Malachi Lesson 2: Do We Have the Highest Reverence for God? 

Chapter 1:6-14

“A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If then I am the Father, where is My honor? And if I am a Master, where is My reverence? Says the Lord of hosts to you priests who despise My name. Yet you say, ‘In what way have we despised Your name?’

⁷ You offer defiled food on My altar, But say, ‘In what way have we defiled You?’ By saying, ‘The table of the Lord is contemptible.’ ⁸ And when you offer the blind as a sacrifice, is it not evil? And when you offer the lame and sick, is it not evil? Offer it then to your governor! Would he be pleased with you? Would he accept you favorably?’ Says the Lord of hosts.

⁹ ‘But now entreat God’s favor, that He may be gracious to us. While this is being done by your hands, will He accept you favorably?’ Says the Lord of hosts. ¹⁰ “Who is there even among you who would shut the doors, so that you would not kindle fire on My altar in vain? I have no pleasure in you,’ Says the Lord of hosts, ‘Nor will I accept an offering from your hands.

¹¹ For from the rising of the sun, even to its going down, my name shall be great among the Gentiles; in every place incense shall be offered to My name, and a pure offering; For My name shall be great among the nations,’ Says the Lord of hosts. ¹² ‘But you profane it, in that you say, ‘The table of the Lord is defiled; And its fruit, its food, is contemptible.’¹³ You also say, ‘Oh, what a weariness!’ And you sneer at it,’ Says the Lord of hosts. ‘And you bring the stolen, the lame, and the sick; thus, you bring an offering! Should I accept this from your hand?’ Says the Lord.

¹⁴ ‘But cursed be the deceiver who has in his flock a male, and takes a vow, but sacrifices to the Lord what is blemished—For I am a great King,’ Says the Lord of hosts, ‘And My name is to be feared among the nations.'”

Last week, we asked God if He really loved us. And this week, God asks us do we really love and honor Him?

If you recall, the book of Malachi is built around six (6) conversations that God has with the captives that have returned to Israel from Babylon, well, Persia really. Babylon has been defeated. They have rebuilt the Temple and are beginning their sacrifices. This second Temple was not as bright and grand as the Temple that Solomon built, but they had a Temple and they were excited.

In verses 1-5, God shows clearly that He loves the people of Israel and that He has shown it by preserving them in the midst of great struggles and by thwarting their enemies. Even when they were sent by God into captivity, He has preserved them and brought them back home.

In our modern times, we have seen the resurrection of Israel in 1948 back to their homeland, and in 1967, the retaking of Jerusalem to be the capital city. The nation of Israel had been pretty much non-existent, scattered across the globe from 70 AD, when the Roman military ransacked the city and scattered the people. But God has preserved them, and now they are back as a nation. God loves the nation of Israel. Remember, Jesus is a Jew; He is the King of the Jews. God cannot hate Israel.

Today, we will encounter a second conversation that God has with the people that are back in the city. As we mentioned before, the Temple has been rebuilt, and they are offering sacrifices. Now there are very clear rules as to what type, kind, and condition of the sacrifices. In Leviticus 1:3, we are told that the sacrifice has to be of the highest quality.

“If his offering is a burnt sacrifice of the herd, let him offer a male without blemish; he shall offer it of his own free will at the door of the tabernacle of meeting before the Lord.”

God required that any offering brought to Him was to be one that was perfect in that it had no blemishes. This, of course, was very important as the sacrifices were a picture of Jesus, our perfect, sinless sacrifice.

There are countless verses that talk about Jesus’ perfection (1 Peter 2:22, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Hebrews 4:15, Luke 1:35, 1 John 3:5). God was very careful to protect the integrity of the perfect sacrifice because He knew Jesus the Messiah was coming to take away the sins of the world. God knew that only a perfect and sinless sacrifice would satisfy His Holiness.

In Leviticus 1, there were provisions made as well for the poor in all the sacrifices. The wealthy could bring a bull or a lamb, but the poor could bring turtle doves or pigeons. All could offer sacrifices, and all would be accepted as long as they followed the rules. God would forgive their sins and show them mercy and grace. But as we look at this conversation between God and His people, we find that there are some issues here that God cannot overlook, and they must be addressed.

• We know how to honor human leaders, verses 5-6

We have all seen what happens in towns and cities where dignitaries are visiting. They clean up the town and make sure all is well. When I was a boy, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth and her husband Prince Philip came to Barbados. I was 10, I think. The Queen was coming to knight one of the cricket heroes, Garry Sobers. I was there at the Garrison, the place where we held horse races in Barbados. It was a large open space that allowed a lot of people to see what was going on. We were all dressed in our best, the place was clean, the roads swept, and on and on. Even though I was never going to meet the Queen face to face, I was still dressed by my parents as if I was going to be standing right in front of her.

