Sacrifices Without Blemish
Malachi 1v6b-8 (Part 1)
6th November 2020
God said to His Old Testament priesthood:
Malachi 1:6b-8
"It is you, O priests, who show contempt for my name.
"But you ask, 'How have we shown contempt for your name?'
"You place defiled food on my altar.
"But you ask, 'How have we defiled you?'
"By saying that the Lord's table is contemptible.
When you bring blind animals for sacrifice, is that not wrong? When you sacrifice
crippled 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.
In the Old Covenant, people would bring sacrifices to the temple and the priests would offer those sacrifices. But in the New Covenant we're all priests:
1 Peter 2:9
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God 's special possession,
that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful
light.
Every Christian is a priest. Every Christian is called to make sacrifices to God. So this passage speaks to every one of us.
The Law of Moses demands:
Leviticus 22:18b-22
If any of you –
whether an Israelite or a foreigner residing in Israel – presents a gift for a burnt
offering to the Lord, either to fulfil a vow or as a freewill offering,
you must present a male without defect from the cattle, sheep or goats in order that it
may be accepted on your behalf.
Do not bring anything with a defect, because it will not be accepted on your behalf.
When anyone brings from the herd or flock a fellowship offering to the Lord to fulfil a
special vow or as a freewill offering, it must be without defect or blemish to be
acceptable.
Do not offer to the Lord the blind, the injured or the maimed, or anything with warts or
festering or running sores. Do not place any of these on the altar as a food offering
presented to the Lord.
You'd have thought that was clear enough: God requires a sacrifice to be a male without defect or blemish. And this principle applies in particular to the Passover Lamb:
Exodus 12:1-3,5
The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt,
"This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year.
Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to
take a lamb for his family, one for each household…
The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect.
Here are two reasons why God insisted that the offerings in the tabernacle or the temple had to be perfect males.
Firstly, all these offerings were a foreshadowing of Jesus Christ, the ultimate Passover Lamb (John 1v29) who was sacrificed once for all for us (Hebrews 10v1-18). The perfect sacrifice has been made. Jesus was a perfect male, a perfect man and the perfect God, the perfect sacrifice who put an end to all sacrifice for sin by fulfilling sacrifice by being the perfect sacrifice.
Secondly, doesn't God deserve the best?
A friend of mine used to work in a charity shop. Christian people would bring all sorts of old tat into the shop, most of which they had to throw in the bin. These Christian people had a mindset of "It's not good enough for me, but it might be good enough for somebody else". What kind of charity is that? I've known people bring out-of-date food to the church to ask if we want it. But if it's not good enough for your table, then it's not good enough for ours. This is the same attitude of giving God the fag end of things, not the best.
This is what was happening in Malachi's time. The Israelites had promised centuries before at Mount Sinai, "We will do everything the Lord has said. We will obey" (Exodus 24v7). And haven't we all said something like that? "I will obey God in all things. I will live for Him. I will give Him the best I have". In the words of the old song, "All to Jesus I surrender". And Jesus wants our best.
Do we give God the best of our time, or do we give Him the fag end of our time? Do we pray as a priority, or do we pray if there's nothing good on the TV? Do we give God the best of our worship, or do we worship God when we feel like it? Do we put our tithe aside first out of our pay packet, or do we give what we have left at the end of the month? Do we give God the best, or do we give God the left-overs?
Consider:
1 Peter 1:18-19
For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you
were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors,
but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.
God gave us His best when He gave us Jesus. How can we not give Him our best?
And here 's another amazing truth from scripture. Not only did God demand perfect sacrifices in the Old Covenant as a prefiguring of Christ, not only did God give us His precious Son as a perfect offering for us without blemish, but also:
Colossians 1:21-22
Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil
behaviour.
But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you
holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation.
Not only must the Old Covenant sacrifices be without blemish. Not only is Christ without blemish. Christ presents you before God without blemish. He is making you perfect as He Himself is perfect. He has washed you clean, free from accusation as He is free from accusation. Not only is Christ on the cross the perfect sacrifice, He brings the perfect healing that makes you like Jesus. How can we not give Him our best?
If God was prepared to speak to His Old Testament priests through Malachi, saying that He will not accept their broken-down old lambs with no eyes, or festering sores, or a limb missing, that He wants the best of their flocks, not the worst, does He not want the best of our worship, the best of our lives, not the spare parts? He wants perfect worship from us, whom He is making perfect, even more than He wanted it from them, who were a prefiguring of what He is doing in us today.