Malachi Who cares what God thinks!

Keep your Bibles open at Malachi, and it's great to be here on this day with Sam and

Sal and Bailey.

Let me say it's great to have him on team.

For those of you who are part of his family and friends, I'm Steve.

I'm on the ministry team.

I work with Sam and work with Sal there for a while, and very sad to get Sal's resignation,

but certainly joyful in the arrival of Bailey.

It's a good reason to resign, I think, here.

So keep your Bibles open.

We are in the middle, for those who are new here tonight, we're in the middle of a commitment

series, or second weekend, in fact, of the commitment series going through Malachi.

So that's the context of what we're looking at.

We do it every year as a church, and so we're up to number two.

So I want to pray, and then I'm going to look at that passage.

Father God, help us.

We pray to look at this passage, which has got so many difficult bits in it, and even

grates against our hearts in it.

You are the sovereign ruler of this universe.

And so help us now, we pray, so that our heart and our treasures might align with yours.

And we ask it for your sake.

Amen.

Am I on the air?

I am.

Fantastic.

Okay.

Last we discovered, as we entered into Malachi, first five verses, the glorious foundation of

this relationship between God and his people Israel.

It's right there in verse two of chapter one, in four words, I have loved you.

And we unpack the implications of that little statement.

God's love is an electing love because he chose Israel over Esau.

His love for them is an unconditional love because he chose them to be his.

He chose to love them before they'd done anything good or evil, before they'd met any conditions,

before they were even born.

His love for them is a sovereign love because he was under no constraint whatsoever.

He didn't have a gun held to his head in order to love his people.

He was not forced to do it.

He wasn't tricked.

He wasn't manipulated in any way.

And his love for them is free because it is the abundant overflow of his immeasurable

grace that can never be bought.

It can't be repaid or earned in any way.

And so my first challenge for us last week was for us to make a commitment to know this

God.

Don't conform God to the size of our finite minds, but to actually know the God, the infinite

God has revealed himself so that we can understand something about him.

So go deeper than just the size of your head in understanding God.

And why do that?

Well, because you cannot worship, adore, love what you don't know.

You cannot treasure Jesus if in fact you don't know the Jesus who has revealed himself.

We also know from the very same verse in verse 2 of chapter 1 that Israel failed to see and

feel the greatness of God's love.

But that's not the only thing that they failed to see and feel.

We actually see here in verse 6, beginning of today's text, that they failed to see and

feel the greatness of God's majesty.

So have a look at it there.

A son honors his father and a slave his master.

If I am a father, where is the honor due me?

And if I'm a master, where is the respect due me, says the Lord Almighty?

And so there are two aspects there of the fatherhood of God.

It means that he loves me, that he will care for me, that he will guide me and forgive me

and take me home to be with him forever someday.

And those things are all wonderfully true.

Don't want to dismiss those in any sense.

But the fatherhood of God in this text also implies that God is to be honored and revered

and venerated.

The majestic fatherhood of God implies that his children should honor him and respect him

and pay him reverential esteem.

And that is Israel's failing in this text.

That's their problem.

And so what Malachi does for us, he helps us to see and to feel the majesty of the heavenly

father by using a special name for God here.

Eight times in the verses from verse 6 to verse 14, God is called, he refers himself as the

Lord Almighty.

Or in old language, you'd call it the Lord of hosts.

So what Malachi wants us to see and feel is that our father in heaven has infinite authority

in the universe.

He can wield any and all armies on the earth to accomplish his purpose among the nations,

whether they like it or not, whether they know it or not.

He has a myriads of unstoppable angels who do his bidding fallously, who never fail on a

single errand that he sends them on.

He has appointed every star in the universe in its position.

He holds them in place, all trillion upon trillions of them by the power of his very

word, and he calls them by name.

That is the greatness, if you like, of God, the sheer majesty of God that the Bible reveals.

And that is what's missing here for these people of Israel.

It's the majesty, the greatness of God that's kind of slipped by them.

It's sort of like this.

You've got a dog, like Rin Tin Tin and Lassie and Benji or one of those dogs, and the dog

saved you a hundred times, and you might feel deep affection for that poor wretched animal,

and you may even cry when the animal dies, but you're never tempted to bow down and actually

worship the dog.

Or it's the same of a true friend.

The closest bond of friendship might develop, but you never think, even if you're closest

friend, that I need to bow down and worship them.

Even though you might love them, you don't actually bow down and worship them.

Why?

Because one indispensable element in worship is greatness.

It's majesty.

It's splendor.

It's the greatness of God that is missing here for God's people in this text.

And it's so evident in two areas as we're going to go through.

The greatness of God is missing for them, and it's evident in their worship, and it's evident

in their relationships with each other.

That's what we're going to look at.

