A son honoureth [his] father, and a servant his master if then I be a father, where is mine honour? and if I be a master, where is my fear? saith Jehovah of hosts unto you, priests, that despise my name. But ye say, Wherein have we despised thy name?
God speaks to people who called Him Father and Master, then asks where the honour and fear those names deserve have gone. The charge falls on the priests, and their startled reply shows they cannot see what He sees.
God starts from the relationship He gave, not from their behaviour.
The believer can measure his true state before God by only one standard: the position grace has set him in. It is a common mistake to work out our place from our state. Nothing could contradict the truth of God more completely. A saint, a child of God, a member of Christ, a believer does not stop being this when he backslides. He does not stop being it when he grows numb to the claims his place puts on him. But there is only one way for him to understand what grace is, or to measure the depth of his fall, if he has fallen. He must accept, without question, every position he has been put in.
The same logic runs through Israel's whole history. Great privilege carries weight with it.
There was responsibility as well as privilege attached to being God's son nationally. This is emphasised in Malachi 1:6, where the LORD says to the remnant of Israel, "A son honours his father… if then I be a father, where is My honour?" Responsibility matches privilege: the privileges of Israel were immense, but they were despised; hence the severity of the judgments.
Father and Master ask for different things, and they gave neither.
They were marked by high profession but low practice. They professed that Jehovah was their Father and their Master. But in practice they gave Him neither the honour due to a father nor the fear due to a master. And must we not admit today that our practice has fallen far below our profession? In our daily life and walk do we honour the Lord? Do we think and speak and act in the fear of the Lord? But showing neither honour nor fear laid the remnant open to a further charge: they despised the name of the Lord.
God aims this at the men who handled holy things every day.
The higher the relation, the greater the danger where God is not before the soul. Sin in such a person is not only more serious; he is also more exposed to it. A priest had to walk not just as a man outside the sanctuary should, but as one who goes inside. The consecration of a priest was fuller than that of an ordinary Israelite. Familiarity with the presence of God, unless it is held in His fear, borders on contempt… Hardness of conscience follows where people are habitually careless about God while still keeping up appearances. Men become numb to everything.
Their protest is not defiance but blindness, and God's opening word of love met the same reply.
When Jehovah said to them in the tenderest tones, "I have loved you," they replied, "How have you loved us?" They did not know the heart of God. When He said to the priests, "You have despised My name," they replied, "How have we despised your name?" They were that blind to their own state and their sins. They polluted the table of the Lord and offered the lame and the sick. Despite all their religious forms, God was not in their heart or their life. They had not the least conscience about the dishonour they brought on Him.
This is not the failing of one nation or one century.
The same thing can be seen in every age. As decline sets in, spiritual perception grows ever weaker. Souls keep up the outward forms of religion, and may do it with real care and zeal. Then they are astonished if someone turns their attention to their state.
The state of a person shows most clearly in what he brings to God.
A man will put up with things in worship that he would not tolerate anywhere else. Many who are critical enough about the preaching make very light of the prayers. … Nothing betrays the state of people more than their prayers, unless it is their hymns, or their worship in general. … Worship ought to be the highest expression of spiritual devotedness toward God.
The fear missing here is what God later finds in a small group within the same nation.
Looking at the crowd, the Lord has to say, "Where is My fear?" Looking at this godly remnant, He delights to own that they "feared the Lord." The man who fears the Lord lets the Lord govern him, not man. … He refers everything to the Lord, and has the Lord before him in all his ways. … In a word, he gives the Lord His right and supreme place, and this is very precious in the sight of the Lord.
- Position first. God argues from the relationship He gave. The place grace sets us in is the measure of our state.
- Two debts. A father is owed honour, a master is owed fear. They called Him both and paid neither, and that gap is the despising of His name.
- Blind to the gap. "How have we despised your name?" Decline dulls sight while the outward forms carry on.
- Nearness is no shield. God names the priests. Familiarity with holy things, unless held in His fear, slides into contempt and a hard conscience.
