I will curse your blessings
Malachi 2:2 - Our God is a God of second chances
Sacrifice offered by Elijah, main altar in the church of Saint Matthew in Stitar, Croatia
“If you do not listen, and if you do not resolve to honor my name,” says the Lord Almighty, “I will send a curse on you, and I will curse your blessings. Yes, I have already cursed them, because you have not resolved to honor me.”
Malachi 2:2 NIV
I find it interesting that God has been directing me in a non-random manner to many of the Old Testament prophets. My last devotional was from the book of Ezra, so directing my focus to Malachi shows that He is really trying to focus my attention on the last prophets since it is thought that Ezra wrote this book as well!
Malachi is a short book — only four chapters — and is the last book of the Old Testament. Next up in the Christian Bible is the Gospel of Matthew. As you can see from today’s verse from the second chapter, God (speaking through the prophet Malachi) is unhappy with someone.
That “someone” is actually a group of people — the priests at the rebuilt temple in Jerusalem after their return from the exile in Babylon. God is greatly displeased with the priesthood for a number of reasons; first, rather than presenting only unblemished animals and the purest grain in their sacrifices, they’re offering “injured, lame or diseased animals” (Malachi 1:13) and the grain is impure.
Not only are they just making a vacant show out of the temple sacrifices, but elsewhere in this chapter of Malachi God condemns the priests for marrying foreign women who worship pagan gods.
The Lord had made a covenant with the tribe of Levi, and elsewhere in Malachi 2 He uses Levi as an example of what He wants from the priesthood — reverence, knowledge of God’s Word, a godly nature, and a desire to preserve and promote the Word. By the time Malachi was written, the Levites have fallen far and God is rebuking them. He’s not only cursing them, but also the blessings they are bestowing on the people!
The Lord is very unhappy with the priests. How unhappy? Well, in the next verse (Malachi 2:3), He says through the prophet “Because of you I will rebuke your descendants; I will smear on your faces the dung from your festival sacrifices, and you will be carried off with it.” The animals being sacrificed had excrement in their intestines; God was saying He would have that smeared on their faces, meaning that the priests would be taken outside of the sanctuary and most likely expelled from the priesthood.
But our God is a God of second chances, which is why He prefaces today’s verse by saying “If you do not listen, and if you do not resolve to honor my name”. He is providing the priesthood with the opportunity to confess and repent.
There is a hopeful tone to chapter 3 of the Book of Malachi — the chapter foretells the eventual ministry of John the Baptist and the first coming of the Messiah (“I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me.”), as well as Christ’s second coming (“the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” — Malachi 3:1 NIV
God, through the prophet Malachi, provides all who study His Word the opportunity to understand His gift of salvation. It’s up to the reader to take Him up on that gift.
Heaven On Wheels Daily Prayer:
Lord in Heaven, I thank You that through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, all who believe in Him will have eternal life. You truly are the God of second chances for all who confess their sin and repent of it! AMEN.