Second Tuesday in Advent

 The Good Water Main

When I was in high school, I loved watching the hit show 24. One of my favorite seasons included a storyline about a mysterious white powder engineered by terrorists as a deadly virus. In an early episode a frightened character, mistaking it for drugs, flushes a bag of the powder down her toilet to hide her criminal activity from the police. In doing so, she contaminates the Los Angeles water main and sends federal law enforcement into a frenzy trying to save the city’s population from exposure to the virus.

 Every city has a similar system in which purified water is housed in central reservoirs until released through a complex piping system where it travels to faucets, hoses, and drinking spouts. Any contamination poses risks to the city. 

 The same is true for the human heart, which functions as a reservoir for living. Whatever fills the heart flows out as our expressions of life—the way we use our hands, our eyes, and our speech. In the same way the health of a city depends on the purity of water stored in its reservoirs, the health of a person’s life and service to others depend on the purity of the heart.

 Israel’s priests learned this lesson the hard way. In the days of the prophet Malachi, God spoke directly to the priests to express his displeasure over their polluted hearts. Whereas Levi, the first priest of Israel, revered the Lord and taught truth with integrity (2: 5­–6), the priests in Malachi’s time led people astray, having turned from God toward corruption (v. 8–9). They failed in their duties of speaking true knowledge and serving as reliable sources of instruction. Why? Because they lacked sincerity in their hearts for honoring God in their ministries (v. 2). While their teachings likely retained traces of both truth and elegance, Malachi sourced the problem in their hearts—the polluted water main that turned their ministry bitter.

 Such pollution is not merely an Old Testament problem. Today, all Christians serve as priests charged with responsibility of speaking God’s saving grace to the world (1 Pet. 2:9). And just as a polluted water main leads to the pollution of any reservoir it enters, so an unwillingness to honor God pollutes our ministries to others. Impartial reverence results in a murky message that the Lord will render both ineffective and repulsive to our hearers, as he did for the priesthood of Israel. 

 When people see our lives, do they witness sincerity toward God? Does your heart reflect the purity God desires? Or do portions need purifying? —Collin Huber

[* Offal is refuse. It consists of the parts of the animal prepared for sacrifice considered inedible to humans, including the dung inside the animal. In referring to offal, God is saying he will use part of the offering itself to express his outrage. God adds a touch of irony. He’s not just using any offal, but the very stuff produced by the people’s shoddy worship.] 

Prayer: 

Lord, forgive me for the ways in which I have lacked sincerity toward you. I confess and repent, asking for the healing you offer through your Son, Jesus Christ. Purify me, and use my life as a sincere, wholehearted, and reliable witness to those you have placed around me. Help me to believe all the more that true joy abides in following you wholly. Thank you for the sacrifice of your Son and the hope of your salvation. In Jesus’s name I pray, Amen.

Memory Verse: “He walked with me in peace and integrity, and he turned many people away from sin” (Mal. 2:6).

He will come again in glory

to judge the living and the dead

And his kingdom will have no end.

Photo credit: HowToGym on Unsplash