How Good Is Your Offering? A Malachi Wake-Up Call - Sermon 21st December 2025

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Good morning, Church. Our Bible reading, well, there are two,

from Malachi, chapter 1, verses 6 to 8.

Malachi 1:6–8

A son honours his father, and a slave his master.

If I am a father, where is the honour due me? If I am a master,

where is the respect due me? says the Lord Almighty.

It is you priests who show contempt for my name.

But you ask, how have we shown contempt for your name?

By offering defiled food on my altar. But you ask, how have we defiled you?

By saying that the Lord's table is contemptible.

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. And across to Malachi 3, verses 1 to 9.

Malachi 3:1–9

I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me.

Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple,

the messenger of the covenant.

Whom you desire will come, says the Lord Almighty.

But who can endure the day of his coming?

Who can stand when he appears? for he will be like a refiner's fire, or a launderer's soap.

He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.

He will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver.

Then the Lord will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness.

And the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the Lord,

as in days gone by, as in former years. So I will come to put you on trial.

I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers,

against those who defraud the labourers of their wages, who oppress the widows

and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice.

But do not fear me, says the Lord Almighty.

The Lord, I the Lord, do not change, so you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.

Ever since the time of your ancestors you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them.

Return to me, and I will return to you," says the Lord Almighty.

But you ask, How are we to return? Will a mere mortal rob God?

Yet you rob me. But you ask, How are we robbing you?

In tithes and offerings. things. You are under a curse, your whole nation,

because you are robbing me. This is the word of the Lord.

It's four days. Is that right? Four nights, four nights, four sleeps until Christmas. Lots to get ready.

Lots to prepare for. Last minute gifts, even cleaning some bathrooms, I hear.

Managing family, managing all of the expectations from outside and inside.

So little time. You might be wondering, has the preacher really decided on this

swelteringly hot day While the children get to party.

The preacher really decided to invite me today to reflect on the words of a

little-known minor prophet at the back end of the Old Testament.

As the preacher really set 20 minutes aside of my life to have to think about

the words of Malachi, to that I would say, no, of course not.

This will go much longer than 20 minutes.

But I do hope this morning that you come with me to perhaps feel the challenge

and the comfort of what Malachi might have to say to us today.

As we consider the last words of the Old Testament, we might,

as we prepare for Christmas, consider how, in a very different time,

in a very different way, they prepared for Christmas.

My sermon this morning has a title and it is a question. And it's a question

that asks us, how good is your offering?

Let me pray again.

Lord, we do thank you for this time of year. We do thank you for your word.

We thank you so much that it speaks to us today. And we pray that this morning

you would open our hearts, that you would allow us to have space to be challenged,

to be nudged, and to hear what you might be saying to us.

We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Well, as many of us know, the Old Testament narrative covers a lot of grounds.

It goes from Adam and Eve in the garden, the introduction of sin into our world.

It talks about Noah and the flood, God's covenant promise to Abraham,

the leadership of Moses.

We find the kings come on the scene, first Saul and then David.

And then a promise is made amongst all of this, that one day a future king will

come who will be like no other. A future king will come who will be above and

beyond anything that you have seen before.

That one day a messianic king will come and save the people from their darkness.

In the Old Testament, the prophets come along and they promise this,

but they also say and warn that judgment is coming for all the ways that they

are disregarding God and his word, for all the ways that they disregard justice.

And in that story, a version of justice does come to God's people.

They're exiled and they're removed from their land.

And after many years, some of them, only some of them return.

Well, Malachi, which sits at the very back end of the Old Testament,

is a story that comes after all of that.

God's people had returned to Jerusalem.

A second temple, not as good as the first one, but a second temple had been constructed.

And the people waited and they wondered and they considered God's word,

they considered the promises, they considered the narrative and they wondered what happens next.

Well, in Malachi, in the book, it's essentially a book of disputes back and

forth where God and his people go back and forth on a series of disputes where God calls them out.

He calls them out about a few things, but especially the fact that they had

been bringing offerings to the temple that were substandard,

that were not good enough.

And his anger was especially kindled as it most often was against the corruption

and the complacency of the religious leaders who should have known better.

And so in Malachi, God comes to those priests and he says, you have been treating me poorly.

You have been despising my name.

And he asked them a question based on a simple premise.

A son honors his father and a servant honors their master.

If then I am a father, where is the honor due me?

And if I am a master, where is the respect due me?

And the question is rhetorical because what God is really saying to these religious

leaders at this particular time is.

Is you guys are not, you are not giving me the Lord of hosts,

the God Almighty, the creator of heavens and earth.

You are not giving me the honor and the respect that I'm due.

And he uses two ideas to illustrate not only their lack of honor,

but also their heart behind it.

And we see two sides of God's character revealed.

First, he is the perfect father. He is relational. He is loving.

He is kind and he is tender. Absolutely.

But he is also master, boss, Lord, King, the one whose word is final,

the one who is in charge of all things.

And the premise that he presents to them is if an earthly father theoretically

gets respect, and if an earthly master gets respect,

shouldn't I as God, who is both eternal father and supreme Lord.

Shouldn't I also be getting respect from you guys?

