Imagine a husband bringing home flowers to his wife, but instead of a lovely bouquet of fresh flowers, he brought ones that were wilted with only half their petals left. What kind of message would that communicate? It would have been better not to bring flowers at all!

In the Old Testament, a vital part of worship was sacrifice. Priests would offer animals and grain to the Lord to express thanksgiving and atone for sin. In Malachi’s day, Israel was going through the motions of this worship, but their hearts were not in it. This was evident from the fact that they offered “defiled food” on the altar (v. 7). The Law required that Israel offer the best of what they had. It directly commanded Israel not to offer animals that were blind, lame, or sick (Lev. 22:18–25; Deut. 15:21). Yet that is exactly what the priests were doing (v. 8).

What we do reflects the state of our heart before God. The priests showed that they had contempt for God through their callous indifference to the kinds of offerings they were making to the Lord (v. 6). They even viewed their privileged position of working in the Temple with disdain, their heart attitude toward their work was: “What a burden!” (v. 13).

The Lord makes clear that it would have been better for Israel to close the doors to the Temple and stop their corporate worship entirely than to engage in worship that they did not really mean (v. 10). The Lord does not want worshipers who are just going through the motions.

The same is true today. The Lord desires our hearts. The apostle Paul reminded the church in Rome that true worship involves your whole self, “Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship” (Rom. 12:1).

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