We have them in hundreds if not thousands. They appear in different regale and uniforms, and we see them everywhere especially on Sundays. Our television and radio stations are filed with their messages. They also go by different titles, some are called Pastors, Evangelists, Prophets, Apostles others combine two or three names- Pastor Prophet or Apostle Evangelist and all sort. While I don’t mind the title they go by or the fact that there are many of them, I worry if they are actually doing what they are called to do.
Malachi 2:7 spells out at least some of their duties for us. Its reads ‘For the lips of a priest should keep knowledge, and the people should seek the law from his mouth: for he is the messenger of the Lord of host’. This scripture presents four things we should look out for in them, namely:
1. Their lips should keep knowledge. This speaks of the content of their message. It should be complete, accurate and up-to-date. They are not to withhold knowledge but to preserve the integrity of knowledge. That means they have to be knowledgeable in whatever they say. It is not surprising that some of our earlier scientist and philosophers were Men of God. Examples include Isaac Newton, Gregior Mendel, John Wesley, John Peckham, Nicole Oresme etc. They were both knowledgeable in secular things as well as in the knowledge of God. The movie the chronicle of Narnia was from the book of a preacher by the name C.S Lewis and it is so amazing that he wrote the book decades ago (1949-1954). If you have seen the movie you will know it is a good presentation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in terms and pictures that the children on the street can relate to.
2. People should seek the law from their mouth. This speaks of character and charisma, in that we should see them practice the same things they preach to the extent that we go to them so that they can teach us what they practice and they should also say it well enough for us to be willing to go to hear them. The latter I know a few have mastered well as they speak so eloquently that we long to hear them but the latter cannot exist without the former.
3. For his is a messenger of the Lord of Host. The commission. A messenger is one that bears a message from his or her master and can only be heard on the ground that he or she has a message from the master. Not only that he has a message but he must have a current message from the Master. First Corinthians 14:30 say ‘if anything is revealed to another who sits by, let the first keep silent’. It means there must be a present truth or message they are trying to pass across to us from God.
Friends when we see our men and women of God, do we see people?
1. With a Commission from God
2. With Character
3. With Charisma
4. With a message of accurate Content
