Quit the Empty Worship

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsack preaches from his series,

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Dead Religion, taking us through the book of Malachi. Let's listen in. Good morning,

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Recast Church. I'm Don Filsack. I'm the lead pastor here. And I just want to remind us all that God has called us all together to worship him and to bring him honor today.

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And so I'm glad that you have taken time out of your busy week to gather together in this place called church.

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Despite the fact that it is a cafeteria, our gathering makes it church.

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And so it is not a building. It is not a place. It is the people that is the church. And so I'm glad that we're all together here this morning.

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And remember that we can worship God and bring him honor all week long. A lot of people have a tendency to think that what we do here on Sunday morning is the thing that we do for God or somehow that this is significantly worship compared to all week long.

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I hope that all week long, you are worshiping him by praying to him, by listening to him through his word, that you're taking in some of his word on your own and studying it and spending a little time mulling over that and meditating on him throughout the day.

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And ultimately, even by the way that we work, by the things that we do, if you're a student that you are studying for the glory of God, if you're working as a postal employee, that you're doing so unto the glory of God, if you're a teacher that you're teaching for the glory of God, that by our very motives and by what we're contemplating and considering, we can be serving

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God in a whole variety of different things. Even working out at the gym or the way we,

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I mention this a lot, the way we drive our car, the way we interact with our spouses or those that we love or friends around us, all of that can be rendered to God as worship.

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And so I hope that you've been worshiping him this week. And in our text this morning, we're going to be called to a different, a difficult task.

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Sometimes it's really hard to take a look inside at ourselves and to have a moment of introspection.

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And that's what this text is going to call us to this morning, a moment of looking inside. Malachi is going to ask each one of us to look into our own hearts and see if we are truly honoring

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God, if we truly fear his awesome power and authority.

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See, we live in a world where we often consider honor as a thing to be earned. I would say it wasn't, it wasn't probably a generation ago or even a couple generations ago that there were positions that deserved honor, where we had an expectation or an understanding that with this office came honor.

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And now it is something that more and more, and increasingly so in our culture, we believe that you have to prove yourself to obtain any honor.

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Well, that can conflict and interfere with our relationship with God, if that's our perspective or if that's our attitude about honor.

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We live in a world where I would suggest to you that authority is becoming increasingly a dirty word. Anybody agree with me on that?

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It's increasingly something that's to be pushed aside or pushed down. But in our text this morning, we're going to read that God identifies him as a father and says, because I am a father,

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I am worthy of honor. And he identifies himself as a master or a ruler, a king.

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And he says, as a master, I am worthy of fear. A pretty strong word, and we're going to dissect that and look at that later after we get a chance to sing some songs together and think about God.

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But a master who's worthy of fear. You see, the people of Israel had fallen into the routines of religion.

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Somehow in their history as a nation, they had forgotten the glory of God, but continued to go through the motions of sacrificing in the temple.

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Continued to go through the motions of religious duty. And I would suggest to you that that's pretty easy for our human hearts.

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We will gravitate quite naturally away from feelings towards the routine mundane things.

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Any of you that did some routine things this week? Some things that you did this week that you did the same as you did them last week?

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Those of us who are getting a little older are recognizing that you become a little bit more comforted by your routines.

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Anybody relate to that? In a way that I wasn't in my 20s, and I was increasingly more in my 30s, now pushing into my 40s,

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I'm finding that routines provide some level of comfort, right? And so when you look at that and you kind of say, well, how we roll and how we think, it happens to us in relationships.

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It can happen in marriages, right? Where the fire and the feeling that was there that drove the action, now that all remains is the action and the fire and the flames aren't quite the same as they used to be.

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That's what was happening to Israel in relationship to God. They were just doing the things without any feeling towards God, without even really remembering who he is and what he's really worthy of.

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And so they were going to see God indict them for just merely going through religious habits.

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Last week we saw God tell the people of Israel that he loved them. He said that at the beginning of the book of Malachi. I have loved you, says

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God to his people. They doubted it. They didn't believe him. But the book began with a relational tone, a relational tone of God expressing his love towards his people.

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But now he's going to level an accusation that is still very relational in its tone, very relational in its nature.

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But it also, as we read it, you'll see that it's quite direct. He in essence is saying, of course you doubt my love, my people, because you've forgotten who

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I am altogether. And in forgetting who I am, you don't realize how I am worthy of honor and worthy of fear and yet I have loved you.

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You'd get it if you saw me, if you met me face to face. So he says, let me remind you of the two primary components of a relationship with me in our text this morning.

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Two primary ways that humans, fallen sinful humans, should relate to God.

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First is honor. The second is fear. So consider as we read this text this morning, if you have a balance in your heart between honor and fear toward the

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Almighty God this morning. Let's open our Bibles, if you have one, to Malachi chapter 1 verses 6 through 14.

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That's what we're going to read. If you have an app, I encourage you to go ahead and get your phone out or your device out and navigate over to Malachi 1, 6 through 14.

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If you're here this morning and you don't have a Bible, I'd just ask you to do me a favor and raise your hand so that Mike can give you one.

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We want everybody to have a copy of God's Word on their lap so you can just follow along. We're not trying to call anybody out, but it's very convenient for you to have a

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Bible there. So if you just raise your hand. Otherwise, we're going to dig into this here.

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I can get over my Bible. There we go. Matthew 1, verse 6 through the end of chapter 1, which is verse 14.

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Recast, this is God's Word to us. This is what He desires to communicate. He has brought us together. And if you're here this morning, well, if you're not here, you're not listening.

