Don’t Mess with the Message!

The Messenger, the Message, and the Mess

Allen Snapp

Grace Community Church

Nov. 9, 2025

Don’t Mess with the Message!

We are continuing in Malachi so let’s turn to chapter 2.

2 “And now, O priests, this command is for you. ² If you will not listen, if you will 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. Indeed, I have already cursed them, because you do not lay it to heart. ³ Behold, I will rebuke your offspring, and spread dung on your faces, the dung of your offerings, and you shall be taken away with it. Malachi 2:1-3

Malachi chapter 2 opens with a strong warning to the priests. Warnings are good but only if we listen to them. I read about a 28-year-old Texas man who ignored a warning sign that said “no swimming. Alligators.” With a grin on his face he mocked the marina worker’s pleas not to get in the water and jumped into the water, only to be attacked and killed by a large alligator a few moments later. The warning was good, but it didn’t do him any good because he didn’t listen to it.

God says this command – this warning in the NIV - is for you, O priests. If you don’t listen, if you don’t take it to heart God says I will curse your blessings. We’re in trouble when the blessings in our life are cursed. When the very things God means to be a source of happiness and satisfaction become the source of sorrow and pain and humiliation.

God says I will rebuke your offspring. The priests will reap from their children’s lives the dishonor and disrespect they have sown towards God. Moms and dads, we need to pray for our kids and be the best examples of godly, loving parents we can be for their soul’s sake. None of us are perfect parents but we need to take seriously the importance of honoring God as much for our kids sake as for our own sake. We do NOT want to be the reason our kids turn away from God and reject His saving grace. We do NOT want to lead our kids to disrespect and despise God. But that’s exactly what these priests were doing. They were despising and cheating God, and their example was influencing their children to follow in their footsteps. God says your kids will pay the price!

Your ministry will pay the price. The priests would cut out what’s called the “offal” – the intestines and other unclean parts and those parts would be carried outside the camp to the rubbish heap and burned. God says to these unfaithful priests you will be covered with that unclean dung and taken out with it to the garbage pit. Those who dishonor God will land on the garbage heap of history.

Warnings are good…if we listen to them. This morning we stand at the water’s edge reading a warning sign, let’s listen to it. Let’s take His commands - His warnings - to heart this morning. But what is He warning us about? And who is this warning aimed?

Malachi probably was a contemporary of Nehemiah and Ezra. Many of the issues that they dealt with, Malachi deals with, including the need for God’s people to return to hearing and obeying God’s word. That’s what this warning is. The priests were supposed to teach and obey the word of God faithfully and lead God’s people to know and obey the word of God. That was the covenant God made with the tribe of Levi from which these priests descended.

⁴ So shall you know that I have sent this command to you, that my covenant with Levi may stand, says the Lord of hosts. ⁵ My covenant with him was one of life and peace, and I gave them to him. It was a covenant of fear, and he feared me. He stood in awe of my name. ⁶ True instruction was in his mouth, and no wrong was found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and he turned many from iniquity. ⁷ For the lips of a priest should guard knowledge, and people should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts. Malachi 2:4-7

Levi feared God.The fear of the Lord removes all other fears. Oswald Chambers said, “The remarkable thing about fearing God is that when you fear God, you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God, you fear everything else”. The fear of God doesn’t make us fearful, it makes us fearless. Those who know their God shall be strong and do exploits (Dan 11:32). Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for You are with me! (Ps. 23)

And Levi stood in awe of God’s name. That word “awe” is an amazing word that means“shattered”. When our lives are shattered by reverence for God, it’s a shattering that takes our lives apart with holy awe and puts us back together the way God meant us to live. When we are shattered by the glory of God nothing else will ever be able to shatter our lives.

But this fear and this awe for God’s name led Levi to reverence the truth of God’s word. True instruction (literally “truth”) was in Levi’s mouth and it says he turned many away from iniquity. His life and teaching influenced people towards God, towards truth and away from sin. Isn’t that what we want to be said about our lives! Don’t we want our lives to influence the people in our lives towards God, towards truth? Away from lies and evil?

