A couple of Sundays ago, we began our venture into the book of Malachi. Malachi’s writings represent the last known words that God sent through a prophet to His chosen people, the Israelites, before the coming of Jesus the Messiah. There was roughly a 400-year gap between Malachi’s writings and the coming of Jesus. The theme of God’s message through Malachi had to do with the inadequacy of the sacrifices that they were offering to the Lord in their worship. They were using defective animals and other elements. The Lord was not pleased!
We identified five Sacrifice ‘Standards’ that God’s rebuke made clear to the Israelites. The second of those that we discussed was that God’s precepts and principles – and promises – really matter! God’s people had departed from the standards that God had laid out in passages like Deuteronomy 7:12–15, where He said …..12 If you pay attention to these laws and are careful to follow them, then the Lord your God will keep his covenant of love with you, as he swore to your ancestors. 13 He will love you and bless you and increase your numbers. He will bless the fruit of your womb, the crops of your land—your grain, new wine and olive oil—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks in the land he swore to your ancestors to give you. 14 You will be blessed more than any other people; none of your men or women will be childless, nor will any of your livestock be without young. 15 The Lord will keep you free from every disease. He will not inflict on you the horrible diseases you knew in Egypt, but he will inflict them on all who hate you.
So, in Malachi 1:7-8 the Lord says to His people “You have shown contempt by offering defiled sacrifices on my altar. “Then you ask, ‘How have we defiled the sacrifices?’ “You defile them by saying the altar of the Lord deserves no respect. 8 When you give blind animals as sacrifices, isn’t that wrong? And isn’t it wrong to offer animals that are crippled and diseased? Try giving gifts like that to your governor and see how pleased he is!” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.
God had given His people specific standards as to the nature of the sacrifices offered on the altar for the remission of their sins. Before the Cross of Christ, the Law had prescribed a system of sacrifice of unblemished animals as a part of one’s own personal worship at the Temple. In his message this past Sunday, Kevin Jordan gave some useful, and illustrative details on the prescribed sacrificial practice. This sacrifice would, in effect, pay for the sins of the individual. The sins would be forgiven, and the individual would be declared ‘not guilty’. But the sacrifice had to comply with God’s standards. The sacrifice had to be of great value.
Here is what is perhaps the main point in all of chapter 1: A ‘sacrifice’ is not a ‘sacrifice’ unless it truly costs you something. We must remember that in our own sinful nature, resulting from the sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden, we were pulled away from a holy and prefect God by that very sin nature that we acquired. This sin caused a great distance between Jehovah God and us. Because of that great distance, it would require a major sacrifice to reconcile the imperfect – us with a sin nature – to perfection – the Holy Jehovah God. God, as the only perfect Being – came and offered all of Himself to pay the price for sin. It would take a great sacrifice – barbaric beatings, humiliation, pain, ridicule, etc. and THEN He would go to the Cross to be crucified, with our sins, to bring us to God. This sacrifice that Jesus made for us cost Him everything in human terms. He would give His very life in the pursuit of bringing us a perfection that was not grounded in us, but was rather grounded in Him, as the One Who paid the great price. This sacrifice was very costly.
In verse 7, we are reminded that actions speak louder than words! By offering improper sacrifices on the sacred altar, i.e. blind or sick animals, the people were saying that the altar is not really sacred, and that ‘compliant’ animals don’t really matter. God then preempts them by anticipating their response (Hey – He IS God!!!) to his admonition in the first part of verse 7, when He tells them they would ask how they had defiled the sacrifices in their worship practices. God tells them that by ignoring the standards required in the sacrifices, they were actually DISrespecting that altar, and Jehovah God Himself. While the people did not say this directly, and they wouldn’t have admitted to it, their actions – sacrificing blemished animals, was an egregious offense against the Lord. These animals were not real sacrifices because they cost their owners so little. Because they weren’t costly to their owners, they were simply unacceptable.
As we look back on this time, some 2500 years ago, we have to ask the question, ‘What sacrifices does the Lord expect of me today?’ That is the right question to be asking, but we must be willing to receive the answer, and to ACT on that answer. If we don’t act in accordance with the answer we receive, then we have missed the boat. We become no different than the people in Malachi’s day who took shortcuts on the sacrifices that were required. If we’re not careful, we wind up not giving Him anything, and if we do, giving Him something that does not cost us anything – which, really doesn’t constitute a sacrifice.
How do I know the sacrifices that I need to offer Him? I believe we can break these areas of sacrifices into maybe three categories. First, we offer him our TIME. Time is such a gift, such an asset. God gives us time over a physical lifetime in which He has given us a specific mission to live through and live out. Time is so valuable because it is God-given, but also because it is limited. Psalm 90:12 tells us ‘12 Teach us to realize the brevity of life, so that we may grow in wisdom.’ We don’t know how much time we have. We sacrifice to God our time when we spend it thinking about God and His Kingdom, when we serve others in the Name of God’s Kingdom, when we talk to others about God’s Kingdom.
The second category of sacrifice is our TALENT. Again, this is a gift from God. He gives us unique equipping in the way He created us, so that we can accomplish tasks, objectives, etc. in pursuit of our fulfilling that unique mission that He has assigned to us. Your talents may be expressed in terms of Spiritual Gifts (Romans 12; 1 Corinthains 12, Ephesians 4), unique abilities, such as manual dexterity, cognitive skills sets, athletic skills, musical and creative skills, communications abilities, etc. and your personalities as tools of influence. When we use these talents to move the Kingdom of God forward, we are using the distinctiveness of how He created us to further what matters the most to Him.
The third category of sacrifice is our TREASURE. This consists largely of our material goods and assets. The things that generally have monetary value, like money itself. We tend to forget that the topic most frequently mentioned by Jesus in the Gospels is GIVING – Generosity. In God’s economy, he allows us to earn a living in order to provide for our families – and maybe others in our care, as well as to manage those funds in a way that we give to those who are in need and can’t otherwise support themselves. God uses His church (the ‘storehouse’ equivalent in Malachi 3) as the facilitator of funds and other material goods to go toward benevolent care for those who are in genuine need. The minimum standard that God requires of us is in the TITHE, which means 10%. In reality, however, the tithe amount at 10% is not really sacrificial, because there is still 90% that God allows us to use for our own purposes. Now – who couldn’t discipline themselves to live on 90% of their income, and to give 10% to the church, as God requires? Apparently, not many can! The Bible specifies over and above the tithe is a sacrificial level of giving – a level that causes us to have to give something up; to actually sacrifice.
In each of these three categories – time, talent and treasure, we have the opportunity to bring pleasure to God, to bring Him honor and not disrespect and contempt as Malachi writes about. But we must be willing to sacrifice. In Mark 8:34–35, Jesus says, … “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me. 35 If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News, you will save it.
I would rather offer proper and pleasing sacrifices now, and gain eternal life in the long run, than to offer blemished sacrifices (which aren’t sacrifices anyway) that cost me nothing, and lose the opportunity for eternity.
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