SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/16/2016 9:52 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-3 “Dishonoring God’s Name
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: Malachi 2:1-5
Message of the verses: “1 “And now this commandment is for you, O
priests. 2 “If you do not listen, and if you do not take it to heart to give
honor to My name," says the LORD of hosts, "then I will send the
curse upon you and I will curse your blessings; and indeed, I have cursed them
already, because you are not taking it to heart. 3 “Behold, I am going to
rebuke your offspring, and I will spread refuse on your faces, the refuse of
your feasts; and you will be taken away with it. 4 “Then you will know that I
have sent this commandment to you, that My covenant may continue with
Levi," says the LORD of hosts. 5 “My covenant with him was one of life and
peace, and I gave them to him as an object of reverence; so he revered Me and
stood in awe of My name.”
We have
been looking at how the priests have been dishonoring God and we continue that
theme in our SD for today. As we look at
verses 1-5 we will see that the priests dishonored God as they despised the
very privilege of being priests. That is
a terrible thing to do, for God had called certain people from the tribe of
Levi and the family of Aaron to be priests and it was a privilege to serve the
Lord this way. The priests were taking
advantage of their high calling, thinking perhaps that God would bless them
just because of who they were no matter what they did, something similar that
the Pharisees would do in the time when Jesus walked the earth. Dr. Wiersbe writes “They were taking for granted
the high calling God had given them and treating the temple ministry with contempt.
Serving at the altar was a job, not a ministry, and they did it to please
themselves, not to please and glorify the Lord.
Unfortunately, that same attitude is in the church today.”
In verse
two where we read that God was going to curse them He was talking about the
nation of Israel, not just them. The
needed to begin once again to do the will of God from their heart, and not just
do it as a matter of practice, which is what Ephesians 6:6 tell us “not by way
of eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God
from the heart.” God told them that He
was already cursing them and we can see that from Malachi 3:11 which tells us
that God will stop doing what He had already done. Haggai 1:3-11 also speaks of their crops being
ruined by insects, but things could get worse if they did not repent.
Next we see
from verse three that God will curse their offspring, and it was very important
that the Jews continue to have children in order that the Promised Messiah
would come. Another way of looking at
this verse could mean that their children could all turn out badly, a curse and
not a blessing to them and to the Lord.
Verse three uses the word “refuge” and Dr. Wiersbe explains this “The
refuse from the sacrifices was taken outside the camp and burned (Ex. 29:14),
but God would humiliate the priests and ‘wipe their noses’ in the dung of the
sacrifices! This would make the priests
unclean so that they would have to leave the camp. In short, God was saying, ‘You’re treating Me
with disrespect, so I’ll treat you like garbage! You don’t value the priestly ministry, so why
should you be in office.’”
In verse
five God speaks of the covenant of the priesthood that was made with them all the
way back in the book of Exodus and we have mentioned that it came through Aaron
and his offspring and was a sacred ministry that they should have had great
respect for as they served the Lord.
Again I have to mention what happened to Eli and his sons as seen in 1
Samuel, and they were so bad that their line of the priesthood eventually died
off. What these priests were doing,
although the sins were different, they still were sinning against the Lord in a
bad way.
11/16/2016 10:21 PM
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