"Where Is My Honor?" Malachi 1:6-2:9 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Good morning, Emmanuel.

Let me invite you to take your Bibles and open to the book of Malachi in chapter 1.

Last book in the Old Testament.

Malachi chapter 1 is our passage for this morning.

Malachi 1 · chapter mention

As you're turning to Malachi in chapter 1, let me remind you that we have an evening service tonight at 5.15.

You are invited to come tonight to worship again to conclude our Lord's Day.

Our pastor of college ministry, Dan Cabtree, is doing a series for the next several weeks on how to understand your Bible.

As a college pastor, Dan has had opportunity to have every question asked of him that people ask about the Bible.

Why should I believe the Bible's true?

How do can I know my interpretation is true?

Isn't that just your interpretation after all?

And Christians disagree about interpretation, so how in the world can I ever hope to understand the Bible for myself?

He's going to tackle all of those questions for the next several weeks.

So we would invite you to come back tonight at 5.15 to conclude our Lord's Day worship together here at Emmanuel.

This morning, the text that we're going to look at together is Malachi chapter 1, beginning in verse 6.

Malachi 1 · chapter mention

This is the second dispute that the Lord has for his people through the prophet Malachi.

We began looking at this book last week in which God challenged the people to properly grasp his love.

And in this text, the Lord continues to challenge us to properly grasp his glory.

It's a long text.

Starts in chapter 1, verse 6, and goes all the way through chapter 2, verse 9.

But this is Emmanuel Bible church, so I'm I don't have any problem reading a big chunk of Bible together.

So I want to begin our time by reading the entire text together.

Follow with me as I read from God's Word, beginning in Malachi chapter 1 and verse 6.

Malachi 1 · chapter mention

God's Word says this.

By saying that the Lord's table may be despised.

When you offer blind animals and sacrifice, is that not evil?

And when you offer those that are lame or sick, is that not evil?

Present that to your governor.

Will he accept you or show you favor, says the Lord of hosts?

And now entreat the favor of God that he may be gracious to us.

With such a gift from your hand, will he show any favor to any of you, says the Lord of hosts?

Oh, that there were one among you who would shut the doors, that you might not kindle fire on my altar in vain.

I have no pleasure in you, says the Lord of hosts, and I will not accept an offering from your hand.

For from the rising of the sun to its setting, my name will be great among the nations, and in every place incense will be offered to my name, and a pure offering, for my name will be great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts.

But you profane it when you say that the Lord's table is polluted, and its fruit, that is its food, may be despised.

But you say, What a weariness this is, and you snort at it, says the Lord of hosts.

You bring what has been taken by violence, or is lame or sick, and this you bring is your offering?

Shall I accept this from your hand, says the Lord?

Cursed be the cheat who has a male in his flock and vows it, and yet sacrifices to the Lord what is blemished.

For I am a great king, says the Lord of hosts, and my name will be feared among the nations.

And now you, O priests, this command is for you.

If you will not listen, if you will not take it to heart to give honor to my name, says the Lord of hosts, then I will send the curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings.

Indeed I have already cursed them, because you did not lay it to heart.

Behold, I will rebuke your offspring and spread dung on your faces and dung on your offerings, and you shall be taken away with it.

So shall you know that I have sent this command to you, that my covenant with Levi might stand, that the Lord says the Lord of hosts, my covenant with him was one of life and peace, and I gave them to him.

It was a covenant of fear, and he feared me.

He stood in awe of my name.

True instruction was in his mouth, and no wrong was found on his lips.

He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and he turned many from iniquity, for the lips of a priest should guard knowledge, and people should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts.

But you have turned aside from the way.

You have caused many to stumble by your instruction.

You have corrupted the covenant of Levi, says the Lord of hosts, and so I make you despised and abased before all the people, in as much as you do not keep my ways, but show partiality in your instruction.

This is the word of the Lord.

You know, some people as they grow up become less.

There's a sense in which many of us share, in which, as a child, life seems to offer such promise of adventure, exploration, accomplishment.

Think of the books that you loved as a child, the stories that you were told.

In our house, we've recently been reading to our kids Pilgrim's Progress and The Myth of Hercules.

And what they have in common is that life is a grand adventure.

There's a great reward in it.

There are foes to be overcome.

There's danger, but there's also great success stories, and there's also great enjoyment in life.

And yet as we begin to experience it, some of the thrill begins to fade slowly, but surely our relationships, we get used to them.

