed there in those awful acts of idolatry in the Old Testament. Our sin is every bit as serious and it is failure to love God's law. It is failure to proclaim God's law, which prevents us from seeing sin as such. When we don't love God's law, when we don't proclaim God's law, we do not recognize sin for what it is. We do not see the deep evil of it, nor do we recognize the danger of pursuing and holding onto it and making treaties with the enemy while we claim to be fighting him. And so the great call goes out to us in our day, you who are described in the book of First Peter, as we saw last week, as priests of the living God. The great call goes out to the Church of Jesus Christ, who is on the Lord's side, who loves God's law, who recognizes the righteousness of his commands and who longs for his soul to be conformed to those commands, who cries out for the grace of Christ because of our inability to keep those commands. Who sees the beauty and the freedom of a life lived in victory over sin? Who hates sin and who rages against it? Who is on the Lord's side? See, it was the job of the priests to stand up, especially among the people of God, to stand up and to say, we are. We are on the Lord's side. And they did that for that brief shining moment with Moses in the situation with a golden calf. The priests were to say, we will serve the God who has called us to be zealous for his law, for his worship, for his holiness and his glory. We will preach God's word. We will teach the people to love God's law, to repent and to seek his grace. Notice again with me verses five and six of Malachi chapter two, this is what they should have done. My covenant was with Him, one of life and peace. And I gave them to Him that He might fear me, so He feared me and was reverent before my name. The law of truth was in His mouth and injustice was not found on His lips. He walked with me in peace and equity and turned many away from iniquity." Notice that connection between the last part of verse 5 and the first part of verse 6. And I gave them to him that he might fear me. So he feared me and was reverent before my name. The law of truth was in his mouth. Injustice was not found on his lips. In other words, among the priests, reverence for God, love for God, standing in awe at the name of God, was worked out and expressed in teaching God's law. The law was to be in their mouth. No injustice was to be on their lips. In other words, they were not to pervert God's law. They were not to avoid it by refusing to teach it. But again, as we saw, the priests in the days of Malachi failed miserably. They hated God's law because they hated God. They caused many to stumble at that law. And because they did not press upon the people the holy demands of God's law, they could not point those people to the glory of God's grace. You see, the law of God crushes us. We know that we are incapable of keeping it when we truly recognize the holiness of God's law and its exacting demands for obedience. We recognize we ought to recognize quickly that we can't do it. We can't keep those commands. We are dead in our sin and of ourselves. We have no righteousness within us. And in our natural state, we hate God's law. We resent it. And yet. And those of you who are brothers and sisters in Christ, you know this. When the Spirit of God grabs a hold of your heart, you recognize that God's law is righteous. You don't resent God's law because it's evil or it's harsh. You resent your own sin and your own inability to keep it. We know when the Spirit of God grabs a hold of our hearts that we are justly condemned by God's law and we offer no excuses. We want to obey it, but we know that we are incapable. We need his grace. We need the grace of Jesus Christ. We need one who loved God's law perfectly and who obeyed it perfectly. And of course, that one is the great high priest, the Lord Jesus Christ, the true priest of God's people. The priests of Malachi's day, the priests of the entire Old Testament institution of the priesthood, were to teach the people about that great high priest. They were to lead the people to faith in Jesus Christ by preaching his law, by showing the people the sacrificial system which pointed to the sacrifice of Christ. The sacrificial system was designed so that people would see their need of grace. As we read in Hebrews, the blood of animals could never take away sin. The people needed a perfect savior. But because the priests did not preach God's law, the people did not see their need for God's grace. They did not see their need for a Savior. They were led to stumble at the law. And God would judge the priests for failing to teach His Word. Look with me please again at verse 3. Behold, I will rebuke your descendants and spread refuse on your faces, the refuse of your solemn feast, and one will take you away with it. Then you shall know that I have sent this commandment to you, that my covenant with Levi may continue, says the Lord of hosts. Now, once again, here is some graphic language that we're liable to be offended by. God speaks of spreading refuse, of dung, of animal waste on the faces of the priests. Well, why does he say such a thing? Well, the design is, in a sense, to humiliate them, but that's not the idea. It's not some kind of cruel, undeserved mockery. It's just simply throwing refuse at someone. There's a much deeper meaning here. See, the refuse, the dung was part of the sacrifice, but it was the part of the sacrifice that was to be taken from the animal and was to be burned outside of the camp. The priest could not have that on them because it would make them literally and especially ceremonially unclean. That refuse was to be burned outside of the camp, and here God says, I will take that refuse and I will spread it on your face. In other words, the priests were unclean. They were ceremonially unfit to perform the sacrifices of God. They were a corrupt people disqualified from the office to which they had been called. And