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So that you are here was God's plan that you would hear this read and that it would have an impact on your heart this morning.

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Malachi chapter 1, verse 6. A son honors his father, and a servant his master.

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If then I am a father, where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is my fear?

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Says the Lord of hosts to you, O priest, who despise my name. But you say, how have we despised your name?

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By offering polluted food upon my altar. But you say, how have we polluted you? By saying that the

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Lord's table may be despised. When you offer blind animals in sacrifice, is that not evil? And when you offer those that are lame or sick, is that not evil?

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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.

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With such a gift from your hand, will he show 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.

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

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For from the rising of the sun to its setting, my name will be great among the nations.

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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

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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.

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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 as your offering.

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Shall I accept that 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

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Lord what is blemished. For I am a great king, says the Lord of hosts. I am a great king, says the

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Lord of hosts. And my name will be feared among the nations.

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Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for your word.

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I thank you for the balance that we find there, from a text last week about your great love for your people, to the conviction that you're faithful to provide, that you give us what we need.

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We need encouragement to keep going. Some of us are broken, we're having a tough week, things haven't gone well, and you are faithful to bring encouragement to us through your word that you do indeed love us.

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And yet many of us, if we're quite honest, are making a mess of our lives. We're not honoring you, we're not following you.

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And at the end of the day, we need correction. We need the challenge and the rebuke that comes from your word to honor you, to really truly see you as you are.

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And Father, our only hope for worship this morning, our only hope that our singing will not be just exercise of our voice and practicing our vocal chords, is that we would see you, that we would actually know you as you are, exalt the great

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King over all, the Creator, the Master, the Lord, the Ruler, the Father who is worthy of honor.

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And Father, I pray that our singing would be transformed into honor and fear, a healthy reverence for you,

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Father, that is driven by the knowledge of who you are and what you have done for us,

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Father, that we can only come to you in the light of what Jesus Christ has done for us on the cross.

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And Father, I pray that in that place of strength, in that place of forgiveness, in that place of you making us whole, we would turn and reflect all of that back to you this morning as we sing.

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In Jesus' name, amen. A big thanks to the band for leading us.

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I'm grateful for the time that they put in. And I want to just remind everybody that if you need more coffee or juice or donuts at either table, you're not going to distract me if you need to get up and get more.

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Also recognize that those seats that you're sitting in are not the most comfortable. So if you need to get up and stretch out in the back,

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I don't want your seat to distract you from hearing from God's Word. And so whatever it takes to kind of keep your focus here for the next half an hour or so as we dig in and look at Malachi chapter 1, verses 6 through 14.

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I would encourage you to have your Bibles open to that. We didn't just read that and are going to wander off into the weeds, but we're going to be talking about that text.

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So having your Bible or your app open to that is going to only help you to be able to get more out of this message this morning.

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So Malachi 1, 6 through 14. I want to point out at the beginning of this that God is gracious to reveal himself to us.

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God is extremely gracious in his willingness to show us something of who he is.

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I say that from a firm conviction that God is the one who calls the shots. God is the one who has set this whole thing up.

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He designed the world in which you and I live and breathe and work and have relationships.

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He designed all of this. He set up the parameters of his relationship toward humanity, especially after the fall, and it was well within his power and authority to leave us alone in our rebellion against him.

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So it is only to his grace, only to his love, only to his credit that he has reached out to fallen sinful humanity to show us himself in his grace and mercy.

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He has been consistently reaching out to humanity from the very beginning of the fall, starting with Noah and rescuing and giving us a demonstration of his rescue through the waters of the flood.

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And then in Genesis chapter 12, he reached out to Abraham and spoke to him and made a promise to Abraham to bless all the nations through Abraham's offspring.

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And then he passed that promise down to Isaac and then to Jacob. And then you see Moses as a tool, one who was used to fulfill that promise to Abraham of giving the people a great land through the exodus.

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And God also has been reaching out and reached out through prophets like Malachi and Jeremiah and Isaiah and Ezekiel and all of these prophets that we see, in particular

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Malachi, the one that we're looking at now. And all of that reaching out to humanity culminated in the ultimate revelation of himself by coming in flesh to rescue us from our own sins by sending his son

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Jesus Christ as a sacrifice for us. So when we encounter God's revelation through the book of Malachi, when we look at this and we dig through this over the next several weeks, it should not surprise us to find out that a lot of this is

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God disclosing himself to us. It is God showing us who he is because salvation is not merely something that God has done for us.

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A lot times we can tend to think of the gospel, the good news, as something that God did. But God himself is our rock and our salvation.

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He is our salvation. The gospel writers say this, this is eternal life, that we may know him, the only true

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God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent. If we know him as he has revealed himself, then we can be saved.

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Then we can be rescued. So verse 6 begins with a proverbial statement that we can take on pretty easily.

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You can see it there in the text, a son honors his father and a servant his master. We can take that at face value.

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But we live in an era of intense precision. So we might be tempted to kind of go all

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Dwight Shrewd on this for a minute. Some of you are going to get that reference. And declare this false. This is false.

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A father is honored by his son. Some of you in this room might have, as fathers, experienced some dishonor from your sons.

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And you look at that statement and you go, oh wait, technically, is this true? Is this not true? And we could really kind of mine down deep into this.

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Do you honor your employer all the time? Is that just something that just naturally happens in you?

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And so you could look at it. But this is a proverbial statement. You need to remember that proverbs are idealized principles about life.

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Can you kind of take it as a general rule that fathers are honored by their sons? Is that a general rule of life?

