Giving God Your Best
Malachi 1:6-14
After listening restlessly to a long and rather tedious sermon, a 6-year-old boy asked his father what the preacher did the rest of the week. “Oh, he’s a very busy man,” his dad replied. “He takes care of church business, visits the sick, works on his sermon, counsels people…and then he has to have time to rest up because speaking in public isn’t an easy job.” The boy thought for a moment and said, “Well, listening ain’t easy, either!”
Why are some of you nodding your heads?
It isn’t easy to listen, is it? Especially when it’s something that we don’t really want to hear, right?
I want to acknowledge those of you who have taken the time to read through this short book of Malachi this past week. If you haven’t been able to do it yet, I encourage you to read these 4 chapters at least once a week.
Let me remind you of the situation that Malachi is addressing.
The Jews have returned to their land after living in modern-day Iraq for 70 years. The Temple has been rebuilt and the worship of God has been reestablished. But things are not easy.
While outwardly everything seems OK, on the inside there was a cancer of complacency is eating away at their commitment.
As God’s final spokesman at the end of the Old Testament, Malachi comes on the scene to challenge them, and us, to give God our best.
And, as we’re going to see this morning, part of God’s program for our spiritual progress is that God longs for us to give Him our best. What we will discover this morning is this:
“Since God is so great, He deserves our very best”
Let’s focus on 3 ways we can give God our best:
1. EMBRACE AN AUTHENTIC FAITH (vv. 6-7) [Repeat]
What we see right away in verse 6 of chapter 1 is that there are two sides to the Father’s love:
One side is tender and the other a bit tougher.
God is relational in His giving, but He is also resplendent in His glory!
And, as such, we must honor Him. [Read verse 6]
John Piper argues that we must hold these truths in tension.
We should have a childlike security in His care for us and
we should have a childlike reverence for His authority.
God refers to Himself as the Father of Israel in Exodus 4:22: “This is what the LORD says: Israel is my firstborn son.”
And, in Exodus 20:12, He tells us to, “Honor your father and your mother…”
To “honor” someone is to consider them weighty or heavy.
God deserves to be honored because He is holy!
I want you to notice the phrase, “Lord Almighty.”
“Lord” is the name “Yahweh” and was too holy to be spoken by human lips. In fact, it was so respected and honored that it was only pronounced once a year on the Day of Atonement, and then only by the high priest in the most holy place of the Temple.
If the name needed to be written, the scribes would take a bath before writing it and then destroy the pen afterward.
That’s how seriously they took the name “Yahweh.”
While “Yahweh” is difficult to define, this name refers to the fact that God is who He is.
He’s the one who causes everything else.
He is unchanging.
He is the One who inhabits eternity.
He is the One who always was and who always will be!
The title “Almighty” is the word “hosts” and means a huge number of armies. The Lord Almighty has all the hosts of heaven ready to do His work because He has infinite authority in the universe! 7 times in these nine verses alone we’re looking at this morning & 23 times in the whole book, God calls Himself, “The Lord Almighty.” Let’s look at them beginning with v. 6 again...
Verse 6: “If I am a master, where is the respect due me? says the LORD Almighty.”
Verse 8: “Would he accept you? says the LORD Almighty.”
Verse 9: “Will he accept you? says the LORD Almighty.”
Verse 10: “I am not pleased with you, says the LORD Almighty.”
Verse 11: “My name will be great among the nations, says the LORD Almighty.”
Verse 13: “You sniff at it contemptuously, says the LORD Almighty.”
Verse 14: “For I am a great king, says the LORD Almighty.”
Now, during the first half of verse 6, the priests are probably saying,
“Amen, that’s right God. Bring it on. Let the people have it.”
But notice the second half of the verse: “It is you, O priests, who show contempt for my name.”
Ouch! Now it’s time for them to listen!
By the way, this had to be a difficult message for Malachi to deliver because he was not a priest.
They probably resented him and looked down upon him.
I’m sure they didn’t like what he had to say.
The priests were showing “contempt” for God. How so?
They no longer thought of Him as weighty.
They didn’t take God seriously.
They despised their duties.
Their worship was wearisome.
They were taking God for granted.
And, they had the nerve to lash out at the Lord Almighty!
Look at the last part of v. 6: “How have we shown contempt for your name?”
Whenever you ask God “how,” He’ll tell you.
