“I have always loved you,” says the Lord.
These are the first words of the message of the prophet Malachi. It is always interesting to me what words the minor prophets have first in their messages. They certainly don’t get as many words as, say, Isaiah or Ezekiel, so the start and finish are usually super important and profound. And Malachi 1:2 did not let us down. The infinite God, who is before time was, has always, throughout all of time and beyond, loved you.
Music to my ears and water to my soul.
A love that is unchanging, unfailing, unending, has always forever been directed at you. At me. At all of us. Pretty cool to think about. It would be great if the message stopped there, nice and feel good, but the very next sentence tells a different story. But you retort, “Really? How have You loved us?”
Malachi is a story about the family of God just plain not understanding the two way street of God’s love. Verses 1 through 5 tell the story from the people’s perspective. They aren’t seeing God’s love for them, even though it’s all around them. In verse 6, the tables turn. God talks about how his people are showing contempt for the name of the Lord rather than love. And so the people ask in Malachi 1:6, “How have we ever shown contempt for your name?” The Lord’s response in verse 7? “You have shown contempt by offering defiled sacrifices on my altar.”
The Israelites (I’m assuming Israelites here. Could be the people of Judah, I guess. Not enough info.) were offering blind and crippled animals (Malachi 1:8-14) in their sacrifices. Instead of giving the best offerings they could, the unblemished firstborns and first fruits of the harvest, God was getting the left-overs. The second-best, or worse. The Israelites were not giving their all and best in worship. They were doing just enough to get by, in a kind of half-hearted love, worship, and action. And God knows it. The minimal sacrifice earned minimal favor. He says, in Malachi 1:9 and Malachi 1:10 “Go ahead, beg God to be merciful to you! But when you bring that kind of offering, why should he show you any favor at all? How I wish one of you would shut the Temple doors so that these worthless sacrifices could not be offered! I am not pleased with you and I will not accept your offerings.”
And yet that is still the trend 2400 years later. Just as the people of God then said, “It’s too hard to serve the Lord” and turned up their noses at His commands (see Malachi 1:13), are the worshipers today giving their all to God? Are we earning the curse of God mentioned in Malachi 1:14 because we are the cheats who are promising to give our lives to God but then not doing so? Failing quality standards doesn’t get us any farther in other parts of life either. A sculptor cannot promise a swan and provide a cube of ice. A journalist cannot write half a story. A car wash cannot only wash half of the car. These aren’t acceptable to employers or clients.
I learned a while back in leadership training that you can influence those around you, but the only person you can change is yourself. I can only influence you to look at your own worship and see if you are giving your all, the best of what you can provide when you worship, or if you are holding back from God. I can only influence you to change your worship habits. I can only change me, and you can only change you. But I want to commit to change, and you can too. All God has done for us should make us slaves to him for eternity, but instead He gives us the choice to be inspired by His love to serve Him for this life and be with Him in the next. So let’s serve him. Let’s stop offering defiled sacrifices.
I want to highlight five points I gathered from Psalm 149 about worship before I end today’s post. Maybe these can help you in a journey to really give your all for God.
1. Don’t get into a rut in your worship
Psalm 149:1 says to “sing unto the Lord a new song.” A lifetime is too short to praise every part of an infinite God and what He has done for us. Keep your worship fresh by praising God for something new, a recent thing He has done for you or an attribute you haven’t yet appreciated.
2. Worship together
Also in Psalm 149:1 it says to “sing his praises in the assembly of the faithful.” An assembly of the faithful is God’s family coming together in one place, normally a church. Don’t just worship your God, but come together and worship our God with believers. Everyone has something different they bring to a corporate worship setting, and they all enhance the worship.
3. Move
For some people who don’t move at all in worship except for their lips, this is perhaps an odd or unwelcome sentence. Psalm 149:3 says to praise the name of God with dancing, though, and the Bible is, well… the infallible Bible. If nothing else, the true worship of God should inspire you to move in action, to work according to the will of God.
4. Don’t be afraid of the mediums of worship
The next part of Psalm 149:3 mentions worship with a tambourine and harp. I picture the tambourine as more of a secular, pop-music instrument. But God can use it for his glory. Worship is not all about music. There are so many things around us in the world that can be used for the worship, as a medium of expressing love and adoration of God. We can worship through planting trees if it is done with the heart of being a good steward of the Earth that God has provided us. We can worship by driving cancer patients to their doctor appointments if it is done out of love for people and God, appreciating his gifts to us by sharing them. Don’t be afraid to break free from the box of Sunday morning “worship”. It’s about a heart and lifestyle, not about the latest song to hit the music industry.
5. Worship is ubiquitous
Ubiquitous is a big fancy word for everywhere, all at once. The point I want to make is that worship is not bound to a location, just as much as it is not bound to a medium. Psalm 149:5 mentions people singing for joy as they lie in bed. In every part of your waking day, you are in a place you can worship. It might not always be comfortable. It might not always be something you do out loud. But, just because you are not in church has no bearing on your ability or call to worship. In the car, at the dinner table, falling asleep at night, at school, at work, at the grocery store. These are all places we can and should worship.
I hope today really got you thinking about your worship and your sacrifices, and how they might not be the first fruit of your harvest. Today certainly challenged me to look at how much I’m not putting into worship but am called to.
Let us continue to aim to be the change we want to see in the world.
-Zachariah