God says he will carry them away with that dung with that refuse because they were unclean. They were unfit. They were unworthy to represent him to the people. They hated his law and they hated him. And so God would curse their descendants, those priests who were to come after them. The priesthood, as it was in the days of Malachi, and for the next several centuries, as we know, would fall into utter ruin. Those who are meant to love God, to love his law, and to lead others in doing the same, despised God and his law and received the judgment for it. Again, These people, these priests, all of them, all of us, we need the perfect priest. We need someone who could fulfill God's covenant with the priesthood. And again, that is the Lord Jesus Christ. You see, friends, this is why Christ was so enraged when he came into the world, why he was so outraged and indignant at the leaders of the people of God at the time. The priests were not preaching God's law, and therefore they were not preaching God's grace. They were preaching laws that they had invented, legalistic standards, external standards, which held the people to a standard that they were not willing to abide by themselves. They had taken God's law, perverted it, and distorted it, and treated the teachings of men as the teachings of God. Preaching laws they had devised, adding on to God's law, and again, holding people under that illegitimate burden, keeping their attention away from the real thing. Christ, on the other hand, preached God's law. We see that especially and perhaps most explicitly in the Sermon on the Mount. Listen to Matthew 5, verses 21 and 22. You have heard that the ancients were told, you shall not commit murder. And whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court. Everyone who says to his brother you're good for nothing shall be guilty before the Supreme Council. And whoever says you fool shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell. Christ preached God's law. In essence, he blew the dust off of God's law. He was not disagreeing with the law of God. He wasn't saying God said in the Old Testament, but I say to you now, no, he was fulfilling God's law. He was bringing that law out into the light when it had been buried and obscured by the priests, the very people who were supposed to preach it. So we see the depth of God's law and how it permeates not just to our external acts, but into our very heart motivations before the Lord. The same is said with adultery. Adultery is not just physically having an immoral relationship with someone. Adultery, according to Jesus Christ and according to the law of God that he preached, is lusting after someone in your heart. Because you've already committed adultery with them in your heart. So friends, can you feel the suffocating power of God's law? Once again, we are crushed by God's law when we recognize its full impact, the righteous demands of God, and how heavily they weigh upon our soul. And the problem is not with the law, as Paul says later. The law is righteous. The problem is that we, in and of ourselves, are unrighteous. Therein lies the offense. The offense is us. We are unrighteous in and of ourselves. And so the thought of keeping such a law, such a law of absolute infinite holiness, drives us to utter despair. And that's exactly the point. That is what it is designed to do. Because then, and only then, do we see our need for grace. Do we see our need for Jesus Christ, the one who kept God's law perfectly, that perfect priest who took our sins upon himself and received the punishment for what we had done. When God's law is not preached, then sin is not revealed, and our need for Christ is not proclaimed and understood. We are made, when God's law is not preached, we are made to feel comfortable, excuse me, in our sin. We're made to think implicitly that we're really not that bad and all we need to do in life is just to try harder to love people and kind of pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps and just do our best and God will be honored by our sincere intentions. Well, friends, that is not the gospel. It's a perversion of the gospel. And yet that is what is preached from so many pulpits in our day by pastors who will not talk about sin, pastors who will not talk about the law of God and its righteous demands on our souls. The people who are under that preaching leave inevitably with the sense that they're not that bad, especially maybe as it compares to other people. Their sin is not that deep, if they call themselves sinners at all. Friends, if we say that our sin is not that bad, then what we're really saying is that God is not that holy, and the work of Christ is not that necessary. And so those churches and those pastors who do not preach God's law will not preach the cross, at least in terms of what the cross really means. Now the other angle of abuse in terms of our day when it comes to preaching God's law is when people do claim to preach God's law. They claim to believe in it and yet. The people who are under that preaching are left with the impression that if they just do enough good things, if their good works outweigh their bad works when it comes to heaven, then God will accept them. They know that there's a law that they're held to. And yet that law is not preached in its full depth and its full weight. And so they leave thinking that if I'm just a good enough person or if I come from the right kind of family, if I just do enough things to obey God, then hopefully by the end of my life, My good deeds will outweigh my bad deeds, and God will accept me." Friends, that's not the Gospel, that's Islam. That's any false religion when it comes down to it. Islam, the idea that at the end of our life, God sets before us a scale of balances, and hopefully our good deeds will outweigh our bad deeds, and Allah will be merciful to us. Of course this isn't the gospel. And remember this also, this is not the proclaiming of a holy God. Despite