Malachi 2:1-9

Ministry Associate Calvin Chu preaches from Malachi 2:1-9 about judging good leaders in the church. Discussion points: It is a blessing and privilege to speak to God’s people about him, we can’t worship influential Christians like celebrities, God will bring justice to leaders who don’t represent him well, we follow Jesus rather than people.

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  Scripture reader: [Malachi 2:1-9] And now, O priests, this command is for you. 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 offspring, and you shall be taken away with it. So shall you know that I have sent this command to you, that my covenant with Levi may stand, says the Lord of hosts.

  My covenant with him was one of life and peace, and I gave them to him. It was a covenant of fear, and he feared me. He stood in awe of my name. True instruction was in his mouth and no wrong was found in his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and he turned many from iniquity. 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.

  But you have turned aside from the way. You have caused many to stumble by your instruction. You have corrupted the covenant of Levi, says the Lord of hosts, and so I make you despised and abased before all the people. In as much as you do not keep my ways, but show partiality in your instruction.

  This is the word of the Lord.

  Preacher: It's a light passage for us, you know, on this lovely autumn, New England Sunday, I was thinking about this, and I was really thinking about the idea of really trying to follow Jesus, like trying to be a Christian can be pretty challenging, right? Like navigating faith with all the challenges that sort of naturally come in trying to like live counter culturally as we follow Christ is not easy, especially for newer believers and. You know, I, I, I've had the the blessing to be able to see people come baptized here, people come to know the Lord here, really deepen like the, the kind of move from the, the early chapters of their faith and continue moving forward in it, and it's, it's really amazing to see. But, whether you're brand new to the faith or, or you've been, you know, following Jesus for your whole life, I think one thing that's very common for a lot of us is that in trying to navigate how do I follow Jesus, we look to other people, right?

  And, and many of us, we look at, and, and, you know, in the bygone era when I was growing up, I didn't grow up in the church. but when I kind of became introduced to, the faith, it was an era where there were cassette tapes, you know, I'm like that's how you'd get sermons back in the days, like almost like mix tapes, but for, for like hardcore Christians, like you, this is, you know, this pastor got a real banger. I'm gonna pass this along to you. That, that was like the bygone era, but now it's totally different. Right now it's like you can just hop onto YouTube and you can listen to almost anyone's sermon anywhere, whether from someone that's just got they're, they're like a Twitch streamer just giving you a, a sermon to like the screen alone or they're a mega church pastor and they have thousands if not millions of followers, right? And, and we look at sort of famous Christians, pastors, authors, music artists, right? And you know, and I didn't have this growing up for sure then, we might even follow people on, on social media, right? Christian influencers.

  Now there's a whole other category of people who we might go to to get some insight for how do I walk in the way of Jesus. But having lived a bit of, of life now. There's a bit of weight, there's a bit of heaviness on my heart, because as I reflect on many of those I looked at for guidance when, when I was younger. I've seen that a lot of them have had these like, like not some, you know, certainly there are some that are small moral failings, and I might not know about those, but there are some people who have had some huge moral failings. Many had titles of like pastor, senior pastor, lead pastor, board member, founder. Many had much power and influence over the church through sermons or books or albums. Many of them preached and wrote prop proper theological concepts, right? They had good theology.

  But time has revealed that though they said the right words. Their actions showed that they use their position of power for anything other than the glory of God, maybe for their own benefit. Right? And so if titles alone don't equate worthiness of being followed, or power and influence alone do not equate worthiness of being followed, or proper theology alone do not equate worthiness of being followed. What does? And essentially the question is, who should I follow? You know, what are the markers of the priests and prophets that we should follow? And I, I, I, I wanna be clear, this is not something new. This is not like a, you know, post 1960s, post 1970s, 1980s, but it's not like a post Y2K. It's not a new thing.