Shouldn't you who know more about this narrative, more about these words,

more about those promises, more about the commands,

more about my nature, shouldn't you more than anybody, not only understand the

honor and respect that I am due,

but shouldn't you actually be giving it to me as well?

And so, at the end of verse 6, these priests, these religious leaders,

on their side of the dispute, their side of the argument.

Use a technique which I am sure in your life you've never used in an argument ever,

which is when something is presented against you, when something's presented

about the way that you have been substandard or lacking or not doing something

that someone else was hoping you would or expecting,

when presented with that, instead of taking responsibility, they simply go, how?

And they do something else, which I'm sure you've never done.

They say, can you give me a specific example about your claim?

Can you give me an example right now of what you're saying?

Can you tell us exactly what that looks like in your mind, God?

They say, God, that's a big claim. Give us specifics.

How have we withheld the honor that's due your name? Aren't we doing the things?

Aren't we ticking the boxes?

Aren't we where we're supposed to be doing what we're supposed to be doing?

You're saying that we're withholding honor. But as far as we can tell,

every time we were meant to be in a room, we were in that room.

Every time we were meant to perform an act, we performed that act.

So how are we despised your name? And unfortunately for them,

God's got heaps of examples.

Verse 70 says, your priestly duties. How about those? Your various offerings that you bring.

That food, that offering, it's not perfect, is it?

It's defiled. God says to them, your offerings that are supposed to be your best are a bare minimum.

So yes, you're in the room. Yes, you're doing the thing. Yes,

you're where you're supposed to be, but you're just bringing the bare minimum.

You're doing just enough so that if people looked, yeah, you're doing the things

that you're meant to be doing.

And you would think if you ever found yourself in a conversation with the Lord of hosts like this,

that this might be the point in the conversation where perhaps fall on your

knees or say sorry or beg for mercy.

Perhaps you would think that's what you would do.

But the priests do something different. They again ask, how?

Not specific enough, God. Can you give us some more examples?

Because if that's all it, oh, I've got more examples, God says.

He says, you want to know how your offerings aren't good enough?

You're bringing me blind animals. You're bringing me animals to be an offering

that were sick, that were lame.

Essentially, what he's saying is, you bring me stuff that you weren't going to use anyway.

The people were bringing their offerings to God but the offerings that they

were bringing to the priests and then the offerings that the priests were bringing

to God were the rejects, the trash they were the leftovers that were going to

be chucked out anyway and God says,

your offerings are meant to cost you something,

and you're bringing me offerings that cost you nothing.

And to be clear, to be really clear about this, God is not calling out those

who in the community are stretched.

He's not calling out those who have little and are bringing all that they can.

This message this morning is not a message for you who at this time of year

is probably feeling, oh man, I thought I was bringing everything I can.

Maybe I am bringing bare minimum and maybe you are. But

God is not calling out those with little who are

giving a lot Because even though the people are implicated in this dispute God's

main issue here is with those who should have known better It's with those who

have a lot and are giving bare minimum And he asks them, when that happens,

when you do that When you bring the bare minimum to me.

Isn't that wrong?

And he asked them because deep down, they knew that it was wrong.

They knew that in Leviticus, the priests are commanded to bring sacrifices and

offerings that are without defect.

They knew that in Deuteronomy 15, 21, as I'm sure you know, God specifically

forbids priests to bring lame, blind, blemished, or sick animals to the altar.

He's calling them out because they were the ones that knew this.

The priest knew it was wrong and instead of nudging the people in a different

direction instead of reminding them or teaching them that there's a right way

that we could be doing this,

they just went with the flow they took the path of least resistance,

and they offered these things to God anyway they made sure they were in the

rooms they were supposed to be in at the times that they were supposed to be

in but they were checked out their offerings were not good enough and deep down they knew it.

And then he asked them this really amazing question in verse 8.

If you offered to your governor what you offered to God, would your governor be pleased with you?

And during that time, the governor might be an appointee from Persia who was

in charge of them, who would decide their fate, who was essentially their boss in a lot of ways.

And God says, if you offered to them what you offered to me,

how long would they remain pleased with you?

And the question for us this morning is, okay, we might live in a different

time with a different system and the whole offering thing is definitely different.

But if you offered your employer what you offered to God, how long would you have a job?

For those who are married, if you offered to your spouse what you offered to

God, how healthy would your marriage be?

In your friendships, if you offered to your closest friends what you offered

to God, how would that impact those friendships?

Do you see how good that question from God is? It makes you think at the very least.

That's all it's supposed to do. It's supposed to make you think.

Like we put God in another category and he is in another category, holy, holy, holy.

But sometimes we put him in another category that allows ourselves to think,

well, I don't really need to tend to that, to give to that.

And we might be challenged this morning. Do I give to the Lord Almighty,

his Jew, when it comes to my time and my energy and my money and my obedience?

And like me, you may answer honestly, well, no, I don't.

And even if I wanted to give like a generous perspective on myself,

I know that I, at the very least, don't do those things all the time.

If I were to place myself in the shoes of these priests in this very different time,

in a different way, yeah, my offerings in terms of like what I bring to God,

what I offer to God, they could be labeled as substandard. They could be.

