Renewing Leadership

6 · Exposits Malachi 2:2's phrase 'curse your blessings' by connecting it to the priestly benediction commanded in Moses' instruction to Aaron, establishing that the priests' ministry was supposed to be a blessing to the people

And so when we see the priests failing at their calling in this context, we see a stark example of the curse of faithless leadership. Verse 2 reads this: "If you priests will not listen, if you will not take it to heart to give honor to my name," says Yahweh 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 first time I read that preparing for this, I was like, curse your blessings? What does he mean by that? What's he trying to get at? Well, as I studied it, I became convinced it's a reference to the benediction that Moses instructs Aaron. Moses tells Aaron— remember, the tribe of Levi is Aaron's tribe, so the priests are going to come from the tribe of Levi. Not every Levite is a priest, but every priest is a Levite. Well, out of this tribe, the priests are going to come. And Moses tells Aaron, Aaron, tell those men who are designated as priests, this is the blessing, this is the benediction they're to say over the people.

7 · Exposits the priestly benediction from Numbers 6:24-26, explaining how the priests' entire ministry was meant to be a blessing that covered God's people with His covenant promises, but faithless leadership transformed that blessing into a curse, making the priests a plague rather than a blessing to the people

It's that famous passage in Numbers 6:24. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace. The Lord bless you. We call it a benediction, which literally means a blessing. That benediction, which is given to the priests, is literally meant to be a representative of their entire ministry. It's not just this benediction that's a blessing from the Lord. The ministry of the priests is meant to be a gracious blessing from the Lord. It's actually thought by scholars that when they said this blessing, that that was the only time when the covenant name of God, when Yahweh, was actually spoken verbally in public in Israel. This is the only context when the priests would speak this blessing over the people. Their ministry was supposed to match that blessing. That's why they invoke Yahweh's covenant name. They're saying it over the people. They're covering God's people with his covenantal promises. They're covering God's people with his covenantal faithfulness. They're covering God's people with the blessing of his covenantal affection. Here Malachi shows us when leadership is faithful— faithless, when it's careless, it turns that blessing into a curse. People don't flourish, they flounder. The reality was the priests who were supposed to bless the people with their leadership had become a plague to the people. All the need for spiritual reformation and renewal that we'll read about in Malachi can be connected back to the spiritual failings, the leadership failings of these priests. That's the curse of faithless leadership. It's not just the leaders who are vulnerable. It's the people who they lead onto that exposed ground.

8 · Transitions from the curse of faithless leadership to the blessings of faithful leadership by clarifying Malachi's ultimate goal: not shame, but repentance and change

So what then are the blessings of faithful leadership? What are the blessings of faithful leadership? Malachi's goal— I think this is helpful— his goal throughout this whole letter in rebuking Israel, whether it's the people or their spiritual leaders, it's not to shame them. That's not what he's trying to do. Now there is a sense where he's trying to shame the priests here, but his ultimate goal isn't to leave them with shame on their heads. His goal is he's trying to stir up repentance. He wants them to change. He wants the people to change. He wants the priests to hear the rebuke, to hear the burden that the— remember we said he has this burden, this oracle from the Lord? This burden is something he wants to take the burden from his shoulders, and in the rebuke, if it's successful, take the burden and put it on their shoulders. If the burden sits on their shoulders, they'll change.

9 · Applies the lesson about leadership accountability directly to the congregation, calling them to hold their pastors accountable through prayer, counsel, and speaking up—not remaining passive—because their spiritual well-being depends on faithful leadership