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Yes. Are employers or masters honored by those under them? By and large, yes.

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And so he's just throwing that out as a generalization. He takes for granted that we understand that concept.

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And then goes on to declare two very important points about himself by looking at this relationship between masters and their servants and fathers and their sons.

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He says, I am a father, but I am not shown honor. Speaking to his people.

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Speaking to Israel. I'm a father, but I'm not shown honor. I'm a master, but I'm not shown any fear.

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He really, the text offers us two rhetorical questions. And rhetorical questions generally are never answered.

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And in the text, they, they rest there in this verse six as rhetorical questions, but eventually they get actually answered in the text.

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Verse 11 and verse 14 is going to answer both of these questions for us. Where is my honor?

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Says God. Where is it? Where is my fear? Says the

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Lord of hosts. In these two illustrations, we find something that we need to keep intention in our understanding of the almighty

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God. He is both father and he is master. Now those two analogies are both pictures of authority, right?

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To some degree as a, as a father and authority. Yeah, to some degree. But even to a heightened degree as a master and authority.

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Yes, right? So you see that they're both deal in the realm of authority, but there's still a distinction between the two.

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It requires some careful consideration about what the distinctions and differences are between the authority of a father and the authority of a master.

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You see, a father has a strong, strong interest in his child. Again, we're talking in generalities, but that's the way we know it ought to be.

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A father has a strong interest in his child, in his child. And, and the almighty father, the, the heavenly father has a distinct interest in his children as well.

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See, God has our best interest in mind as a good father. He is loving.

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He is compassionate. He is gracious. He is generous. And by the way, the illustration of father and the entire concept brings in the idea of inheritance with it, with the reality that a father will leave his possessions to his children.

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A really kind of a final and ultimate act of love. If you think about it, a pretty significant step of love to leave all that they possess to their children when they're, when they're gone.

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Masters are not the same, right? That's not the same way that it works. The illustration of God as master or lord or king, you could substitute some different words in there, and he reveals himself in a variety of different ways.

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Lord, king, master. It's one of pure and complete authority. Again, one that we don't necessarily like a whole lot.

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How many of you, if you're just being flat out honest, kind of appreciate some independence? You appreciate the opportunity to make some choices?

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A handful of us raised our hands and the rest of us are just tired because I think all of us, probably some degree in us, like the freedom to choose.

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We like to think of ourselves as controlling our own destiny, but the reality is

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God is, God is master. He is, he is pure and complete in his authority.

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This doesn't speak of God's love and mercy in this illustration of master as much as his divine sovereign right to rule and reign over all things.

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His master. All destinies. Think of it this way. All destinies are wrapped up in this one being.

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All destinies are wrapped up in God. Your destiny is wrapped up in the way that this one sees you.

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This one, just one. And he possesses your destiny in his hands.

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And that, if we believe that, should cause some trembling in us.

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It's a reasonable response to think that my destiny, my eternity, is wrapped up in the will of this one.

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How do you respond to one like that? How do you think of one like that?

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And so, as our father, he deserves our honor. We should exalt him and rejoice in his compassion and kindness towards us, especially we who have been adopted into the family by faith in Jesus Christ.

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We've been brought in and adopted into his family, and we are now, we now see him as father, and we are his children, and that's a glorious and beautiful thing, and that should lead us to bring honor to his name.

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And we honor him, by the way, by the worship of our daily lives. We worship him by singing like we just did, but we also worship him by testifying of his goodness to others, telling others about how awesome and glorious he is.

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We worship him by loving others and forgiving others, just as he has forgiven us. A lot of the way that we worship him, I don't know if you notice this, it's relational.

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It's about loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and what's the second? Love your neighbor as yourself.

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Loving each other, forgiving each other, being kind to one another, being understanding of each other, sharing the grace that has been given to us in turn towards others, measuring out forgiveness to others with the way that forgiveness has been measured to you.

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How many of you would confess right now by raising your hand that you have been forgiven much? It's a lot of us, right?

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You recognize that you've been forgiven a lot, and that is the measurement with which we are to love others, to forgive others, and to reach out to them with grace.

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I think one of the most harsh things is a Christian who is unforgiving. If we really get down to the core of recognizing who we are, and who our

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God is, and what he has done for us, and how much we've offended him, and how much he has let us go free because of his sacrifice for us, you'd be hard -pressed to make a case about how you are justified in your unforgiveness towards one.

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It'd be hard to do. We worship him by sacrificing, by the way, for others, for him, but also by sacrificing our agenda, our time, and our resources for him and for others.

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But further, as our king and master, we are called to fear him, a word that might not strike us right at first.

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How many of you, the word fear towards God is kind of like, well, wait a minute, where are we going with this? I thought he was my friend.

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I thought he was, you know, my buddy. I thought me and Jesus were tight, and now you're telling me I'm supposed to fear him?

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Like, whoa, wait a minute, and that requires a little bit of understanding. It might be a word that we don't like, that we want to lighten it up a bit.

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Well, fear means just, you know, respect, or something like that. We'd like to take it and turn it into something.

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I mean, come on, Malachi, aren't you being a bit extreme here with the fear word? But the word for fear here has been studied extensively, and I worked through it this week.

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I read a lot of pages and a lot of words about this one word, fear, and I found that this word is somewhere south of abject terror, okay?

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So, whew, it's not like I'm undone and I'm just gonna go insane because this is so terrifying.

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But it's probably more than just mere reverence. It's more towards awe.

