Corrupt Priests Who Offer Polluted Bread

6“A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If I am a father, then where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is the respect due me? Says Yahweh of Armies to you, priests, who despise my name. You say, ‘How have we despised your name?’ 7You offer polluted bread on my altar. You say, ‘How have we polluted you?’ In that you say, ‘Yahweh’s table is contemptible.’ 8When you offer the blind for sacrifice, isn’t that evil? And when you offer the lame and sick, isn’t that evil? Present it now to your governor! Will he be pleased with you? Or will he accept your person?” says Yahweh of Armies. 9“Now, please entreat the favor of God, that he may be gracious to us. With this, will he accept any of you?” says Yahweh of Armies.

God the Son created all things by his word. Jesus, the King of kings, created the world in order by his word, and for that reason every creature must obey that word so that the order is not broken.

Nature keeps God’s law, showing its changes season by season, but people still tear down God’s order. Only human beings, made in God’s image, defy and judge his word and live outside the order he has established. This is sin, and yet people do not even recognize that they are sinners. And when the chosen people, whom God himself elected, defy his law, his wrath can only be all the greater.

God chose priests and gave them the authority to teach the people. He entrusted them with the holy office of teaching what God’s will is and how to live as his children. That is why the corruption of the priests is so grave a matter: if the priests break the law, Israel, taught by them, cannot be God’s people, because, tragically, it is the people, never taught the truth, who end up being disciplined. So the priests’ teaching matters enormously, for it leads to the people’s woe or blessing, and on to heaven or hell after death. Today too, if pastors do not teach the truth, those in their care who do not grasp God’s will can only drift away from salvation. Because the salvation of the flock depends on it, a pastor must preach nothing but the truth, and preach it honestly.

In Philippians 4:12 the apostle Paul confessed that he knew how to be humbled and knew also how to abound, and that in everything and in all things he had learned the secret both to be filled and to be hungry, both to abound and to be in need. This is the very faith that priests and God’s people alike ought to have.

Whenever the people of the Old Testament sinned, deliberately or unknowingly, they brought a sin offering to the priest and were forgiven through the sacrifice. The priests bore the weighty duty of helping those who had offered sacrifices to be forgiven and go back to daily life; their corruption was therefore an enormous problem. Now Jesus has become the atoning sacrifice himself and serves as our high priest, and God’s people no longer need to offer sin offerings with the blood of animals as the people of the Old Testament did. Then the Holy Spirit came to dwell within us, and we became his holy temple, so that, like the priests of the Old Testament, we worship God directly and enjoy deep fellowship with him. Those who have been saved have taken up the task of spreading the gospel so that more people may receive Christ. So, as the apostle Paul confessed, we must live righteously. We must not make wealth our strength but use it as a good tool, laboring faithfully so that more souls may be saved.

When hunger and want come, we must not give way to despair or foolishly doubt God; we must remember the sacrifice of Jesus, who bore the cross, and endure. Paul had not the slightest doubt that the incarnate Jesus had borne the cross and risen again, and that the Holy Spirit was walking with him. That certainty is why he could say with confidence that he had learned the secret of overcoming in any circumstance. Those who look for reasons and grounds to complain in every situation are miserable. They treat God’s grace as worthless and do not exalt his holy name, and for this they cannot receive God’s special love. Those who strive to live by faith, on the other hand, are not ruled by their circumstances. Knowing that God’s purpose lies not in this world but in his Kingdom, they are neither overly troubled nor overly elated by the endless round of worldly affairs.

When Paul met Christ face to face on the road to Damascus, he realized that for God’s people life is a pilgrim’s road, and that only by receiving forgiveness of sins from Christ while we live can we enter the Kingdom of God. Once he saw that life is like a wind that passes in a moment, he gained assurance of heaven; and once faith in Christ was born in him, suffering and persecution had no power over him at all. When he came to see how much he owed to Jesus’ sacrifice, he grieved that people were going to hell unsaved, and he put his own life behind him and took to the road to preach the gospel. Paul was a man who gave up the rights he could have enjoyed and chose God’s way.

If Paul’s faith is the stance of a good steward, the priests now being rebuked by God through the prophet Malachi can be seen as unjust stewards. Though God had specially called them to be priests, if they lived only for themselves, they were no different from the world that will face God’s wrath. Whatever your situation, may you not complain or doubt, but draw strength from prayer and praise and fulfill your calling to proclaim the gospel.

Malachi 1:6

6“A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If I am a father, then where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is the respect due me? Says Yahweh of Armies to you, priests, who despise my name. You say, ‘How have we despised your name?’