And our employment, we get used to it.

Where we live, we get used to it.

And again and again and again we find this experience that we just get used to things.

And many of us find ourselves settling into a quiet resignation that life isn't what I thought it was, and I'll just try to get by.

And that, sadly, is the way many experience the Lord as well.

Think of if you know the Lord, the time that you came to know him, or if you know people who know the Lord, think of what they were like when they first had their eyes open to the gospel, when they beheld the glory of God and the face of Jesus Christ, and they saw their sin in light of his holiness, and they saw Christ loving them to the point that he gave himself for them, bearing the wrath that I deserve, to wash me white as snow and bring me into the fellowship of Father, Son, Spirit, and all those who are redeemed by Him to belong to an eternal heavens and earth where I will live with Him forever and ever in fullness of joy and pleasure forevermore.

People who come to understand that are excited, aren't they?

There's a sense of wonder and awe that grips you.

There's a magic that I get to be a Christian, that I know God, and they they want to read the Bible and pray and worship and talk to people and speak to other Christians and see what God is doing in their lives, and yet many of us have had the experience that over time we start to get used to it.

We begin to grow a malaise about our relationship with the living God.

That's the kind of thing that we find happening in the life of the people of Israel at the time of the prophet Malachi.

You remember that Malachi lived in an era when the people of Israel came back from their exile to Babylon and they had rebuilt the temple, and they were expecting this glorious fulfillment of all of God's promises to come and fill the temple with his glory and bring the nations to worship him.

I mentioned this last week, but I didn't look at very many specific promises, but we could look at just a couple in the preceding two books in our Bibles, Haggai and Zechariah, were the two prophets that prophesied to the people of Israel and gave them the impetus to build this temple, and they promised some wonderful revelations of the Lord through it.

This is from the book of Haggai, where Haggai says, Thus says the Lord of hosts, yet once more in a little while I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land, and I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all the nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with glory, says the Lord of hosts.

The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts, and in this place I will give peace, declares the Lord of hosts.

That's something to look forward to.

Then the prophet Zechariah extends that.

And he says, On that day, living waters shall flow out from Jerusalem, half of them to the eastern sea, half of them to the western sea.

That's just a global rain over where Jerusalem's reigning over the earth.

It will continue in summer and in winter, and the Lord will be king over all the earth.

On that day, the Lord will be one, and his name one.

That's what the people were looking forward to.

And generations had passed, and it hadn't happened, and they were beginning to grow used to the idea that God could say things, and they sound nice, but I don't know if they're really true.

And they had grown a cold malaise in their relationship with God.

God at this period in their t in their history raises up the prophet Malachi and through him speaks a word into the life of his people to call them to renew their affections and their faith in his promises.

Malachi over and over and over affirms that every single promise of the Lord is true, none of them will fall.

He'll fulfill every promise, he'll reveal his glory to his people, he will save people from every tribe, tongue, and nation, and he'll bring them to this place, and they'll see his glory and be filled with fullness of joy and pleasure forevermore.

All of that is true.

In other words, what God is challenging his people with is this word.

The problem is not with God.

He is who he says he is.

He's just as fully glorious, he's just as beautiful, he's just as powerful, he's just as wise as he says he is.

The problem is in me.

I don't see it, and I don't believe it, and I'm not walking in accordance with the reality of who God is.

And what God does in this passage is he speaks through Malachi to his people to call them out of that self-centered, malaised religion into a fully God-centered devotion to him.

Not just because of what he can give you, but because of who he is.

This text calls us to wake up and recognize how glorious it is to know the living God.

So I want to walk through this text with you.

It unfolds in three stages.

And the first is this, very simply, God gives a charge to his people, and he accuses them with this, despising him.

Notice this in verse six.

Look down your Bibles at chapter 1 and verse 6, where through the prophet God says, A son honors his father, and a servant his master.

If then I am a father, where is my honor?

And if I am a master, where is my fear?

says the Lord of hosts to you, O priests who despise my name.

Here's the charge you haven't given me honor or fear.

And it's worth reminding ourselves what these words mean.

The word that's translated here, honor, in some of your English versions, might be rendered glory, because it's the same Hebrew word that in some contexts in our Bibles we translate honor, sometimes glory, but it's the same word.

And the core of the word means weightiness.

Kavod means to be heavy.

That's the word that the Hebrew language uses to describe God's glory.

Why?

Well, the idea is that God, who he is, his essential nature, his godness, is heavy.

