Choosing to honour God first and always

Brothers & Sisters in our Lord Jesus Christ,
Today we consider again the message God delivered through his prophet Malachi – the last of the Old Testament prophets.
God placed a burden, a message on Malachi’s heart.
He had to share the word of the Lord.
His message:
God has an unfailing covenant love for His people.
The Lord says, “I love you!”
There are those who believe that love means that they can do anything they like.
God’s people had sinned and God had disciplined them. The Babylonians took them captive yet in faithfulness to his covenant love, after 70 yrs. God had delivered them. God raised up godly servants who in faith and dependence on God’s gracious provision had rebuilt the Walls of Jerusalem.
The temple had been rebuilt and sacrifices were offered.
Israel’s response to the message of God’s great love was:
“How have you loved us?”
In other words: “prove it that you love us.”
Remember the situation that Israel was in at this time.
They were experiencing hardship – pests and plagues (2:17; 3:11,12)
They were politically weak and insignificant, still living under Persian rule.
My friends, it would seem to me that the people did even think to ask themselves, ‘Why is there no blessing from our God and father?’
Yet, ‘God’s great Name will be revered by all in spite of the irreverence of Israel.’
Israel had spurned God.

Israel had refused to respect God their Father.
It is not so much the outward actions of the priests that upsets God.
It is their attitude.
God addresses the condition of the priest’s hearts.
They were not choosing to honor God first and always.
We know, ‘from the heart the mouth speaks, then actions follow.’
What did the priests do?
They neglected their duties to God.
They neglected their covenant responsibilities.
How?
They went through the motions of sacrifice – but their hearts were not in it.
“What a burden,” they said.
They took no care or pride in what they offered to God.
The priests did not teach the people to honour the Lord their God. They accepted the offering of blind, diseased, maimed and lamb animals from the people, thinking this was good enough for God even when God had said,
‘Your offering must be without defect’.
Malachi compares the attitude of the priest’s in his day with that of Levi.
“He revered Me and stood in awe of my Name. True instruction was on his lips, nothing false. He walked with me in peace and uprightness and turned many from their sin.”
How different to the priest’s in Malachi’s day.
‘You have turned from the way. You have not walked in the footsteps of your father Levi. Your teaching causes people to stumble.’

The point is: if God gives people a task, a responsibility,
He is not pleased if they just go through the motions.
God evaluates the heart.
God considers the outcome of a person’s life.
How will God discipline the priests?
Malachi paints it in stark terms.
“I will smear your faces with the dung – you know what that is – of your festive sacrifices.”
In other words, God will take away their place of honour.
They will be humiliated.
My friends, we reap what we sow.
Those who sow to sate the inclinations of the old nature will reap God’s curse.
God’s warning is plain, ‘If you do not listen, and if you do not resolve to honour my Name, says the Lord Almighty, I will send a curse on you, and I will curse
your blessings.’
God was calling the priests of Malachi’s day to repent of their evil ways.
God is a holy God who calls his people to be holy!
What is the point of this for us today?
We no longer have the Old Testament priesthood offering burnt offerings to God.
That has been taken care of with the offering of Christ – the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
He has become the mediator between God and man.
He is the great teacher, teaching God’s people what is acceptable to God – the sort of sacrifice God desires from His people.
What does obedience to God’s covenant look like?
‘Choosing to honour God first and always.’

Jesus said in Mk. 8. – Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me.
The Sermon on the Mount teaches us who will enter into the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5-7) – Blessed are are the poor in Spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart and the peacemakers.
This is reiterated in Rom 12:1-2
“Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy,
to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and
pleasing to God–this is your spiritual {Or reasonable}
act of worship.
Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world,
but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s
will is–his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
Romans speaks of the offering of our selves as a living sacrifice.
With what is God pleased?
With those who honour Him with all their hearts.
Lip-service does not honour God.
He is not mocked. God searches our inmost being.
As the New Testament church we God has made us a holy
priesthood so we cry to God, ‘Be merciful to sinners.’
In a real sense we are the hands and feet of Jesus.
We are His mouthpiece.
What is it we teach those who God has given us
responsibility to guide and lead?
As young people who are considering marriage,
will you choose to marry a believer or an unbeliever?
Listen and learn from history!
I urge to honour God first and always.

“Judah has desecrated the sanctuary by marrying
women who worship a foreign God.” Mal. 2:11
As parents we are mediators between God and our children.
Parents, we need to urge our children from a young age,
‘Please honor God by marrying a believing partner.’
“A wife of noble character who can find?
She is worth far more than rubies … Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” Proverbs 31:10,30
Are our hearts set on honouring God?
Do our children see parents who stand with a holy awe and reverence for God?
Or is false teaching coming from our lips?
Perhaps we are guilty of failing to teach.
My dear friends, if we love God we will love His Word.
The Gospel is the good news that God is merciful, compassionate and gracious.
When the Spirit of the living God convicts us of our sins and short-comings, may we be quick to repent and call on our loving heavenly Father to forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
The priest’s in Malachi’s day were called to teach the people the sort of offerings that God is delighted in. They were called to be an example to the people of
faithfulness and warn people not to sin but honour God.
They failed miserably.
Malachi came as a watchman on the wall to sound God’s warning:
“What does the one God seek? Godly offspring. So be on your guard, and do not be unfaithful to the wife of your youth.” Malachi 2:15

Therefore, as a God who loves His people, like any father who loves His children, God disciplines the priests and the nation, that they might turn back to Him.
400 years after Malachi God himself in the person of Jesus Christ came into the world he had made, to his own people.
The message that Jesus proclaimed was,
‘Repent for the kingdom of God is near.’
In the Old Testament, our creator God’s desire was that
‘All the peoples should praise Him.’
He gave his commandments – 10 of them, which Jesus summarised saying, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. And you shall love your neighbour as yourself.”
We can go through the motions but if our heart is not in it – what does it achieve?
Worse than nothing.
God said through Malachi,
“Oh that one of you would shut the Temple doors, so that you would not light useless fires on my altar. I am not pleased with you and I will not accept any
offering from your hands.”
God will not allow his glory to be given to another.
Let us consider again the greatness of our God.
God so loved us that He sent His one & only Son into the world. He was crucified – the lamb of God. Yet it was the Lord’s will that He suffer, bearing our sin and shame so that He might draw all nations to Himself. In view of such love, shall we not come before the Almighty Lord with awe – He is an awesome God.
Come before Him offering a sacrifice of thanksgiving.

What is a sacrifice that is acceptable to the Lord?
Micah asks the question: “With what shall I come before the Lord and bow before the exalted God? Burnt offerings, calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has shown you, o mortal, what is good.
What does the Lord require of you?
To do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:6-8
Choose today to revere the Lord, honour Him first and always with all your heart.
Seek Him with your whole being.
As Malachi warned, ‘Do not flood the Lord’s altar with tears.’
Crocodile tears will not cut the mustard in God’s sight.
When we sense that God is not pleased with us, let us repent, change our ways and listen to Paul’s exhortation to his spiritual son – Timothy,

“Man of God, flee from all of this, (the temptations that plunge people into ruin
and destruction) and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness. Fight the good fight of faith.
Take hold of the eternal life to which you were were called when you made your good confession in the sight of many witnesses… God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of Kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honour and might forever. Amen.” 1 Timothy 6:11,12,15,16