  In fact, our passage today is from the Old Testament, right, and centers around this concept and, and really the, the, the, the, I think asks the question of how can we tell if those we follow are solid. Right? What criteria should I use to determine if a leader is good or not? And I think this passage sheds some light on this. And, and I preached this passage with a sense of like fear and trembling, right, because, knowing that as I read it, I'm reading the requirements of in which you should judge me as the preacher, right? Like I'm I'm putting myself out there because this is what it means to stand in front of this pulpit, what it means to say that I'm speaking on behalf of, of what I think God is directing us through his scriptures, right? And so that'll be fun. So because it's a, it's a heavy task, and because I'm inviting a bit of, you know, the microscope on myself and my life, I'm, I'm gonna need to pray, so I'm gonna pray, and then we'll really, dive into this passage here. So let's pray.

  Father God. Indeed, for all those who stand on church stages, who speak on behalf as a representative of a priest or a prophet, or even a king, God, um. Who say that we are doing something in your name, publicly, openly and outwardly to the world around us. God, would you help us to know that you have very specific requirements for us, and that should we not take on that mantle lightly, and that we should not assume that the benefits are for us, but the really, that we're the name that we're trying to make great is yours. And God, as we'll see, and as we've, I'm sure our minds have shown us, that there are many people who have been removed for that exact reason. And God, for those of us who are not on stages, who are not considered themselves leaders in the faith, God, would you help us to see and have clarity in who we should follow? What are the, what are the, the, the representatives of your church leadership that we would consider solid or good and worthy? And God, would, would we have a new lens to look at our lives, look at the things we, consume in terms of content, in terms of books, and all that, God. And Lord, I pray that extra blessing and, and, and nudging of my spirit, my heart, for me as I share this word, would you get me out of the way and really help your word shine through the Holy Spirit? I pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.

  When I was a kid, I remember watching a lot of, there were a lot of TV sketches of the time. I, I grew up in like the 80s and 90s, late 80s and 90s. and there were a lot of sketches. I remember watching like SNL, Saturday Night Live, In Living Color, for those of you who know those deep cut, that deep cut. Deep cut, and there were a lot of sort of, sketches at the time that sort of poked fun at these televangelists, right? There were a couple of sort of famous, televangelists, kind of people who are very significant television ministries that had fallen into like moral failure, and I didn't understand at the time. I thought they were funny just because, you know, there were people doing kind of funny accents and, you know, all, all of it that comes with sketches, but I, I don't think I really understood what this all meant.

  In, in hindsight, I realized I was sort of first seeing like, the first cultural critique of, of church leaders, and, and I again, I, I didn't understand at the time, I just thought people were doing funny things, but didn't fully grasp the gravity of the situations. And then as I got older, the, the revealed abuses of Christian leaders moved beyond individuals to kind of like entire church systems, right? And, and, and I understand that that was a, that was a big deal again, but it still felt a little bit removed from my own experience because like oh it's that church or that, you know, subdivision of, of the Christendom. But it finally dawned on me when I became a pastor, at my last church, and there were these spiritual leaders that stepped down because of sin that I was like personally aware of. You know, pastors who wrote books that I was told to read growing up, preachers who got top billing at conferences that I attended, right? And, and there were leaders who created music that I loved to sing. You know, you know, the pastors on boards of coalitions, that, that I was a part of.

  And this passage, you know, kind of direct is directed towards spiritual leaders, clearly, as we saw in verse one, but the book starts in a way that must have been pretty startling for the priests, kind of who are listening. Malachi 1, and we don't have it here, but Malachi 1:6-7, it says this A son honors his father and a servant, his master. If then I am a father, where is my honor? If I am a master, where is my fear, says the Lord of hosts to you, O priests. Who despise my name. But you say, how have we despised your name? By offering polluted food upon my altar. But you say, how have we polluted you? By saying that the Lord's table may be despised. I mean, Malachi is coming for these priests.

  You know, some a little bit of the historical context is that basically, The church is sort of, you know, the God's people are, are like in disarray, right? There, there's no one really following and because of the number of different factors, everyone is taking shortcuts. Everyone's kind of skimming off of the top. Everyone's trying to do the minimum to be able to check the boxes off and say that they are following God, but it is not really doing anything for God. It's not really honoring Him. Right? And, and as they, as these priests listened to the rest of these accusations through the rest of chapter one. I imagine they're listening with like the sharpest of ears like oh it's like that kind of you're sitting outside of the principal's office being like oh what did I do? like what did I say, you know, and they're trying to remember like what is gonna happen here, like how much is my mom gonna punish me when I get home situation, you know.