There's weight to it.

The idea here is that God is not just like us, a little bit smarter, a little bit wiser, a little bit stronger, but God in his self-existence, there's a weight and a gravitas to him because he's totally other than us.

He's in a category all to himself.

And to understand who this God is is to understand that there is significance, there's eternity, there's magnitude to the reality of this God who exists in himself for all of eternity and every molecule in the universe he suspends in its orbit by his own sovereign wish.

That God is heavy.

There's significance to know this God.

And he's challenging his people and he's saying, You haven't treated me like that.

You haven't treated me with the weight and the gravitas that I deserve because of who I am.

The second thing he follows up with is he asks the people, Where's my fear?

Why don't you fear me?

And some of your English translations might render that as respect, and that's a good translation, that's what it means, but we shouldn't too quickly gloss over the idea that over and over the Old Testament uses the word fear to describe the relationship that God wants with his people.

The kind of relationship that God wants with you and with me is one of fear.

He wants you to fear him.

Proverbs 1.

Beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord.

So why does he choose the word fear?

Well, if you think about just the nature of what fear is, it encapsulates a perfect way of describing the kind of relationship God wants with us.

What is fear at its core?

It's one of the most powerful emotional experiences that humans can have.

When you are afraid of something, the nature of fear is that it pushes everything else out of your mind, doesn't it?

Times when you have been afraid, there's been an object of your fear, and whatever it is that you're afraid of, it's gripping you.

It's pushing out any other priorities.

It's driving away any other imaginations or any thoughts, any other affections.

Everything is just focused on the object of your fear.

That thing grips you and compels you, and you act in response to it.

And God says, that's the way you should relate to me.

You should see the reality of how heavy, how how weighty, how great and glorious I am, and it should grip you and compel you, and it should drive out competing affections and drive out competing desires, and everything should be oriented around knowing and loving and trusting me.

And he says, You haven't done that.

In fact, what he says in verse 6 is that you've done the opposite of that, you've despised me.

Look in verse 6.

Where is my honor?

Where is my fear?

You priests who despise my name.

Now, just a word about the priests before we move on.

Most of this text is directed primarily at the priests, those people who had primary responsibility for the spiritual worship of God's people.

In the New Covenant, this text would be have particular emphasis for anybody who, in the life of the church, takes on the responsibility of leading others in their spiritual lives.

But it also has implications for anybody who is engaged in spiritual worship of the living God.

You notice that even in verse 14.

Look down in your Bibles at chapter 1, verse 14, where God speaks not just to the priests but all worshippers.

Cursed be the cheat who has a male in his flock and vows it and yet sacrifices to the Lord what is blemished.

God's not just after the leaders, he's after anyone who is engaged in worship of the living God, which would be us here this morning, and us in every part of our life, because as believers in the new covenant Messiah of Israel, the veil of the temple has been torn, and God's granted direct access to him for everyone who has a relationship with Jesus Christ.

We believe in the priesthood of all believers, so every one of us has a priestly ministry in the sense that we have direct access to God and responsibility to build up one another in the body of Christ.

And here is God's word to us.

He wants us to treat him with weight, with fear, and not the end of verse 6.

Look at the end of verse 6.

You despise my name.

What does that mean to despise God's name?

It's quite an accusation, isn't it?

I mean, the people who are offering sacrifices in the temple probably wouldn't say we despise God.

I mean, of all the Gentile peoples in the world that worship whatever pagan gods, the Israelites would say, We're the ones that revere God.

And yet God says, No, you don't, you actually despise me.

How can that be?

The nature of this word despise is it gets used often in a pair with the word to give glory, to give honor.

And if to glorify means to give weight and significance, then to despise means to treat as no significance.

To give you one example of the way this is used in the scriptures, in Proverbs 15, verse 20, a wise man, a wise son makes a father glad.

Proverbs 15:20

How does he do that?

Well, what's the fifth commandment?

Honor your father and your mother.

A wise son, he honors them and so makes them glad, but a foolish man despises his mother.

The opposite of to give honor is to despise.

You either treat people with the proper reverence and respect and weight that they deserve, and if you don't, you're effectively despising them because you're treating them as no significance.

And in this relationship that God calls his people to, he demands that he be the center of everything, that we treat him with weight, with magnitude, we treat him with the majesty that his essence deserves, and not to do that is to treat him as so little and insignificant it is to despise him.

