Lame Offerings
by
Captain Michael Ramsay
A look at Malachi 1:8
It doesn’t pay to try to steal from the Lord. That is what
Malachi 1:6-14 is about. Malachi 1:8 is about stealing from
God. It reads, “When you offer blind animals for sacrifice, is
that not wrong? When you sacrifice lame or diseased animals,
is that not wrong? Try offering them to your governor! Would
he be pleased with you? Would he accept you?” says the LORD
Almighty.”
The world at the
time of Malachi: We don’t have an exact date for the book of
Malachi but it was probably written around 430 BCE.[2] Persia was the regional superpower
at that time (cf. Ezra-Nehemiah).
Persia
militarily occupied Palestine
and they did grant
Judah
a somewhat privileged place among the occupied Palestinian
nations (cf. Ezra 1:2-4, 6:1-12, 7:11-28; Nehemiah).
Persia
eventually lost control of Palestine
to the Greeks who after conquering it (or ‘liberating’ it in
today’s vernacular) traded it among themselves for a century
or two – with a brief period of self-governance - before the
Romans took over and ruled Judea
for a few hundred more years. Before the Persians occupied Palestine, we remember from Scriptures that
the Babylonians ruled the area for quite a while (cf. Daniel
1-5, Esther, 2 Chronicles 36). An independent Palestinian
state, be it Judean, Israelite, Edomite, Moabite, Phoenician,
or whatever is neither in the memory nor in the cards for the
future of anyone alive at this time. Judah is firmly embedded
in the Persian Empire and it appears that at this time they
are for the most part relatively happy to be there (Cf. Daniel
6-11; Esther 8-10; Ezra 1).[3]
The Temple in
Jerusalem
that was destroyed by the Babylonians had been rebuilt under
the Persians and the Levitical High Priest Zerubbabel (Ezra
2). Jewish religious traditions were tolerated and even
accepted at the time of Malachi (cf. Ezra 1:2; cf. also Daniel
6-11; Esther 8-10). Dramatic, political things were for the
most part nonexistent; national life was uneventful.[4] There
were no great revolts. Conquering armies weren’t walking back
and forth across the ancient land bridge that is
Canaan. Their goal of semi-independence and their
hope of religious liberty had been realized.[5] Things aren’t
perfect but things aren’t that bad in Judah.
Have you ever noticed that in our own lives when things are
going better than they have been that that is when we can tend
to drift away from the Lord until He finally relents and lets
us suffer the consequences of our actions? And have you
noticed that it is not until we suffer these natural and
logical consequences from being separated from God that we do
actually return to Him (cf. The book of Judges and TSA docs.
9&10)? Malachi knows this and he is delivering the Lord’s
warning to God’s people not to continue down this road of
apathy and self-indulgence. The people, sadly, are starting to
put themselves before God.[6]
Malachi 1:8: “When you offer blind animals for sacrifice, is
that not wrong? When you sacrifice lame or diseased animals,
is that not wrong? Try offering them to your governor! Would
he be pleased with you? Would he accept you?” says the LORD
Almighty.”
We know that, as recorded throughout the Old Testament, people
brought sacrifices to the temple priests for them to sacrifice
to God on their behalf (cf. Exodus 12:5; Leviticus 1:3, 10,
22:18–25, Deuteronomy 15:21). In Malachi’s time people were
still giving God their tithes and offerings but they were
starting to skimp a little bit and the priests were guilty of
letting them get away with it and so they too were responsible
for the people’s sin. This is serious (Leviticus 22:18–25,
Deuteronomy 15:21).
What would
happen is that because of ritual, legal, religious
requirements, and/or social pressure, the people would be
obligated to continue to bring their sacrifices to the Lord
but they would skimp a bit. Instead of bringing a healthy
animal that they would miss, they would bring sick, crippled
or blind animals that they couldn’t use anyway. They figured,
I imagine, “Well, I can’t really sell or use this animal
anyway so why not give it to God and the Temple priests; no point in wasting a
perfectly good animal that we could sell or otherwise use for
ourselves.”