And he wants the people to realize the kind of accountability they should be bringing to their leaders. That's one of the great application points of this sermon. Providence, don't be content, never be content with mediocre or half-hearted or faithless leadership. Don't be content with those things. Malachi's point is that your spiritual well-being depends upon it. Now the letter of Hebrews, it calls God's people to honor and submit to their leaders, to honor and submit to the elders that God gives to His church. That's a good and it's a necessary thing. But that doesn't mean the people are silent. In the same way that a wife is submissive to her husband, if she understands her role, she still brings accountability. She still brings correction and reproof to her husband when she sees he's in need of it, doesn't she? That's what a loving wife does. In the same way, a congregation has to be willing to bring correction and has to be willing to bring accountability to its pastors. And let's be honest, bringing correction or accountability, it's almost always awkward, isn't it? You've got a quirky personality if you're like, "Oh, it's accountability day! I get to sit across the table from somebody in a coffee shop and tell them where they've gone off the rails! I can't wait!" I hope that's not the way you go about those things. It's hard to do. It's awkward. Even when you're doing it well and you're expressing love and affection and and concern for someone. But that doesn't mean it's not necessary. So as a congregation, hear that and realize and recognize you don't want to be in the state of Israel when Malachi is giving these burdens and these oracles. And part of the reason they're in that state is because they failed to hold their leaders accountable. I'm up here this morning asking for your accountability, asking that you would hold the leaders of this church accountable. We need your prayers. That's like the tip of the spear of accountability. Pray for us. We need your counsel. When we ask, what are your thoughts on these deacons we're going to install? What are your thoughts on our pastoral intern, Seth? We need to hear from you. We need to hear from you. You need to speak for your own spiritual well-being. We want these things. We want accountability for you because we want to be faithful stewards of our calling. And we want our ministry to be a blessing to you and not a curse.

10 · Establishes the first mark of faithful leadership—reverence before the Lord—by expositing Malachi 2:2, 5 and Isaiah 6, showing how the priests' lack of reverence infected the people's worship

So with that in mind, here are 4 marks of faithful leadership. 4 marks of faithful leadership that Malachi gives us in these 9 verses that you need to hold us accountable to. The first thing we see is that faithful leaders have a reverence. You could say a fear and an awe before the Lord. Faithful leaders have a reverence before the Lord. Now we saw last week the people had grown weary in their worship, right? They're just bored. Some of them seem to even be annoyed that they have to go to worship at all and make these sacrifices. We have to go to the temple again? There's just these lackadaisical attitudes. And so they're bringing secondhand offerings. They're bringing blind animals and the infirmed animals and not their best like they're supposed to. The heart of the problem with what was going on in worship is a lack of reverence. That's the heart of their problem in worship. They don't have reverence before the Lord. They're flippant about coming into the presence of the true and living God. Well, we see now they learned this lack of reverence from their spiritual leaders. They learned the lack of reverence from their spiritual leaders. Verse 2 says, the priests do not listen. They don't give heart to the name of the Lord. In other words, the priests don't care about God's glory. Is there a more tragic thing that you can say about the spiritual leaders of God's people than that those spiritual leaders don't care about God's glory? Then what are they doing? What do they see as the purpose of their ministry? The people go through the motions because the priests go through the motions. They have no passion for the fame and glory of Yahweh, Lord of Hosts, the true and living God. They proclaim benedictions and blessings over the people, but they have no sense of awe that they are uttering His covenant name. There's no sense of the magnitude of what they do as they minister as representatives of the people. They're flippant about offering the sacrifices and placing their hands on the goat and sending it off as atonement for sin. Listen to how God describes the ideal faithful leader in verse 5. My covenant with him, with Levi, was one of life and peace, and I gave them to him. I gave life and peace. It was a covenant of fear, and he feared me. He stood in awe of my name. This isn't bad fear. This isn't faithless fear. This isn't the irresponsible fear that happens in movie theaters around Halloween. This is holy fear. This is the fear of standing before your Maker, the one who holds you together by the word of his power. Isaiah, when he's brought into the presence of Almighty God, is overwhelmed by what he experiences there. In that famous passage, Isaiah 6:1, "I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple." That's a way of saying, when you talk about the train of His robe, the size of the train of the robe was sort of a mark of the glory and the significance of the monarch. If you were a big deal as a monarch, you had a big train. It's just you're showing off. It's like an Indian chief's headdress. "The train of His robe filled the temple." His glory filled the temple. "Above Him stood the seraphim; each had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew." And one called to another and said, "Holy, holy, holy is Yahweh, the Lord of hosts! The whole earth is filled with His glory!" The foundations of the threshold shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I, Isaiah, said, "Woe is me! I am lost! I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King, Yahweh, the Lord of hosts. That title, Yahweh, Lord of hosts, over 85% of the times it's used in the Old Testament happen in this book, in Malachi. These people have lost sight They're vulnerable. They have no armies. They have no king. And so in part, Malachi is coming to them saying, "Your Lord is the Lord of hosts." He is the Lord of angelic hosts. He is the Lord of angelic armies. You feel surrounded, but your Lord has the largest army ever. But he's also coming to them and saying, "Your Lord is the Lord of hosts." Tremble in His presence. You trembled before Assyria. You trembled before Babylon. But now you don't tremble before the LORD of hosts, who can wipe them out with the brush of His hand? Oh, that we would know what it is to fear the Lord, that we would stand in awe of God. Pray for us. Pray for your elders that we would know this. Pray that we wouldn't trifle with the presence of the Lord, that we wouldn't be flippant in the way we prepare for Sunday morning, that we wouldn't be flippant about how we handle God's Word, that we wouldn't be flippant in caring for You, sheep that were bought with precious blood. Specifically, help us to guard against the lure of celebrity culture. Celebrity culture is something that has infected so much gospel ministry in our day. Now, celebrity culture is everywhere around us. There's people who vote because celebrities say vote this way or vote that way. There's people who do all sorts of things simply because celebrities do it. There's celebrities making millions and millions and millions of dollars, and the only reason they're famous is because somebody has said they're famous. But they make all that money because the people are obsessed with watching what they do. That celebrity culture, that's a great temptation for pastors as well. There are a lot of pastors who are more concerned with the number of their Twitter followers, with the size of their church, the release date of their new books and how great the endorsements are on that new book, with the impressiveness of their sermons. They're more concerned with those things, with the celebrity they're building around themselves, than they are with being beacons to the glory of God. I think pastors today, yours included, are vulnerable to becoming obsessed with their own press clippings. And they're vulnerable to being dissatisfied when there aren't press clippings. That idolatrous craving for celebrity has infected the church and its pastors. Pastors feel the temptation from their people as well. People drawn to celebrity pastors leave ordinary pastors feeling like, I guess I need to work towards celebrity. People flock to hear celebrity preachers and buy their books, and so pastors clamor to become the next celebrity preacher. It has led many to their downfall. And it is not the way of faithfulness. It is not the way of faithfulness. And so I ask you, pray and hold us accountable. That we would be men as your spiritual leaders who live for the glory of the Lord, that Christ would be praised. And if Christ is praised, we would be happy with obscurity. Would you pray that for us?