  And then when we kind of switch from chapter one to chapter two, Malachi, the prophet is now gonna basically say, hey, look, God's gonna lay bare what's gonna happen to them if they don't change their ways, which is what our passage was this morning. And so let me read verses 1 and 21 more time. He says, and now, oh priest, this command is for you. If you will not listen, if you will not take it to heart and 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. The word listen here could be like hear or listen like in the general sense, but there's almost examples of this word which mean like here with a sense of like expected followed action, right? It's, it's almost like there's like a sense of obedience here, and, and I think it makes sense, right, given what kind of what follows, but basically God is telling the priests like through Malachi like you better listen, listen up, like kind of like a parent with a kid that's kind of out of line. Listen, you listen, listen, listen. It's not gonna, it's not like a passive thing. There's like an expectation that you're gonna do this. And if you don't. There's gonna be some results for you.

  There's in this case, God is saying there's going to be curses for them. And so before we go and kind of see what those curses are, I think it's helpful to think about why, why would God curse them? Like what is like the, the core accusation that God has against his priests here. It's because they failed to meet his standards. Right, God has stand high standards for his leaders. Those who say in God's name, I'm gonna be an intermediary for his people and him. God has high standards. And because the results for failure are, it's because the standards are so high, the results for failure of leadership is also incredibly great.

  And so look at, look at verses 2 and 3. If you will not listen, if you will not take it to heart and 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 offering, offspring, excuse me, I will rebuke your offspring and spread dung on your faces, the dung of your offerings, and you shall be taken away with it. Or what, what is, what can we break this down a little bit further here? There there's basically two results that God is, is declaring to the priests through Malachi.

  The first one is, is, kind of practical. And the other one is, is symbolic and, and kind of together we see this full view of, of God's, perspective on, on these priests here. And so the first one we read is that God will send a curse on their blessings, which shows us that for, for priests, being a priest, being an intermediary between God and His people. Serving him had benefits, right? And so one, obviously the first one is like it's a privilege to be able to lead God's people, to teach His word, to announce his forgiveness. That itself is a blessing to be able to see that. Ask anyone in ministry who, who, who does it, to be able to see and be able to speak and share wisdom and insight from what God has done through our lives and our understanding of the scripture. There is an incredible blessing there. But here he's saying that I'm gonna, I'm gonna curse that blessing, right?

  But then there are also practical benefits like being able to eat from the burnt sacrifices as commanded by God. So when they would have sacrifices, burnt sacrifices, you know, you take the, the, the meat that was, there's a burnt sacrifice. It was good enough to eat and the priests could eat it, right? And so there's a benefit. That's actually how they were able to have their sustenance provided. Through part of a portion of that was saved for priests. And God is saying, I'm gonna curse that. They could live within the safety of the sanctuaries, right? There, there was housing for those who were priests. And God said, I'm gonna curse that. They had the respect of God's people, of the congregation. And yet God is saying, I'm going to curse that.

  And what God tells him is basically this is over. No longer will you be able to teach my word, announce my forgiveness. No longer will you be able to enjoy the sacrifices to me. You will no longer with the respect of my people. God is cursing the things that they so very much got to enjoy, and maybe that became the main reason that they were priests and not to be representatives in the intermediaries between God and His people. And in fact, the next rebuke really symbolizes God's frustration and anger against them. Let's read verse 31 more time. 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. God tells him that he will, and to quote little kids, he, he's gonna smear poop on you, right?

