Jump Start # 4110
Malachi 1:6 “A son honors his father, and a servant his master. Then if I am a father, where is My honor? And if I am a master where is My respect? Says the Lord of hosts to you, O priests who despise My name. But you say, ‘How have we despised Your name.’”
The book of Malachi reveals some powerful spiritual lessons. A person can come back home. He can restore things externally. Everything can look good and seem fine, but the heart was never moved. Walls were repaired. Rubble was removed. Gates were put back in place. But what was not touched was the heart. The heart of the people was far from Jerusalem. The heart was not where it ought to have been.
What a great reminder for us. “Get to church,” we tell a family member, and out of guilt, pressure, fear they come. We are so happy. They are back we tell everyone. Yet, they are not back. Their hearts and minds are galaxies away from the Lord. They sit in a church building, but they do not follow the Lord.
And, in the development of these verses in Malachi, three fundamental principles are established.
First, God can be offended. We’ve gotten to the point in our culture where we have made God so desperate for our worship and attention, that He’ll accept anything. From rock concerts, to food courts, to dancing to comedy clubs, to dating services, the modern church has turned so far left that it cannot even see the Bible anymore. A few verses are sprinkled into pep talk sermons that are nothing more than self help talks.
In Malachi we find, “With such an offering on your part, will He receive any of you kindly?” What was the offering? Sick, crippled and diseased lambs, the stuff that no one else wanted. Don’t want to breed a diseased animal. The disease may carry on. Certainly can’t eat a diseased animal. They are worthless. So, this was the basis of their sacrifices. Give to God what nobody else wants. God will take it. He’ll take anything. God was offended. How little they thought about the Lord. How insignificant God was to them.
We need to open our eyes and see that what we do in worship may make us laugh, feel good on the inside and fire us up, but those very things might insult and offend the Lord. God may reject our worship.
Second, God is aware of what is going on. How did God know that the sacrifices were diseased and crippled? He saw. He knew. Malachi 1:7, says, “You are presenting defiled food upon My altar…” He saw. He knew. God knew when they complained that worship was so tiresome (1:13). Sleeping in worship, God sees. Playing on your phone during worship, God sees.
Not only does God see those things, He sees into our hearts. He knows the motives, the reasons and the attitudes that we carry. A right sacrifice can be ruined by the complaining heart of the one giving it.
Third, God was expectations. God was expecting honor and respect. Our verse shows that. We should never settle for substandard worship. We ought to try to bring the best to God every time. He has always given us the best.
In a broken system of worship, as we find in the opening sentences of Malachi, we find wonderful principles about how we ought to worship. Bring the best ought to be running through our veins and be woven into our spiritual DNA. This starts by thinking about Sunday other than on Sunday. Get to bed early on Saturday. Get things ready for the coming Sunday.
Don’t allow others to sour your attitudes or get you distracted by talking about weather, sports and politics. I hear this going on right up to the start of worship and as soon as worship is over, it fires back up again. So little “other time” to talk about the Lord. It seems that we are in a hurry to get thought worship so we could talk about the things we really want to talk about: sports, politics and the weather. It’s as if we have squeezed God in just as something we have to do.
Bring excellence. Bring the best.
Roger