What did God see them do that made him say they had despised his name? It is astonishing that priests, who ought to obey the word of almighty God without question, could insult and mock him. When God asks how they could despise him, he means that they had despised the Lord’s name, that is, his glory. Having heard words of wrath, they should have repented at once; instead they shot back, asking when they had ever despised his name. That priests would presume to answer the absolute God so irreverently shows that something other than God had already filled them.

The people who came back from exile had forgotten God’s law; it fell to the priests to teach them God’s covenant and the life of worship. Instead the priests had fallen even further, and Israel was left with no hope. What must God’s heart have felt when he addressed them as priests who despise his name? Israel’s future had to be entrusted to priests who knew the law, but they had become corrupt, leaving God nothing to hope for from them.

Leviticus 22:2 spells out exactly what the priests were to do: “Tell Aaron and his sons to separate themselves from the holy things of the children of Israel, which they make holy to me, and that they not profane my holy name. I am Yahweh.” Yahweh commanded Aaron and his sons, whom he had appointed high priest and priests, not to profane his holy name but to bring holy things that were whole. If they broke God’s command, they were put to death on the spot without forgiveness, like Nadab and Abihu. Obedience was not optional. But when God did not judge immediately, the priests offered polluted bread on the altar. What do you suppose was in God’s heart as he looked at them, defying his command and then asking how they had polluted him?

Suppose your child is doing something you know will bring them harm, and when you stop them, they talk back, asking why you are taking away their freedom. How would you feel? Talking back like that means your child does not respect you. When someone under you objects to every word you say, it would mean they do not acknowledge you. Even people grow angry when treated this way. If, when God points out our sin, we presume to demand that he tell us exactly what sin we have committed, there can be no forgiveness for us.

The church, too, has an unseen order. In one sense church offices can look like a ranking, but before God there is no rank among his people. The pastor is not above the congregation, and elders, ordained deacons, and senior deaconesses do not stand higher than the laypeople. Just as Jesus set an example of service from the lowest place, we too must serve one another from a low place. Yet in doing God’s work, the church needs order. So those of us who serve a personal God must be people of good character who honor and recognize one another, so that we work together for good.

Treating older members with courtesy matters greatly for keeping order in the church. If young people talk back to their elders, or members of the congregation behave rudely toward the pastor, the church’s order will crumble, regardless of the word.

Rude behavior disregards the church that our forerunners in faith built through prayer and labor, and it is a challenge to God himself. We must not do it. The older members of the church, for their part, must set an example of sacrifice, as Jesus did. Younger people find it hard to voice their grievances to their elders, and so the older members must take the initiative to be considerate and to yield for the sake of the church’s order.

Malachi 1:7

7You offer polluted bread on my altar. You say, ‘How have we polluted you?’ In that you say, ‘Yahweh’s table is contemptible.’

God told them that they offered polluted bread and then asked how they had polluted him; they could treat Yahweh’s table with such contempt because they had despised him. The polluted bread here means unclean offerings. Israel should have offered God sacrifices without spot or blemish, yet they chose their offerings as they pleased. God had laid down the sacrifices and the law of worship for the sin offering, but the priests ignored that law and so defiled God’s glory. Such conduct was a monstrous sin; they would have deserved to be put to death on the spot. When Yahweh said it was evil for the priests to offer the blind, the lame, and the sick as sacrifices, they should have repented right away, but they set themselves against God instead. In this way the priests were tearing down the order God had established.

According to Leviticus 22:19, the sacrifice God accepts with pleasure is a male without defect, of the bulls, of the sheep, or of the goats. God had made this perfectly clear, but the priests, having no fear of him, offered sick animals without the least sense of guilt. Only when the offering is accepted by God can the people who bring a sin offering be forgiven and live. Yet the priests sacrificed with polluted offerings that should never have been brought.

The priests kept for themselves the healthy male cattle, sheep, and goats that should have gone to God, and offered him the weak and the sick. Even priests whom God has specially chosen can offer him polluted sacrifices once greed and lust take hold of them.

Jeremiah 7:8-11

8Behold, you trust in lying words that can’t profit. 9Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense to Baal, and walk after other gods that you have not known, 10then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are delivered;’ that you may do all these abominations? 11Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it,” says Yahweh.

These are the words God spoke to the people of Judah when they had fallen into corruption. For six days a week they lived filthy lives in the world—lying, stealing, murdering, committing adultery, and burning incense to Baal—and then they came to the temple and spoke detestable words: “God, I am one of the people you have delivered.” Sickened by what Israel said, God declared that though they rose early and sought him diligently, again and again, he would not listen, and though they called on him, he would not answer. It was for this very sin that Israel spent seventy years in exile. After seventy years of suffering in captivity they came back to Israel, but they had not changed at all; they were committing the same sins they had committed before they were taken captive.

