I am a Great King

Oh that there were one among you who would shut the doors, that you might not kindle fire on my altar in vain!

I have no pleasure in you, says the Lord of hosts, and I will not accept an offering from your hand.

For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name will be great among the nations, and in every place incense will be offered to my name, and a pure offering.

Has it ever occurred to you that God would rather have no offering than one which is flippantly offered? God is speaking here to Israel through Malachi specifically about the sacrifices they were offering in the temple. They were supposed to bring the best: they were supposed to bring the most perfect lamb they could find among their flock. The most valuable one. But what they were bringing were the worst. They were bringing the lame, the sick, the blind, the ones they captured in war. They gave God what they would have had to get rid of anyway.

We don't sacrifice animals anymore (personally I say, THANK GOODNESS!) but I know I do this in my heart. The animals chosen for sacrifice were not about making sure that what you had to offer God was perfect; it was about recognizing the immeasurable gift God gave you by refraining from enacting justice on you for the darkness you brought into the world and the evil that you knew lived inside of you. How easy is it to flippantly offer prayers of thanksgiving at meal time, or prayers before a sermon, prayers at the end of a sermon, or prayers for any number of things that we ask for from God like He's Santa Claus? How easy is it to give food to a food drive, or serve in a homeless shelter, or make food for a church dinner and simply check it off as the thing you did for God today? Make no mistake, these are GOOD things. They're things we SHOULD do and keep doing, but doing them to check off your I-was-a-good-Christian-today list is not what God wants. In fact it PROFANES His Name. Does that little phrase "in vain" sound familiar? It reminds me of the fourth commandment to not take God's name in vain. When you say you are serving God, but in your heart you are not, you are taking up His Name with no meaning behind it. You are putting your heart as the person behind God's Name. And quite frankly, He would rather His Name not be there at all if it is only you that those watching will see. If it is not a deep, heartfelt worship of our King, if it is not a heart kneeling in awe of the magnificence of the Great King we serve that others see, if when people see us they don't see us pointing straight back to Jesus, then it would be better if we didn't do it at all.

When you offer blind animals in sacrifice, is that not evil? And when you offer those that are lame or sick, is that not evil? Present that to your governor; will he accept you or show you favor? says the Lord of hosts.

This stuck out to me. Why are we so eager to please people who are in positions of power, but not nearly so to give the King of Kings our best? If I were to receive a request from the president, a governor, a senator, or even a house representative, I'm sure I would spend a great deal of time on it and probably review the finished product a dozen or so times before submitting it to them. But with God? While there are times I do treat the things God has entrusted to me with reverence and weightiness, there are many times I try to rationalize my way out of giving it any effort at all. Would the governor or president accept shoddy work? Or even if they would, would they praise you for it? Most certainly not. And yet we expect God to show favor and blessing to us regardless of the attitude with which we serve Him? Of course, God gives us abundantly more grace, blessing, and favor than we deserve, no matter how we serve and worship Him. But how can that be the attitude of our hearts? How can we be so backwards?

But you say, "What a weariness this is," and you snort at it, says the Lord of hosts. You bring what has been taken by violence or is lame or sick, and this you bring as your offering! Shall I accept that from your hand? says the Lord. Are we wearied by serving God? By giving our love and honor to the One who gave His Son for us? My only conclusion when I think about why this might be, why we might be wearied by our sacrifices to our King who loves us and who fights for us, is that we do not understand just how much He loves us, and how much He fights for us. When we forget His love, our love becomes an obligation.

I have heard it told that we should worship and serve because we owe it to God, simply because God is God. He created us and therefore He owns us. To me, this is reminiscent of a parent telling you as a child to do something and when you ask why (because, you know, you don't really want to do it) they just say, "Because I said so." Most kids have experienced that, and most adults remember the feeling of frustration at having to do something simply because someone with more authority and power said so. Sometimes we feel like that with God. And in those moments when we feel like God's rules are simply "Because I said so," we become wearied by our obedience. But if you read the whole of Scripture, you begin to see that God's heart is not "Because I said so." It certainly could be. Because He is God. He did create us. We do belong to Him. But His heart is one of love. You see it in passages like Deuteronomy 6, where God promises that His commands are for His people's good, "that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly." You see it particularly in Jesus, when He gave up all His rights to the divine to be born among the poorest of the poor, to die among the lowest of criminals, just to say, "This is how much I love you. And this is where I'll go to save you from yourselves."

Are we wearied by serving a God with a heart like that?

Oh that there were one among you who would shut the doors, that you might not kindle fire on my altar in vain!

For I am a great King, says the Lord of hosts, and my name will be feared among the nations.

*Passages in this post are taken from Malachi 1 and convey the heart of the passage, but verses may be used out of order to draw attention to points being made.