In v. 7, He answers them. Look at v. 7...
“You place defiled food on my altar.”
Unbelievably, the priests persist in their questioning: “How have we defiled you?”
God replies, “By saying that the Lord’s Table is contemptible.”
They were just going through the motions like we sometimes do when we allow the extraordinary to become ordinary. In fact, intimate familiarity with the holy can lead to a humdrum spirituality if we’re not careful.
Ravi Zacharias said it this way: “When man is bored with God even heaven does not have a better alternative.”
If God bores you, then nothing else is going to satisfy you either.
Genesis 4 records what happened when two brothers, Cain and Abel made sacrifices to God. Cain was a farmer and brought the first fruits of his harvest. Abel was a shepherd who brought the first of his flock as an offering. For some reason, God accepts Abel’s offering and rejects Cain’s. People have suggested all sorts of reasons why God would do this but it has nothing to do with the offering and everything to do with the attitude of the one making the offering.
1 John 3:12 tells us that the reason Cain’s sacrifice was not accepted. Do you know why his sacrifice wasn’t accepted?
He had a heart full of evil.
Hebrews 11:4 gives us the reason Abel’s offering was accepted.
Do you know why his sacrifice was accepted?
He had a heart of faith.
God looks at the sacrificer and then at the sacrifice.
He looks at the offerer and then the offering.
God is not pleased with a sacrifice that is in essence a spiritual sham.
God is looking for authentic adoration!
If we want to give God our best we must first embrace authenticity.
We must stop just going through the motions, refuse to play church, and do whatever it takes to keep the fire burning.
Some of us dishonor God and count Him contemptible when we try to live on what Charles Swindoll calls, “three dollars’ worth of God.”
Listen to his words:
“Some of us would love to buy three dollars worth of God. Not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine…I want ecstasy, not transformation. I want the warmth of the womb, not new birth. I want a pound of the eternal in a paper sack. I want three dollars worth of God, please.”
This is the Lord Almighty we’re talking about! He is great!
And because He is so great, He deserves our very best.
And one way we give Him our very best is to embrace an authentic faith.
A 2nd way we give God the best is to...
2. GIVE GOD PRIORITY OVER POSSESSIONS (vv. 8-9) [Repeat]
We could sum up Israel’s problem by saying that they were suffering from SARS – Severe Acute Religious Syndrome – and it was highly contagious. Look at v. 8... [Read v. 8]
What’s going on here? What was happening was that the priests were accepting not just the second best from the people.
It was much worse than that.
They were bringing God sick sheep and gross goats.
They were offering the ones that weren’t worth anything!
Imagine the parade of diseased animals limping and stumbling blindly toward the Temple.
Picture their oozing sores just covered with flies.
Some of them probably collapsed even before they got there!
The reason God says, “is that not wrong?” twice in this verse is because the people, and certainly the priests, should have known better.
In Leviticus 22:2, 19-20, God made it very clear that He was not interested in substandard sacrifices.
Listen as I read from Leviticus 22...
“Tell Aaron and his sons to treat with respect the sacred offerings the Israelites consecrate to me, so they will not profane my holy name. I am the LORD…you must present a male without defect from the cattle, sheep or goats in order that it may be accepted on your behalf. Do not bring anything with a defect, because it will not be accepted on your behalf.”
Here’s the principle: God deserves priority over your possessions.
These people were more concerned with keeping what they had than they were in giving God their best.
Their hearts weren’t in it any longer.
They were still coming to worship but it was just a meaningless ritual to them.
They had accepted mediocrity in their lives and their leaders did nothing about it.
God tells them to try and offer their junk to the governor as payment of their taxes and see if he would accept them.
The bottom line is they thought God didn’t care what they did.
After all, they were middle class people who had worked hard.
They had high taxes, bills to pay, and they didn’t have a lot of extra cash.
I’m challenged by this passage because the priests could have said, “Hey, it’s not our fault that the people are bringing their garbage to God. We’re just sacrificing what they give to us.”
God doesn’t buy it! He holds the priests accountable for what the people are bringing. Just like he holds pastors and elders responsible to make sure that the congregation doesn’t slip into a ritualistic religion that no longer gives God the best.
And that’s a heavy responsibility!
Well, what are the standards for sacrifices in Scripture?
There are at least 3 standards for sacrifices in Scripture:
• Give the best [Repeat]
Israel had been taught to look through the flocks and find the one animal without defect or blemish to sacrifice.