It reminds me of the person who has to pay significant parking
fines or income tax and then brings bags full of pennies and
dumps them all over the office floor. Sure they pay their dues
but it does not go over so well – and I believe that it is
actually not technically legal to do that either. Or another
example is the child who is forced to attend an event that
they don’t want to attend and so make the whole experience
miserable for everyone. Actually I seem to remember doing this
myself even as an adult in college. I was required to take a
particular course that I really didn’t want to take and I fear
that I was so distracting that many people wished with me that
I wasn’t forced to take the class. Yes I did what I was told
but there was no blessing in my compromised pseudo-obedience
(which is really disobedience) for anybody.
I
remember at church group as a teenager, speaking about
disregarding the spirit of the law. We would often have these
big events where there would be dozens or even more than 100
kids and it would be night and we would be playing a game of
flashlight tag. We would be given instructions to try to get
from the university to the church first without being spotted
by someone and ‘tagged’ with a flashlight. The people who won
would be the ones who got from the university to the church
first without having someone shine the flashlight on them.
Well, one time myself and my friends who were on the
non-flashlight team smuggled in our own flashlights and turned
them on as soon as we were out of sight and then kept them on
so that the people trying to catch the non-flashlight people
by tagging us with their lights assumed that since we had
flashlights we were one of them and thus they neglected to tag
us and we made it back to the church before anyone else. This
brilliant ploy didn’t stop us from being disqualified.
Another time playing this game, we car-pooled to the church
and we left a friend of mine’s car at the church and then
after they checked us to make sure that we did not have any
flashlights on us, they loaded us all in a bus and brought us
to the university. Then, as soon as they said we could start,
this time we walked not towards the church -which was our
destination- but we walked two blocks in the opposite
direction. Remember, we brought my friend’s car to the church.
When we walked two blocks in the opposite direction from the
church we walked to where we had left my car. We all hopped in
a drove to the church. We thought we were pretty smart but
this brilliance didn’t stop us from being disqualified either.
It is the same with the Israelite, the Judean offerings here.
Sure they make the sacrifice but the literally lame and blind
sacrifices that they offer are not what God wants and these
lame sacrifices get them disqualified from the LORD’s blessing
and not only them but also the priests who accepted their
sneaky and corrupted offerings as well (Malachi1: 6-14; cf.
Malachi 3:8-12, Leviticus 1:3, 10, 22:18–25, Deuteronomy
15:21). God was not happy with them.
Malachi 3:8-10 asks:
“Will a mere mortal rob God? Yet
you rob me.
“But you ask, ‘How are we robbing
you?’
“In tithes and offerings. You are
under a curse—your whole nation—because you are robbing me.
Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there
may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD
Almighty…
By not giving their full tithes to the LORD -Malachi 3:10- by
giving lame offerings to the LORD -Malachi 1:8- they are
robbing him. By not giving our full tithes to the Lord, by
giving lame offerings to our Lord, we are robbing him.
Malachi 1:8: “When you offer blind animals for sacrifice, is
that not wrong? When you sacrifice lame or diseased animals,
is that not wrong? Try offering them to your governor! Would
he be pleased with you? Would he accept you?” says the LORD
Almighty.”
How about us? What are the ways that we commit the sin of
Malachi 1:8 of offering blind animals and sacrificing lame or
diseased animals? Is there anyway that we rob God? I think so.
I think any time that we don’t offer God our tithes first
before we spend money on ourselves we are doing just that
(Malachi 3:8). Malachi 3:9 records that if we do this we are
under a curse. I think that when we spend more money on cable
television, Dairy Queen, McDonalds, or movies; I think if we
spend more money on fast food, recreation, or other self
indulgences than we do on God then we are in effect taking the
good animal for ourselves and giving the lame animal to
Christ.