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It's a really difficult word to translate, and what many people want to do is they want to go straight to reverence or respect.

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Well, respect is like you take your hat off during the national anthem or something like that, you know, that's respect.

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Reverence, yeah, a step up of maybe like watching what you say around dignitaries or something like that, or, you know, just giving some deference, or, you know, in some cultures they bow before somebody who's a higher rank than them or whatever, you know, saluting in the military or something like that.

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That's, there's a little bit of reverence in that, or the way that you treat a flag is supposed to be that way.

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This is something more than that. It's just really hard to pin down, but consider what it would be like, and I think this might help us, consider what it will be like to stand before the one who made all things.

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The one who made all things. Just imagine for a moment, and I mean, now your mind might naturally navigate towards like, what will

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I be seeing? What does he look like? But regardless of the surroundings, try to get that out of your mind to just consider for a moment the one who made it all, the one who existed from eternity past, before there was anything, that one, and you're standing before him.

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What will that be like for real? There's an awe about that, right?

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Is there a wonder and an awe about that that's hard to put into words, that's hard to convey? Fear is not an unreasonable word for that scenario, right?

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Is fear an unreasonable attitude towards that encounter? I don't think so. I don't think it's the wrong word.

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I believe that I will fall down before him in awe.

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In awe. Not as though I am undone, not as though I fear for my eternity, not as though I'm like fearful and in abject terror that I'm going to be condemned because I'm convinced that I'm not on the basis of what

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Christ has done for me. I will be in his presence with delight and joy and willingly fall before him in just like, mind -blowing, radical awe of who he is.

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That will be the reasonable encounter with God. That's a reasonable encounter with him.

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I know he loves me, but I believe I will be awestruck. Now, I'm not a person who's easily starstruck.

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Some of you in the room could maybe share about encounters that you've had with running into somebody in the airport or getting your picture with somebody or seeing, you know, maybe getting a distant picture.

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I saw Greg Jennings at the athletic club one time and took a took a subtle picture of him. You know, he's over there like, you know, so I'm like, cool, click, hey,

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I know, you know, and he walks by and I'm like, hey, and he's like, hey. But I'm not easily, I'm serious, I'm not a particularly person who's prone to being starstruck.

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Some of you maybe are like, man, if I could just see Shania just once, you know, we could get a selfie and maybe we could go out for coffee or something.

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Whoever it is, I don't even know. I mean, I just said Shania. Is that, is she even a thing anymore? Sorry, I'm off. No? Yes?

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Somebody? Help? Did I just make, I'm not, I'm not country. I was just throwing that out for someone else.

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So I don't know who it is. Some of you are like, oh, if I could just see that person and spend five minutes with them, I would be like, whoa, starstruck.

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But I don't lean in that direction. I'm certainly not a People Magazine follower. I couldn't tell you, I'm even bad with actors' names, actresses' names.

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I just don't even know some of these people. But I believe that one day every single person will be

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God -struck. Every single person that has ever lived on this planet will be

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God -struck with awe and wonder at who he is. And that reverent fear is something that, and I'll call it reverent fear just for lack of a better term, but know that reverence doesn't quite cut it as I go through this, but that reverent fear is something that God deserves from us now.

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It's only that we haven't seen with our eyes, that we haven't experienced him in the way that we should, that we don't have a reverent fear for him.

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One of the first things to go out the window, by the way, when we stop looking to God's word to find out who he is, is this reverent fear.

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I'm convinced that that's one of the first things that gets scrapped in our minds as we tend to make a

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God in our own image after ourselves. Well, one of the first things to go is that he's significantly different than us, because if we're making a

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God after our own image, we're naturally bringing him closer to us, right, in a way that we can relate to him, in a way that we can understand.

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And so we're going to lose the difference, the distinction, the awe about it. I mean, think in terms of like the

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Greek and Roman pantheon of gods. What did they do? They started with humanity and crafted and created legends and myths about gods that were very similar to them, fashioned gods after themselves.

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And they were, at the end of the day, just souped -up humans, right? Isn't that what the pantheon of gods were with all of their issues and their struggles and their strife and their, you know, sometimes humans getting caught up in the middle of it and stuff?

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And God is not merely a souped -up human. He's not anything like that.

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We're made in his image for sure, but that's just a facet. I don't believe we have two of the thousands of facets to God's nature and character.

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We just don't even, we don't even scratch the surface of who he is. Well, a sign that you do not have a robust biblical view of God is that you find it easy to speak of him flippantly, that you have no more awe, and that your life is lacking a motivation of honor towards him, that you really don't see the drive to honor him

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Monday through Saturday. Sunday's a little bit easier because we're here and you can kind of at least check a box that you came to church.

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So that's, I've done something for him. But all throughout this text, God reminds his people of his place of authority, even by the title that he uses for himself.

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In seven of these nine verses, seven times in just a short span of nine verses,

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God calls himself the Lord of hosts. You see it, it's repeated, repeated, repeated, Lord of hosts, Lord of hosts,

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Lord of hosts. Depending on your translation, it might read Lord Almighty. It's translated in different ways, but Lord of hosts is a direct translation of it.

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And just like the office of president, office of president has different titles, right? Like you could call him the chief administrator, the chief executive, you'd know who we're talking about, but he also has a title that's related to this kind of title of Lord of hosts, it's commander -in -chief.

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Now those of you that are politically informed even a little bit, what comes to mind when you hear the phrase commander -in -chief?

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Military force, right? Hopefully you're thinking of him as the head of the army, navy, marines, and air force, right?