You see, God doesn't offer three options to come into relationship with him.

There's only two paths.

There's a path of loving God, worshiping him, treating him with weight and honor, or there's treating of him of little significance, which is to despise him.

They're the only two options God makes available to us.

And it's only reasonable, isn't it?

If you think about it just for a second, suppose you were to walk up to a lake and you were to take a pebble and toss the pebble into the lake, what would happen?

And there would be a little ripple for a while, and it would dissipate.

So you could kind of tell that like a pebble hit, something's going on there, something has disturbed the water, but it's not that significant.

Whereas, just suppose an asteroid comes from beyond, smashes into the lake, what will happen?

Everything's going to be reoriented, right?

Because the weight of this rock that has slammed into the lake is going to change everything, is going to be centered around the rock now.

What God is saying is, if you're going to say you have a relationship with me, then what has happened is the God from beyond, the God who is there, the God in his self-existent glory, obstains the universe by the word of his power, has entered into your life.

And if this God, with all of his glory and significance and power and majesty comes into your life, it's going to radically reorient everything about your life.

It's going to change the way you think, it's going to change the way you pray, it's going to change the way you brush your teeth.

Everything will change because the God of the God of glory has come into your life.

And if that's not what happens, and if what instead happens is there's some change, like some of my habits maybe are starting to kind of change.

I go to church and I just try to kind of stay in my lane and not do too bad of the sins.

It's like saying, God is just a little pebble that can kind of hit the surface of my life and make a little significant influence for a while, but that's about it.

God says that is to despise him, to treat him of no significance.

That is a challenge, isn't it?

From the living God into our lives, calling us to treat him with utter and complete reverence.

But he doesn't just give the charge, he also gives proof of the charge, and that's what we find in the next couple verses.

And God says, the way that you can tell if you're treating me this way is by how you act towards me and how you think about me.

And the first thing he says is, you can tell if you're treating me with weight or if you're defiling me by thinking about how you act towards me.

Look at verse 8.

When you offer blind animals and sacrifice, is that not evil?

When you offer those that are lame or sick, is that not evil?

Now you remember in the Levitical system over and over when God describes the sacrifices that he requires, there's this refrain that there are to be unblemished, unblemished, unblemished.

But what the people have established here is a little system, a quid pro quo with the priests, where the people will bring their lame and their sick and their mauled, and the priests will sacrifice those.

Why?

Well, it's mutually advantageous to both parties.

On the one hand, the farmers have an interest in not giving up the best of their livestock.

They would rather give up those that have some kind of genetic defect, those who have some fault, those who are weak, and sickly who you don't want in the gene pool anymore.

Give those as a sacrifice, and then you keep the best for yourself.

You'll get some blessings from God because you kept the rules after all, but then you really get what you really want, which is your flocks to really do well.

And the priests get what they want because the priests, for their part, offer the sacrifice and they eat some of the meat.

That's their portion.

They don't have property of their own, they don't have flocks of their own, they have the the flocks that are offered on the altar.

And you know what?

Doesn't really matter how many legs that sheep has, he's still gonna taste good.

It's mutually advantageous.

Both people get what they want, but you see what they want isn't God Himself.

They like the idea of religion because it's a means to an end.

They like having God in their life because it's a means to getting what they really want.

They feel good about themselves, not like those Gentile people.

My flocks are good, my belly is full, my life is going really well.

God says that's the kind of worship that's actually not worship at all, it's despising him.

When we treat God as a means to an end, God says that's despising him.

Look at verse 8 again.

He says, Present that to your governor.

Will he accept you or show you favor?

says the Lord of hosts.

I mean, even that on a human level, this is not the way that you would treat people.

If you go to a job interview, you don't put your second Best suit on.

It doesn't make any sense to treat God this way.

So verse 9 he says, Now entreat the favor of God, that he'll be gracious to us.

With such a gift from your hand, will he show favor to any of you, says the Lord of hosts?

Answer verse 10.

Oh, that there were one among you who would shut the doors that you might not kindle fire on my altar in vain.

I have no pleasure in you, says the Lord of hosts, and I will not accept an offering from your hand.

God says, that kind of worship that treats me as a door that opens up to what you really want isn't worship at all.

It's despising me.

And I will not accept that kind of worship.

I think the Prophet is challenging us to think about why we worship God and why we do what we do.

We've got a lot of things that we want in life, isn't it?

Is it the case that you want your family to succeed, your career to thrive?