the fact that Muslims will claim God is holy. In fact, he is so holy he would never allow his son to be crucified. They sacrifice the very holiness of God. They do not truly preach the God's law. They preach abusive principles of men, not the idea of God's actual law of righteousness. And they are left with an entire planet full of people, billions of people who are hoping that their good works will outweigh their bad works in the face of an arbitrary God who holds their destiny in his hands. And the same thing, friends, can happen within so-called Christian circles. This, dear friends, though it is not expressed and advertised as such, is the theology of Rome. It is the theology of the Pope and of every priest that represents him. Now, they say that salvation is by faith and they say that salvation is by the grace of Jesus Christ. But friends, if you can fall from that grace, then you are not saved by grace. If justification, if the idea of being declared righteous in the sight of God can be lost, then you are not saved by God's grace. If you have to go to purgatory in order to work out the rest of your salvation, in order to get into heaven, you are lost. And you are serving a God who will weigh your works, good works against your bad works, and you are infiltrated with a works-based theology in the name of grace. And that is what makes the error of Rome so insidious and so ensnaring, is that it claims the grace of Jesus Christ, but at the same time pushes a works-based salvation every bit as much as that of Islam. That is why it's so insidious. So dear friends, do not be deceived. If you can leave the teaching of the Bible, or if you can leave someone who claims to be teaching the Bible with the impression that hopefully your good works outweigh those bad works, even if you claim that Christ is doing those good works, if you can hope for a short time in purgatory instead of a long time in purgatory, then you have been deceived by a false gospel. And ironically, you have never felt the true weight of God's law. We are not okay enough ourselves. An infinite number of our works could never satisfy the holy dictates of a holy God. It is only the flawless righteousness of Jesus Christ that can satisfy a holy God. And salvation in Him is not a matter of doing X, Y, and Z and hoping for a short purgatory. Salvation in Him is a matter of faith, of trusting in Jesus Christ by faith alone, knowing that it is only by grace that we can be saved. And if we are held by Jesus Christ, if we are saved by His grace, then we are, as one preacher said, twice gripped in the hands of eternity. No one, Jesus says in John 10, can ever take us from His grasp, nor from the grasp of the Father. We cannot lose our status before Him because it was not up to us to gain. It is His work, His righteousness, completely all-or-nothing salvation. The law of God causes us to realize that we are not acceptable to him in and of ourselves. Often you'll hear Christians say, come to Christ, he'll accept you just the way you are. That's not true. He can't accept you the way you are if you are lost and dead in sin, but he will change you. He will give you his spirit. If you cry out to Him in faith and repentance, He has given you His Spirit. He will save you completely and forever. And then you can live a life that is increasingly conformed to that holy standard of God's law. We serve a merciful Savior, the same God whose law is infinitely righteous and condemns us Gives us grace in Jesus Christ and in Christ we stand in his righteousness and God slams down the gavel looking at us and says innocent. Righteous because of the righteousness of my son. See preachers who will not use words like sin and hell and judgment in churches that we would call theologically liberal. Preachers who will not proclaim God's law are leading people to be stumbling at that law. They are exactly in ministering for Christ. They are exactly the opposite of Christ who preached more on hell than he did on heaven. God's law, when God's law is not loved, it is not preached. And then thousands of people in our day, thousands of people in the days of Malachi go to churches to worship services, thinking that they are okay with God. And they stumble at his law as they beat a path to hell. Again, it was the same in the days of Malachi, verse eight. of Malachi 2, but you have departed from the way you have corrupted the covenant of Levi, says the Lord of hosts. Those people were not taught God's law, they were not taught that God is holy and that he must be treated as such. They did not feel the weight of God's righteous demands upon their sinful souls. So again, the people needed that priest who would preach the law, who would love God's law and love God's people. And that priest came in Jesus Christ. Listen to Psalm 40, verses 8 through 10, as it describes our Lord and Savior. I delight to do your will, O my God, and your law is within my heart. I have proclaimed the good news of righteousness in the great assembly. Indeed, I do not restrain my lips, O Lord, you yourself know. I have not hidden your deliverance within my heart. I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation. I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness from the great congregation. As lawbreakers, we need a representative who fully loved God's law and who therefore kept it fully, and that is Christ. This is the key to understanding Jesus Christ and his work. Christ was driven to the cross not only by love for God's people, but by love for God's justice. This is why Paul says in Romans 3.26 that in the cross, God is both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Christ. You see, Christ knew that sin had to be punished. Christ would not suffer the glory of God to go denigrated, to be denigrated by somehow suggesting that God would redeem a people without punishing their sin. That would be the greatest injustice that could ever happen. And so out of love for God's people and