  And I, I apologize. I'm gonna, I'm gonna talk about poop a lot in this sermon, but it's, it's biblical, right? It, it's, it's, it's in this passage, and so I'm not just trying to be funny, but it's, it's here, OK, so I apologize if you're like squeamish, I'll try to balance it, OK, um. But this might make it we can and we kind of see it right there's there's almost like a funniness to it because poop in our day is sort of like it's kind of funny, right? Like we think about like a gag or someone's, you know, there's like fake poop or oh he he he he like that's funny, right? or something like that. but in the time in which Malachi was sort of pronouncing this judgment against, you know, the priests here. It was not like a, it was not done for comedic effect. Actually, feces, the, the, the, the word here that's the dung is actually, it says it's the innards of the animal's intestine. And, and so for, for, in, in that culture at the time, anything like excrement would have been something if you touched it, you were considered ceremonially unclean. And if you were ceremonially unclean, you had to be removed from the rest of the people, at least temporarily, for fear that you would spread. That uncleanness to other people.

  And so it wasn't funny to them, but it was actually like kind of a serious accusation that if to say I'm gonna smear dung on you, if the dung of your offerings, it's to say like you are going to be rejected. Let me share it like this. When my kids were younger, um. You know, my, my wife and I, we, we chose the cloth diaper our kids, and, and we thought about a lot of different things. We thought about creation, we thought about the economics of it, and I won't go through the whole thing. I'm not here to evangelize cloth diapering or anything like that. But when I, when, when we first started introducing it to like the friends that we had to go, they had a lot of questions because cloth diapering is not a very common thing in our day and age, and I think, as I'll say, it's very sort of obvious why, they understand kind of like the, the liquid waste. They go, OK, we get that. And then then as I explain they go. What about the solids? Like what do you do with those? And it's like, OK, well, well, the solids, like you get, if you're, if you're able to get to a toilet, you just kind of throw it into there as one does. and then they go, but what if you're not near a toilet? What do you do? I'm like, oh yes, well this is the kind of the heart of my illustration here is, well, we have this thing called the wet bag, and you take the diaper with the liquid waste and the solid waste, and you put it in the bag and you zip it, and you put that in your diaper bag, and you wait till you get home or you can get to a toilet and you. Get rid of it.

  And that's where I lose most of the people that go, no, I'm out. I'm never, I'm no, no, no. They're like, they will say I am, I am very eco-friendly. They buy an EV. They have solar panels, they compost, they, they use a metal straw, all that. But you say, well, well, have you thought about cloth cost and everything? They go, Ew, no, mm mm, I'm out, right. And it's because of the solid waste, right? Basically, what I'm trying to say is that. Solid waste. Is really just like it causes this visceral reaction. Like we don't want it to touch anything. If you step and you go, oh, like there's no like well what it's not touching my hands, there's no big, no, we do like the, we're doing the scrape, we're trying to get, oh I can't get you get, you know, if you're bold, you get the stick, you try to really clean up because you want as little feces on you as possible. Cause it's only good for expulsion. It's only good to get rid of, it serves no purpose other than get rid of it.

  And so then when God says through Malachi that he will spread dung on your faces, he's saying something similar. He's saying, you priests are unclean and unfit to serve me, to be near my holiness and it's not just gross. It's a judgment. God is saying, you've corrupted what is sacred, and I won't let that corruption spread. He means that he sees you and your offerings as unclean, unfit, only good for throwing out. And God is calling them and their offerings literal human garbage.

  And so what does that sort of mean for us today, right, because we don't have a, a priestly system, we have pastoral leadership, we have that, right, but there's no sacrifices. What does that mean kind of for us in this sort of New Testament era. God continues to hold a high standard for leaders in this church. Pastors, ministers, community group leaders, bible study leaders, leaders of all types. Right? their leaders are how they live and how they, lead are representations of God. Right? And as leaders, we are called to represent God. In a way that we accurately represent him. And if we don't do that and we don't meet the standard, then. God will not be misrepresented. He's not gonna stand by and let it happen. And thus he will remove them from any positions of influence, expelled. Flushed down, flushed out.

  And so then if you're following along, I think the natural question comes to go, OK, but, but, but then what is the standard, right? Like, what does God hold his leadership, his leaders of the church, to in order to best represent him? Like how do we know which leaders are actually worthy to follow and which are not? And I think the challenge is that. We sort of treat the church like a lot of other pockets of society. We, we sort of treat the church like sports, right?