The holy God never forgives sin until there is repentance. Sin is a wall that divides God from people; even when God wants to embrace them, sin keeps him from doing so. Malachi knew this, and he brought God’s warning to the priests, but they were doing evil, committing the same sins as their fathers. They had no thought at all of turning back, even after hearing God’s warning. So the prophet Malachi says this: Yahweh declares that they give him what is sick and do not even know it is sin, and he tells them to present it to their governor and see how he responds. Let them see whether a governor who receives a polluted offering will be pleased with them. He will not accept them, and he will not be pleased. When they offered the holy God an offering that even a man would refuse, and then talked back, asking when they had ever failed to honor him or when they had polluted him, we can imagine that God had no choice but to be angry. He rebuked their hypocrisy: having committed such sin, they came to the temple and prayed that he would be gracious to them. This sin went on because the priests were corrupt, which is why Malachi said he wished all temple worship would simply stop.

Here lies human folly. Jesus Christ said that he is the First and the Last, and if Christ is the First and the Last, then human beings have no choice of their own. Because God was watching the priests deceive him in order to keep the healthy animals for themselves, they could never own those animals: once he takes their lives, everything they own becomes someone else’s.

Had the priests sincerely chosen offerings without blemish and offered them, God would have blessed their descendants to serve him generation after generation. If, instead of lying to God and stealing to get the offerings for themselves, they had held an honest faith, the priests would have been protected and would have received overflowing grace without having to harden their hearts. We must look at ourselves and ask whether we have offered God polluted bread, with spot and blemish.

Are you honestly setting apart what you have received from God and giving it back to him? I hope you will stop and ask yourself whether, to get on in the world, you give your best to the governor while begrudging what you give to God and counting the cost. Such conduct is exactly what it means to despise God’s name and to treat his altar with contempt.

When illness strikes, or your family faces trouble, or you have no strength left to bear hardship, you seek God before anything else; but if you hesitate when the time comes to give him what is rightly his, God will be the first to know that hardened heart.

The priests were to cut up the good offerings the people brought, burn them, and present them to God. Entrusted with that weighty charge, they could secretly swap the people’s offerings for sick animals and no one would know, so they did not feel even a pang of conscience. Only God and the priest knew the condition of the offering, so unless God judged the wicked priest at once, the sin would never come to light. When God did not discipline them right away even though they offered animals with spot and blemish, the priests stopped fearing him. But God does not overlook even a small sin, so he will surely judge the sin of stealing the offerings the people had prepared with such care, and the sin of defiling the holy sacrifice. Rather than rejoicing that judgment does not fall the moment we sin, we must remember that God established the law for how offerings are to be brought for each sacrifice. If anyone offers polluted bread and offerings because God does not judge immediately, their life will slowly go to ruin.

When God rebuked them, “How can you pollute my table?” they talked back once again, asking how they could possibly have polluted him. God did not command them to offer animals without spot or blemish because he coveted the offerings people bring. What God wants from the priests is that they offer whole sacrifices according to the law, so that the people may be forgiven their sins.

Every sacrifice recorded in the Old Testament points to Christ. In our terms today, the priests’ sin is like failing to serve well the one offering God accepts from us: Christ. God therefore had no choice but to judge the priests who did not serve Christ fully.

You must never become the object of God’s judgment. If you bow to the powers of this world for your own gain but do not offer God whole worship, you are committing the same sin as the priests who offered what was evil.

Luke 21:3-4

3He said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow put in more than all of them, 4for all these put in gifts for God from their abundance, but she, out of her poverty, put in all that she had to live on.”

In Jesus’ day there were many kinds of offerings, and it is said that people stated the amount and the purpose as they gave. Jesus was watching the rich bring large gifts and put them into the treasury when he saw a poor widow come and put in two small brass coins. Though the rich had given far more, Jesus commended the widow, saying she had offered God far more than they. The reason he said this is that the gifts of the rich and of the widow carried a great deal of meaning. Jesus knew everything: how they had earned the money, how they were using it now, and with what heart each one gave. That is likely why he especially commended the widow.

Are you giving God honest offerings that please him? God is not asking you for large sums; he wants a faith that knows your life belongs to him and gives from the heart. If we do not understand this God, people in the pews will begin to demand blessing from him in exchange for their offerings, and pastors will begin to pressure people to give while stressing blessing. God did not want animal sacrifices because he needed the things of this world, nor does he want his people’s offerings for that reason.

Human beings were sinners from the beginning and stood outside salvation, but God took pity on our souls and, through the sacrifice of the incarnate Jesus, made eternal life ours. Priests and people alike ignored and despised that love for the sake of petty greed and stole what belongs to God; that is why they came under his wrath.

May you not ignore the law of almighty God or despise his name by offering worship that is only for show. I hope you will live as people who offer God whole worship, and become blessed saints who rescue many more souls from sin.