Malachi: Owning a True Heart … Embrace His Authority

In Malachi 1:6 – 2:9 we find the second step in the path to owning a true heart – we need to embrace or appropriate the authority of God.

He is boss. He is our Lord and there is no other.

“A son honors his father and a servant his master …” God is both our Father and our Master and thus deserves the honor. One thing about owning a true heart is to live a consistent life and the consistent life is only through living out what we say and living according to who we are. In most of the world hypocrisy is frowned on. We this is what we are talking about here.

The nation of Israel asked how is this and it was because they were not consistent with what they knew. The Law was clear as to the type of sacrifice that was to be done. They, the Israelite’s, in accordance to the Law were to bring their best. The unstained, unblemished animal. Remember they had agreed to this but failed to do it.

On top of this the leadership, the priests that is, allowed the people to do this without instructing properly and God reprimanded them. Why? Because they did not “lay it to heart” (Malachi 2:2) In other words they were not owning a true heart. They knew what they were supposed to teach and they did not. The priests were to teach about life, peace, and the connection to fearing God (2:5). Instead the priests “corrupted” the covenant resulting in the people disregarding the Law – the result, neither had a true heart.

Even today we can do the same thing, can’t we? Think about it. We claim to be followers of Christ and yet we do not do what our Lord asks and then expect Him to bless us. This is a corruption of the love that has been demonstrated for us in the Son and Savior Jesus Christ. The reason is because the Israelite did not won a true heart. They said something and did something to make it look they were when they were not.

This is not a call to perfection as some might note but rather a call to being true to who we are by doing what we say we are going to do. This is called being authentic. This is what we want to be, authentic believers. In order to live consistent and be true to what and who we are is to embrace or appropriate God’s authority. He is the boss.

If He is the boss than we do what He says because we want to. We bring to our Lord the best according to His word because He is the authority.

Let’s do just that.

Mark