So what happens when you don't see or feel the majestic greatness of God?

Apathy, carelessness, fickleness, half-hearted devotion.

They are the results when you don't see God's greatness.

And it's there in verse 8 for us.

Have a look at it if you've got your Bibles there.

When you offer blind animals for sacrifice, is that not wrong?

When you sacrifice lame or diseased animals, is that not wrong?

Try offering them to your governor.

Would he be pleased with you?

Would he accept you, says the Lord Almighty?

Now, Israel knew that the book of Leviticus condemned dodgy sacrifices like that.

And the priests, it also condemned the priests who offered those dodgy sacrifices.

So why was it so important to God to bring the best animals for sacrifice?

The perfect one, the unblemished animals for sacrifice.

The primary reason is that God was interested in teaching his people that a sacrifice for sin must be perfect for it to be effective.

These sacrifices, in the end, way back then, centuries earlier, were meant to all point forward to the sacrifice of sin that was to come in Jesus Christ,

the one who was called the perfect Lamb of God.

Hebrews 9 says this about Jesus,

that he appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself.

Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people.

And Hebrews is at pains to point out the greatness and the majesty and the perfection of Jesus.

And so these sacrifices that these people were doing were meant to look forward to Jesus and his once for all perfect sacrifice.

And so if you offer a dodgy sacrifice, by implication, you were saying that my sin isn't that great.

It doesn't matter that much.

And it doesn't need anyone or anything perfect to die as a substitute for sin.

And so the horror of what these priests were doing here in offering these blemish sacrifices is that God says explicitly that he's turning away.

You come to the altar, you bring your blemished animal, your mangy broken legs,

you blind sheep and you put them on the altar and God says, I will not accept that.

And so what he does is he turns his back to it.

And when he turns his back to it, he ignores you, the person who brings the sacrifice.

And when you are bringing a sacrifice as a sin offering, what happens if it's rejected?

You are still in your sin.

And that's the horror.

All this religious activity that's happening in the people in Israel is of naught value to God.

They arrogantly assumed that they could approach God on their own terms rather than on God's terms.

And you only do that when God is small in your mind and you are big in your mind.

And so why offer these substandard sacrifices?

The origin of this careless worship is seen in verse 11 and 14.

So cast your eyes there in chapter 1.

Both verses give the reason God rejects this careless worship from his people.

Let's just look at verse 11.

It's connected, verse 10.

Logically, I know, but it's connected to verse 10.

It says, I am not pleased with you, says the Lord Almighty,

and I will accept no offering from your hands.

For, I want to inject a word in there.

For, my name will be great among the nations, says the Lord Almighty.

In other words, careless worship is unacceptable because it utterly fails to come to terms with the greatness of God.

And then God, what he does here is he quotes their attitude to worship in verses 12 and 13.

You profane it by saying the Lord's table is defiled and its food is contemptible.

In verse 13.

And you say, what a burden.

And you sniff at it contemptuously, says the Lord Almighty.

What's their basic attitude to worship?

It's a burden.

Or quite literally, it's wearisome.

It's boring.

And so they sniff at it with contempt.

When you become so blind that the maker of galaxies, the ruler of nations, the knower of all mysteries, the lover of all souls,

becomes boring, then there's only one thing that's left.

And that is the love of the things that he's created.

Love of the world.

When you give away the very best treasure, you will always pick up a lesser treasure.

Because our hearts are restless and they must treasure something.

And if it's not in heaven, if it's not God, then it will be here in this world.

If you cannot see the greatness of the sun, you'll be impressed by a streetlight.

If you've never felt the roar of thunder and seen the brilliance of lightning, you'll take photos of fireworks.

If you turn your back on the greatness and majesty of God, you'll fall in love with the world of shadows and short-lived pleasures.

And so when it's time to bring your sheep from the flock to sacrifice, what do you bring?

You bring the blind one with broken legs and the mange.

Or better still, you jump the fence and flog your neighbor's one.

Because the good sheep sell better and you love your money more than God.

And so this, I think, is what is happening here amongst these people.

Careless worship in this text is religious activity that illustrates how little I value God.

That's the sense of it there, I think, in verse 10.

Oh, that one of you would shut the temple doors so that you would not light useless fires on my altar.

There's a little word behind the phrase useless fires.

And it's probably better translated vain fires.

The same word is used in 2 Samuel 24-24 in a very similar way to this passage here.

So back to 2 Samuel 24.

King David is trying to avert a plague.

And to do so, he needs to build an altar in order to make sacrifice on the altar.

And the owner of the threshing floor where he wants to build the altar says to him,

take it for free and I'll give you some animals to sacrifice on it for free as well when you build your altar.

And this is King David's response.

No.

But I will buy it from you at a price.