We understand how to prepare for human dignitaries, and yet, as God points out, we do not have the same reverence for Him.

How many people show up to church each Sunday tired and sleepy, the kids, the adults because they did not prepare for church, to worship the Lord with a good night of sleep. How many go to bed early each weeknight so as to be ready for work but do not offer God the same reverence. How many are late to church each Sunday but arrive 15 minutes early each day for work? How many mentally prepare for work but refuse to prepare spiritually for meeting with the Lord?

We take the Lord for granted, and we do not honor Him as He deserves. He is the ultimate dignitary, He is our heavenly Father, and He is deserving of all of the honor and glory that we can give Him. But for some reason, we, yes, even God’s people, do not honor Him at all.

• We pretend not to know what we are doing, verse 6

God tells them what they are doing, and the people pretend not to know that they are not honoring God as the King and Heavenly Father. The people ask, ‘in what way have we despised your name?’ They pretend that they do not know what is going on. We are all like that. We get pulled over by the police, and even though we know we were speeding, we ask, ‘what’s wrong, officer?’ Then the officer has to explain that you were doing 80 mph in a 50 mph and that you will be getting a ticket.

God goes on to explain to the people that they have been offering imperfect sacrifices to Him on His altar, and He is not going to tolerate it anymore.

7 “You offer defiled food on My altar, But say, ‘In what way have we defiled You?’ By saying, ‘The table of the Lord is contemptible.’ 8 And when you offer the blind as a sacrifice, is it not evil? And when you offer the lame and sick, is it not evil?”

You refuse to offer me the best that you have. You take the sick and lame, the blind and marred, and offer this as a sacrifice to me. First of all, go and offer that to your local governor and see how he reacts. Will a mere human dignitary accept this second-rate offering? We all know the answer, No, he will not. He would take it as an insult and maybe even execute you. He certainly would not hear your petitions. Yet, you expect me, the God of the Universe, to accept your second rate, or maybe even worse offering. NO, I am not going to do it. Stop it.

But, just as important as God the Father’s position as King is Jesus’ position as Savior. This picture had to be properly guarded, as there could be no question as to the sinless perfection of our Lord and Savior Jesus.

This practice of offering God unclean and damaged animals was prevalent even in Jesus’ day. We find Him overthrowing the money changers in Matthew 21:12, and as we study the history of the time, we see that the priests or maybe their servants would inspect the animals as they were brought for sacrifice by the people. They would determine that an animal was unfit and then offer to sell them a fit animal. This was all lies. Most of the people brought good animals, and the priests swindled them out of the good animals by declaring them unfit. They simply took advantage of the poor.

The priests were a part of the ruling class in Israel. When the people came back from Persia, the priests and not the kings became the ruling class right up to Jesus’ day. Jesus called them out as thieves, turned over their business tables, and kicked them out of His Father’s Temple.

How often do we treat God the same way? Do we tithe first? Do we give God what is rightfully His, or do we give Him what is left over, if there is any?

There is a lot of discussion in churches today about tithing. Many think it was part of the law and simply do not take the time to study the scriptures. I encourage you to study it yourself.

The first time that tithing is mentioned in the scripture, we see it in Genesis 14 when Abram pays a tithe to Melchizedek when he returns from a battle to rescue Lot. We are told in Hebrews that this Melchizedek was Jesus, a man without mother or father, without beginning and end (see Hebrews 7:3), and that he is a priest forever. Abram, our spiritual father, paid tithes to Jesus our Savior long before the law of Moses was written. God should get the first fruit of our labor. In our time, the government takes payroll taxes, and we have no control over that. But once you get paid, God should be paid first above all else. We will cover this more extensively later. This is another conversation that God has with them.

• We still expect God to help us, verse 9

We still expect God to help us and to treat us favorably when we treat Him with utter dishonor. We are delusional, or worse, arrogant.

Last night as I was coming home from work, I had a few questions for the Lord. I was contemplating the issues in Israel as Hamas was raining bombs down on them. I see the economy here in North America be decimated by the crooks we have in power, and the ones who are not crooks are incompetent. Sadly, most are corrupt. I was angry with God for standing by and apparently doing nothing, but I was wrong. The more I read the book of Malachi, the more I understand.

We have mistreated God. We have defied God, yes, even as supposedly saved people. We have elected – time and time again – men and women who hate Israel, who hate babies in the womb, who hate the God of Israel, and we wonder why they are doing these things. We, God’s people, are the problem. Most of these people could not get elected without Christians or supposed Christians voting for them. We elect evil people and then entreat God to stop their evil actions. We are the idiots.