out of love for God's law, our Savior marched to the cross and he bore the penalty for what you and I have done. He's died for the sins of his people, taking upon him our guilt and giving to us his righteousness. And that, friends, the idea of Christ's love for the law is what tells us and gives us a window into the agony of the cross. You see, it was not the physical brutality that truly agonized the soul of Christ, although certainly that was near unimaginable what he endured. It was not the physical brutality. That's what's always emphasized in our culture. No, Christ was the ultimate servant of the law. The law was in his heart. And that law which he himself had written, that law which he had fulfilled perfectly, was what condemned him because he took his people's sin upon himself. Consider the heartbreak of our Savior as he cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Jesus Christ, he who knew only perfect obedience to God's law, who loved God's law fully, who from all eternity had basked in the warm light of God's love and perfect pleasure, was now treated as a defier of the very law that he wrote. That is the agony of the cross. Jesus Christ was treated as if he were us, were we. And we in salvation are treated as if we had obeyed like Christ did, as if we loved the law of God as Christ did. Christ was the servant of God's law. He was its greatest preacher, unlike those priests in the days of Malachi. He is the great preacher of righteousness. And friends, he is not only the preacher of righteousness, he is the giver of righteousness. He gives his righteousness to those who come to him in faith and repentance. The priest could not do this. So friends, what does it mean for you today to be in Christ? If you don't know Christ, come to Him, repent and come to Him, and He gives you His perfect righteousness. If you do know Christ, think of what it means to be in Him, to be united to Him. The law no longer curses you. You are free from the burden of the law. There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And now, as a redeemed child of God, you can delight in God's law in your inner being. You know it is righteous, and by God's grace, you are conformed more and more to the image of the one who kept that law perfectly. And you can, in Jesus Christ, with the psalmist, say, oh, how I love your law. Remember, as we started with, love for God's law is ultimately love for God himself. Imagine, friends, a society like this. Imagine if our culture truly loved God's law. Imagine if our churches truly loved God's law. Imagine if, in the depths of our own being, we ultimately and perfectly loved God's law, were molded and shaped according to the pattern of the holy law of God. Brothers and sisters in Christ, do not your hearts long for this. As you behold sin in the culture and in your own heart, do you not long for God's righteous law to prevail, for people to love it, and for true justice and equity to dominate and permeate this life? Well, if that is the longing of your heart as a child of God, and if you repent over and hate your sin, then hear God's word, hear God's law. Repent of your sin and cast yourselves upon the one whose heart is completely conformed to that law. And as a redeemed child of God, forever kept by the power and righteousness of Christ, By his grace, battle against sin, wage war against the sin in our culture by proclaiming the gospel, by proclaiming God's law, wage war by his grace against the sin in your own life by preaching God's law to yourself and listening as it is preached to you. Particularly to those of you who are preachers and ordained to be such, and those of you who are along that path, be preachers of God's law. But don't you dare preach God's law without preaching His grace. You cannot preach one without the other and do justice to either. Preach the law of God. Have people by God's spirit feel the full weight of that law and yet preach the grace of Christ who lifts the burden of the law from us so that it is now a delight as we see our lives increasingly conformed to it. Preach Jesus Christ, the glorious and gracious Savior who loved that law and kept it perfectly so that he could give us his righteousness. All of you who are called by the name of Jesus Christ, love his law, and therefore love his grace, and ultimately love him. Cast yourselves always upon the great preacher of God's righteousness. To love God's law is to love Him. Let us, by God's grace, be continued to be conformed more to the image of Jesus Christ, the great preacher of the law, the one who kept it on our behalf, our righteous God and our glorious Savior. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, you are perfect. You are infinitely holy. The very angels of heaven, who have not personally known sin, surround your throne and hide their eyes for the sheer radiance of your glory and holiness. And they proclaim, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts. Father in heaven, may we love your law so that that too would be our cry. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts. May we feel the searing heat of your law so that we may embrace the glorious freedom of the gospel. Heavenly Father, forgive us for making treaties with the enemy. Forgive us, Father, for claiming to oppose sin and yet willingly clinging to it. Grant us grace. Grant us a greater experience in this life of that salvation which our Savior has purchased for us. Grant that we would grow in the grace and the knowledge of Christ, that we would be more conformed to that righteous law, that we would love God's law, your law, increasingly from our hearts. For we know that that is the reality with our Savior, and we long to be like Him. We thank you that when our lives are over, we will be. not because of what we have done or what we have deserved, but all and wholly because of Christ, who is our righteousness. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, our righteous Lord and Savior. Amen.