“The Lord says, “You said cruel things to me.” But you ask, “What did we say about you?” You said, “It is useless to worship God. We did what the Lord All-Powerful told us, but we didn’t gain anything.”

Why do you worship the Lord? Do you worship Him because of who He is or because of what you can get from Him?

About 400-450 years before the birth of Jesus, a remnant of God’s people had excitedly returned from exile. After a few decades, however, their excitement began to wane. The prophet Malachi told the people of Judah that they had broken God’s heart. In chapter 3, Malachi prophesied about the coming Messiah. God then has a “conversation” between Himself and the people of Judah. God levied a charge against them, and they responded with a question. God then answered their question.

In the verses for today, we see that God accuses His people of saying cruel things to Him. They ask God what they said about Him. God told them they said worshiping Him was useless because they didn’t gain anything from it. Oh, how God’s heart must have been broken as His people forgot who He is and everything He’d done.

Are we all that different from the people of Malachi’s day? When things don’t go our way, do we question God? Do we recite a laundry list of our spiritual activities trying to prove that we deserve to be blessed by Him in the way we see fit? Do we withhold our offerings and our worship like pouting children because something didn’t work out the way we thought it should?

Shame on us! God has done everything for us! He is worthy of all our worship, service, and praise because of who He is. We do not worship Him so that we can get more things from Him.

Brothers and sisters, let us repent of our improper attitudes toward worship. Worship is our response to a holy God who has rescued, restored, and reconciled us. If He never did another thing for us, He would still be worthy of all our worship, service, and praise.

Shawn Cornett, Bible League International staff, Indiana, USA