Worthy of it All

I’m sure that many of you have heard or maybe even used this phrase before: It was the thought that counts. Maybe you were in charge of picking out a gift for someone and time sort of slipped away from you and instead of really putting in the effort to find them something that they would love, you grab the first thing off the shelf, throw it in a bag, and while it wasn’t great, at least you got them something. It’s the thought that counts right? After all, you could have gotten them nothing. A not so great gift is still a gift right? And surely a not so great gift is better than no gift at all! Husbands, allow me to call all of us out with another example. I’m sure that many of you, myself included, have taken on the near impossible task of putting the recently washed laundry away. I’m sure that you have tried your best and attempted to fold and put that laundry where it was supposed to go and you have been stunned to find out that somehow 2 shirts no longer fit in the drawer they usually go in. But that doesn’t stop you, you just cram them in anyway and you can go show off to your wife that you did in fact do the laundry. Or at least you tried, she still has to go back in and refold it all so that it actually works, but it’s the thought that counts right? We could list example after example for hours on end of moments where we use that mindset and I think we would all agree at this point that it isn’t a good mindset to have. Yet it is this very mindset that we have when it comes to worship the living God. You see not only does God care about who you worship, God cares how you worship. Not only do we see in Scripture instruction on who we must worship, we see instructions on how we should worship and a worship that is nothing more than, “I went to church, I sang the songs, it was the thought that counted” is not worship. Would you say that your worship sounds like that? Is your quote on quote worship of God nothing more than crossing off something on your to do list with the mindset of, “I did it and God should be happy that I did!”? The people in the days of Malachi had this problem and that is what we are going to see as we turn to Malachi 1:6-14. Before we dive into these verses, let me give you our big idea for today. Half hearted devotion and worship is not true worship at all. God will be praised whether you praise Him or not. God is deserving of all praise, honor, and glory and if we are going to worship Him, we must do it in the way that He requires. Let’s go to the Lord in prayer and then we will dive in.

Malachi 1:6–14 NASB95

“ ‘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? Would 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 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,” 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. “But you are profaning it, in that you say, ‘The table of the Lord is defiled, and as for its fruit, its food is to be despised.’ “You also say, ‘My, how tiresome it is!’ And you disdainfully sniff at it,” says the Lord of hosts, “and you bring what was taken by robbery and what is lame or sick; so you bring the offering! Should I receive that from your hand?” says the Lord. “But cursed be the swindler who has a male in his flock and vows it, but sacrifices a blemished animal to the Lord, for I am a great King,” says the Lord of hosts, “and My name is feared among the nations.”

