Worship that Honors God

The Messenger, The Message, and the Mess

Allen Snapp

Grace Community Church

Nov. 2, 2025

Worship that Honors God

Let’s turn to Malachi 1:6. I’ve titled this series “The Messenger, the Message, and the Mess”. Malachi is the messenger – his name means “my messenger”. The message is a message of rebuke to a people who are a spiritual mess. It opens with God affirming His covenantal and unconditional love for His people. God’s rebuke is always motivated by love. We may not like getting rebuked by God but we should treasure it because God disciplines all those He loves.

Let’s read vs. 6 to the end of the chapter and then pray.

⁶ “A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If then I am a father, where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is my fear? says the Lord of hosts to you, O priests, who despise my name. But you say, ‘How have we despised your name?’ ⁷ By offering polluted food upon my altar. But you say, ‘How have we polluted you?’ By saying that the Lord's table may be despised. ⁸ When you offer blind animals in sacrifice, is that not evil? And when you offer those that are lame or sick, is that not evil? Present that to your governor; will he accept you or show you favor? says the Lord of hosts. ⁹ And now entreat the favor of God, that he may be gracious to us. With such a gift from your hand, will he show favor to any of you? says the Lord of hosts. ¹⁰ Oh that there were one among you who would shut the doors, that you might not kindle fire on my altar in vain! I have no pleasure in you, says the Lord of hosts, and I will not accept an offering from your hand. ¹¹ For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name will be great among the nations, and in every place incense will be offered to my name, and a pure offering. For my name will be great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts. ¹² But you profane it when you say that the Lord's table is polluted, and its fruit, that is, its food, may be despised. ¹³ But you say, ‘What a weariness this is,’ and you snort at it, says the Lord of hosts. You bring what has been taken by violence or is lame or sick, and this you bring as your offering! Shall I accept that from your hand? says the Lord. ¹⁴ Cursed be the cheat who has a male in his flock, and vows it, and yet sacrifices to the Lord what is blemished. For I am a great King, says the Lord of hosts, and my name will be feared among the nations. Malachi 1:6-14

Let’s pray.

In the Old Testament a big part of worship was to offer sacrifices. There was the sacrifice offered for forgiveness of sin, but then there were also other sacrifices to express devotion to God. We don’t offer sin sacrifices anymore because Jesus is our sin-sacrifice offered once and for all to cleanse us of all our sin. But Rom. 12 says that we are offer our lives as a living sacrifice. That means worship isn’t just 20 minutes of singing on a Sunday morning. Worship is living 24/7 to honor God.

The problem is Israel’s worship isn’t honoring God, it’s despising God. God says it is natural for a son to honor his father. I’m a father, where’s my honor? It’s natural for a servant to fear getting on the wrong side of his master. I’m a Master, where’s my fear?

The word honor literally means “weight”. Do we give God the weight in our lives that He deserves? Do we fear the Lord? The fear of the Lord is a good thing – Proverbs 1 tells us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Malachi’s message of rebuke is about what they’re doing wrong and how they’re dishonoring God, but within its message is how to do right, how can we honor God with our lives?

1. We honor God by giving Him our best, not our worst

God commanded the Jews to honor Him by sacrificing to Him the best of their flock and the first of their harvest but the priests flipped the script and kept the best for themselves and offered to God the worst; the lame, sick, blemished.

So when they ask how have we despised you? They knew. All God has to do is ask one question: would you give your governor what you’ve been giving Me? No way! If we gave the governor the junk – I mean offerings – we’ve been giving God he’d be offended.

They should have been giving God their best. That would have expressed honor for God. Instead they were giving God the worst of their flocks – the lambs and goats and bulls that were lame or sick or defective – the livestock that had little value to them. They were even giving to God their roadkill. That dead lamb is no good to us – let’s give him to God! That way we get rid of it AND have an offering to give to God. Win, win!

We honor God when we try to give Him our best. We don’t give our best in order to earn God’s love. God has already spoken to His people in verse 2, I have always loved you, and that love is not based on what we do or don’t do. God chose Jacob and rejected Esau before they were born or had done anything good or bad. We aren’t saved because we give God our best, we are saved because God gave us His best when He gave us Jesus. We don’t give our best to earn God’s love, we give our best to honor God’s name.

God says in 1 Sam. 2:30 those who honor Me I will honor but those who despise me I will lightly esteem. Nothing blesses our lives like having God honor us does. And nothing messes with our lives as much as God thinking lightly of us.Jesus said if we put God and his kingdom first, all the other things we need and care about will be added to us.