  This is, I wasn't planning on sharing this, but it just came to me, in my previous church, I grew, I, I, I started going to middle school, so I, I, I didn't consider myself growing up there, but functionally for sure I grew up there. But when I got there and I got to know some of my friends, this is like a middle school, maybe high school me, so I understand I was very young, they had this thing they called fantasy church, like fantasy sports, like fantasy football or fantasy basketball, but they did it like jokingly for like. Church and so it's like, oh, you know, a pastor had, you know, he had 3 solid points and so like they, they kind of score him like kind of rating the, the, the, the, the, the, the passage and like oh seeing who had like the best like points or whatever.

  And I think that's kind of like how. We, we, we approach it a lot of times. We, we sort of think, oh well, they're, they're a, they're, they're a position of, of influence, right? They, they're in a position of power and we're gonna rate them of how well they, they do, and that's how we can tell if, if they are impressive, right? If they're, they're doing good things, if they're convincing me through the way that they talk, OK, these are the metrics that we have, right? Or they, they lead the song really, really well. OK, they must be a good leader, right? And I, I think that it's easy to fall into this, but it, it really made me think of how, celebrity culture in, in our, in our society, in, in our, in our day is, is really interesting.

  And to me, the kind of, watershed moment, not to overly drama drama dramatize this, but I think the watershed moment was in 1993, um. I grew up in that era when like 90s NBA basketball, Jordan, like, like just so much of it, kind of getting the tailwind of the 80s, I'm from here, the 80s Celtics, and getting into like the 90s Bulls, like that was just like a golden era of basketball in my mind, um. And what was really interesting is that it wasn't like a Bo knows like I don't know if you if you guys like deep cut like sports advertising people like Bo knows baseball because Bo Bo Jackson, he had, he played multiple sports professionally, so he's really impressive and the ad campaign that Nike had was like, oh, he's, he, what can he do? How great is he? He, he knows everything, right? And then there was like the be like Mike, you know, the, the Gatorade ad of, you know, back when the Gatorade came in glass bottles. If you're, if you're old, you know about that one, that's me.

  But then in 1993, there was this really interesting ad campaign that came out, and, and it was, it was featuring Charles Barkley, right, Charles Barkley was like tearing it up in the league. He would eventually win the, season MVP, but in the middle of this, there was a Nike campaign that came out and it, it basically it featured, it was really, really like. You know, kind of punchy. There wasn't a lot of like, dressing to it, which is really kind of raw, and, and the, the core message, and I'm gonna quote here is basically Charles Barkley saying, I'm not a role model, model. Parents should be role models. Just because I can dunk a basketball does not, does not mean I should raise your kids.

  And this was like again very, very like revolutionary at the time because again you had all those other accolades of like how great it is because they, the message was be like these people and buy my gear, buy my clothes, buy my jersey. And here we had Charles Barkley, who maybe you know more from like the TNT inside the NBA crew now, but he was a dominating force in the NBA back in the day. And he's literally telling people, don't follow me. I'm not a role model. And it created a lot of, a lot of negative reaction. The, the commissioner of the NBA spoke on it. Karl Malone, another, another NBA big, even kind of like wrote an op ed piece criticizing him, saying like, no, you are a role model.

  But I think Why that's like a watershed moment for me is because I don't think we ever went back to that. I think that was a marker where Charles, Charles Barkley was the symbol of don't worship celebrities. They, just because they can do something well. Does not mean that they should be your everything. And we haven't looked back since. And again, celebrity worship did not get invented then, didn't get invented when TMZ, you know, it was invented. It goes way back, right? But I, I haven't heard a single ad campaign from a significant multi-billion dollar, multinational corporation that is telling people, hey, listen to your parents. I mean that's wild.