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Like you're thinking of him in terms of, man, he's got a lot of pull, a lot of military authority.

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That's what this word Lord of hosts means. It's a, it's a very significant, strong word of military drive towards it, like the commander of the hosts of the armies of heaven.

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He repeatedly reminds his people throughout this text, and therefore he is reminding you and I here where we sit in Matawan, that he is indeed mighty in his power, mighty in his authority.

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He has all the hosts of heaven at his beck and call. Well, the Israelites in Malachi's day, we see that through the text, they've lost that love and feeling, and their dishonor for their heavenly father and their disrespect for him as their master showed itself in their daily lives.

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What we believe about God will leak out of us. It will leak out into our daily lives.

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It will be shown. For them, it showed up in the way that the priests were despising the name of God and the sacrifices.

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They were disrespecting God by profaning and polluting the altar of sacrifice. The metaphor of the altar as a table is one that's unique to this passage and needs some explanation.

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It is implied in some, a few other passages in scripture, but not often, and so we need to be careful to understand the metaphor carefully because some people could get confused into thinking that they were offering food to God, like he was going to eat it or something like that.

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The Israelites were unique, and if you study their history and their understanding and what they were writing during this ancient time about the sacrifices, it was a very distinct, different purpose for their sacrifices than the pagan nations around them that would sacrifice to Baal or sacrifice to Ashtoreth or all these

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Molech or other gods. It was very different. They did not have a perspective that God ate the food that was offered to them.

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As a matter of fact, they knew full well who was going to eat the food that was on this altar of sacrifice. Who was going to eat it?

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They were. They were. They ate the food offered to him. His table was one of a place of welcome to his people.

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The fellowship of eating the sacrifice was one of restoration after atonement being made by the shedding of blood.

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The people ate a reminder. Think about the Lord's Supper as we talk about this, as I make this next sentence clear.

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In the Old Testament, the people ate a reminder of the forgiveness and grace of their God every time there was a sacrifice.

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They were eating a reminder of the great grace of their God towards them, much like we take communion to remember the sacrifice that has been made for us.

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It's a picture. It's an image. It was for them and it is for us. And a further word about sacrifices in the Old Testament.

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God gave the law. Hear me carefully. God gave the law and he expected the people. It was his standard.

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It was what he said they must follow. And then within the law, he gave provision for what to do when they broke it.

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Think about that. Very similar to maybe what you do with your own family or what your parents did with you.

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They would set out the rules and then what did they do beyond that? Told you what to do, what was going to happen if you broke those rules, right?

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Here's the response to the breaking of those rules. And I would encourage you, you know, it's something that I might even be a little bit weak on with my own children, but it might be good to say, hey, if you've done something wrong, here's some steps that you could do to restore that.

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It'd be good to be teaching our kids that, right? That there's steps of restitution that can be made and for them to be able to take that initiative and go with it.

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But that's what God did and he set up this entire sacrificial system as a means of making things right after they had fallen.

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God in his grace knows our fallen state. He knows our sinfulness and he had expectations that his people would disobey and so he set up that entire system as a method for dealing with the sins of the people.

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And the culmination of that system is the once and for all sacrifice of Jesus Christ, who is the perfect lamb of God.

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So all of the Old Testament sacrificial system was a signpost pointing in the future to the final sacrifice for sins, which was

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Jesus Christ. And the people in Malachi's time were defiling these sacrifices by offering blind, lame, and diseased animals.

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This is a direct disobedience to the law of God found in Leviticus 1 .10. You don't need to turn over there, but you can see it on the on the screen there.

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Hopefully you can read that. Leviticus 1 .10 says this, if his gift, this is a person bringing a sacrifice, if his gift for a burn offering is from the flock, from the sheep or the goats, he shall bring a male without blemish.

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This is stated over and over and over again in the law, by the way. I just picked one. I had a choice of about five different passages to choose from to quote.

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This is one of the shortest ones I'm going to fit on a slide, but it gets the point across. Don't bring one that's blemished, straight up.

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Don't do it, says God. I'm telling you that when you break my law you are to bring a sacrifice.

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Here's what I want you to bring, and I want you to bring one that's not blemished, and then they're breaking the law by bringing those that are blemished.

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Do you get the cycle of sin here? Do you see the depth of depravity in the human heart where even in the process of seeking to atone for sin we're corrupt?

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Even our motives in that are messed up and jacked up. We certainly need something different.

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Well, it was clear from the Old Testament it was to be a male from the flock. Why a male? He's going to mention later, you know, you pledge a male and then you bring something that's blemished, and why a male?

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Well, it prefigured Christ. It's a prefiguring of the final sacrifice for us, who is

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Christ. Why was it to be without blemish? To prefigure Christ, the perfect Lamb of God, sinless

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Lamb of God. He wasn't just trying to strictly get to the value. What does it cost you?

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Give something that costs you greatly. Now, that is a part of it, but it's not the whole thing. Many are going to point out the obvious value of an unblemished male sacrifice, that this is high, this is a significant value, but it's not strictly that the people were not giving their most valuable to God.

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That's not the sole indictment here, but they are flat out disobeying Him and breaking the image of the sacrifice that the whole sacrificial system was to point to Christ, and they're messing that all up.

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So God gets a bit snarky here for a minute, which can never be good. Like, if God is sarcastic with you, watch out, right?

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Like, I mean, He kind of goes for it here for a minute, and He says, Hey, I've got an idea, you guys, and I'm going to make this a little modern for all of us.

