Lighting useless fires

This week's verses are Malachi 1:6-14:

“A son naturally honors his father and a slave respects his master. If I am your father, where is my honor? If I am your master, where is my respect? The Lord of Heaven’s Armies asks you this, you priests who make light of my name! But you reply, ‘How have we made light of your name?’ You are offering improper sacrifices on my altar, yet you ask, ‘How have we offended you?’ By treating the table of the Lord as if it is of no importance. For when you offer blind animals as a sacrifice, is that not wrong? And when you offer the lame and sick, is that not wrong as well? Indeed, try offering them to your governor! Will he be pleased with you or show you favor?” asks the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. “But now plead for God’s favor that he might be gracious to us.” “With this kind of offering in your hands, how can he be pleased with you?” asks the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.

“I wish that one of you would close the temple doors, so that you no longer would light useless fires on my altar. I am not pleased with you,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, “and I will no longer accept an offering from you. For from the east to the west my name will be great among the nations. Incense and pure offerings will be offered in my name everywhere, for my name will be great among the nations,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. “But you are profaning it by saying that the table of the Lord is common and its offerings despicable. You also say, ‘How tiresome it is.’ You turn up your nose at it,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, “and instead bring what is stolen, lame, or sick. You bring these things for an offering! Should I accept this from you?” asks the Lord. “There will be harsh condemnation for the hypocrite who has a valuable male animal in his flock but vows and sacrifices something inferior to the Lord. For I am a great king,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, “and my name is awesome among the nations.”

This verses mesh a bit with what we talked about last week. They are written by the prophet Malachi, who lived during the period when the Persians ruled Israel, after the Israelites had managed to rebuild the temple. But instead of the restored people being zealous, they were lukewarm about their faith. They were intermarrying with the Persians, adopting Persian customs, and just going through the motions in their worship of God. Church: box ticked.

If you're in a relationship with someone, and they're just going through the motions, how does it make you feel? Or what about if you're being served by someone in a restaurant or store and they're on their phone the whole time? It's kind of disrespectful, isn't it? And that's basically what God is saying to the Israelites: "If we're in a relationship, where is the love? And if you are serving me, where is the respect?"

Before Jesus paid the price for our sins, people used to make sacrifices of food and animals in order to pay for their mistakes. The idea was that you would be losing something of value when you failed, whether it was a fat animal that could have sold for a lot of money, or a bunch of flour or olive oil you could have used to feed your family. It made a statement.

But in Malachi's time, religion had become more of a culture thing, and people weren't really interested in their sacrifices being actual sacrifices. They were like "wait, don't take the good goat! Use the blind one we can't sell anyway." It was shrewd, and defeated the whole purpose of making a sacrifice.

Even worse than that, people were complaining about having to worship at the temple at all. Imagine you're married and your spouse complains openly about having to spend time with you! Imagine you're a manager and your subordinates are openly badmouthing you to their colleagues! It's a real problem!

The thing God says through these verses is not that we need to give more tithes. Even if the Israelites had given twice the number of blind and lame goats, it still wouldn't have been a genuine sacrifice. Instead, what God is saying is that practicing our religion reluctantly or on autopilot is disrespectful.

He says that he wishes someone would close the doors of the temple and quit lighting useless fires to burn useless sacrifices. In other words, it's better to lock the doors and turn out the lights than to have a service where people are just there because it's what is expected of them by their culture.

The people were on such autopilot that they weren't even aware they were doing anything wrong. Have you ever had someone confront you on a longstanding habit of yours and been in denial? You get so used to doing things a certain way that you can't see anything wrong with it. The people were like "what are you talking about? We show up and we put money in the offering plate just like everybody else. How are we being disrespectful?"

God reminds us that he is the Lord. The boss. The king. And a commander of armies. He deserves respect. We shouldn't allow ourselves to become too complacent with him. We shouldn't cut corners. We should take him, and our devotion to him, seriously.

If God was a person who mattered to you, maybe someone you're in love with, maybe someone on whose favor your career or personal well-being rests, how differently would you treat the time you spend with him or the things he asks you to do?

If someone you have a crush on, for instance, asked you to bring some food to a sick friend of theirs on your side of town, what would you do? Would you say no? Would you agree and then talk yourself out of it? Would you find the cheapest possible food and drop it on their doorstep just to say you did something? Or would you go all out, and do whatever you could to make sure their friend was well?

Or what if your boss wanted to meet with you once a week to potentially get you a promotion? Would you tell him no, you're too busy? Would you set a time and then show up late, or not show up at all? Would you show up, but then just nod at what he's saying while texting your friends? Or would you show up, take notes, and block out time to do what he suggests?

And yet God tells us to care for those in need, and to spend time in prayer and meditation on his word, and most of us don't respond anything like we would for someone we value. In the temple where we worship our God, the fires are lit, but nobody is engaging seriously. Maybe we've gotten used to him and have started taking him for granted.

We're in a time of year where people often examine their lives and decide where they need to make some changes. If you think you might be disrespectful in the way you live out your Christianity, I would suggest spending some time in reflection and prayer to see what you might be able to do to set that right in the coming year.