(upbeat music) - 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 his doctrine for the sake of his own soul and for the sake of the souls entrusted to him. 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. So we are grateful to God for you, each of you. 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, not watching their doctrine. And these situations are tragic and very painful and often devastating. The heartbreaking stories we hear bears this out. No church is immune from this. The compromise happens in huge suburban mega churches and it happens in very small rural country churches too.

And it was a problem even 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'll see today in Malachi 2, verses one to nine.

This text remains relevant for pastors today as Pastor John explained in 1987 in a sermon from about 34 years ago. Here now is Pastor John to explain. - But we noticed in verse seven of this text that that wasn't the only task of the priest, namely to sacrifice. Let's read verse seven.

The lips of a priest should guard knowledge and men 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. That's why it's so relevant because it's all around us today, ministerial failure and success. I ended with an overview last time and began what I wanna begin this morning, namely a list of these failures and then turn to the success of the ministry.

Let me give you that overview again. Verses two, eight and nine give us five failures in the priestly ministry, five pastoral failures. Verses five, six and seven 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 were the threats made against the priests, the pastors to sanction the commands in verses five to seven and to redeem them and get them to clean up their act with regard to their failures.

And those threats are found in verses two, three and nine. And it may be well to begin right here. Let's just start with the threats and then 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.

Goes like this, "You who taught others, did you not teach yourself? Think long and hard before you envy your pastors at the last day." And James said, "Let not many of you become teachers for they will be judged with greater strictness." Now let's read these threats. Verses two and three, and then I'll drop down to verse nine.

"If you will not listen, if you will not lay it to heart to give glory to my name," says the Lord of hosts, "then I will send a curse on you. I will curse your blessings. Indeed, I have already cursed them because you do not lay it to heart.

Behold, I will rebuke your offering or your seed," perhaps referring to the crops, "and spread dung on your faces. The dung of your sacrifices I will put and I will put you out of my presence." Now down to verse nine. "And so I make you despised and abased before all the people in as much as you have not kept my ways but have shown partiality in your teaching." Now there are four threats in those three verses.

Number one, verse two, "I will curse them." Number two, in verse two, "I will make your blessings a curse." That is, I think he means the words that you speak which are intended to be the blessing of the people, I'm gonna turn them into a plague upon the people.

Number three, in verse three, "I'm gonna rebuke your offspring or your crops," perhaps. The word seed could go either way there. In other words, the curse is gonna spread far beyond you, whether to your children or to your land. And finally, number four, "I am going to smear the dung of these mangy, broken-legged, blind sheep in your face." Or as verse nine explains, "I'm gonna make you despised and contemptible among the people." 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 towards the pastors of Israel.

He is angry because of five failures. Let's look at them. Number one, the failure of listening to God or failing to listen to God. Verse two, "If you will not listen." It's a failure because you can't herald what you can't hear. Number two, the failure to have a heart for the glory of God.

Verse two again, next phrase, "If you will not lay it to heart to give glory to my name," says the Lord. And that's the root of the matter, brothers and sisters. We're gonna see more clearly than ever this morning as we move to the success. 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, nor wide his ministry. Number three, they have turned aside from the ways of God and live lives out of sync with the teaching of God. Look at the first line of verse eight.

"You have turned aside from the way." And look again at verse nine. "I make you despised and abased before all the people inasmuch as you have not kept my ways." So the third failure is the failure of practicing what they preach. Their lives are way over here. They're not walking with God.

They say one thing and they're doing another thing. Number four, they have shown partiality in teaching. The last line of verse nine. "You have not walked in my ways, but you have shown 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.

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, give them to God and keep your pockets full. 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. They do what Micah chapter three, verse 11 describes. "The heads of Jerusalem give judgment for bribe. Its priests teach for hire." You hear that? "Its priests teach for hire.

Its prophets divine 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. Number five, the failure of what results from all of this in the middle of verse eight, do 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. Not because a sin in and of itself is of a different nature or quality, but 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, trusting his vision, reliability, wisdom, and veracity. And the essence of leadership is that trust. And so a leader who violates trust in a fundamental and public manner is ipso facto no longer a leader.

And I believe he's right. 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. Now, have in mind people who have seen in the 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, the victims of priestly failure. Here's what he's saying. I hate ministerial hypocrisy 10,000 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. Don't carry it. 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. - Amen.

That is a sobering but relevant word today. And more positively, Pastor John goes on to celebrate the glories of pastoring well in his sermon titled "The Glory of Priestly Success," preached on November 15th, 1987. The whole message is online at DesiringGod.org. This clip was sent in to us by Scott, a pastor in Atlanta, who was moved by this clip to rededicate his ministry to the glory of God and to double down on personal holiness.

So thank you, Scott, for sending in this selection. I had never heard this sermon before. It's very much appreciated. Well, our clips are now crowdsourced. You tell us what bits of Piper's sermons impacted you, and we share that clip with the APJ audience. And if you got one, email me.

Give me your name, hometown, the sermon title, the timestamp of where the clip happens in the audio, and then tell me how it impacted you. Put the word clip in a subject line of an email and send it to me at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. That's our email address, askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. Well, God is our refuge and our fortress.

And in the great refuge psalm of Psalm 91, we are given this glorious promise that he who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. It's the first verse of Psalm 91. So how do we do this? Like, how do we dwell in the shelter of the Most High?

I'm your host, Tony Reinke, and we are rejoined in studio with Pastor John for that when we return on Friday. We'll see you then. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)