Jeremiah, the man who wrote the book in the Old Testament, was both a prophet and a priest. In Jeremiah 1:1 we see that Jeremiah was a priest and in Jeremiah 1:5 we see that he was also a prophet. In the Old Testament times, these two offices existed in parallel, but often were at odds with each other. Priests were commanded to oversee the religious rites and temple worship proceedings. Prophets were the ones listening to God and commanded to tell the people of Israel what God was saying. It may be that these two roles exist in the church today: there are people who act like priests and say, “This is how we have always done things,” and there are people who act like prophets and say, “But this is how God is telling us to do things now.”

We, of course, have the benefit of living after Jesus’ ministry and therefore have been given the Holy Spirit as our guide. Not only that, but we are told, in 1 Peter 2:9, that we are part of this priesthood — we do not solely believe, but rather we are to be in service, as well. In other words, all of us who believe in Jesus are called to serve and we are universally given God’s Word as our primary method of hearing from Him. We can all participate in these roles of priest and prophet. But even though we can be participants, we all follow someone. Church members follow their church leadership; church staffs follow their pastors; pastors follow their senior / lead pastors; senior & lead pastors collaborate with other pastors; sometimes pastors follow denominations or fellowship groups. We all follow someone.

Jeremiah 5:30-31 — An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land: the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule at their direction; my people love to have it so, but what will you do when the end comes?

Jeremiah, again both a priest and a prophet, notices what is happening around him in his land and with his people. Prophets who prophesy falsely (misinterpret the Word of God) and priests who rule at their direction (instead of at the direction of God) will make people happy. The populace will praise those who tell them what they want to hear.

Colossians 2:8 — See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.

We all follow someone. We must be aware of who we are following and we must make sure they are not simply telling us what we want to hear. If we follow people who tell us what we want to hear, then what will we do when the end comes?

Tags: 1 peter, colossians, following, Jeremiah, Leadership

This entry was posted by zac on Sunday, December 6th, 2009 at 6:09 pm and is filed under Weekly Jib Jab. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.