Good evening. I'm grateful for the opportunity to proclaim God's Word to you tonight. I'm going to read from Malachi chapter 1. As you turn there, just a word about Malachi, about this book, this prophetic book. What we find in the book of Malachi is a series of statements, some of them accusations by God against Israel. followed by Israel saying, essentially, how is that true? We don't see it that way. And then following that, God makes his case, or his statement, his accusation. We'll see a couple of instances of that in the passage that we'll read tonight. I first want to draw your attention to what's just before that, what we won't read, in the very second verse of this book. The first example of this cycle where God says, I have loved you. That's God's statement, foundational statement to this book. And the response from Israel is, how have you loved us? They don't quite know how it is God has has loved them. And God goes on to affirm and demonstrate his great and gracious love for his people. And that really is the basis for all the instructions in this book. God's great love for his people has implications for them. And we find that in this book, implications in terms of worship is what we'll look at tonight, in terms of marriage, tithing and just general faithfulness and so on. So we'll keep that in mind as we go. I'm going to read verses 6 just through verse 11. I'll refer to some beyond that, but I'll just read 6 through 11. So please give careful attention to God's Word. A son honors his father, and a servant his master. Then if I am a father, where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is my respect, says the Lord of hosts to you, O priests, who despise my name? But you say, how have we despised your name? You are presenting defiled food upon my altar. But you say, how have we defiled you? in that you say the table of the Lord is to be despised. But when you present the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? And when you present the lame and sick, is it not evil? Why not offer it to your governor? Will he be pleased with you? Or would he receive you kindly, says the Lord of hosts? But now will you not entreat God's favor that he may be gracious to us? With such an offering on your part, will he receive any of you kindly, says the Lord of hosts? Oh, that there are one among you who would shut the gates, that you might not uselessly kindle fire on my altar. I am not pleased with you, says the Lord of hosts, nor will I accept an offering from you. For from the rising of the sun, even to its setting, my name will be great among the nations. And in every place, incense is going to be offered to my name, and a grain offering that is pure. For my name will be great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts. Jacob was terrified. Isaiah said, woe is me, I am ruined. Job was speechless. John in the book of Revelation fell on his face as if he were dead. The elders and the creatures, others in the book of Revelation also fell on their faces as if dead. These are just some of the responses of saints and others in the Scriptures when they knew that they were in the presence of God Himself. And the Bible teaches that in corporate worship, which is the context of the passage we've read this evening, corporate worship is a coming into the presence of God in a real and a special way. And in this passage here, God, through Malachi, confronts the Israelites concerning their not treating this privilege, this reality, appropriately. with the gravity and the seriousness that it demands. Malachi begins this section with an illustration. A son honors his father and a servant his master. These are universally accepted norms that sons honor their fathers and servants honor their masters. Across the world and throughout history, there are expectations along those lines, maybe even fairly rigid cultural expectations about what is said and maybe even what is worn and what obedience looks like. The point of God's illustration here as he goes on is, if I am a father, where is my honor? If I am a master, where is my respect? God, of course, presumes that he is a father, he is a master, he is God, and he's not receiving even the expected, the assumed honor of an earthly father, of an earthly master. Rather, God says, he speaks to you, O priest, who despise my name. And so there's a serious charge here against the priests, those who were charged with leading the honoring of God, teaching what it meant to serve and to love God, to honor him. Rather, they're despising him, God says. They're treating him with contempt, with dishonor, undervaluing, disregarding him. God is of infinite value, infinitely worthy of honor, and yet he's not receiving much honor. He's being treated as of little significance. And yet the response that comes from Israel in this parting, again in this cycle that I mentioned just a minute ago, is how have we despised your name? How have we done that? The Israelites, the priests specifically, don't recognize. They're so settled in their disregard, their negligence is so routine, so comfortable, so normal, that perhaps they genuinely really don't recognize how they're despising God's worship. I just call your attention again to the root of this error and really I think all of the errors pointed out in this book in verse 2. God's statement was I have loved you and their response was how have you loved us. They challenged God back as to whether he has loved them. They've forgotten the so great love of God. And so in all of these challenges and the one that we'll be looking at this evening God is calling them to remember that he has loved them. I want you to consider that, keep that in mind tonight as we consider worship, that God is infinitely worthy of worship, first because He's God, because we're His creatures, but He's infinitely doubly worthy of worship, in a sense, because He has loved you so graciously and mercifully. We love, we obey, we serve God because He first loved us. So I want you to be thinking tonight, what does it mean for you to meet with God at His invitation in corporate worship each week? What does it mean to truly and appropriately give Him honor