Thursday, November 24, 2022

 

Thursday, November 24, 2022


Psalms 56; 57

Malachi 2:1-16

Revelation 12:7-18


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.


What is the difference between a priest and a lay Christian? It depends on who you ask. The Roman Catholic answer would involve something about the “ontological shift”, the change of view from before and after ordination. An Anglican would have to say something about being chosen out of the congregation to speak God’s word back to that congregation. Other denominations use different terms: pastor, minister and so on. Whatever the case, there is always a sense of separation.


The job description we read today in Malachi might blur that line between priest and laity. Particularly when we read it in our own historical and geographical moment, where Christianity is more of a cultural memory than a consensus, with nothing being offered to replace it.


If we love the Lord Jesus, we are drawn to Him in prayer, Bible study and worship. Some Christians do those things more often than others. But the responsibility placed upon any of us is the same. God has given us lips to speak, and as people walking with one foot in the spiritual realm, we have words of divine knowledge and instruction to share with our neighbours.


That knowledge and instruction comes from a place that is different to any other religion, spiritual discipline or philosophy. The fact that our faith is rooted in something external to ourselves is that difference. Every worldview that people are trying to advance, whether it is the blind faith of atheism, the unnecessary complication of philosophy, or the navel-gazing of whatever new Hindu-Buddhist-New Age hybrid has come along, focuses on the self. It is about the individual bettering themselves.


The message of Jesus frees us from that effort. Jesus is the One who is external to us, who has put everything into its meaningful place, and gives us our peace and assurance because we rely on Him, who is unchanging, and not on us, who are lazy and capricious. All of us living in the post-New Testament era hold the responsibility with which Malachi charged the Temple priests; all of us have knowledge to guard and the instruction people seek. All of us are messengers of the LORD of hosts.


This is where we are at in Revelation today. The scroll and the seals; the angels and the trumpets; now the dragon and the woman: each describe the story of creation from fall to redemption from a different angle. We have the responsibility as well as the honour of joining the voices in heaven of announcing the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Messiah, for the accuser of our comrades has been thrown down. We are the ones who conquer satan and all that is evil by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of our testimony, who are unafraid of death, because we know that on the other side of death is life in Jesus.



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