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I got an idea. How about you take some of your trash and wrap it up in a nice box with a bow and give that to your boss at the

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Christmas party next year? How about you do that? How's that going to go for you?

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Go ahead and grab something from the garage sale pile. How many of you have a garage sale pile or an eBay pile or something, stuff to get rid of?

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Maybe it's a goodwill or a Salvation Army pile, but do you guys have those? Do you know what I'm talking about? We've got one of those that's ongoing, it's constantly growing, and then in the summertime it gets a little smaller and we sell some of it, we give it away, whatever.

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You've got stuff to get rid of, right? How about you take that and try to wrap something from your garage sale pile up, and I know, make a big to -do about it.

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Go ahead and get, you know, at the Christmas party, make a big deal about this presentation that you're going to give to your boss, and then give him that, give her that.

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Some of you are laughing because you know that's not going to be pretty, right? Common sense expects that to be ugly in the long run.

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Obviously he uses the word governor here, I'm using boss, whatever, but somebody in authority over you, go ahead and give them your crap, give them your trash, right?

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Not a great idea. It is not going to go well for you in the long run. But that was how the people and the priests were treating

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God. They had so little respect and held him in such low regard that they were offering him that which demonstrated their disobedience, that which showed their disobedience to him.

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And their sacrifice was obviously no sacrifice at all, because they only offered what they were hoping to get rid of anyway.

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Some of us have been guilty of that. Some of you are already making the connections, by the way, in your own life. You're already starting to draw those connections.

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I personally find that this is, this relates to me on the level of that silly feeling, that silly good feeling

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I get when I take the leftovers from my garage sale to the Salvation Army. Any of you ever do that?

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And then you're just like, yeah, I just gave, no I didn't, I didn't give anything away. As a matter of fact, I should write a thank you card to the

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Salvation Army for taking my junk, right? Some of you know what I'm talking about, but have you ever had a good feeling about something that, in retrospect, it's kind of like, why am

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I feeling good about this? I didn't do anything good. They did me a favor. Like, it's silly, but we can, we can tend to think that we're, we're doing a favor to God or we're doing a favor to others when we're just really not.

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Verse 9, Malachi offers a partial solution for us in a command form.

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He commands us to entreat, which is another word for plead or beg for the favor and grace of God.

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If you keep dishonoring him with your leftovers, he will not regard you with favor, says Malachi.

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But I want to be clear that this is a, this is all a text for those who declare they're already in the covenant community of God. They have, they've said that they're the people of God and they are already in a relationship with him, but they are cheating him.

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And this verse, this text in verse 9 is, is not saying the reverse. We've got to be careful to get the direction right.

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It is not stating you must buy his favor. That's not what it's saying. Even the command to entreat the

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Lord shows that our hope lies in his grace and not in our effort, not in the content of our sacrifices.

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Those who are all in with Christ have entreated the Lord for salvation and he will graciously grant it to anyone who would come and plead with him for forgiveness through his son.

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But let me be as clear as this text is meant to be to us this morning. If you say you honor and reverence him, if you say you have honor and reverent fear for him, but give him nothing, you're lying.

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You're lying. If you say you love him, but there's no sacrifice in your life of a sacrifice of even forgiveness or letting go of hurts from others.

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Sacrifice, by the way, is not just not just giving in the black box. Please don't, that's not the point. He is going to talk about their giving later in a later text, but at this point, that's not the point.

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Is it, there's all different kinds of gifts and ways of sacrifice for God. Letting our pride go, letting things go, letting forgiveness reign in relationships, those types of things.

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You don't need to be wealthy to offer a sacrifice to God. As a matter of fact,

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God also made a provision in his law that if you cannot afford a lamb, you can take a pigeon, you can take a dove, you can take something smaller.

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It is not strictly, I mean, in that day and age, a male lamb was a costly thing. But God says,

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I recognize that not all of you are capable of that. Not all of you are capable of these amazing large gifts like this.

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And so, even just a little bit, it wasn't about the amount. You could give him very little and still honor and respect him if you just happen to have little means to give, if that's where you're at.

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And Jesus himself acknowledged that even the smallest gift of money given with a heart of honor and reverence for God is better than millions given with disrespect and dishonor.

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And in case any of us harbor any notions that a half -hearted gift is better than no gift at all, he sets out to dash that.

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In case you're tempted to think that dabbling in the Christian faith is covering your bases, in case any of us thinks that moving our mouths so we look like we're singing on Sunday morning is good enough, verse 10 is here to save us the time and the trouble.

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It's pretty direct because God says, cut it out. Cut it out with your half -sacrifices.

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Cut it out pretending that you're getting it. You'll not very often hear a pastor, let alone a passage of scripture, that will suggest that you stop doing religious things.

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This text says, stop it. I will agree with scripture and encourage you to stop pretending if you're pretending.

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You can be free to have your Sunday mornings back, harsh but true.

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You can quit the whole giving thing and stop wasting your time and volunteering if you do not have honor for God.

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Honor for Him as your Father, reverent fear in your heart for Him as your

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King and Master. Verse 10 bluntly and directly calls for those who are disobeying

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God and His sacrifices and are dishonoring Him with a half -hearted worship to just stop the charade.

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He calls for one person. He says, oh that there would just be one who had the guts to step up and shut the doors of this temple.

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I wish there was just one to shut the doors. Shut it, bar its doors, put up a close for business sign because He says,

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I have no pleasure in your half -hearted sacrifices. I find no pleasure there.

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I don't find half -pleasure there. I find none. And now in verse 11, we find the answer to the rhetorical question.