and respect in our worship in light of the fact that He's loved us so incredibly? So we'll look at God's response here to Israel. How are they dishonoring him in worship? What is what does that imply about how they ought to and how we ought to? Approach God in worship and look briefly at four four points four lessons From this passage. So the first lesson is simply that we would worship God as he directs we worship as God directs again in verse 7 God accuses, you are presenting defiled food on my altar. Verse 8, you present the blind for sacrifice. And there are other examples as well. They're presenting what is defiled in the worship of God. What is polluted or unacceptable. And these things are forbidden by God. He gave very clear instructions to the Israelites in the Old Testament about how to approach Him in worship. Leviticus 22 for example says you shall not offer anything that has a blemish for it will not be acceptable for you Animals blind or disabled or mutilated or having a discharge or an itch or scabs you shall not offer to the Lord So first one of the first things we could say about worship and what God is charging the priests here with is that it's it's a matter of obedience to what he directs. God determines how he is to be worshipped. And those requirements that God gives are not simply arbitrary. They're not just given to be a burden to his people, but they're very purposeful. Purposeful with respect to himself, who he is, and with respect to his people, that they would be blessed. The sacrificial regulations, for example, taught about the seriousness of sin and about holiness, about the need for a perfect atoning sacrifice. They taught the fact that God alone provides that sacrifice. The need to approach God in a certain way and on and on. God's requirements were very purposeful in both directions with reference to him and his people. And that principle remains today. God determines how he is to be worshipped for his glory and for our blessing. Many people imagine that the measure of appropriateness in worship is mere sincerity. And sincerity is important. We'll talk about the matter of the heart in just a moment, but we can ignore the fact that we can be sincerely wrong. We need God's direction. for many reasons. I've been reading, I just finished reading a biography of Adoniram Judson, who was really the first missionary sent from the United States, from a missionary society in the United States. And he was one of the first ever to go to Burma, which is near India, Myanmar today. And early on in his ministry there in Burma, he had opportunity to have an audience with the emperor of Burma. And this was a very fearful thing. Very, very few Westerners have ever seen the emperor of Burma. And the biography describes through his diaries the fact that he didn't just bank on his sincerity and going before the emperor and pleading for tolerance for Christian missionaries. He didn't just march straight to the palace, but he spent days preparing. learning. What does it mean to go before the emperor? How do we do it? What do I say? He didn't sleep the night before. God is infinitely greater than an emperor. We are much farther removed from understanding him or approaching him than an American to a Burman emperor a couple hundred years ago. And so how much more are we as sinful creatures and as mere creatures to be eager to know how we can rightly and lovingly approach God in our worship? And yet we don't simply have to ask, how does God require that we worship him because of fear of God or because of this distance, because he is God and we're his creatures? But also, and maybe we can say primarily in light of the gospel, in response again to verse two, I have loved you. The question in coming before God in worship and asking what does God want from us in worship is a question of how can we express our love to this God who loves us, this great loving God? How would my loving God have me to do that? God's requirements for worship are, in one sense, simply His telling us how it is we can express our love for Him, our relationship for Him in worship. And Israel failed to acknowledge God's great love in this context and so failed to love him in the way that he directed, the way that he prescribed. Well, another of God's requirements and something that the sacrificial regulations themselves also taught, the second lesson here is that we ought to worship God with our best. or to worship God with our best. Imagine, maybe probably a lot of you have been through a scenario like this. If you can picture two kids, two little kids playing with toys. Only one of the kids has a couple of toys and the other kid doesn't. And so you might ask the boy who has some toys to share one with the other one who wants some toys but doesn't have any. Now, if they're ordinary, selfish little boys, the one who has toys might look at what's in his hand and see if one of them maybe is broken or smaller than the other one or not quite as desirable. And that's probably the one he's going to share with the other kid. Well, that's essentially what the Israelites are doing and bringing their offering, bringing their worship to God at the temple. They're looking around at their flocks and herds and saying, where's that sheep that has a broken leg? Where's the goat that's sterile? Where's the one that's of least value to me? We'll take that in worship. They're looking for what is most convenient to them, what would cost the least. And God wanted them to bring their best animals in sacrifice, as obviously symbolic of their best worship, symbolic of their trust in God, that they could bring their best to Him and He would still take care of them. They were to bring their first fruits to Him. But they were bringing the blind, the lame, the sick, Malachi says, even in verse 13. He accuses them of bringing what's stolen, stealing animals to bring them to worship to God. That's sort of like robbing a bank on April 14th to pay your taxes. It's dishonest as well. And God again illustrates this in verse 8. saying, why not offer it to your governor? Would he be pleased with you? Or would he receive you kindly? He's saying, would you even offer