The Faith of Priests

After crossing the Red Sea and setting up camp at the base of Mt. Sinai, God gives the “law” to the Israelites. The law included instructions for a priesthood to offer ceremonies designed to reflect blessings from God or repentance towards God; but as time went on, the priesthood didn’t function like they were supposed to very often. From the very beginning with Nadab and Abihu, who didn’t respect the responsibilities of the priests (Leviticus 10), to the prophetic words of Malachi, “For the lips of a priest ought to preserve knowledge, because he is the messenger of the Lord Almighty and people seek instruction from his mouth. But you have turned from the way and by your teaching have caused many to stumble…” (Malachi 2:7-8).

The priests had abused their position of intercessory between God and the Israelites. It is believed that the sects of the Pharisees and Sadducees were established during the time after Malachi as an effort to establish more order in their service. Whether that worked or not could be debated. Just because there was “order” didn’t translate to faith.

Zechariah served as a priest when the Messiah arrived. We’re told in Luke 1:8-9 that “Zechariah’s division was on duty and he was serving as priest before God, he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to go into the temple of the Lord and burn incense.”

Jesus often rebuked the religious leaders and teachers of the law because they “do not practice what they preach,” and “everything they do is done for people to see…” (Matthew 23:1-7). Even at Jesus’ trial, we get a glimpse of the blindness because they were so “zealous for their traditions” that they couldn’t see how the prophecies about Jesus were being fulfilled right in front of them. (Mark 14:55-63, Galatians 1:14).

There’s no indication Zechariah was doing a half-hearted job, but we see pretty clearly that his faith didn’t match up with what the ceremonies he was performing were pointing at. As a result of his lack of faith, he became a mute. But it makes sense that, even prior to that instance, he still wanted to receive blessings from God and had hope for God to redeem Israel.

Sometimes, like the priests, our actions may not match up with our hopes. If we hope to be smarter, fitter, richer, better in some way, can we expect to reach that goal if we just go through the motions? Following Jesus takes faith. Jesus reminded Thomas of this after His resurrection, when He said in John 20:29, “Because you have seen Me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” What we do in faith, matters!