For those of us
that do not tithe at all but rather spend the money first on
our own lives, Malachi has a question for us. He asks, ‘would
we do this to the government (Malachi 1:8)?’ If Revenue Canada
asked us to pay XYZ dollars in income tax would we say, ‘okay
but only if I have enough money left after I make my mortgage
payment, pay for my kid to play soccer, and have an ice-cream
cone at the DQ, then and only if I have the left over money
will I pay my taxes’. It doesn’t work that way. Do you think
that Revenue Canada would go for that…No! If the government
asks for our money we pay them what we owe them so why do some
of us sometimes cheat God by only giving him our leftovers,
our lame animals. Is it because we don’t care about paying our
dues to God as much as we care about paying our dues to the
government? Is that why we pay our taxes more religiously than
our tithes? Do we really love politicians that much more than
we love God? I
hope not. If you are waiting for an elected official to save
you from anything, I’m afraid you’ll have a long wait. They
are not messiahs. They are not saviours.
But maybe there are other reasons why we withhold God’s
offerings from Him. If loving or fearing the government more
than God isn’t why some of us can be tempted not to FIRST
offer our time and money to God, do we spend it on other items
before we spend it on God because we don’t trust God? Is that
why we can be tempted not to offer Him our first fruits? Do we
not trust God to take care of our needs? Malachi 3:10-11
records, “‘Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse...[don’t
withhold any of it!] Test me in this,’ says the LORD Almighty,
‘and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and
pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough
to store it. I will prevent pests from devouring your crops,
and the vines in your fields will not drop their fruit before
it is ripe,’ says the LORD Almighty.” God will provide. We
just need to actually trust Him. We just need to actually put
our faith in God. He will provide!
Offering God blind and lame sacrifices and not giving Him the
tithes and offerings that are due Him is indicative of not
putting our faith in Him. Really if we do spend money first on
frivolity – or even necessity for that matter – if we do spend
money on ourselves before we give our offerings to God then we
are declaring that it is we who are our first priority and not
God. We have all heard the cliché that if the Lord is not Lord
of all than he is not Lord at all. Well, this is true.
The 20th Century poet/songwriter Bob Dylan tells us that no
matter who you are
You're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You're gonna have to serve somebody,
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody.[7]
And what we do with our time and money, what kind of offering
of our time and money that we give to the Lord really does
tell who we serve. If we keep the best for ourselves and only
give God our lame offerings (of what’s left over) then that
shows what is the priority in our lives. I am going to leave
us all today with this challenge or two, should we choose to
accept it. Keep an envelope or a pencil case in your car and
every time you go to buy something at McDonalds or a movie;
every time you go to spend money on a self indulgence; take
that same amount of money and put it in the envelope and bring
it to the corps or your church next week over and above your
weekly tithe. See if you can do that on top of your regular
offerings. At the very least I would ask this of everyone: I
challenge each of us to first set aside our money for God -
even if we think we can only afford a tithe. Let us first set
aside at the very least that 10% and leave the leftovers for
ourselves, instead of the other way around.
Captain Michael
Ramsay’s book, ‘Praise
The Lord For Covenants’, is available from Canadian
Supplies and Purchasing and on-line at
www.sheepspeak.com
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[1]Cf. Joyce G. Baldwin: Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi: An
Introduction and Commentary.
Downers Grove, IL : InterVarsity Press, 1972 (Tyndale Old
Testament Commentaries 28), S. 226
[2] Cf. John Schultz, Commentary to Malachi © 2004 E-sst LLC
All Rights Reserved. Published by Bible-Commentaries.com.
Available on-line at http://bible-commentaries.com/?page_id=7
[3] It is not that they didn’t have problems. They did have
problems but they did have some special privileges and they
not blame their Persian rulers for the difficulties (Nehemiah
5:14-19). Cf. John H. Tullock and Mark McEntire, ‘The Old
Testament Story’ (Pearson Prentice Hall: Upper Saddle River,
NJ: 1992), 320.
[4] Joyce G. Baldwin: Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi: An
Introduction and Commentary.
Downers Grove, IL : InterVarsity Press, 1972 (Tyndale Old
Testament Commentaries 28), S. 226
[5] Robert L. Alden, The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Pradis
CD-ROM:Malachi/Introduction to Malachi/Occasion of Malachi,
Book Version: 4.0.2
[6] cf. Paul L. Redditt, 'Themes in Haggai -- Zechariah --
Malachi' in Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 61
no 2 April 2007, p 184-197.
[7] Bob Dylan, ‘Gotta Serve Somebody’, copyright © 1979 by
Special Rider Music.
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