this to a human ruler? Is this how you would treat a human ruler? If you had an audience with a world ruler today, would you root through your attic and find the most worthless junk you could find to present as a gift? And then he says, would he even accept it? We often wanna do our best for a parent or a boss whom we love and respect and who treats us well and generously. We want them to be pleased, we want to serve them. And yet God, of course, is infinitely beyond that illustration and his kindness is incomparable with that. You need to understand that the way you worship necessarily reflects how you value God. The way that you worship necessarily affects how you value God, what you believe about God. Whether you're worshiping a personal, infinitely holy and loving God, and rightly understand that to be your highest duty and privilege and joy or whether you're just going through a routine, something that's maybe even boring. Well, what does that look like if we were to bring our best? We don't bring offerings, we don't bring sacrifices, I should say, anymore in worship to God, since Christ is our once-for-all sacrifice. This principle remains that we would bring our best to God in worship. What might that look like? Well, I think, for one thing, it would look like worship that's not driven by convenience. as Malachi accuses the Israelites of here. I think convenience has arguably become the most powerful economic force for American consumers. And that's not all bad. Convenience is not inherently bad. We all enjoy the goodness of convenience in many ways and pursue it in ways that aren't harmful. I think a blind following or even a slavery to convenience can and does bleed into other areas of our life with troubling consequences, including the church and its worship. And that ought not to be a driving factor in how we worship God. If a people values sleeping in and maybe watching football and other Sunday fun, maybe all good things, but over the worship of God, by His means of grace, worship services are moved to Saturday night. It's far more convenient. or when people value family time or downtime and so on after overly busy weeks driven by other priorities. Again, maybe lots of very good things, but over against the privilege of worship of our Creator and Redeemer. If that's the order of priority, then Lord's Day evening worship, it becomes burdensome. It's cut out. I think it's worth observing that morning and evening worship on the Lord's Day has been nearly universal in the Christian church for centuries and centuries and a relatively very short time historically. Evening worship has gone from an assumed privilege and joy in the church generally to such a burden, such an inconvenience, That it's been cut out altogether in much of the Western church. It's not an exaggeration to say that the amount of worship being offered in most churches in the West today has been cut at least in half. And I think a lot of that is driven by convenience. You give God your best in worship when you don't treat it as a matter of convenience. Something you do when it's easy or fits your schedule or is just convenient. How do we give God our best while we worship? Again, thinking tonight about corporate worship in the context of this passage. I challenge you to think of something to which you give very careful attention, something that grips you, something that holds your interests and your attention, something you watch or listen to or engage in very closely, and then ask simply, is that the sort of attentiveness you give to the Word of God during worship? Are you carefully thinking about what you're singing in that way? Giving God your best in our times of corporate worship could involve, again, more simple, other simple practical things like being well-rested, ordering the rest of our week, ordering our Saturday evenings so as to be able to give ourselves to it fully, to give Him our best. I think there are many applications, but There's evidence of something in this passage as we move on that's even more primary, not more important, I think, but more basic. It comes first. And without it, the rest of this is meaningless. And so the third lesson here, the third principle is that we must worship from the heart. Worship from your heart. Worship must be out of a true love for God. That's the motive. Grateful, joyful, humble, amazed love for God. And God quotes the priests here, as we've read, speaking about their disdain for the worship of God. And I don't think it's likely that the priests were walking around the temple actually verbalizing that, these things, but God is putting into words, verbalizing himself, what is essentially their heart attitude. Another example of that that we didn't read yet is verse 13. You also say, God says, my, how tiresome it is and you disdainfully sniff at it, says the Lord of hosts." God's speaking of their heart attitude as well, not valuing God and His worship. It's tiresome, it's a burden to them. And this points us to the fact that even if you have all of the forms of worship right, and obviously Israel didn't have all of them right here in terms of the kind of animals they were bringing, but certainly they had probably a lot of them right. Even if you outwardly give God your time and your best and do things according to his direction, it's all for naught if it's not from a sincere heart, if it's not for love for him. A husband could outwardly do all that his wife asked him to. He could meet obligations for providing for her and get birthday cards and anniversary flowers and so on and yet not love his wife. Maybe you've known of a relationship like that. Not be reflecting a true biblical relationship. And God says here it would be better that you would just not come and worship at all. If it's not from your heart, if you're going through the motions, if it's routine for you, but it's not coming from your heart. In verse 10 he says, O that there were one among you who would shut the gates, that you might not uselessly kindle fire on my altar. I am not pleased with you. It would be better that the gates of the temple would just be shut, that there would be no worship at all, he says. One