There are so many pressures on you, aren't there?

And God's asking you to think through.

If I say I'm a believer in God, if I'm a believer in Jesus Christ, why?

What is it that I'm getting from him?

Is he the means to making my life go well?

My flocks are thriving.

Or is he that weighty, significant, grand reality in the center of your life around which everything orbits because in and of himself, just to know him, just to know him is enough.

Well, it's not just your actions, but God actually is looking into your heart in verse 13.

But you say, What a weariness this is, and you snort at it, says the Lord of hosts.

You bring what is being taken by violence or is lame and sick, and you bring this as an offering?

Shall I accept this from your hand, says the Lord?

This is the reason we need to look at our hearts because God will.

Verse 13, you say, What a weariness this is, and you snort at it.

I have to do this.

I guess I do because I really want to fill in the blank.

So I guess I better do this.

But oh, it's wearisome.

And the word that's used here for wearisome is an interesting word.

It's rare, it only occurs five times in the Hebrew Bible.

First two times it's used is for the weariness of the wilderness wanderings of the people of Israel.

People of Israel, God redeems them out of Egypt, takes them to the promised land, but they disobey, and so God curses them to 40 years of wandering about in the wilderness until everybody dies.

And twice the text says, What a weariness that was.

Twice more the word gets used to describe how weary it was when the Babylonians came and destroyed Jerusalem and burnt the temple to the ground.

Jeremiah in Lamentations 3:5 laments what a weariness it is to endure this.

Lamentations 3:5

And now God says, the way you're treating me, I can see into your heart.

And I can see when I call you, take up your cross and follow me.

When I call you, love me with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

I can see in your heart, uh, what a weariness it is to love God more than the world.

This is the charge God wants to place on our hearts.

Where is the weight in our life?

If it's not on God, then we're fundamentally despising Him.

There's a second thing God follows up with.

Second, he says, if this is the way you treat me, then I will make you despise.

This is in chapter 2, verses 1 through 9.

You notice in chapter 2 and verse 1, God speaks to the priests in verse 2 and says, If you will not listen, if you will not take it to heart to give honor to my name, says the Lord of hosts, then I will send the curse upon you and curse your blessings.

Notice the command: take it to heart and give honor to my name.

My name, my name.

Eight times through this text, my name, my name, my name, my name, over and over and over.

The whole text is about orienting your life around God's name.

And of course, his name signifies all that he is.

Who God is, and all of his limitless attributes, all of his splendor, all of his beauty, all of his compassion, all of his kindness to orient your life around all that God is to make him the center and the heartbeat of your entire life.

That's what God's calling his people to do.

And he says, if you don't do that, then look at verse three.

I will rebuke your offspring and spread dung on your faces, the dung of your offerings, and you shall be taken away with it.

Woo! That doesn't sound very nice.

The word that we translate here, dung, is a word that's used for the leftovers of an offering.

So the priests were required to sacrifice an animal to remove its entrails, to remove its guts, its intestines, and even the fecal matter, to put those to the side, to make the offering, and then to take the entrails, what's left over, that unclean material, take it outside of the holy space and burn it away from the presence of the Lord.

And God says, Because you are treating me in such a despicable manner, because you make me so light, so little, of no significance in your life, I'm gonna treat you like those entrails.

I'm gonna remove you from my presence because you don't want to be with me anyway.

So the final conclusion comes in verse 9.

Because you have despised me, verse 9 says, So I make you despised.

Because you have treated me so little, I will treat you little.

That's the consequence that God threatens for people who treat him lightly.

Now there is a good word in this text.

I think the weight of the challenge needs to just settle into our lives.

But as it does, God follows up with a promise.

Right in the heart of this text, there is a promise of good news.

It comes in chapter 1 and verse 11.

If you look down at your Bibles, at chapter 1 and verse 11, we'll see that the promise is that God will be honored.

Chapter 1, verse 11, God interrupts this chastising of his people with this for from the rising of the sun to its setting, my name will be great among the nations, and in every place, incense will be offered to my name and a pure offering, for my name will be great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts.

What a promise.

God says, You are treating me so little, you are treating me so lightly, but that's not how it's going to be forever.

All of the promises, like the promises we looked at at the beginning of this message, that God is gonna come down to earth, he's gonna fulfill his promises to Abraham, the Messiah is gonna come and bring salvation for every tribe, tongue, and people.