This wasn’t easy to do because this animal was the cream of the crop, the most expensive, the one used for breeding, but it was what God demanded.
This reminds me of the story of Mary of Bethany found in John 12.
She loved Jesus so much that she looked for the one gift she could give that would be the most appropriate expression of her devotion.
She had been phenomenally forgiven and so she wanted to give greatly. As she went through her possessions, she looked for something that would represent Her relationship with the Redeemer.
And then she saw it, an alabaster jar of expensive perfume, which was worth almost a year’s salary for a common working person. She went to Jesus with the jar, broke it, and spilled it out on His feet. The whole house was permeated with perfume and the aroma went up to God in recognition of His weightiness.
She gave her best.
Are you giving God the best that you have?
• Give to God first [Repeat]
I love the sense of joy that accompanies giving in 2 Chronicles 31:5: “As soon as the order went out, the Israelites generously gave the firstfruits of their grain, new wine, oil and honey and all that the fields produced. They brought a great amount, a tithe of everything.”
God is never to get the leftovers!
He should receive what is right, not what is left!
When the Israelites gave God 10% right away, it helped them to recognize that everything they had was a gift from Him.
We’ll talk more about this when we come to Malachi 3.
But I find it very interesting that according to IRS figures, those who make the least amount of money contribute a greater percent of their income to charitable causes than those who make the most money.
Why? Why the disparity? One reason is because when we don’t have much we recognize that what we do have is a gift and we want to give out of gratefulness. When we have more we think we deserve it and because we’re spending what we have, or in some cases more than we have, the thought of giving to God first is either absurd, or absent from our minds altogether. And yet, God calls us to give to Him first, no matter how difficult that may be. It’s like the story of the widow in Mark 12:41-44, who gave all she had, while those who had a lot gave just a token of their wealth.
What’s the principle here?
God measures the value of an offering by its worth to the person bringing it.
Not only should we give the best and give to God first, but...
• Giving should cost something [Repeat]
Israel had been taught that giving should be sacrificial.
In 2 Samuel 24, David came to the recognition that his own sin had led Israel astray, and God’s judgment had come in the form of a plague on the people. David interceded in prayer and then he wanted to offer a sacrifice to God. He went to a place owned by a man named Araunah and told him that he wanted to buy his threshing floor so that he could build an altar to the Lord.
Araunah generously offered to give the oxen for the offering and the wood for the fire – kind of a “turn-key” sacrifice.
All David had to do was sit in the pew and everything would be taken care of for him.
Instead of looking for a shortcut, David refused this discount and said this in verse 24:
“No, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the LORD my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.”
Likewise, we must give sacrificially, not sacrilegiously.
Are you giving God the best?
Are you striving to give Him the first?
Does your giving cost you something?
One of the best ways to monitor how you’re doing spiritually is to take a look at your giving.
Are you leaving God your leftovers, or are you giving Him priority over your possessions?
Our God is so great that He deserves our very best! Amen?
What are some ways we give Him our best?
1. We embrace an authentic faith
2. We give God priority over our possessions
And we...
3. GRASP THE GREATNESS OF GOD (vv. 10-14) [Repeat]
Verse 10 should cause us to bolt upright in our chairs!
God would much rather have us shut down the church than to come to Him with pathetic leftovers. [Read v. 10]
As hard as this may be to hear, God does not need our sacrifices.
He’s saying to us today, “Don’t you dare allow me to be represented as some lifeless religious icon. I’d rather you shut everything down than have you continue in a phony religious ritual. If you’re not prepared to give me every inch of your life, then you can’t play church because I’m closing the doors.”
This stings, I know, but no worship at all is better than halfhearted sacrifice.
God doesn’t need us to give Him anything.
This passage gives us the purpose behind offerings.
Listen to these verses and see if you can detect a pattern:
Verse 11: “My name will be great among the nations, from the rising to the setting of the sun. In every place incense and pure offerings will be brought to my name, because my name will be great among the nations, says the LORD Almighty.”
Verse 14: “Cursed is the cheat who has an acceptable male in his flock and vows to give it, but then sacrifices a blemished animal to the Lord. For I am a great king, says the LORD Almighty, and my name is to be feared among the nations.”
Did you catch it? Do you see a pattern there?
