Are you really giving God your best? That was the question Malachi asked his readers, some 400 years before the birth of Christ. The people were holding back their best offerings, bringing lame or sick animals to the Temple instead (Malachi 1:13). And they were shortchanging God, bringing less than the tenth of their income prescribed by the Law of Moses (Malachi 3:8, 10; Deuteronomy 14:22-23).

But the priests weren’t any more faithful than the people were. After all, they were willing to offer the “stolen, the lame and the sick” animals that the people had brought to sacrifice (Malachi 1:13). In setting such a bad example for the people, they “caused many to stumble” (Malachi 2:8).

And, perhaps because of their long years in bondage to unbelieving empires, waiting for the deliverance God had promised them, both the priests and the people had fallen into the cynicism that so often accompanies despair. They cried, “Where is the God of justice” (Malachi 2:17)? Why shouldn’t they hold out on God when God was so slow to keep His promises?

Well, the good news for them and for us is that God did keep His promise to redeem His people. In fact, in chapter 3, Malachi promised not only the coming of the Messiah, the Messenger of the covenant. He also promised another messenger who would prepare the way of the Messiah. And both of these prophecies were fulfilled in the ministries of John the Baptist and Jesus. Both of them would indeed refine the priests and the people so that they might present pure offerings to God (Malachi 3:3).

But how God fulfilled His promise, a story which is told in the New Testament, should give pause to the despairing cynics of every age. For no matter how faithless God’s people may have been, God didn’t hold anything back from us. No, God sent His Son to die on a cross for us. And it is only through the perfect sacrifice of Christ that God’s people can be refined, for it is only by the purifying power of the indwelling Spirit of Christ that any of us can offer ourselves to God in righteousness.

In other words, in Jesus Christ God has given us His best. Does He deserve anything less from us?

Malachi 2:17-3:3 (NASB)

17 You have wearied the LORD with your words. Yet you say, “How have we wearied Him?” In that you say, “Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the LORD, and He delights in them,” or, “Where is the God of justice?”
“Behold, I am going to send My messenger, and he will clear the way before Me. And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple; and the messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight, behold, He is coming,” says the LORD of hosts.
2 “But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap.
3 “And He will sit as a smelter and purifier of silver, and He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, so that they may present to the LORD offerings in righteousness.