He's gonna redeem his people Israel, he's gonna save people from all the nations and bring them into his presence, and they'll see him face to face, and they'll worship him with his presence among them, and he'll be called their God, and they'll be his people.

All of that's gonna be true.

All people are going to worship God.

The question is, will you be a part of it?

That's a challenge.

And the way that you can know, if that's you, if you are going to be a part of God fulfilling all of his promises for all time and redeeming a people for himself, who'll be with him where he is to see his glory, is this is what you want in your life for God's name to be great.

Do you want God to be that weighty, significant center of everything?

Do you want him to tell you what to do?

Do you want to say, order my salv order my affection, Savior?

Tell me what to do.

Nobody else has the words of life.

It's you.

I want you.

Or could you imagine a world where the new heavens and the new earth would come, tears would be wiped away, sin would be no more.

But there's no God.

There's just a really nice, shiny city with really squeaky, clean people.

There's no God, there's just really nice stuff.

And you'd be happy with that.

Because that's not what God offers.

And in fact, it's not even what would satisfy you.

Do you really think that heaven is just a bigger house?

Is that gonna make you happy forever?

Is it just nicer lawns on which to golf?

Is that gonna make you happy forever?

What is it that's gonna make you happy forever?

When our first daughter was born, we we found this dis wonderful new parenting trick that we could take our baby out to dinner and we could keep her totally content, and my wife and I could have a nice conversation if we just sat her down in a high chair and handed her a plastic cup.

And she would play with the cup the entire dinner.

It was amazing.

She's gotten a little older, and when I hand her a cup at dinner, she's not impressed anymore.

And so it would go with you.

Again and again and again and again.

You get a nicer house, you get a nicer place of work, you get nicer things again and again and again, and you would need more and more and more and more, and none of it would satisfy you.

So, what is going to satisfy you?

Well, what is it that would satisfy God forever?

God is an infinite being.

He's not just growing like you, he is infinite in his depth and his height and his breadth and his length.

What is it that would satisfy God?

Well, what is it that has been satisfying God, that's making God infinitely happy for all time, past, present, future?

What is it that satisfies the heart of God?

It's Christ for all time, Father and Son sharing infinite glory, infinite love, overflowing in their abundant, exuberant, rejoicing in the glory of one another.

And if you say you're a Christian, then what you are fundamentally confessing is that God has given me Christ, the Christ that has infinitely satisfied the heart of the Father for all time.

He has given to me.

There's nothing else he can give.

There's no more cabinets in heaven that God can draw out of.

He's given you Christ, the infinite well of all of the glory of God, and he said he's gonna dwell among you.

You're gonna see him face to face.

You'll call him your God, and he'll call you his people, and he will bless you with wave upon wave of satisfying grace to know him.

That's what God is calling his people to because that's what it is to honor God.

Christ is everything, Christ will satisfy me.

You know, I think there's a text in the prophets that captures this for us.

It's in Isaiah chapter 25, and we'll close with this.

Isaiah 25 · chapter mention

In Isaiah 25, the prophet depicts what the gathering of God's people in his presence is going to look like, and I want you to listen to what it is described like.

In Isaiah 25, the prophet says, On this mountain, the mount of Zion, the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined, and he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations.

He will swallow up death forever.

And the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people, he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord of hosts have spoken, and it will be said in that day, behold, this is our God.

We have waited for what's in the blank.

I've been waiting, I've been waiting, I've been waiting for better relationships, a nicer house.

What is it?

What is in the blank?

What is it that is at the heart of your life?

What is it that has that weight that drives everything else out?

What is it?

Here's what it is.

This is our God.

We have waited for him.

That he might save us.

This is the Lord.

We have waited for him.

Let us be glad and rejoice in him.

Oh God, that is the cry of our heart.

We want to rejoice and be glad in you.

And God, we come before you as a people who, by your spirit and by your grace, you've made us aware that we so inadequately honor you, we so easily treat you as a trifle, and we love the world rather than loving you.

So we beg you, God, we plead with you, we ask you to open the eyes of our hearts to behold more of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ and give us larger affections for Jesus.

Lord, cause us to think lightly of the passing pleasures of the world and to think deeply about the eternal weight of glory that's been prepared for us from all eternity, to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

Oh God, be our treasure, be our joy, be our hope, be our trust.

And as we hope in you and look to you and love you, conform us to the image of your Son, so that we could live lives worthy of this great calling to which we have you have called us.

We pray these things in the name of Jesus.

Amen.

And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, DC area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.