  And so I, and I think this love of celebrity has permeated the church as well, right? Many of us grew up in church culture, went to Bible college, you know, maybe a lot of us, we, we, we subscribe to, you know, YouTube pages of our famous pastors or their churches, and we can't wait for Monday morning to hear their sermon to sort of like supplement what we heard on a Sunday, or for some people like, oh fine, I can listen to a good sermon. You know what I'm saying? We pre-save albums from Christian artists. We, we, we follow the countdown, we can't wait. You know, there's like Taylor Swift, but then we have our Christian version of it. We were so excited. Because now we can finally be inspired, because they're famous. Many of us are ardent followers of influential Christians. Now I'm not saying it's bad, I'm not saying that you're a sinner if you pre-save an album or you follow somebody on YouTube. I'm not saying that. It's good, I think, right? Having pastors and leaders and authors and artists to help us better understand and live out the gospel, I think that's fine.

  But as many of us have seen, there have been articles written, pod entire podcast seasons, entire docuseries that talk about how there have been famous and influential church leaders. That have fallen. And in a big way. And that a lot of people have been hurt along the way. That there have been people who have been spreading church hurt as much if not more so than the gospel. And these types of Christian leaders are the ones that share illustrations about how great they are to them. Churches, albums, books are testaments about their abilities, and anyone else who sees differently, they don't belong. It's really easy to cast them. Well, you're just not a true follower of Jesus because you really follow Jesus, and you would know what, I'm cooking up something amazing here. And when they speak, they have this sense of the most important thing is that you are impressed by my wisdom. Not impressed by my God.

  And our celebrity driven culture is drawn to that type of leader. And often that leader is very successful. Right? They might have huge churches, huge following on social media. They might be rich and famous, have famous friends, famous congregants. They collaborate with famous artists. But they may not be the type of leader. That God is looking for. And so what is God actually looking for? We'll see you in verses 4 to 7, it says this. So shall you know that I have sent this command to you, that my covenant with Levi may stand, says the Lord of hosts. My covenant with him was one of life and peace, and I gave them to him. It was a covenant of fear, and he feared me. He stood in awe of my name. True instruction was in his mouth, and no wrong was found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and he turned many from iniquity. 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.

  In his rebuke of the priests of the time, he uses history to describe what once was, to show his high standard. Right, he tells us that the ministry of priests was supposed to bring people to a place of deep reverence. Of God Not of the person Right? And that was done through the teaching of the truth. Of God, his words, not the leader's words, and living, living in obedience to God. Right? His commands, not the commands of the leader. And in their action and that deep reverence should be for God. Not for a leader. And that would turn people from their sin. And turn them to God. Not a leader. And basically, the standard is. Does that leader point you to God? In their teachings, in their art, in their ministry, in their programs, in their conversations, in their lives, do they point you to God? Or do they point you to something else?

  Cause we're gonna see in verses 8 and 9, God is saying that you have failed, you have not been pointing them to me, you've been pointing them to something else. Let's read verses 8 and 9 here. But you have turned aside from the way. You have caused many to stumble by your instruction. You have corrupted the covenant of Levi, says the Lord of hosts. 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.

  This doesn't mean that a good church leader only talks about Jesus. Hey, did you see the game yesterday? No, but I saw the Lord moving. Hallelujah. Like, no, like we can have other interests. That's not what it's saying here, right? But ultimately, do those you kind of follow as like under shepherds. Do they point you to follow God or do they point you to something else? Do they clarify who God is and inspire you to worship Him? Or do they cause you to worship something else? Are they putting God on the highest places of honor and glory or are they putting something else? If anything other than Jesus. If it's anything other than Jesus, then you might want to be careful. Because you might get some poop on you. And you're gonna be flushed out with them. With those disgusting offerings that God rejects.

  And I know this is really challenging. Like I understand this. And this is actually where like kind of the, the start of in in my heart of where I wanted to share this because I understand that this is a challenging topic for many Christians right now. Right? Many followers look at the landscape of the church and they see what it feels like countless leaders doing and saying things that are in opposition to God's truth found in the scriptures. Right, these same followers of Christ struggle in their faith and wonder, where is God? Like how could God let this happen? If God were real, then, then certainly these leaders, the most influential people, would not have fallen to scandal. Right? Whether it's marital infidelity, abuse of power, politicizing the pulpit, many Christians are walking away from the faith, disillusioned because of the behavior of leaders and systems that cover up abuses, that boost up their name over God's.

