THIS next verse from Malachi 2 describes the duty of the priest, that is for us in the New Testament, the minister of the Gospel. The Levitical priesthood had two roles. One was to offer mediatorial sacrifices to God for the atonement of the sin of the people, and their reconciliation before God. The other was to preserve the truth of God and declare it faithfully to the people of God. The first role of the Levitical priest is needed no more. This role was a temporary and an inadequate role. The sacrifices offered to God never really took away sin and cleansed the sinner. This role was temporary until the true, eternal, priest should come, and offer himself as a perfect sacrifice for sin. This priest we know as our Lord Jesus Christ, who was and is an eternal priest after the order of Melchisedek. He has offered on the cross a complete and all-sufficient sacrifice for the sin of the whole world, and for those who believe in him as their Saviour his blood shed for us cleanses us from all our sin, and reconciles us to God completely and forever. As our priest Jesus lives forever to make intercession for us before the throne of God, presenting his perfect and eternal sacrifice to God on our behalf. We now need no other priest than Jesus, and earthly, human, priests are not needed, and any who presume to be such a priest are defaming the name of Christ by saying by their acting as a priest that Christ as our eternal priest is deficient and failing, and needs some addition to his atoning work. This is tantamount to blaspheme.

The second role of the Levitical priesthood to preserve knowledge and teach the people continues, and is the true and supreme calling and role of ministers of the Gospel. This seventh verse of Malachi chapter two gives us the heart of this role, so let us now observe and meditate on this role.

MESSENGER OF THE LORD ALMIGHTY.

Here is the heart of the minister's role. He or she is a messenger of the Lord Almighty. The minister has the role of an ambassador for God. Paul speaks of his role as being an ambassador for Christ. This is a role of great privilege and importance. It is the Lord Almighty who gives them this role, and sends them out to proclaim his message. It is a sacred role. It is a role which places upon the messenger the sacred duty of being entirely faithful to the the message God gives the minister. The minister must never proclaim his or her own opinions or wisdom. The minister must speak only what comes from God. For the minister in this gospel age it means that he or she must be totally faithful to the Bible. There must be no room for judging the Word of God, or letting human wisdom decide what is acceptable in the Bible and which is not. The minister must be a diligent student of the Bible, seeking to increase in knowledge and understanding of all the revelation of God given in the Bible. The minister must have applied the message of the Bible to him or her self, so that God's word transforms and rules in all living, and so have experimental knowledge of the truth. The minister as a messenger of the Lord Almighty must seek always to hear the message of the Lord from the Bible that is appropriate for every occasion. This means a close walk in life in the presence of God. The minister must speak as the oracle of the Lord faithfully proclaiming the message God gives for each occasion. The minister must be faithful, and never hold back the truth of God given in the Bible in fear of how it might be received. Anything less than this role will be a dereliction of duty on behalf of the minister.

PESERVE KNOWLEDGE.

Malachi's message to the priests of his day was that with their lips they should preserve knowledge. We need to ask ourselves what the prophet is expressing when he says that the minister must preserve knowledge. The first question to be answered is as to what knowledge is being referred to, and the second question to be answered is as to how this knowledge is to be preserved.

a. The knowledge to be preserved.

The business of the minister of God and Christ is not the preservation of any secular knowledge. It is no business of the minister to be uneducated, and unaware of the various threads of knowledge that there are in the world, and he or she should have been educated in some thread as any educated person should be, but the minister of God is not called upon to preserve such knowledge. There are plenty of people in the world to do this, and to research such knowledge.

The very fact that the knowledge a minister of God should preserve declares that this knowledge is a given knowledge which is complete and perfect, and the minister can't and must not seek to add to it or change it or in anyway judge it. The minister's role is simple one of preservation; that is to keep this body of complete knowledge intact and free from tampering or corruption.

Having said all this it is clear that the knowledge which is to be preserved is the knowledge of God and the revelation which God has given in his holy Word, the Bible. In the Old Testament, the priest's role was to preserve the knowledge of God handed down in the Old Testament writings, and in the word of God pronounced by the faithful prophets of God, as God revealed his will and purpose to Israel through them. In the New Testament, and for the church all down history, the role of the minister is to preserve the Word of God declared in the Bible, without attempting to change it, correct it, judge it, destroy it, or in anyway allow it to be corrupted or defamed in any way. The role of the minister in such preservation of knowledge is to declare that the Bible is the inspired Word and Revelation of God, which must be received and believed and obeyed without any question. The only questions this preservation allows is to understand the true, plain and pure meaning expressed in the Bible.

b. How this knowledge is to be preserved.