- Fear restored. A remnant gave what the crowd withheld. They feared the Lord, gave Him first place, and were precious in His sight.
Ye offer polluted bread upon mine altar; and ye say, Wherein have we polluted thee? In that ye say, The table of Jehovah is contemptible.
God's second charge in Malachi falls on the priests. They bring polluted offerings to His altar, and they treat the altar itself as something cheap. Instead of admitting the charge, they ask what He means. That question is the sharpest part of the exchange.
The altar and the table mean the same thing here. Commentators explain the second name from what the priests laid there — older translations call it bread where the ESV says food:
The altar and the table of the Lord, in this scripture, are one and the same thing. The altar is so named because the sacrifices were called God's bread. So God charges these priests with offering polluted bread on His altar. That is the proof that they despised His name. In doing so they showed plainly that they had lost all sense of the holiness of the One they claimed to sacrifice to. In their eyes the altar was just a common thing. By their act they were saying that the Lord's table was contemptible.
The charge lands on the men closest to the sanctuary. Nearness to holy things is not safe in itself:
The higher the relation, the greater the danger where God is not before the soul. Sin in such people is more serious, and they are also more exposed to it. A priest has to walk not just as a man outside the sanctuary, but as one who goes into it… Familiarity with the presence of God borders on contempt, unless a man keeps it up in His fear… Hardness of conscience follows when a man is careless about God day after day while keeping up appearances. Men become insensible to everything.
God quotes them as saying His table is contemptible. Commentators note that they never spoke those words out loud:
We judge that they were not saying this in so many words. But that is what their actions declared. Actions speak louder than words, as we know, and God knows exactly how to read them.
And they had no cover of ignorance. God's law had already fixed what could come to the altar:
The altar stood before the Lord, and it carried His name. That is what made this act so terrible. And they had no excuse for not knowing what suited the Lord. Long before, His word had clearly forbidden anyone to offer the blind, the lame, or the sick in sacrifice.
The law asked for an animal without blemish. Commentators explain why that mattered:
The animal offered on the altar was always to be "without blemish", so that it might be a fitter picture of Christ. But this meant giving God their best. These men looked over their herds and flocks with no sense of God's claims, and were willing to give Him only what was of no use to themselves.
Their reply is the signature of the whole book. They meet every charge God makes with a question of their own:
They had no moral feeling and no spiritual sight. They were satisfied with a correct position and with going through religious forms. They had no idea how low they had sunk… If He rebukes them for despising His name, they say, "How have we despised it?" If He reproaches them for offering polluted bread, they say, "How have we polluted You?" … If He pleads with them to return to Him, they say, "How shall we return?"
The same failure shows up in worship today:
A man will put up with things in worship that he would not tolerate anywhere else… Few things drag a person down more than being content, week after week, with worship that is not the praise our hearts feel is due to God. And yet in nothing do even children of God put up with more shortcomings. Thousands of Christians know that what they accept as worship is not according to God's mind. They bear with it for reasons of their own — not for God's honour.
The same test applies to giving:
Are we never trapped into offering the Lord our useless things? Suppose the chance comes to give to the Lord out of what we own… Do we give our best, our firstfruits? Or do we give our spare and useless things? Do we, in a word, admit that the Lord's claims come first? Do we begin with Him or with ourselves? Does man not often have more influence on us in these things, because we see him, while we do not see the Lord?
- Table. God calls the altar His table, because the sacrifices laid there were called His bread. A careless offering insults Him at His own table.
- Best. They had not stopped sacrificing. They kept back their best and gave God only what was of no use to them.
- Actions. They never said the table was contemptible. Their offerings said it for them, and God reads actions as speech.
- Blindness. "How have we polluted you?" is the mark of decline. The outward religion runs on, the conscience sleeps, and the charge comes as a shock.
- Us. The same test falls on us. What we put up with in worship, and what portion we hand over, tells God what we think His table is worth.
