Read: Malachi 1
Why are sacrifices called sacrifices? This isn’t a trick question, it has an obvious answer: it’s because they are costly. The person making the sacrifice, whether that is a sacrifice of an animal, time, money, or something else, is giving that thing up for another.
Under the Old Covenant, the Lord required that the people bring their best. Whether it was the best of their herd or the firstfruits of their crop, it was to be costly to the one making the offering (Lev. 22:21).
God, being the owner of the cattle on a thousand hills (Ps. 50:10), was not concerned about the quality of the offerings in and of themselves. God doesn’t hunger and he’s not like the petty idols of the nations that need to be paid before they would pour out their favor on their worshippers.
The reason God required something costly was threefold: First, he is holy and supremely worthy of the most honor, fear, and devotion (see Rev 4:11).
Second, sin is that serious and costly to forgive.
And third, the sacrifice was to be an act of faith in God. Sacrificing an animal that was sick or injured, that wasn’t good enough to sell or eat, required no faith in God.
When a worshiper offered a blemished sacrifice, they did not need to trust that God would continue to provide and that a reconciled relationship with God was worth far more than the cow or goat.
Seventy years after the temple was destroyed, the returned exiles of Judah had finally rebuilt the it and were able to properly worship and sacrifice to Yahweh as they did before. God told them through Malachi, however, that it would be better if one of their priests closed and locked the doors of the temple and prevented any worship being done inside of it (Mal. 1:10). It would be better for them to not worship at all than to continue worshipping as they were. Why? Because the people were bringing their wounded and sick animals as offerings and the priests were accepting them!
In so doing, the priests were teaching the people that God’s laws and requirements could be ignored and broken on a whim and that God himself wasn’t worthy of much honor or fear. He gets them to realize just how dishonoring their sacrifices have been by asking them what would happen if they were to take what they were offering and present them to their governor? Would their governor accept such lazy and worthless offerings? Absolutely not. He would have considered their offering as on offence against him. “You think I’m only worth a diseased cow?”
The people knew this and would have never thought to beseech the favor of the human authorities over them with what they were giving God. But how much more worthy of honor, fear, and respect was Yahweh? Infinitely more, which makes their offerings all the more insulting and dishonoring to God. Their offerings weren’t reflecting any sort of love or fear or faith in God. Thus, God sent Malachi to them to correct them of their foolishness. A foolishness, by the way, that they were completely oblivious to (Mal 1:6).
What are we offering to the Lord? Before we can answer that question, we must remind ourselves that Jesus Christ and his perfect sacrifice for sin, was the fulfillment of the sacrificial system. We are no longer required to offer up to God a bull or goat as our act of worship any longer. Our sins have been fully paid for by the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ (Heb 10:10).
But we are still called to worship God, both individually and corporately. In fact, our whole lives are meant to be lived in worship to God (1 Cor. 10:31). But God specifically calls us to offer up, by faith, our time, money, natural and spiritual gifts—our whole bodies—to him as worship (Rom 12:1).
This worship expresses itself in many ways, but to just name a few: Reading our Bibles, praying, giving, and corporate worship with the saints. When we do those things do we find them to be burdensome? Do we think of them as religious activities to check off in order to remain in God’s good graces? Are we doing those things out of a love for Christ and with our whole being, or we distracted and only going through the motions as we do them?
When we do those things with impure motives and without any effort on our part, are we not offering up to God our lame cows and blind goats? What are our hearts doing as we do those things? What does our worship reflect? A fear of God or a lack of fear of God? May God increase our fear of him and may our worship bring honor to his name!