I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God which cost me nothing.

I will not offer to the Lord my God sacrifices in vain.

And that is the essence of careless worship.

What David is saying there in 2 Samuel 24 is,

I value God so much.

The sovereign freedom, unconditional love and the majesty of his fatherhood are so satisfying to my soul

that I cannot bring myself to worship in a way that looks as if I value money than I value him.

I won't do it.

It must cost me something.

It must say that he, the holder of galaxies, is my greatest treasure.

And so the essence here of careless worship is empty religious activity.

It doesn't express the worth of God.

It doesn't cost anything.

In fact, what it does is it expresses that our treasure is on earth

and that in actual fact I really love this world that he's made rather than him.

And so if we worship God when it is convenient

or it's the eighth most important thing on the list

without bothering to repent of any sin,

then we are in the end revealing our view of God.

And friends, as I said this morning, I've got to say it here again.

I'm concerned because it is so easy for careless worship

just to filter in amongst the people of God.

And I've seen it filtering here.

A carelessness that worships when it's convenient.

A carelessness that isn't on time.

A carelessness that only sings the songs that I want to sing.

A carelessness that fits the worship of the majestic God of this universe

around sport and travel and entertainment and family gatherings

and school and TV and work and my own sleep patterns

and around anything.

A carelessness that reveals that some of us are more impressed

with the street light than we are with the sun.

A carelessness that doesn't treasure the sacrificial, electing, sovereign, free love

of this majestic, great Lord Jesus Christ.

That he's not in fact the greatest treasure.

True worship comes from a heart where the Lord Jesus is treasured above all human property and praise

and it aims to inspire the same Christ-centered passion in the hearts of those that are gathered.

Now I'm not talking about a particular form of worship here.

Don't get me wrong.

I'm not batting for Anglicanism or anything nutty like that

when I talk about true worship.

What I have in mind is worship

that really comes from feeling and seeing the greatness of God.

It seeks humbly to express and to inspire that same intensity for Jesus

without the distractions of theological lightness or errors or superficiality

or carelessness or flippancy or pride.

So my friends, we need Jesus to open our eyes to his greatness

so that we never offer him in the pew or in the pulpit

or in the singing or in the prayers or whatever it is,

the leftover of our lives.

That's the first evidence that they haven't seen the greatness of God.

The second evidence they haven't seen the greatness of God

is in the way they treated one another.

The failure to treat each other correctly

was another sign that in actual fact their worship was empty.

I'm just going to be really brief.

Have a look at chapter 2, verse 10.

I'm not going to pick all this apart,

but there's a few things I want to show you.

Do we not have one Father?

Did not one God create us?

Why do we profane the covenant of our ancestors

by being unfaithful to one another?

Judah has been unfaithful.

A detestable thing has been committed in Israel in Jerusalem.

Judah has desecrated the sanctuary of the Lord,

the Lord loves by marrying women who worship a foreign God.

As for the man who does this,

whoever he may be,

may the Lord remove him from the tents of Jacob,

even though he brings an offering to the Lord Almighty.

Another thing you do,

you flood the Lord's altar with tears,

you weep and wail because he no longer looks with favor

on your offerings,

accept them with pleasure from your hands.

You ask why?

It is because the Lord is the witness

between you and the wife of your youth.

You have been unfaithful to her,

though she is your partner,

the wife of your marriage covenant.

Has not the one God made you?

You belong to him in body and spirit.

And what does the one God seek?

Godly offspring.

So be on your guard

and do not be unfaithful to the wife of your youth.

The man who hates and divorces his wife,

says the Lord,

the God of Israel does violence

to the one he should protect.

says the Lord Almighty.

So be on your guard

and do not be unfaithful.

The will of God in those verses

is really plain.

He wills that we be faithful to each other.

And the word unfaithful there

is used three times

in the three different sections.

So in verse 10,

why do you profane the covenant of our ancestors

by being unfaithful to one another?

That's referring to a general untrustworthiness

in relationships.

Verse 11,

Judah has been unfaithful

by marrying women who worship a foreign God.

That's reference to the marrying of unbelievers

who don't trust Jesus.

In verse 14,

the Lord is the witness

between you and the wife of your youth.

You have been unfaithful to her

is in reference to

what I would call careless divorce.

The sin that runs through

each of these areas of life

is the failure to keep a commitment.

It's the breaking of an agreement

or a covenant

or a contract

or a promise.

It's that they're not true to their words,

is what he's saying.

And so what Malachi does

with this key word

is to show that community life

of the church

is supposed to be ordered

by the faithful promise

of fulfillment

of promises and contracts

and oaths and covenants

and commitments.

We had one of them up here

just a moment ago.

I promise

to bring Bailey up

in the life of the church.