And if ye offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? And if ye offer the lame and sick, is it not evil? Present it now unto thy governor will he be pleased with thee? or will he accept thy person? saith Jehovah of hosts.
Malachi speaks to priests who kept the temple running while bringing God animals nobody else wanted. So God sets one test in front of them: take that same gift to the governor and see how it lands.
The rule about blemished sacrifices was one of the plainest in the books these priests handled daily. One commentator shows that they broke it with open eyes, and what they gained by it:
The charge against them is even more direct. They offered the blind, the lame, and the sick for sacrifice, knowingly breaking one of the strictest commands of Scripture. In every case the animal offered on the altar was to be "without blemish" (see Lev. 22:17-25), so that it might be a fitting picture of Christ. But this meant giving God their best. These men looked over their herds and flocks with no sense left of God's claims or of what the sacrifices meant. They were willing to give Him what was of no use to themselves — their worthless animals, and nothing more.
God argues by comparison. Offer this to the man who governs you, and you already know the answer. One commentator traces that gap back to the motive behind their whole service:
They brought their offerings to the altar, or table of the Lord. They lit the fire on the altar, and they opened and shut the doors of the temple. But no one would shut the doors for nothing. Love of self, not love for the Lord, was the motive behind their service. The result was that in the service of the Lord, anything would do. The lame and the sick would do for the Lord. They would never have dared to treat their earthly ruler that way. Men had a greater place in their eyes than the Lord, and giving men such a place was treating the Lord with contempt.
The slide happened one animal at a time, as a priest weighed what his own family would eat:
Sometimes a priest saw a nice fat animal brought in, and noticed that it had a blemish — perhaps a blind eye. But he knew it would be just as good for him and his family to eat if it were blind. So he passed over the blind eye and offered the sacrifice. And God steps in and says, "You care for yourself; but what is due to Me you pass over, and so you have profaned My name before the Gentiles."
The same animal in a field is only an animal. What made this an insult was the name attached to the place they brought it to:
In Malachi the phrase "the table of the Lord" is used again, and even more strikingly, in connection with the holiness of the altar. The Lord confronts the priests who offered polluted bread on His altar and profaned His name. Those priests said that the table of the Lord is contemptible (Mal. 1:7-12). The altar stood before the Lord and was called by His name. That is what made this desecration so terrible.
God does not begin with the flock. He begins with the person holding it, and the gift reports what He finds:
God first appealed to the hearts of His people, and afterwards referred to their offerings. We may take the offerings as an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual state. God has so ordered it that the hearts of His people should regulate their offerings. So we cannot suppose that their offerings would be right in His eyes when their hearts were wrong. Neither does He say, "My son, give Me your offering," but, "Give Me your heart."
The passage presses on the reader as well. One commentator turns the governor comparison into questions about our own giving, and ends with the reason we treat people better than we treat God:
Are we never caught out offering the Lord our useless things? When, for example, we have the chance of giving to the Lord from what we own, in what way do we act? Do we give our best, our first-fruits, or our spare and useless things? … And do we never give more to a man who asks of us than we would have given if left alone to act in secret before the Lord? Has not man often more influence on us in these things, because he is seen, than the Lord who is not seen?
Another sees the same instinct working through our schedules rather than our wallets:
The flesh in each of us would naturally and easily put our own earthly interests first, and treat "the kingdom of God and His righteousness" as something that may conveniently fill up any little gaps left as we pursue our own things.
- Best withheld. The law asked for animals without blemish. The priests scanned their flocks and handed God what was useless to them.
- Best measured. God's test is a comparison. What they would never have dared hand their governor, they were content to lay on His altar.
- Best exposed. The priest passed over the blind eye because the meat was still good for his own table. Self-interest, not ignorance, chose the gift.
- Best refused. The altar carried His name. A careless gift there was not a small lapse but contempt for the Lord Himself.
- Best requested. God does not say "give Me your offering" but "give Me your heart" — and the gift then tells the truth about the giver.