God is not mocked; whatsoever a man sows, that will he reap. These Jews had no idea that in a few short centuries, some 400 years away, the time of the Gentile church would come, and that God would scatter the Jews around the world and burn Jerusalem to the ground. They had no clue that God would, for all intents and purposes, shut the nation of Israel for almost 2,000 years and begin a new work in the Gentile nations. The very nations they detested. They thought that God needed them, and they were wrong.

We are in the same boat here right now. The Gentile church is dying. We are defying God; we are offering Him second-rate men and leaders to do the work. We dishonor Him with our lives and our ways. We take advantage of His grace and mercy. But all too many in the New Testament churches do not realize that the time of the NT church is swiftly coming to an end; it will be a violent end, and God will begin to prepare the world for the resurrected King of Israel, Jesus, the King of the Jews.

• We have a unique opportunity, verse 14

We are the nations that God is talking about in this verse. The Jews rejected God’s leadership, and we, the Gentiles, received it. For the better part of 2,000 years, we have been the light bearer and the carriers of the Good News of Jesus to the world. As we get nearer and nearer to the return of Jesus, let us not drop the torch. Rather, let us be even more diligent to offer God our best: our time, our lives, and our faithful service. Paul puts it this way in Romans 12:1-2,

“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”

God does not require animals to be killed any longer; He wants us to willingly sacrifice ourselves for the Kingdom. Let us give Him ourselves and our families, fully, wholly, and completely for His service and for His use. Let us honor Him with our lives and with our monies, with our time and our speech. Give God the glory, and reverence Him as the King of kings, our Heavenly Father, and the Righteous Judge to whom we will answer. Let us honor our Great King,

“For I am a great King,’ says the Lord of hosts, ‘And My name is to be feared among the nations.'”

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding

Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church

How to Connect with Us

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MississaugaMissionaryBaptistChurch

Online: https://www.mississaugamissionarybaptistchurch.com/ (under construction)

Email: missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca

An Exposition

Hebrews 2:1-4: “The Worse Kind of Neglect”

“Therefore, we must give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest we drift away. For if the word spoken through angels proved steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the LORD and was confirmed to us by those who heard Him, God also bearing witness both with signs and wonders, with various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit, according to His own will” (Hebrews 2:1-4, NKJV).

I do not know how much clearer the Scriptures can be when it comes to the issue of salvation. From Genesis through Revelation, the central figure of the Bible is the Lord Jesus Christ, whom the Bible describes as the “Author and Finisher” of our faith, and that He and He alone is the ONLY way to God the Father (John 14:6).

The New Testament is without meaning or relevance if all it did was to list the accomplishments of a good man, noble teacher, and pious example for people to emulate and admire yet ends in a grave. There would be no New Testament at all. The entirety of the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) would be a deceptive, insignificant record of an ancient nation and its claim to be chosen by God for His purposes. Without the salvation provided by the work of Jesus Christ, any message of redemption and an afterlife is a waste of time, and humanity is doomed (1 Corinthians 15:12-19).

It is pride and arrogance within our wicked and ungodly being that we hatch the idea that we can do alright without the intervention and grace of God, that we can make ourselves righteous by things such as works, good behavior, obedience to the local laws, and a nod to the Ten Commandments to sound better than the average pagan. We neglect to read the Bible or even take it upon ourselves to search through it and see that anything we do in our own power to make our lives acceptable in the sight of the favorite deity of the day is as useful as nailing gelatin to the wall and still does nothing to rescue us from a possible post-mortem worm feast or a dark afterlife if it even exists (John 8:33-34, 9:41; Romans 3:10-18; 2 Peter 2:14; Romans 6:23).

Scripture says that it is Jesus Christ who saves and keeps us (John 10:28-30). He is our only substitute from sin (Isaiah 53:5, 11; 1 Corinthians 15:3; 2 Corinthians 5:21; 1 Peter 2:24, 3:18). He is our sin-bearer, something we cannot do for ourselves (1 Peter 2:24; 1 John 3:5). He is the final sacrifice for our sins, and by saying “it is finished” (John 19:30) on the cross, He assured us once and for all and that anything we do in our own strength will not be accepted by God as payment for our iniquities (Isaiah 64:6). There is no need for anything else, period.

The LORD has used various means to speak to His people, as was written in the opening sentences of Chapter 1. We read of His audible voice as He both instructed and warned His people about the direction of their country and their individual relationship with Him (Exodus 19:19; Numbers 33:50; Psalm 29:4, 62:11, 108:7; Isaiah 48:15; Daniel 4:31: Matthew 17:5; John 12:28-29; 2 Peter 1:17). The words that God spoke were written down by the prophets and statesmen of Israel over the centuries and became Holy Scripture, inerrant and all-sufficient (John 17:17; 2 Timothy 3:16-17; 2 Peter 1:19-21).