11 · Establishes the second mark of faithful leadership—instruction from the whole counsel of God's Word—by expositing Malachi 2:6-7, explaining that priests were meant to be teachers/messengers who proclaim God's inscripturated revelation, and applying this to modern pastoral ministry and biblical counseling

Then ask that faithful leaders would instruct from the whole counsel of God's word. That faithful leaders would instruct from the full counsel of God's word. Verse 6, true instruction was in the mouth of this faithful leader. No wrong was found on his lips. Verse 7, for the lips of a priest should guard knowledge. People should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the messenger of Yahweh, Lord of hosts. Nowhere in all the Old Testament does the teaching aspect of the priestly office become so prominent. There are a lot of unique things that happen in this short book, and this is one of them. Nowhere else in the Old Testament do they talk so much about priests being teachers. What do you usually think about when you think about an Old Testament priest? Sacrifices, right? You don't think of teaching and preaching and those things. But here Malachi says, this is central to what you do. You're teachers to God's people. Remember Malachi's name? It means "my messenger." So the prophet named "my messenger" is saying these priests are also meant to be messengers of the Lord of Hosts. The prophet proclaims new oracles of the Lord. He receives fresh revelation, that burden that he gives to the people. Well, the priest proclaims the old oracles. He proclaims the ancient and inscripturated revelation of the Lord. Spiritual leaders faithful in their calling instruct the people according to God's word. They instruct the people according to all of God's word. They bring blessing because their counsel isn't their own counsel, it's God's counsel, because their teaching is founded on the infallible authoritative word of God. Priests in the Old Testament, pastors in the New Testament, they bring blessing as they point people over and over again to what God has said in His Word, to what God has said in the Bible, in the Scriptures. A pastor's lips should guard knowledge. In other words, when you go to a pastor for counsel, Well, let's do a brief aside here. When you go to a pastor for counsel, that implicitly says something, right? You should be going to pastors for counsel. It's all too common in the era of modern Christianity to look for counsel from self-help books or pop psychology, right? To professional counselors. To all sorts of random sources before a person goes to seek counsel from God's Word or from God's people. Doesn't Paul teach us that the gospel makes foolish the wisdom of the world? Doesn't the psalmist teach us, blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. 1 Peter 2 tells us we are all part of a priesthood. The old priesthood has now passed away. All believers are now part of the priesthood. His point isn't there's no more need for spiritual leadership. There's still a place for elders. His point is all of God's people should be familiar with God's Word and able to be ambassadors and emissaries and counselors from God's Word. And so God's people must be equipped to give counsel, and God's people must look for counsel. That's why we should seek counsel from one another. It's why it's so important for your pastors to be capable and committed to giving instruction from God's Word. So faithful pastors do— they help people grow in the skill of asking What do the Scriptures tell me about this situation? How should I respond biblically to this trial? What does holiness look like in this matter? How am I called to honor Christ by my actions in this particular circumstance that I find myself in now? That's what spiritual leaders are meant to do. They guard knowledge. They're a blessing as they give that knowledge, as their lips speak truth.

