I Must Make Up My Mind to Honor God's Name

Malachi 2:1-2 ""Listen, you priests—this command is for you!  Listen to me and make up your minds to honor my name," says the LORD of Heaven's Armies, "or I will bring a terrible curse against you. I will curse even the blessings you receive. Indeed, I have already cursed them, because you have not taken my warning to heart. I will punish your descendants and splatter your faces with the manure from your festival sacrifices, and I will throw you on the manure pile." NLT

      O Lord, what a horrific picture!  As a mother and grandmother, I cannot imagine what that must have been like to hear about your children and grandchildren!  And yet, nothing changed. They would not repent and so you were silent until You sent John.
      Israel's priests were going through the motions of the rituals, but their hearts were not in their sacrifices.  You had blessed them so richly by bringing them out of captivity and back into their native land, yet it had not taken long for them to revert back to the very ways that had sent them away in the first place.
      In reading the Intertestamental history, I see that the High Priesthood had become very corrupt.  High priests were elected by their peers or appointed by the pagan rulers and became a political office instead of a rightful priesthood.  They were put in charge of armies, and at one point there was a civil war between the Pharisees and Sadducees!  Jews fighting Jews over territory.
Because of the desecration of the temple by Antiochus IV, when Jehovah was to be called Zeus and pigs were made to be offered on the temple altars, it is no small wonder that You were charged with blasphemy and was going to be stoned when he said that he would destroy the temple and build another not made by hands.  It is also not surprising that the Pharisees had made up over 600 laws not found in Leviticus that the Jews had to follow to be "good Jews"!  And yet, they lived in dark silence with no prophet to tell them what You wanted them to know because of their stiff-neckedness and hard hearts.  They practiced ritual without reality.  In our age, some do the same thing.
     Sweet Lord, You brought me out of the darkness of my life into Your blessed light; out of captivity of my own sin into freedom to be Your bond slave to enjoy Your blessings in my life.  All You ask of me is loving obedience to Your commands.  You will never accept lip service or service done for You or others out of a sense of obligation or to gain praise for myself.
      You cursed Israel's blessings and were silent for 400 years because, although they were Your chosen people, their hearts were far from you.  And yet, You found Mary and Joseph in all of that mess!  Lord, keep my heart on fire for You all the days of my life that I may serve you with a whole heart!