This knowledge must be defined by the minister to his or her people. The minister must, in the first place, have preserved this knowledge for themselves and in themselves, and are living in obedience and faith to this knowledge. This knowledge is the infallible revelation of God given in the Bible in the Old and New Testaments. In his ministry Jesus was faithful in the preservation of this knowledge. He gave authority to his teaching by accepting the Old Testament as God speaking his true revelation, and being the Son of God Jesus expounded this revelation with the insight he had of the divine truth. The example of Jesus shows us that preserving the knowledge is accepting and believing the revelation given in the Old Testament as well as the New.

Preserving this knowledge means also that in life and teaching the minister makes known to his congregation, and to all to whom he speaks, that the Scriptures are the infallible and true revelation of God, and defend it against all those who would wish to question that it is the true Word of God. All down history there has been those who have sought to corrupt the Word of God, by seeking to deny its message, or change its message, or add to its message, in some way or other. The minister must preserve this knowledge from God against all attempts to corrupt it or deny that it is God's truth in every part. A slogan these days coming from those who question the Bible is that they claim that the Bible simply contains the Word of God. Having said this they then claim that human wisdom has the right and the skill to discern which parts of the Bible are true knowledge from God and what parts are not. They fail to appreciate how they remove all authority from the Bible, because if truth depends on the wisdom of mankind, then nothing is secure, and everything can be questioned, according to the various opinions of men.

PROCLAIM KNOWLEDGE.

Malachi goes on to proclaim the minister's duty in the words 'from his mouth men should seek instruction'.

This declaration expresses the fact that the chief role of the minister is to be a teacher and a preacher. The minister is called to this role above all others, and this should be the chief concern of every minister of Christ. To achieve this, the minister must be a serious student of the Bible, and give quality time to reading and meditating on the Bible, to become filled with all the knowledge of God proclaimed in the Bible. Particularly this study must equip the minister to faithful proclamation of the Gospel. To be so faithful the minister must have become subject to the Word of God, believed it and know its power and truth in his or her life. Such teaching must be faithful to the whole counsel of God, proclaiming the whole truth of the Bible as the Lord leads him or her, and not be afraid because of the fact that the people who are being taught may be, and often are, antagonistic to the whole truth of God. The minister answers to God as Christ's ambassador, and not to people.

If people are to seek instruction from the minister, then the most important role of the minister must be a preacher and a teacher, and this must take precedence over all other ministerial duties. Preaching and teaching must be first before celebrating the sacraments, administration and pastoral duties. These must not be neglected, but preaching and teaching must come first in importance and priority. When we view the ministry of the apostle Paul, this priority is made abundantly clear. He speaks little about the sacraments, and claimed he baptised few people. The only reference to Holy Communion that he makes in his letters is in 1 Corinthians 11: 17-34, and this was to correct disorder in the practice of the Lord's Supper which had occurred in that church.

As we appreciate this supreme role of the ministry, we also learn the importance of attending on the ministry of preaching and teaching by all who profess and call themselves Christians. In my observation of the church in the United Kingdom it seems to me that the decline in vital Christianity can be traced to the ignorance of people to the word of God. This decline reveals a failure of ministers to take to heart their role as teachers and preachers. Also the despising of preaching and teaching in the church which has grown up over many years explains spiritual decline so evident everywhere in the United Kingdom. Also in the attitude of Christians to fail to seek instruction, and to be content with a very shallow Christian life and understanding, explains this decline.

Until the church worldwide places instruction and teaching from the Bible first, and people have a hunger to know the truth, it seems to me that there can be little hope of life returning to the church. It will be found true, that where the church is alive and flourishing, and showing forth the glory of God, there people are hungry for the pure Word of God taught and expounded, and minister's are diligent in this important role of the minister.

CONCLUSION.

Minister's like the priests in the Old Testament are messengers of the Lord Almighty. There can be no greater role in life than this. What a privilege it is to be God's mouth-piece in the world. How sacred is such a role which should cause all of us who are called to the ministry to tremble over the responsibility placed on us. What a joy it is to tell people the love of God in the salvation of sinners, how God so loved the world that he was willing to make his only Begotten Son a sacrifice for the sin of the world, and be the one who absorbed all the just wrath of God against sin, so that sinners like we are may be forgiven all our sins, freed from eternal death, and blessed with eternal life, and so be called children of God.