12 · Exposits Malachi 2:9's charge of partiality in instruction, showing how the priests taught according to what people wanted to hear rather than God's truth

But the priests in Malachi's day don't do this. They're failing, they're neglecting to bring God's Word to bear upon God's people. Verse 9 says, "They showed partiality in their instruction." They showed partiality in their instruction. What he means by that is they're concerned about the opinions of the people they're instructing. They're not impartial in the way they teach. They're partial. They're sort of reading Scripture here but kind of listening here. Am I getting the right reaction? Should I keep teaching this? Oh, no? Look somewhere else? They're more concerned. They were more fearful about how their hearers would respond. They care more about the opinion of the listener. Their first priority isn't proclaiming God's truth. No, these priests in Malachi's day put first priority on telling the people what the people wanted to hear. Well, that's not a recipe for spiritual health. We're going to see that as we go through the rest of the book of Malachi. That's not faithfulness in leading the people. A faithful leader can't be more concerned about the opinions of others than they are about respecting God and having reverence for His word. You don't want leaders who care too much about your opinion. Sounds like a strange thing to say, right? You don't want leaders who care too much about pleasing you with their sermons, who care too much about being praised for how great and wonderful and nice and encouraging that word was, no matter your decisions or the consequences. Malachi says those kind of leaders cause people to stumble. By their instruction. Impartiality is a great threat facing pastors today. There is great pressure from the outside and from within the church to lead people and teach people according to their desires rather than according to the truthfulness of God's Word. There are churches to be built. There are brands to grow. There are ministries that will be lauded. There are accolades to be won by the pastor who becomes a master at feeding the people what they want to hear. There are platforms for those kinds of messages. They are celebrated. They have full churches and the culture around them often praises them. But listen to what the Apostle Paul calls pastors to. 2 Timothy 4:2: Preach the word. Be ready in season and out of season. Be ready to preach the word, the full counsel, everything it says when it's popular and when it's not popular. Reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience. Do it. Do it gently, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. Far be it from me to correct the inspired Apostle Paul, but I kind of wonder if verse 3 should say, "For the time has always been when people won't endure sound teaching but will gather together for themselves those who will itch their ears." Malachi is experiencing it, right? Paul is experiencing it. Paul is warning it's coming in the future. It's a temptation we face, and faithful leaders have to be careful. Providence, don't be that kind of people. Don't accumulate teachers to soothe your conscience. They will lead you away from the truth and they will lead you into destruction. Don't settle for people standing up before you and never opening the Bible. Don't settle for pastors and elders standing before you and saying just what they think you want to hear. If you never feel uncomfortable, chances are you aren't hearing the full counsel of God. Either that or you somehow reached a sinless state. I'm going to guess it's the former. Don't settle for that. I was so affected. I saw this quote. I saw it on Facebook, actually, of all places this week. It's one of those moments where it's like, oh, thank you, Lord. Via Facebook. Pray that you have pastors like John Knox, the great Scottish reformer. He said this: I have never once feared the devil, but I tremble every time I enter the pulpit. Faithful spiritual leaders instruct and teach by the whole counsel of God. Because they have a reverence and an awe for whose messenger they are.

