God's Complaints Against His People

Prophecy To Our Age

God’s complaints against His people

Introduction: God, through the voice of his messenger Malachi, voices seven complaints against the people of Israel. Let’s summarize the complaints: Profanity, Sacrilege, Greed, Weariness of Service, Treason against Heaven, Theft and Blasphemy. However, the people are ignorant of their hopeless state or in denial of their sinfulness because they respond with the same answer to all seven of God’s complaints, “Wherein, have we done these things.” Now I’m here to tell you that there is a profanity worst then the spoken word; a sacrilege worst then desecrating holy vessels; a greed more atrocious then the greed of man; a weariness of service that exceeds that of slothful man; a higher treason then that of addictive behaviors; theft that is more terrible then dealings of monetary systems; and blasphemy that is more revolting then those that fall from the lips of man. God has sent His messenger Malachi into the midst of carnality and has levied these seven complaints against the people.

Let’s look at the first complaint, profanity (Chapter 1:6-7).

Here we find that the people are calling God, “Father”, and the people are not giving God any honor; they are calling Him “Master”, and do not have any fear of Him.

The people are perfectly satisfied with the fact that God is their Father and they are perfectly content that God is their master; yet God comes and says: “You call me Father, and you call me Master: where is My honor, and why don’t you fear me?”

The people respond, “Wherein”. They are perfectly happy with their outward appearance of following the letter of the law and providing bread as required from the Law of Moses.

God says, “You offer me polluted bread, and yet you say, the table of the Lord is supplied as required by the law.” The bread may have been perfectly fine but it became polluted by the very hands that made the bread. The root meaning of the word profanity is “away from the temple.” Profanity is used in reference to things that are not sacred, things that are commonplace.

There profanity is that they claimed to have a personal relationship with God the Father and they claimed to fear Him but they failed to honor Him except in word alone and they did not fear Him. In doing this they reduced God’s temple and service to a level of mediocrity.

No man who does not honor God can offer anything pure on God’s alter because God judges man’s gifts by the character of his heart, not by the following of rules and regulations.

Illustration: Why was Abel’s gift accepted and Cain’s gift refused? The true reason is that when God looked at the hearts of the two men; Abel’s heart was righteous and Cain’s was not. Both men gave of their first fruits but Abel’s gift was accepted because Abel was accepted; Cain’s gift was rejected because Cain was rejected. Likewise, these men laid their gifts upon the alter, saying “Father,” and “Master,” but before they came to the alter they had no honor for the “Father,” and no fear for their “Master.”

In our churches today, we find the same type of profanity, people with impure motives or unforgiven sin placing their gifts upon our altars and contaminates their gifts because their lives are contaminated by their own impurities. We need to be careful how we give to God. He receives or rejects our gifts by receiving or rejecting us by our hearts.

The second complaint is sacrilege (Chapter 1:8).

These men are merely offering their flocks for the form of sacrifice and for the appearance of fulfilling the law. How? They are offering to God the blind, the lame and the sick; keeping for themselves the best of the their flocks.

Why is this wrong? The offerings these men were putting on the altar were of little value to them and God always places great value on an offering by how much it cost the man the man that brought it, not a dollar figure but a love figure.

Illustration: As Jesus watched the men walking by and dropping their offerings into the temple treasury, there came a woman who dropped in only two mites. He saw that the men gave of their abundance but the poor woman gave of all she had. He measured the gift then, as he still does today, by how much it cost the giver.

Today, men are still bringing into the church the things they do not need. There are many who give sacrificially but there are many more who give sacrilegiously. If the giving of today’s churches were in line with the giving of the poor widow, the work of God wouldn’t be in such peril.