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Where is my honor, says God to the people of Israel, to His people? He's pleading saying, where is my honor?

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And the answer is there. Where is my honor? He says, from the rising of the sun to its setting, from east to west, across the entire globe, in every single place, incense will be offered to the name of our

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God, and pure offerings will rise up to Him. For His name will be great,

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His name will be honored among the nations. If we don't honor

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Him, He'll find somebody who will. If we don't bring Him honor, He'll be fine shutting this and finding a people who will.

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Pretty heavy. Here at the end of the

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Old Testament, God indicates that a day is coming when the whole earth will be filled with His honor.

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We know that to be at the culmination of the age when Christ returns and sets up an eternal kingdom, a new heaven and a new earth, and His honor will indeed rule and reign.

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But despite their dishonor, despite their irreverence for the Almighty, He will get the praise that He is due.

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And you and I are a part of the fulfillment of this prophecy. Don't be all discouraged. Actually take some encouragement in this.

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We are a part of this. Matthew, uh Matthew, Matawan, Michigan. Matawan.

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Matawan, Michigan is one of those places between the rising of the sun and the setting. It's one of those places that was outside to Malachi's time, outside of the people that he was talking to.

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Stryker is one of those places. UPS is one of those places. Bronson Hospital is one of those places.

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Matawan High School is one of those places. Portage is one of those places.

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Zoetis, Silver Oaks, Brownstone, three rivers. And you can name where you live and it is one of those places.

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Because wherever the people of God are called by His name and give Him honor, seek

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Him in prayer and testify of His glory. His name is made great in that place.

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You take it with you. You are making places from the rising of the sun to the setting.

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You are creating places for His honor and glory in your neighborhood, in your workplace, at your school.

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You carry that with you. A glorious opportunity to plant that seed wherever you go.

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To make His name great. To honor Him. To promote the awe of Him.

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But through disobedience and irreverence and dishonoring sacrifices, the priests of God here in our text were profaning the name of the

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Lord and they made it look ugly to those around them. We find two things that are piled on top of this rebuke in verse 13 that we didn't know until we get here at the end of our text that just makes the case against these people more solid.

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He says, they've grown lazy. They've grown weary of serving the Lord. They're tired of serving Him. And they have also sacrificed what they've obtained by violence.

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Wow. It's not a sin, by the way, to be weary. You go through seasons when you're weary?

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Some of you are nodding, yeah. Having a complaining or grumbling attitude about serving the

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Lord or giving to Him is a sin. Only in that it shows a heart of dishonor and irreverence to God.

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That's the issue. Being weary isn't the issue. Dishonoring God and being irreverent toward Him is.

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Nobody gets away, by the way, with promising God one thing and giving Him something different. These priests were ignorant enough to think that they could trick

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God. They thought they could trick Him. In a moment of need, they would vow to God a male from their flock and then when

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God came through for them, they would give Him any old blemished animal. And finally, in verse 14, we find everything is wrapped up in this section by the declaration that God is a great king.

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He will obtain the fear He deserves among the nations. This answers the second rhetorical question from verse 6.

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Where is my fear? The answer is, He will find it among the nations.

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In our text this morning, I found four distinct calls for us. You may find that God is laying something on your heart specifically as I've walked through this text.

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I'm going to tell you four things that He laid on my heart. Really, four calls that I heard His voice calling out to me from this text to think in terms of these four things.

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You may come up with a fifth. You may come up with a sixth. Maybe you'll ignore these four things and there's something that God is just driving home to you.

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I think every time we hear from God's Word, we ought to think in terms of, God, what do you want me to do? What do you want me to do with this?

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The first thing that God struck with me was a call to balance. A call to balance.

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He's a Father and He's a Master. Maybe you've majored in God as Father, but you've kind of been shy to think of Him as Master.

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You accept His love, but not His command. You see Him as soft, but are not open to His rebuke to your heart and to your life.

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I would encourage you to consider His power and authority and come to Him in reverent fear. I would encourage you to cozy up maybe to the

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Old Testament and see that He is awesome in His power and authority. Maybe you're on the opposite side and you have an intense fear of God, but have not experienced

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His love. Nothing can be more terrifying than to know God from the side of His fear and His wrath and His judgment, but to not know

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His love. It's a scary place to be. Let me encourage you to study

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Jesus, see His compassion towards the weak in the Gospels, and to recognize His love poured out for you at the cross.

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Whichever way you lean, don't over swing the pendulum. Seek to move toward balance on this. He is loving and He is worthy of reverent fear.

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And truly knowing God as He has revealed Himself is the key to avoiding empty worship, by the way. How do we avoid empty worship?

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How do we avoid giving God our half -hearted half -hearted offerings, our half -hearted sacrifices?

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By coming to know Him. How are you going to know Him? You're not going to find Him in here.

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You're not going to find Him in here. Our culture says, just look in your chest. Just look into your heart and you'll figure it out.

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No, you won't. Your heart will draw you away from God. You need this to know

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Him. You need to dig in here to know who He is. And that's going to drive us to worship

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Him more when we see Him in awe and the wonder of the things that He did. We also find

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His love there. That's where balance is going to be found. Really, the greatest balancing thing in the world is the cross.

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The cross is the place of the balance, where we both find that our sin is terrible.

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We find out how bad we were at the cross. The Son of God Himself dying because of our sins, because of our brokenness, because of our, what we would like to call mistakes.

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Little white lies, little this, a little bit of that. It's just a little bit of this, God. No, it's the cross. It's Him dying for those things.