To know, to love

and to serve the Lord Jesus.

That's a covenant.

That's an oath

that was declared here

and promises were made

in full view of us all

and God.

But this order

has been given way

to the disorder

that comes when people

give in

to the power

of self-centered

emotional impulses.

See, what happens?

Remember it?

What happens when you fail

to see and feel

the greatness

of God's love

and the majesty

of the Fatherhood of God?

You live

for disappearing shadows

and short-lived pleasures

for self-centered

emotional impulses.

And Malachi reveals

two alternative ways

here for people

to live in a community.

One way

is what you might call

covenantal order.

All relationships

are made

peaceful and pure

by the fulfillment

of covenants

and promises

and oaths

and contracts

and commitments.

Children to parents,

parents to children,

husbands to wives,

wives to husbands,

employer to employee,

employee to employer,

state citizen,

citizen state.

probably other ones

as well.

The peace

and prosperity

and joy

of the community

is held together

by the deep,

strong spirit

of covenant

keeping

that pervades

the community.

We are true

to each other.

The very fabric

of the community

is the trustworthiness

of its people.

that they do

what they say

not just because

of the person

they're eyeballing

but because

Jesus is true

to them.

They want to

honor him

and obey him.

And so we

follow through

with our commitments

to each other.

And the big one

here that he mentions

a couple of times

is marriage.

we follow

through with

commitments

such as

I Steve

in the presence

of God

in the presence

of God

take you

Natalie

to be my wife

to have and to hold

from this day

forward

for better or for worse

for richer for poorer

in sickness and in health

to love and to cherish

as long as we both

shall live

this is my

solemn vow

and promise

to you Natalie

but my solemn

vow and promise

to God

and I stick

to that promise.

The other way

for people to live

together in community

is the opposite

of covenantal order

is what you might call

the disorder

of self-indulgence

and in this community

the spirit of

commitment making

and commitment keeping

has been replaced

by the spirit

of emotional

and physical

impulse

and so when my wife

doesn't please me

anymore

I abuse her

or I just

replace her

and that's what

the carelessness

is what Malachi

is speaking about here.

He's not talking

about a genuine

divorce

he's talking about

careless divorce

and the moral

fabric of faithfulness

to covenants

and promise keeping

and contracts

is unraveled

and what's left

are individual

strands of private

gratification.

I think friends

that Malachi's message

to us today

could hardly be

more relevant.

He warns against

the pseudo freedom

of individualistic

self-indulgence

our worship

our worship

of God

is not

a deeply

private matter

it is

intimately linked

with our relationships

with other people

our horizontal

relationships

with one another

testify

either for

or against

the reality

of our vertical

relationship

with God

God

and that is

why our

core value

here as a church

treasuring Jesus

together

is so essential

this is what it

says

having been led

individually

by the spirit

of God

to receive

Jesus Christ

as the Lord

Saviour

and supreme

treasure

of our lives

we now

most solemnly

and joyfully

enter into

covenant

with one another

as the one

body in Christ

in an age

of individualism

we value vigilance

and accountability

in treasuring

Jesus together

and then

after that

that's the

introductory statement

there's a few

things that come

in after that

in terms of

what it might

look like

in practice

and here's

one of the

points

we are committed

to making

corporate worship

a weekly

priority

now that's

not just

because of

our relationship

with God

that's because

of our relationship

with one another

it's treasuring

Jesus together

as John 4

20 says

if anyone

says I love

God

and yet hates

his brother

he's a liar

for anyone

who does not

love his brother

whom he has

seen

cannot love

God

whom he has

not seen

the love of God

must show itself

in the interaction

with one another

if we are so

self-righteous

that we don't

allow other

Christians to speak

into our lives

and to correct

our injustices

we cannot

be a church

together

so reality

check

God is the

one who holds

the galaxies

in its place

that's him

perfect

all-knowing

sovereign

you on the

other hand

are sinners

and I

am a sinner

and it would

be really good

if we took

ownership of

that very

basic fact

and in

humility

admit our

own sin

before God

and approach

one another

in brokenness

rather than

in self-centeredness

rather than

in self-righteousness

this is the

kind of worship

that is acceptable

to God

it's the kind

of worship

that treasures

Jesus by offering

him

our best

and our

all

and it is

faithful

to one another

where we also

offer ourselves

to one another

our worship of God

involves how we

treat God

and how we

treat others

if we think

that we worship

God

because we

attend church

tonight

we've sung

some hints

and we've read

the Bible

and we've done

some praying

and stuff like

that

and yet our

lives move

out from here

and the rest

of the week

self-indulgent

impulse is what

I live for

then the only

person who's

being fooled

is you

the majestic

Jesus requires

that his

treasured

possessions

treasure him

above all

else

Amen