But let's skip ahead now to Malachi chapter three, verse one,

where God speaks and he promises a messenger who he says will one day come and

prepare God's people for God's arrival.

It says, see, I am sending my messenger to prepare bear the way before me and

the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple.

The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, indeed he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.

In a chapter or so later, Malachi finishes, the Old Testament closes and that's it.

And there is what some theologians describe as the 400 years of silence,

months, where God's people didn't hear from God.

In some ways, they didn't hear from God. There were no more books being written,

no more scripture. 400 years.

In my Bible, it's a single blank piece of paper. That's it. 400 years.

And I think it's probably fair to say that in our lives, every person here has

had an experience of the long night, had an experience where the days just drag on,

where the minutes feel like hours, where the hours feel like days,

where the days feel like weeks, where the weeks feel like months.

We've all had that experience of just silence.

Perhaps parents who are just about to begin six weeks of school holidays,

that's what it could feel like.

Long period of time that feels even longer in some ways single blank piece of paper,

they're left to consider these words these promises these warnings these challenging questions,

between the end of malachi and where the gospels in our new testament begin

400 years where god's people were left with malachi's promise that god was coming

but before he comes a messenger will arrive.

And in Malachi chapter 4, this messenger is said to be like an Elijah-type figure.

Malachi 4 · chapter mention

And that scripture that I read, it might have sounded familiar because it is.

If you get that blank page and you go a couple of different places in the Gospels,

you find in Matthew 11, in Mark 1, in Luke 7,

they all quote Malachi 3.1 and

its promise of a messenger and declare that john

the baptist was this messenger john the baptist who said the one who comes after

me is even greater john the baptist whose ministry goals was to prepare the

way for the messiah for a king who had been promised for god's arrival for the

prepare the way for jesus,

and in malachi 3 and 3 4 there is also a line about what will happen after the

messenger has come After God has arrived It says Then the offering of Judah

and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord.

A few things going on in this verse that I don't have the time this morning

to dig into, but I will just pull on one of the threads that I think you can

see in this promise in Malachi 3, 4, where it says, then, then,

only after God has arrived,

then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord.

If I was to pull on one thread for us this morning that might encourage us,

that might speak to us, it is this, that the messenger is said to prepare the way for the Lord.

And then the Lord's arrival will result in the offerings of God's people being acceptable.

And I want you to see this morning what happened.

God looked upon what the people were giving to him. He looked at it. He had a system.

He had some rules. He had some standards.

And the people, and especially the religious leaders, brought their bare minimum, and he looked at it.

He saw that it was substandard, bare minimum, defiled. all those things.

He saw that it cost them nothing.

He looked at what humanity offered to him.

And in terms of the relationship between people and the God who is holy,

holy, holy, didn't satisfy the terms of that relationship.

The people had failed to give the Lord his respect and his honor.

And this is what happened.

God in his love for the world took the initiative to bridge the gap.

God, in His love for the world, took the initiative to send His only begotten Son.

And He sent His only begotten Son to be the perfect offering on our behalf.

And when you come to a saving trust and faith in Jesus,

what you are saying is, I'm not quite bringing enough, But I know that what

you gave to me Jesus whom we remember born on Christmas Day Is perfect.

Unblemished. He's undefiled. That is my offering and it's my offering because you gave it to me.

And perhaps today you might feel some conviction about the substandard nature

of what you offer to the Lord Almighty.

But if I go back to the title of my sermon today and ask you that question again,

how good is your offering?

The answer actually is this. This Christmas, I remember that in Jesus,

my offering is perfect. It's perfect.

Malachi suggested that one day the offering of God's people would be acceptable to him.

And they are, because he offered it himself on our behalf.

And so as today, when you're released back to the extremely hot day for all

of those last minute Christmas preparations, let's see this together,

that God does still call us to live for Him, to give to Him, to bring to Him.

Now, we do so not from a position of judgment, but from a position of mercy.

We're invited to offer our lives to God, but not as a people who are muddling

through, always failing, but to do so from a position of being utterly loved.

We're invited to bring and give our lives to God and to live for Him in the

ways that are unique to our journey, our calling.

And we do so not so that we might one day be good enough, not so that we might

one day be acceptable to the people around us and to God.

We don't do it because we have an obligation to a command or an expectation.

We don't do it from a position of, I have to.

The life that God invites you to walk into now, you get to do it.

And you get to do it from a position of, I get to do it. I get to.

So as you consider this morning all the ways that you might be tempted to cram

yourself down and feel like you're not enough, sure, indulge it a bit if you need to.

But don't indulge it for so long that you forget that on Christmas Day Jesus

arrived and that for you and for me and for all of us is everything. Let's pray.

Lord, we do thank you again at this time of year for Jesus and we pray that

you again remind us what that means.

Lord, I pray for everyone with all the stuff they got to do,

I pray that amongst it, Lord, they were able to do so with a memory that you

loved us so much that you sent your one and only Son.

Help us this morning, God, not to operate out of guilt, but to operate out of

joy, from your place of mercy and from your place of total love for us, Amen.