Every time God mentions sacrifice, He follows it with the phrase, “I will be great” or “I will be feared.”
Sacrifice is directly linked to the greatness of God.
That’s why when we give Him our best we are grasping the greatness of God. And, on the other hand, when we offer Him little or nothing, we are really saying that God doesn’t matter much to us. When we fail to celebrate God’s greatness by giving Him our best, our priorities go out of whack, and we become bored with God and excited about the world.
That’s what happened to the priests in verse 13. [Read it]
Instead of counting it a privilege to minister on God’s behalf, they complained, “What a burden!”
It was more trouble than it was worth in their minds.
They even “sniffed at it contemptuously,” which means that they “puffed” or “blew” in exaggerated exasperation.
I imagine God looking at us and wondering why we get so bored with Him. God actually put this into a question in Micah 6:3:
“My people, what have I done to you? How have I burdened you? Answer me.”
And in Isaiah 1:12-13, we hear this from the Almighty:
“When you come to appear before me, who has asked this of you, this trampling of my courts? Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me…”
Notice the strong phrase at the beginning of verse 14: [Read v. 14]
God not only wants the temple shut down but the offerer of awful stuff will be bitterly cursed. No wonder the Lord is angry!
They promised to give their best, but then they gave Him their worst!
God does not want to be cheated as Ecclesiastes 5:5 states,
“When you make a vow to God, do not delay in fulfilling it.
He has no pleasure in fools; fulfill your vow.”
God is saying that His name will be great, whether we acknowledge it or not. The party will go on without us.
But someday, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord!
Someday everyone will acknowledge His greatness and His grace.
Someday everyone one will acknowledge His supremacy.
In the meantime, do you acknowledge that today?
If so, are you worshiping Him with all you are?
Or, do you have a hard time worshiping the Lord?
Do you find worship wearisome to you?
If so, maybe these 3 symptoms of wearisome worship will help you give God the best as you worship Him:
• Inadequate Preparation [Repeat]
This touches what happens before the service begins.
Did you ever wonder why the Jewish Sabbath begins on Friday evening at sundown?
Because the preparation for worship begins the night before.
Are you taking time on Saturday night to get yourself ready for Sunday morning?
If you find you are continually up late on Saturday evening,
what that tells me is that you don’t value God and don’t take Him seriously.
Because if you realized how great God is and took Him seriously, you’d be giving Him your best.
And you can’t give Him your best when you are tired and worn out from staying up late the night before.
• Half-hearted Participation [Repeat]
This speaks to what we do when we finally get to worshiping corporately with others.
Because we generally know what’s going to happen in a service, it’s easy to just go through the motions, isn’t it?
There’s nothing more boring than trying to worship God when your heart isn’t in it.
I hope you don’t come to church to be entertained.
We are not here to entertain you.
We are here to assist you in worship.
We are here to worship with you.
And you are not the audience! God is! Amen?
And because He is so great, He deserves your very best!
He deserves all of you!
He deserves your whole hearted participation!
There’s a 3rd symptom of wearisome worship in the church today...
• Improper Motivation [Repeat]
This touches on the reason we come to church in the first place.
Are you here just to get something for yourself or do you come because you have an appointment with God?
Your answer makes a world of difference.
Instead of wondering if a service helps you, or determining if you liked it or not, the real issue is this:
Did I meet with God today and to some degree, did I grasp His greatness?
Well, maybe you’re feeling like the boy I mentioned when I started this message: “This ain’t easy to hear!”
Maybe so, but I believe it’s time for us to step it up!
Are you giving God your best with your time, with your talents, and with your treasures?
Are you giving Him what is left, or what is right?
If we’re going to give Him our best, we must grasp His greatness!
The big event today that most everybody will be watching is the Super Bowl. I’ll be watching it. And there’ll be lots of hype about this great game and this great event.
Listen to how one NFL football player describes his experience of playing in the Super Bowl...
This is how John Burrough, who played for the Atlanta Falcons in the 33rd Super Bowl on 1/31/99, describes the experience:
In the middle of all the explosions and hoopla and hype, all I could think was, Is this it? Is this all it is? Why, this doesn’t even compare to worshiping my God!
It all comes down to this:
Since God is so great, give Him your best!
If you ever get a glimpse of the greatness of God, and what Jesus has done for you, you’ll never play church again and you’ll give God your best for the rest of your life.