13 · Establishes the third mark of faithful leadership—personal pursuit of holiness—by explaining that Malachi's priests failed to walk uprightly with God

Number 3, faithful leaders pursue holiness. God calls the spiritual leaders of his people to walk in the way of the Lord, to walk in the way of the Lord. I don't think that means there's like a sort of like strut you have. It's like No, he's talking about holiness. He's talking about those righteous ruts of the Psalms and Proverbs. Get in these righteous ruts. The way of the righteous versus the way of the wicked. Malachi describes a faithful leader as one who walks with God in peace and uprightness. Well, in Malachi's day, the priests, they veered off of that path. They're not living uprightly. They're not a model of holiness for the people. They're out of step with the very Word of God they're supposed to be preaching, which, oh, by the way, maybe has an effect on the fact that they're not preaching God's Word, right? They're not living in step with God's Word. So rather than be convicted while they're preaching God's Word, they just kind of stop preaching all of God's Word. You see why the holiness of your spiritual leaders matters? That's part of the point he's trying to make. The Old Testament is filled with the stories of spiritual leaders, and every single one of them, every single one of them is prone to wander, is prone to drift, prone to disobey. The Bible is littered with examples of leaders, and it's littered with examples of leaders and their failures. It's not because the Bible is just finding the bad examples. It's because the Bible is just being honest and retelling the story. I don't care what chapter of history you look at. Show me a leader and I'll show you his feet of clay. Leaders are sinful. They are prone to error. But they need to pursue holiness all the same. Faithful leaders know that they have a proclivity to drift, and so they maintain practices that prevent moral drift and decay. Your pastors, your elders participate in care groups just like the rest of you. It's not so that we can say, participate in care groups, we do it too. No, we're doing it because we know we, just like all of you, have a need for fellowship and accountability and care, that we need to be discipled as iron sharpens iron, that we need all of those things, that we can't neglect meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, lest we drift and fall away. The same goes for all of us. That's a little side note on the importance of community. We need your accountability. We welcome your input, your questions, your concerns, even your rebuke. We don't just welcome it, we need it because we want to strive for holiness. We don't want to be ensnared by our sin. And if you love us, you won't remain silent. Malachi shows us you need spiritual leaders who are pursuing holiness. Just a few months ago, I found out about a pastor in the Midwest. Gifted man. Gifted. Theologically sound. Faithful in his preaching. And he fell morally. He slept with the church secretary. He'd been doing it for months. Just devastated the church. The holiness of your spiritual leaders matters. Pray for us, hold us accountable. And not just in those sorts of categories. Here's another one I think you can pray for us about. I think pastors can be uniquely tempted by covetousness. I think pastors can be uniquely tempted by money and possessions. If I was doing something else, would I be making more money? They could be tempted by time off and leisure. My vacation got interrupted by this pastoral crisis. Why can't I just ever get away? They can be tempted by allowing the lure of retirement to drive the decisions they make in life. I think pastors can be uniquely tempted in those ways because the culture around us is intoxicated by them. Oftentimes our people are pursuing them and so we feel that tug as well. Pray for us and hold us accountable in those areas. Robert Murray M'Cheyne was correct when he wrote, "The greatest need of my people is my personal holiness." He's not being arrogant by saying that. He's recognizing that by a lack of personal holiness, he can undo every true thing he's ever said from God's Word.

14 · Establishes the fourth mark of faithful leadership—promoting holiness in others—by showing how faithful leaders turn people away from sin through teaching, counseling, and example

