Malachi | The Purpose of Offerings 1:6-2:9
All of us struggle with surrendering everything to God. Many christians, myself included, find themselves complacent or in outright defiance of the Lord. I have often heard from people attempting to dispel complacency from young christans say, “God deserves our best.” However, in actuality, our best is still insulting to God. If God deserves merely our best, our requirement for salvation wouldn’t be faith, but rather “trying our hardest.” Instead, God sent his son to be what even our best could not achieve, and bear the punishment for our sins. We can then be adopted into the kingdom of God and be called his children.
That being said, while our best is insufficient for God’s favor, followers of God give it anyway as an overflow of their love for Him. Children of God honor their Father because they have been given the right to be called children. This is why God asks Israel, “A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If then I am a father, where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is my fear?” (Malachi 1:6 ESV). We give God our everything not because it is required of us, or that we will get salvation or anything else out of it, but because God is simply worthy of it. Israel had their deliverance from Egypt and Babylon as proof of God’s goodness, and we have the cross. It is for this reason that while God deserves much more than our best, we give Him what we can all the same.
The Tainted Offerings of Priests
If even our best is worthy of God’s eternal judgement, how much more does he despise anything worse than that? The temple priests had not been sacrificing animals in accordance with the law, but instead had been sacrificing animals with imperfections such as blindness. Not only was this against the law, but it demonstrated a lack of understanding of the gravity of the sins of Israel. God requires a perfect sacrifice because He is perfect, and the only way we can be reconciled to God is to be made perfect. This is why it was so important that Jesus lived a perfect life. Otherwise, He would just be another blemished sheep for God to be displeased with.
When the priests sacrificed tainted animals, it implied that these animals would please God, which insults His character. In sacrificing these animals on the Lord’s table, they say that “the Lord’s table is polluted, and its fruit, that is, its food may be despised,” (Malachi 1:12 ESV). All too often, we excuse our own sin and continue in it. A common excuse to continue in sin is the claim, “God still loves me.” While nothing can separate us from the love of God, in Christ, we are set free from our sin and we have the ability to deny ourselves in favor of God’s will for our life. God and sin cannot exist in the same place.
The Curses Placed on Disobedient Priests
God lists out a series of curses on those who do not heed his warning, illustrating how seriously he regards the tainted offerings the priests have been giving. He rebukes their offspring and spreads the dung of their offerings on their faces. He does this to uphold his covenant with Levi, the tribe of which constitutes the priests of Israel. He compares Levi to the priests at that time and rebukes the priests for not fulfilling their duties. He says, “the lips of a priest should guard knowledge, and people should seek instruction from his mouth,” (Malachi 2:7). Priesthood was a privilege to teach the people in the ways of the Lord, and is similar to pastorship today. It was important that priests follows and taught the word of God accurately, because many people were under their influence, and one priest who failed to guard the truth led to many misinformed lay people.
Pastors carry this same influence today. It is crucial that pastors give all they can to God and to truth, because congregants will be influenced by this. A good shepherd will not walk into destruction and in turn lead their flock into this same destruction. While not all of us are priests or pastors, we all carry some pastoral and priestly influence, regardless of the form. We are responsible for how that influence is used, and what others can learn from us. As followers of God and stewards of His word, we must preserve the truth and ensure that we do not lead those who look to us for guidance astray. Therefore, we must give God our everything to demonstrate our gratitude for Him and give an example for others to reproduce in their own walks of faith.