A Low View of God and Worship

As we dive into these verses we see that God accuses the priests of Malachi’s day of showing Him no honor, no respect, and having in the process despised the name of the Lord. The name of God is something that we will come back to later on this morning. The issue with the priests is that they have a low view of God and a low view of worship. The problem there is that if anyone should be getting worship right and have a high view of God, it’s the priests. We can assume that as the worship of the priests suffers, the worship in the pews suffers as well. Very rarely does a church ever rise above its pulpit. This is something that we will talk about more next week as we dive into Malachi 2. In verse 6, we see God put forth a statement to the people that would have been instantly affirmed, especially in a culture that so highly valued honor to fathers and elders. “A son honors his father, and a servant his master” is what the Lord says and no doubt every mouth would agree with that statement. The Law of God made it clear that a son was to honor his father, that was the 5th commandment, and it was clear that a servant was not above his master. It was expected that a son would be obedient to his father and it was so serious of an issue that the Law would actually call for the son to be put to death if he was not obedient to his parents. These priests would know that a son was to honor his father. God says to them, “If I’m a father, where’s my honor?” Moses reminds the people of Israel in Deuteronomy 1:31 “and in the wilderness where you saw how the Lord your God carried you, just as a man carries his son, in all the way which you have walked until you came to this place.’” In Exodus 4:22–23 the Lord says to Moses, “Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord, “Israel is My son, My firstborn. “So I said to you, ‘Let My son go that he may serve Me’; but you have refused to let him go. Behold, I will kill your son, your firstborn.”’ Israel was the adopted children of God, they knew their history, they knew where they came from and yet God says, “Where is the honor that I’m due? Where is the fear and respect that I am due?” How have the priests despised the name of the Lord? God says in verse 7 it was because they presented defiled food upon His altar. In the name of worship, in the name of service, these priests were bringing blemished, sickly, injured, leftover animals as sacrifices and they were saying, “Here you go Lord! Here’s the first fruits of our offering! This is our best!” No it wasn’t. The priests knew and the people of Israel should have known that the daily sacrifices that God required in the Law were of the highest standards. God spoke to Moses and said that only the best and finest would be appropriate in an offering to the Lord. We don’t have time to look through the entire book of Leviticus but maybe later on go through that book and see the standard that God gave to the offerings and to the priests. One look at that book and it is easy to see how the priests of Malachi’s day were totally rejecting or ignoring what God had commanded. In Leviticus 22:20–22, “Whatever has a defect, you shall not offer, for it will not be accepted for you. ‘When a man offers a sacrifice of peace offerings to the Lord to fulfill a special vow or for a freewill offering, of the herd or of the flock, it must be perfect to be accepted; there shall be no defect in it. ‘Those that are blind or fractured or maimed or having a running sore or eczema or scabs, you shall not offer to the Lord, nor make of them an offering by fire on the altar to the Lord.” It should have been clear as day that the offerings that were being offered was unacceptable. Not only should the priests have not offered the offerings, they shouldn’t have even accepted these animals from the hands of the people that were bringing them! Peter Adam says, “These blind, crippled and diseased sacrifices revealed much about the worshippers who offered them, and even more about the priests who accepted them. It was not a matter of, ‘Only the best will do for God’, but rather, ‘Give God the worst.’” In verse 8 God says, “Try offering that to your governor. Would he be pleased with you? Would he receive that with kindness and appreciation?” Again we have a statement and questions that should have been clear to the people. Absolutely he wouldn’t be pleased with it, they wouldn’t dare to do it. They wouldn’t have even thought about offering it to him and yet they give the worst of the worst to God and expect to be praised for their benevolence. God is greater than the governor so why would he be pleased with inferior gifts and offerings? He wouldn’t! God is so disrespected and dishonored by this that He says in verse 10 that it would be better if the gates of the temple were shut and no offering was given, that is how unpleased God is with the worship of these people. I would challenge us, if God were to look at us as a church, if God were to look at us as leaders within this church, would He be pleased with our worship? Would He look at our hearts and be pleased with what He saw there? Or would He look at this church and say, “I would receive more glory if those doors were closed. I would receive more glory if they just stayed silent.” These priests were going through the motions and I challenge each and every one of us to ask, “are we going through the motions of worship”? Do you truly have a heart of worship. Can you really say that you see God as infinitely wonderful, infinitely glorious, infinitely beautiful? Could we truly say to God that in all that we do, we do for the glory of God? That in all of that labor we could present it to the Lord as the first fruits of our offering? Warren Wiersbe wrote, “If our concept of God is so low that we think He’s pleased with cheap, halfhearted worship, then we don’t know the God of the Bible. In fact, a God who encourages us to do less than our best is a God who isn’t worthy of worship.” If all God is is a little god that we have made in our image and have crafted in our minds, then our capacity to please him will be very simple to accomplish because we can convince ourselves of anything. How easily we can look at our actions, look at our worship and say, “I’m good with it so God must be good with it too.” We say things like, “Well I didn’t do as much today for the Lord as I could have but I at least went to church so that’s good. I may not live like a Christian Monday through Saturday but I’m a faithful giver on Sunday.” If God is just a small divine figure that we can keep in our pocket like a genie, then sure He could be happy to be noticed and given whatever attention that we give Him. But that God is not the God of Scripture. No, this is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the Creator, sustainer, sovereign judge over all things. The God in which there is no God before Him and no God after Him. This is the God we worship, this is the God in whom we live and move and have our being, the very God of very Gods. How do you see the God of Scripture? How do you see the God of all creation? I love the story of Donald Gray Barnhouse, the former pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church and Princeton Theological Seminary graduate, one day was invited back to his alma mater at Princeton to preach at their chapel service. As Barnhouse went to the pulpit and began to preach he noticed in the front row Dr. Robert Dick Wilson. That name may not mean anything to you but Wilson by all accounts was a genius. The man knew 45 languages and was one of the greatest theologians of the Old Testament of the past 200 years. He was also a former professor and a hero of Barnhouse so of course as Barnhouse looked out and saw Wilson, he got nervous. Barnhouse got through the message and at the end of the service, Wilson walks up to him, shakes his hand and says, “If you come back, I will not come to hear you preach.” In that moment, it felt like Barnhouse’s whole world was crumbling around him. Barnhouse asks, “What did I do wrong? Where did I fail?” Wilson replied, “You didn’t fail. I only come to hear my boys preach once. I only want to konw if he is a big-Godder or a little-Godder, and then I know how his ministry will be.” Barnhouse had no idea what he meant by that so he said, “Some men have a little God, and they are always in trouble with Him. He doesn’t intervene on behalf of His people. They have a little God and I call them little-Godders. There are others who have a great God. He speaks, and it is done. He commands, and it stands fast. He knows how to show Himself strong on behalf of them that fear Him. I could tell within 10 minutes that you are a big-Godder, and God will bless your ministry.” And God certainly did bless Barnhouse and his ministry. Could that be said of us? Could people spend ten minutes with us and see that we were Big God worshippers? Is that the God that you worship? Does your worship reflect this mighty and awesome God that stops the winds and the waves in a moment? Does your worship do justice to the God of the universe that knows the stars by name and hung them in their place? Does your heart honor as Lord the One that destroyed death by death and rose again from the grave? This is the God of the universe and the praise that He desires is the praise that He deserves. How then does God desire to be worship?

How Does God Desire to be Worshipped?