Which leads us to the final mark of a faithful leader. Faithful leaders promote holiness in others. They pursue holiness themselves, they promote holiness in others. You pray for the holiness of your pastors in part because you're doing so because you want to be holy. I'm praying for my pastor to be holy. I'm praying for my elders to be holy because I want an example of holiness because I want to pursue holiness with them. Do people tend to exceed the holiness of their pastors? I don't want to say that incorrectly or say that inappropriately. I think the Lord who is sovereign over our sanctification, who calls us to strive and fight and work with all of our energy for it, He can make us holy people. But when you don't have holy pastors, it makes it that much harder to be a holy people. Pray for our holiness so that you would grow in holiness and demand spiritual leaders that call you to more holiness. Malachi describes the faithful leader as one who walked with the Lord in peace and uprightness. And he turned many away from iniquity. Faithful leaders turn people away from their sin in their teaching, in their counseling, and by their example. Pastors are called to be protectors of the people. They're shepherds, meaning they turn the sheep away from danger. They keep the sheep from stumbling. We're to put the burden of Hebrews 12:14 before our people. Hebrews 12:14, "Strive for the holiness without which one will not see the Lord." Strive for holiness, otherwise you won't see the Lord on the final day, at least not in the way that you want to see Him. That's not works righteousness. That's not works righteousness at all. It's saying for the one who truly loves the Lord, there's a desire to walk and live according to His word. I'm not going to belabor that point. Rick Amash is going to visit that and touch on it significantly next week. But hear this, your pastors, your elders, we promote holiness. We preach hard words. We preach sermons that are hard to preach, that we know make people uncomfortable, that we know bring conviction. We do that. We proclaim godliness even when it runs counter to the culture because we want you to see the Lord. When He returns, we want you to be numbered amongst the sheep. We want you to see Him with joy on your face. We want you to see the Lord. The great blessings Malachi tells us of faithful leadership are that it brings life and peace. It brings life to the people who sit under it. It brings peace. We want that as your pastors. We don't want to be a burden. We don't want to be a curse.

15 · Pivots from earthly leadership to Christ by showing that the priesthood was a shadow that would pass away and that no human leader is perfect

My ultimate hope for you is not our leadership, essential though it is. Malachi's indictment of the priesthood is ultimately a reminder that the priesthood itself was a shadow that would pass away. His rebuke and his burden— this is the last word until the prophets go silent for centuries. You know where those priests are several hundred years later? They're stirring up the people to release a murderer and convict an innocent man. The priesthood hasn't improved. Malachi isn't telling them, "Invest your hope in your earthly leaders." So who is the leader? Perfect. In his zealousness for God's glory? Who is the leader perfectly interpreting and proclaiming the Word of God? Who is the leader perfectly walking in the way of the Lord? Who is the leader perfectly promoting holiness in God's people? Who is the leader, the high priest, perfectly able to make atonement for sin?

16 · Answers the rhetorical questions by expositing Hebrews 3:1 and 10:19-23, establishing Jesus as the faithful apostle and high priest who perfectly fulfills the priestly role and provides access to God

Hebrews 3:1: Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our affection, who was faithful to him who appointed him. The only priest who is faithful to God who appointed him. 10:19, therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, And since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. He has provided a perfect leader.

17 · Applies the gospel truth by addressing those who have suffered under poor leadership, showing pastoral sensitivity to that pain while redirecting their hope from human leaders to Jesus Christ as the perfect leader who will lead them home to see the Lord

If you've suffered under poor leadership, and let's just be honest, to a degree you've all suffered under poor leadership. That's what it means to be under sub-shepherds of the chief shepherd, under-shepherds of the chief shepherd. But if you've really suffered, if there's been injustices done to you, Maybe you were deceived by bad teaching. Maybe you were hurt by harsh, vindictive, insensitive counselors. Maybe you had a pastor who fell in a horrible way. It's heartbreaking to hear about. It's hard to get past that. It's hard to have renewed faith and renewed confidence in the leaders God gives to his people. And I think the primary encouragement that Malachi and Scripture and the New Testament and especially the book of Hebrews would have for us is you shouldn't place your hope in them to begin with. Our confidence should never rest in men. Let our confidence never be found in human leaders. Put your confidence in God's provision of His Son, Jesus Christ. He was the perfect leader. He is the faithful pastor. He is the great high priest, and He is the fulfillment of Malachi 2:10. 5-17. Place your hope there. Follow Him. Be taught by Him. Sit under Him. And He will lead you home so that you can see the Lord.

18 · Closing prayer asking God to stir up holiness in the congregation and raise up a people marked by reverence, love for God's Word, and commitment to Christ's glory

Would you bow your heads? Lord, we want to see You. We want to be clothed in the holiness that allows us to enter your presence. Lord, we know that through your gospel we are clothed in the righteousness of your Son Jesus, but we now ask, stir up corresponding holiness in our lives and our lifestyles. And God, I pray that you would Raise up a congregation from the members to the leaders who have reverence for you, who long to sit under your word, who love to apply your word, and who are committed to the glory of your Son Jesus. We pray this in your name, Jesus. Amen.