commentator summarizes, it's better to be speechless than to blaspheme. God isn't fooled by our routine religion. We should pause and ask, where does heartfelt, true worship come from? It doesn't come from just trying harder. It comes from loving God more. which comes from knowing God's love for us more. Remembering again how God has loved us. God says, I have loved you to the Israelites. That was to be their foundation for their worshiping rightly, outwardly and from their hearts. understanding God's great love for us, then being blown away by the thought that we are meeting in worship with God Almighty at His invitation. We're here tonight exercising the purpose of our creation and redemption. And so how can I treat this casually? How can I not give myself fully and attentively to this great God? One, another commentator has said, maybe a bit shockingly, but I think rightly, casual worship of the living, true, holy, sovereign God does not exist. Casual worship, in one sense, does not exist. Well, into this sad description here of heartless, convenient, cheap worship, God, through Malachi, injects hope in one of the great prophecies of this book. And so, fourthly and finally, I'll summarize this point, this lesson, as worship in Christ. worship in Christ We're pointed to that in verse 11 verse 10 again God says the gates might as well be shut if there isn't a true heartfelt worship going on in the temple God's not desperate to receive defiled worship from people who don't love him because verse 11 for From the rising of the sun, even to its setting, my name will be great among the nations. And in every place, incense is going to be offered to my name, and a grain offering that is pure, for my name will be great among the nations. Malachi is looking to a day in the future when people will be offering acceptable worship to God over the whole earth. When he says, from the rising of the sun to its setting, that's not just the length of a day, that's east to west, the entire world. This is really a shocking statement if you think about it from the perspective of Old Testament Israel. Everything that was necessary to the formal worship, the sacrificial worship that's being talked about here, the priesthood, the temple, the altar, it was all in Jerusalem. It was all geographically isolated in one place in Jerusalem. And God is speaking here of worship being offered, acceptable worship around the world. And so that presupposes some sort of great change in God's dealing with his people and the ability of the whole world anywhere to worship him. The only way that anyone anywhere in the world, in an Israelite's understanding, could rightly approach God in worship is if they had access somehow to a priest. And if a sacrifice was somehow made that sanctified everyone anywhere who called in the name of the Lord in genuine repentance and love. And that of course is the work of Christ. This points ahead to the work of Christ and offering that sacrifice for all people once for all. To sanctify anyone who had come to him anywhere in the world in worship. And we, this evening, as we gather for worship again today, are a fulfillment here of verse 11, of this anticipation of pure worship being offered through someone who would come, a priest who would come as a sacrifice. And that points us to just a couple of truths, additional points of application as we close here. The first is that none of us worships perfectly. These are strong accusations here that God gives to Israel and we can't come to this and not be convicted in any way. None of us worships perfectly, whether in the form of our worship or giving God our best or worshiping from our heart. The ultimate reason any of us worship in an acceptable way to God, ultimately, is because we have a mediator in Christ. We've been sanctified by the blood of Jesus because of His death, because He faced the abandonment of God on your behalf, because He intercedes for you at the right hand of God. And so we ought never to think as important as it is that we think carefully about how we ought to worship, how our great God who has loved us would have us to approach him. We must not think that we are worthy of God's approval because of our practice or even because our hearts are sincere enough apart from Christ. We don't worship apart from Christ. And then secondly and finally, I think we ought to hear this same warning that God gives to Israel, and even stronger. Because God has now demonstrated, because He's now poured out His love on you in the person of His Son, Jesus, we ought to be even more eager to worship Him with our best. as we come together for worship. The book of Hebrews makes this point more than once, saying essentially that it's one thing to neglect, to misuse, to undervalue the sacrifice of an animal. And it's quite another thing, a more serious thing, to undervalue and to neglect the sacrifice of the Son of God. Hebrews chapter 10, for example, Verse 29, how much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the one who has spurned the son of God and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified and has outraged the spirit of grace? So those of you who do know, though, the salvation of Jesus and have placed your trust in his sanctifying you to come before him in worship, who have trusted him as your priest, God has loved you in sending his son to die, to live and to die and to rise again for your life. So worship him in love with your best. Let's continue to do that together as we pray and then sing. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for your word again this evening. We thank you for the challenge that you issued to your people, Israel, and that we can receive as well concerning our worship, whether we are worshiping you from our hearts with our best and as you direct. and now in Christ. And we thank you for the great blessing of worshiping in and through Christ and knowing his work, being on this side of his work. We pray that you would help us to lay up your word in our hearts and to practice it in our lives and continue to receive our worship through him as we close our worship this evening. We pray in Christ's name, amen.