  And if you're almost there, maybe. Maybe you're there right now. Maybe you're fed up. I get it. I get it. But I hope this passage gives you hope. My prayer is that this, this inspires you to hold on and to look at something different other than these leaders. Because I think there's hope knowing that God has a high standards for leaders in his church. He always has. All the way back to Malachi and before. And I think there's hope in knowing that he's able and very willing to remove leaders who are not properly representing him and giving glory to his name. I know it's really easy to be like just like enchanted and, and cynical to see, oh my gosh, there's another church leader falling. This is bad. I, I think that's actually a positive thing that God says nope. The sun's gonna shine on all darkness. All sin is gonna be revealed, whether it's in the life to come or very often in this life.

  And he says, you were influential, you got rich off of the name of Jesus, and you were only serving you. I wish I had a flush sound like I just, that would have been so effective. I'll have to do that if I preach this again, like just flushed out. And it's a good as hope that God is bigger than any famous pastor. That might fail or not fail. God is bigger and more influential than any New York Times bestselling author that's written something about him, whether for him or against him. God is bigger. He's got a high standard, and he will hold his leaders to that.

  So I think a clear application to this passage is to follow Jesus, not people, right? Even people who do things in his name. Yes, in our path, as we follow him, as we follow Christ, we will find authors that are helpful. We will find podcasters that provide insights to make our faith clearer, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X, whatever's blue sky, whatever social media you wanna find, you will probably find people that actually help you. And that's fine. We find artists who inspire us, find new ways to worship him. But remember, they are guides, not gods. They're there to help you worship, not to be worshiped.

  So don't anchor your faith to the voices that speak about Jesus, anchor to Jesus Himself. Cause he's the one priest who's never failed. He's the one leader who never sought his own glory, but always glorified the Father. He didn't use his position for power or comfort, but emptied himself, taking on the form of a servant. He never misrepresented God, he revealed him perfectly. And when he went to the cross, he bore the curse that our unfaithfulness deserved.

  And I know this message can be easily brushed off, especially when we feel cynical seeing leaders fall. It's easy to doubt God's efficacy, right? And that, that can creep in when we look and wonder where God is in all of this. But my friends, church, don't mistake the failures of humanity for the absence of God. He's not passive, he's not asleep. He's still purifying his church. He's still faithful to his covenant, and he's already given us a shepherd that we can trust completely to guide us. So, I, I, my prayer, my hope is not that you follow people. That don't just listen to me because of the me. I'm saying these words that I, I wish that I weren't here. Because I wish that I could just represent the, the one that you should follow, and that's Jesus, not me, not any other pastor, podcaster, influencer, musician, whatever. Jesus is a faithful priest, and the true shepherd of your soul.

  And with that in mind, we're gonna move to a time of communion. The Lord Jesus, on the night that he was betrayed, he took bread, and we had given thanks, He broke it and said, this is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way after supper, he took the cup, saying, this cup is the new covenant of my blood. Do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me. For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. So I'm gonna pray for communion, in just a second. You know, the, the music team's gonna come and play a little bit and kind of really get us to the place of, of reflection. And so with that being said, I'm gonna pray for us as we prepare for communion. Let's pray.

  Father God, it is just appropriate that you stand alone as the one we should follow. And even if there are seasons of utility of following certain famous Christian leaders. And, and that is still part of your plan, God, you were not duped, you were not tricked, that was still part of the way for you to help us to develop through the, the, the sermons and the music and all this from other famous Christians. But God, we know that there's only one that's truly faithful forever, and that's Christ. And we thank you that he died for us, because of our sin, because of our unfaithfulness. And God, we take as we should be participate in this meal, God. That we would take it with the, the proper amount of reflection and proper amount of gratitude, thanking you for all that you've done through Christ. So Lord, we, we thank you, and as we continue to worship you through song, would you have us go from here ready to hear from you as well. I pray all this in Jesus' name, Amen.