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How bad are we? It's pretty terrible, right? But what's on the balance of the other side?

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He loves you. He loves you so much that He went through that for you. No, we're terrible and He loves us.

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That's the balance. That's what makes sense of the brokenness that we experience in the world that we live in, in the give and take, in the confession, in the, oh,

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I did it again and I need forgiveness again. And it's that balance of recognizing I am a broken person and He loves me enough to have made it right.

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That's the balance, call to balance. The second is a call to honesty.

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Are you offering your best to God? Man, that's a tough question. It's a really tough question because how many of you acknowledge that you could give it all?

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Like, I mean, there's no end to it, right? There's no end to it. I mean, well, there is. There's a finite amount of money in the bank.

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You could sell your house. You could give everything. I mean, not drive a car. There's, it's a difficult thing to discern what's going on here.

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And the thing is not about the amount that you give. Jesus commended a woman who gave a fraction of a penny in the offering.

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And He was there in the synagogue when she gave, and He acknowledged to His disciples, He said, she's given more than everybody. I'm like, how could she give more than everybody?

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She just gave a penny and she gave all that she had. She gave everything. And it's about heart.

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It's about honor. It's about reverence. Only you know if you've got respect for God. I can't tell you if you have respect for God by watching what you give.

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I don't know what anybody gives. True story, okay? But if I could see what everybody gives, if I could see the time that you spend volunteering, if I could see, you know, the good things that you do in your community, the way that you serve your employer,

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I still don't know where your heart is. I mean, you know, there's all kinds of motivations for doing good things. It's about the honor, the reverence, the respect for God that drives us to these things that matters most.

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So we'll call to honesty. And it takes a lot of work. A lot of us would rather just kind of get caught up in the busyness of life and not take that time.

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I heard it said recently that the most terrifying thing to the American mind is isolated time alone with no noise.

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It's scary to us. We've got to have constant noise. We've got to have the music going in the background. We've got to have something going on because we're afraid to be alone with ourselves.

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But we need some of that time to get down to this answer and wade through our motives. Am I robbing

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God? Am I tricking myself into thinking I'm honoring him and I'm not? I believe it would be a worthwhile journey to sit down this week and consider the nature of what you offer to God.

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Time, resource, maybe even write it out. Maybe even put some columns down. Time, resources, money, effort, love for others, forgiveness of others, work for your employer.

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To cheat your employer is to cheat God. Did you know that? Cheat your employer is to cheat

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God. You're supposed to be doing what you do unto who is your boss, who's the one that you're working for.

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It's for God. Are you cheating him? He loves you but he is a great king who is worthy of any sacrifice.

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The third call, a call to entreat him, to plead with him. If you are not all in with Jesus then come to the

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Lord and plead with him for grace and mercy. Anyone who would come with this attitude of humility and ask

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Jesus Christ to save them will be saved from their sins, will be saved from the guilt, and will be saved from the penalty.

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It's an awesome thing. Come and entreat the Lord if you're not in with Jesus. And then

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I'd encourage you to to share that with somebody. I would love to be one that you would include in that loop. If you if you give your life to Christ and you recognize that for the first time and you're like,

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I need Jesus and I've asked him to save me, come and let me know so I can pray for you so that I can I can help help you walk and grow and learn.

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The last call is obviously a call to sacrifice. He is a great king.

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Give your best because he is a great king. Because you have found in him the love of a true father.

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You recognize his power and authority over your life as master and king. This morning we're going to come to communion just like every week to remember the sacrifice, the great, awesome, glorious, amazing sacrifice of our king.

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Jesus came as the lamb of God without blemish, without the stain of sin.

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And he became the once and for all sacrifice that we needed to cover our sins. He took on himself our sin so that we can be restored in a relationship with our heavenly father.

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And if you believe this, if this is your hope, then come to one of the tables and take the cracker to remember his body that was broken for you.

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Come to the table and take a cup of juice. There's tables in the four corners. You can get up during any time to this song and do that and take the cup of juice to remember his blood that was shed for you.

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But if you're not in with Christ today, I'd encourage you to remain in your seat, take in the song that Dave's going to play for us, and why not pray?

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Why not pray today and ask Jesus to bring you into the grace of his heavenly father today?

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Let's go out from this place and live this week with God as your father and your master.

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Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for your grace.

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I thank you for your mercy. This would be an immobilizing text to me were it not for your grace.

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I would be left with the wondering, how much am I supposed to give? What's the amount? What's the right dollar amount?

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What's the right amount of time that you would be worthy of? And the answer is all of it.

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That really at the end of the day, I can't put a number on that. And so I thank you that you operate towards us based on grace.

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And that it's about a relationship with you. That it's about a relationship of honor. We don't get to check boxes and figure it out.

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And sometimes at the end of the day, it's really hard to know how we've done this day toward you. So I pray that you would give us better questions.

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Not the amount, but do we honor you? Do we respect you?

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Do we have reverent awe for you? Father, I pray that you would move in us to transform the way that we think about you.

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That that would be the fuel for the things that we do. That it wouldn't just be go out and do a bunch of stuff.

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Go out and give a bunch of stuff. But it would be connect with you so that we can't help but give stuff.

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Help our actions to reflect our heart. Move us in line with you.

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Father, if there's anybody here who has not entreated you to come for grace, I pray that today might be a day of salvation for some.

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Father, thank you for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that we remember through the cup and through the cracker. Father, at the end of the day, it's really about the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

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Bring us back to that each week in reflection upon the awesome sacrifice and the forgiveness and salvation we have in Jesus name.