Week 33 Malachi
Let’s say I’m living in Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile. The temple is rebuilt and animal sacrifices are back on the agenda.
Let’s say I have a prize-winning sheep.
And I also have an old worn-out crippled half-blind sheep.
I have to go up to the temple to sacrifice one of them. Question: which one do I choose?
Pretty clearly for me it makes better economic sense to give the Lord the old sheep that’s on-its-last-legs.
So one of the first reminders Malachi gives is that OT regulations aren’t just stand-alone exercises. He asks the people: when you give blind animals as sacrifices, isn’t that wrong?…Isn’t it wrong to offer animals that are crippled and diseased? The Lord clarifies things when he says: you have despised my name by offering defiled sacrifices on my altar.
The big issue with giving a beat-up animal to the Lord is that the animal isn’t the big issue.
When I sacrifice I’m sending two signals: a publicly observable signal, and a private signal, a signal to the Lord.
Anyone else seeing me sacrificing my sheep will be thinking: good-religious-guy.
But sacrificing a bad animal to the Lord is like holding up a sign to the sky saying: I Despise You.
So is the secret of sacrificing making sure I offer a blue-ribbon animal? Not really. The secret is to not despise the Lord.
Note: quotes from Malachi 1:8 & 6 (NLT)