The preaching and teaching of the Lord Jesus were spread by the apostles throughout the Roman Empire and later written down as they grew older and realized that what had been taught by them concerning the Lord Jesus needed to be written down. This would become the New Testament.

Most of its contents were completed before 70 A.D, save for the three letters of John and Revelation, which most Bible experts believe were written around 85-90 A.D. Afterwards, the Canon of Scripture was closed. The Church Fathers (100-400 A.D.) all agreed that the 39 books of the Old Testament and the 27 books of the New Testament were the authentic and complete word of God due to apostolic confirmation and authorship and the use of the Scriptures over the centuries as the foundation of all teaching and preaching.

Any other “gospel,” such as the Gnostic writings found in 1945 at Nag Hammadi in Egypt, had been condemned by the Church Fathers in the progression of Christianity as heretical due to their outlandish content, contradictory records of Christ’s life and work, and the denial of His true nature. What we possess is the authentic, inspired, inerrant, and God-breathed Word, and that has not changed in thousands of years.

Verses 1-4 of Chapter 2 tell us that God used angels, signs, wonders, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit to spread and verify His word. Before the composition of the Gospels and other writings of the New Testament, the apostles were given the ability to perform miracles of healing and deliverance from demons as proof that what they were teaching was from Jesus and could be trusted. Every sign, wonder, gift, and miracle were to demonstrate the power and saving mercy of God through the work of Christ and in the power of the Spirit, never for personal notoriety or to promote a type of spiritual “snobbery” that seems to be a bad trait of some churches today.

The signs and wonders from the LORD were also a sign of judgment on anyone who thought that they did not need the intervention of Christ to gain access to heaven and eternal life with God. The sinner was faced with the undeniable power of God before them, and many opened their eyes to the need for redemption through Jesus alone and not of their own accord. The Holy Spirit used these signs and mighty works to draw the lost to Christ then, and uses the Scriptures through the preaching and teaching of the Word to the lost today. I will agree that He can perform mighty works today if He so desires, as He is God and has all things under His rule, but it is a rarity in terms of what occurred in the time of the apostles.

We live in an age, not of serious inquiry and study of the Word of God, nor of heartfelt prayer for the lost, nor for a genuine renewal of love for Christ and the edification of His church, but of grabbing the next spiritual thrill, or emotional experience, or newest trend that will be a sure-fire means of getting the people to come to worship. Shows, dramas, concerts, coffee bars, and pep talks that substitute for sermons seem to be the norm in this apostate age.

I have heard a generation of folks wishing for the “days of the Book of Acts,” essentially recreating the time where the “tongues of fire” (known languages) came on the Apostles. They want a “rush” while blinded to the fact that we ARE in the days of the book of Acts, complete with persecution, false doctrine, false teachers, church disagreements, fallouts with brethren, hazardous journeys made to spread the Gospel, and a constant threat of danger from the world, the flesh, and the devil.

I am warning you, whether you are rolling in the aisles on Sunday mornings, or reading from a prayer book for the umpteenth time, or not even trying to comprehend the deep treasures of the Word of God and the person of Christ because of a good excuse you can muster so as not to go to the house of God. Many of you reading this message need to wake up and face the fact that you either need to be renewed in the Spirit and repent of your coldness towards the LORD or be convicted of your sin and bow the knee – not to society, political ideologies, lifestyles, opinions or the idol of self that you keep polished on the mantle of your ego — but to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Jesus Christ, God Incarnate, Savior, Redeemer, Deliverer, and Coming Judge to establish HIS eternal kingdom.

He will exercise absolute control over this world and will rule with a rod of iron without anyone’s opinion or input. He will NEVER compromise with a sinful world that hates Him, and He does not bow or cater to what YOU think should be done or said. If you refuse His offer of salvation, not only you but every reprobate sinner who rejects Him will face Him, bow to Him (Philippians 2:9-11), and be condemned to eternal punishment (Matthew 25:41; Mark 9:43-48; Luke 12:13-21, 16:19-31; Revelation 20:11-15).

You are a blithering fool if you walk away from the gift of mercy, life, and forgiveness freely offered to you by the Lord Jesus Christ. The wrath of God that is to be poured out any day now on this wicked and perverse world will not be delayed or set aside. To refuse salvation ensures that you will suffer through what will be, according to the Bible, hell on earth leading to the hell of the afterlife, if you live at all.

Jesus Christ is THE only way of salvation, no one or nothing else. Period. Deal with it TODAY, one way or another, but you are without excuse as of reading this message. Please come to Him today. Your temporary excuses and arguments are not worth an eternity in hell where there will never be another chance or opportunity to be saved. So, make your decision.

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