In other words, if you care about your spouse – put God ahead of them! If you care about your kids, put God ahead of them! Rather than messing up our lives, putting God first puts everything else in our lives in proper order. A couple practical applications:

Time – I remember hearing advice that I tried to take to heart when my kids were young– be careful not to pour all your time and energy into your work leaving nothing in the tank but fumes for your wife and kids. The reason is that family is too important to just get our leftovers.

God is too important to get just whatever’s leftover at the end of the day…or week…or month. We can honor God by making time with Him a priority. Start your morning by taking time to hear from God and His word and talking to God in prayer. We can honor God by how we do our job. How we talk to people and about people. How we treat our family. How we treat strangers. Everything we do can be a way of giving God our best.

Money – I don’t like talking about money all that much but Jesus talked more about money than heaven and hell combined because money has a unique window into our hearts and priorities. God doesn’t ask for it all, just 10% for His house plus special gifts like alms to the poor and such. We’ll come to this in chapter 3, but the question is, are we giving God our best or just what’s leftover? I always write out our tithe first because I want it to be the first thing that comes out of our checkbook, not the last thing if there’s any money left. As we’ll see in chapter 3, God promises to reward us when we put Him first with our money.

God’s Word – The movie Chariots of Fire depicts the moment when Eric Liddell refused to run in the Olympics on Sunday and a friend handed him a piece of paper that had 1 Sam. 2:30 written on it: those who honor Me I will honor. Liddell considered God’s word to weigh more than an Olympic trophy and God honored him for it.

Does God’s word weigh heavier in our lives than our ideologies, opinions, and personal preferences? Or do we take His word lightly when we are ordering our lives and priorities? Do we want to hear God’s truth even when it hurts or do we want our itching ears to be scratched? Paul told Timothy as a young elder to preach the word, which is useful in correcting, rebuking, and training in righteousness. We honor God when we acknowledge this book has the authority to change us. We despise God when we think we have the authority to change His word where and when it suits us.

Our Heart

Look at verse 13: but what a weariness this is… Their worship had become a burden. Their heart wasn’t in it. We can honor God by putting our heart into it. God loves a cheerful giver – why? Because they don’t look at serving God as a drudgery, they look at it as a privilege!

Singing worship songs is by no means the sum total of what worship is, but it’s a good opportunity to allow the truth and the theology of these songs to sink into our hearts and affect us. It’s possible to sing these songs half-heartedly. I’ve done it! Or distractedly – I’ve done that too! But that doesn’t bless God’s heart or our heart. But when we allow the words to stir up love for God in our hearts. When we marinate in the faithfulness of God to us. When we find our faith being encouraged and challenged. When through a song we stand at Calvary and get a glimpse of what Jesus suffered for our salvation and feel the love, the saving power, the promise of it. And love God for it! Thank God for it! Honor God for it! That pleases God’s heart.

2. We honor God when we live as if God sees everything – because He does!

¹⁴ Cursed be the cheat who has a male in his flock, and vows it, and yet sacrifices to the Lord what is blemished. For I am a great King, says the Lord of hosts, and my name will be feared among the nations. Vs. 14

This is a man or woman who’s religion is all on the outside. It’s an act for people to see. The word “cheat” means deceiver. They’re making public vows – I vow to give my best to God! Then behind the scenes they are switching out their best for their worst. People praise them for being so devoted to God, so sold out, so spiritual. But God sees what they are doing.

It reminds me of Annanias and Sapphira in Acts. They saw other people in the church selling their property and giving it all the church and God’s work and they wanted the praise and admiration these people were getting so they sold their property but they didn’t want to give it all. They wanted to keep some. But they wanted the admiration that came from giving it all. So they said they were giving all their profits but they kept back some. If you know the story you know that God struck them dead on the spot.

The property was theirs. When they sold it the profit was theirs. They didn’t have to give any of it. They could’ve given any portion and kept any portion. The problem is they were lying to God. They were vowing one thing in public and doing something else in private and God sees everything. To have a religion that is all outward and no inward, all show and no substance, is dishonoring to God. He sees everything.

God’s name is being profaned in Israel by the priests and the whole faith community as they give God their worst but God says my Name is great and will be proclaimed. In a future glimpse of the gospel going forth to all nations God says His name will be proclaimed and feared among the nations. Jesus said the Father is seeking those who worship him in Spirit and in truth. No phoniness,