The priests are guilty of doing the exact opposite:

⁸ But you have turned aside from the way. You have caused many to stumble by your instruction. Mal 2:8a

This is why James warns that not many should seek to become teachers. If someone believes a lie, that lie affects them. But if that person is a teacher and teaches that lie to a thousand people that lie affects a thousand people’s lives. But how do we know what is truth and what is lie? This word is Truth. Jesus prayed in his high priestly prayer in John 17 that the Father would sanctify us in the truth, and he prayed, “your word is truth.”

We can’t “feel” our way into truth. We shouldn’t trust our own perception because sin has messed up our internal compass. We need the fixed point of God’s word. When my daughter Jenn was about 7 and son Jared was about 4 years old, I remember on a beautiful Easter Sunday taking them for a walk in the woods across the street from our house. We were only going to be gone for a short time, walking a clear path in and out of the woods. But at some point we got off the path and couldn’t find it again! We started going here and there to find the path and soon I was turned around and didn’t know which way to go. Panic started to set in. In a short time the sun would go down and I had no idea how to find our way. I was carrying Jared on my back cause his little legs gave out.

Then I gathered my thoughts and realized if I go east, west or north we’ll go deeper and deeper into the woods. So I used the sun to determine which way was south, picked Jared up, and we started walking in a southerly direction. We finally saw signs of civilization and came out in a different part of our neighborhood.

In a world where it’s easy to get lost and sin has messed up our truth compass, the word of God is our fixed point. It is the Truth. And from Genesis to Revelation it speaks of Jesus and what he came to accomplish.

We need to take this word seriously and give it the utmost weight! In the last days it says people will not endure sound doctrine but instead will seek out teachers who say what their itching ears want to hear. Sound doctrine needs to be endured because it’s not easy to understand and it doesn’t say what we want it to say. If you find a teacher who’s always saying what you want to hear and never challenges you, run! If you find a teacher who preaches a God who thinks and feels exactly the way you think and feel, run!

Malachi warns that the priests have corrupted God’s word. They have messed with the message:

You have corrupted the covenant of Levi, says the Lord of hosts, ⁹ and so I make you despised and abased before all the people, inasmuch as you do not keep my ways but show partiality in your instruction.” Malachi 2:8b-9

Showing partiality in their instruction means they were changing the instruction of God’s word according to what people wanted to hear. They were tailoring it to fit people’s lives rather than tailor people’s lives to fit God’s word. That’s like taking that sign that said, “no swimming. Alligators” and rewriting it to say, “swimming. No alligators.”

God says, “don’t mess with the message.” In our closing moments I want to share how we can give God’s word the weight it deserves in our lives and our church.

1. We preach through books of the Bible rather than only do topical messages. Preaching through entire books helps us see the bigger context and it forces us to consider passages that I probably wouldn’t pick out on my own.
2. I encourage you to be like the Bereans and examine the scriptures to see if what is being preached lines up with the Bible. If I ever preach something you don’t believe is biblical, please come and tell me. I promise I will take it very seriously and if I am convinced that I missed it, I will stand up the next Sunday and share that.
3. Spend time in the Bible. It’s the word of God that feeds our faith. If you struggle with weak faith, one reason might be that you’re not spending much time in the Bible. If our diet is mostly taking in the news and FB posts and TV shows, our faith will starve from malnourishment. Feed your faith with the truth in this book.
4. Study, memorize and meditate. Study to understand better what its saying, rather than just infusing it with your own opinions. Meditate to chew on it and rechew. And memorize so that God’s word is handy in your heart and mind when you need it.
5. Adjust your life to fit this word, don’t adjust the word to fit your life.
6. Don’t compromise God’s word out of partiality to others. If you have a child or friend who is embracing ideologies and philosophies that run counter to the word of God and you are tempted to change what you believe in order to stay connected to them – I understand! I get it! But here’s what I urge you to do: connect with them with love. With compassion. With humility. But don’t compromise your grip on God’s word to keep your grip on them. You will lose God and them if you do. You want to be an influence in their lives towards God, not allow them to be an influence in your life away from God.

God’s covenant leads to life and peace. His warnings are beautiful because they give us direction and protection from danger as well as point us to His grace and wisdom and truth. Let’s be careful not to mess with God’s message, but learn to love His word even when it’s not what we want to hear. Even when it gives a stern warning!