We could turn to numerous places but I want to turn our attention to the gospel of John. Turn to John 4. Many of you are likely familiar of what happens in that chapter. Jesus and His disciples go to Samaria and as Jesus sits at a well, a Samaritan woman comes up to Him and He asks her for a drink. This is the moment where Jesus says that He offers living water and the person that drinks of that water will never thirst again because the water that He gives springs up to eternal life. Picking up in John 4:15-19

John 4:15–19 NASB95

The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw.” He said to her, “Go, call your husband and come here.” The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You have correctly said, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly.” The woman said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet.

At this point, the woman starts putting some clues together. She realizes that she isn’t in the presence of just an ordinary man. There is something significant about this man because this man knew about the secret sin in her life. This man knew about that which this woman would prefer to keep quiet. Jesus is a prophet but He is so much more than just another prophet. Continuing in John 4:20-22

John 4:20–22 NASB95

“Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.

The woman says to Jesus, “our forefathers told us that here on this mountain is where we are to worship but the Jews say that in Jerusalem, that is where we are supposed to worship. Jesus then says, “Woman, a time is coming where mountains won’t matter and these mountains won’t have any role for those who truly worship God.” The entire perception of worship is about to change. Look at what Jesus says in John 4:23-24

John 4:23–24 NASB95

“But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Right there, plain as day, those who worship the Father MUST worship in spirit and truth. To worship without that is to fail to worship God as He has called us to worship Him. So what does that mean then? What does it mean to worship God in spirit and truth? To worship God in spirit doesn’t mean that we are simply emotive worshippers. Emotion can connect to worship but it is not directly worship. Someone can be acting insane and we wouldn’t say that it was an act of worship to our God. To worship in spirit means that our act of worship is first an inward act before it is ever seen as an outward expression. James Montgomery Boice describes it like this:

Psalms 42–72 Worship in Spirit and Truth

True worship occurs only when that part of man, his spirit, which is akin to the divine nature (for God is spirit), actually meets with God and finds itself praising him for his love, wisdom, beauty, truth, holiness, compassion, mercy, grace, power and all his other attributes.

To worship in Spirit and truth means that we recognize and are responding to the worthiness of God. All worship is expressing the worthiness of that which we are worshipping. If we want to worship God as He has called us to worship, it must be done because our hearts have been made new by the Holy Spirit and we have embraced fully the truths of God. In order for us to truly worship, we must go to God with the understanding that He is to be adored above all else. John Piper said, “True worship comes from a heart where God is treasured above all human property and praise and it aims to inspire the same God-centered passion in the hearts of the congregation.” To worship God as He deserves to be worshipped means that He is that which our hearts find most valuable and most lovely. Now you may be here today and you might think, “I’m not a worshipper. I don’t believe in God, I don’t worship anything.” Yes you do. The world is not divided up between worshippers and non worshippers. The world is divided up between those who worship the one true God and those who worship everything else. Now you might be here today and think, “No, that’s not how this works. I know me, I don’t bow to a different god, I don’t follow a different religion, I’m not a worshipper.” We all are. That which you have prescribed the absolute highest level of worth to is what you worship. That thing if you were to lose it would cause you to break down in such a way that you are convinced that you would never recover is what you worship. You worship a spouse, you worship your kids, you worship your money or your stuff, you worship it! That’s god to you because you are attributing worth and praise to it that does not go anywhere else. Jesus himself says in Matthew 6:21 “for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” What is it that you treasure? We all have treasures. The question is whether or not your treasure is actually of eternal value. Every treasure that you possess if it is outside of God Himself will fade away. The money will go, the relationship will go, the family will go and when that happens what will become of your god? When that goes away what will become of your heart? St. Augustine had said that the human heart is restless until it finds its rest in God and that is true because it is only in the Lord Jesus Christ where every longing of our heart finds its fulfillment. In Christ, where every need that we have ever had will not just be met but be exceeded beyond what we could ask or think. Dear friend, what is it that you treasure? What is it that has your praise? May it only be in the Lord our God. As we continue to talk about what it means to worship in spirit and in truth, I think that it is worth mentioning that to worship God as He desires is a beautiful and a wonderful thing. God wants us to praise Him because He knows that nothing in all creation can possibly surpass Him. God invites us in to worship Him because He realizes that it is only in praise of Him where we can have the fullness of joy that we have always longed for but have tried to find in other places. C.S. Lewis puts it beautifully in this way: “I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed… If it were possible for a created soul fully… to “appreciate”, that is to love and delight in, the worthiest object of all, and simultaneously at every moment to give this delight perfect expression, then that soul would be in supreme beautitude… The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is “to glorify God and enjoy Him forever”. But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.” To fully worship God is to enjoy Him in all that He is. That is what the priests and the people in Malachi’s day failed to do. They saw worship as a chore and not as the ultimate expression of joy in their hearts. Psalm 95:1-3 says

Psalm 95:1–3 NASB95

O come, let us sing for joy to the Lord, Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving, Let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms. For the Lord is a great God And a great King above all gods,

3 times in 3 verses we see the joy of the Lord. Have you come here today not just singing for joy to the Lord, have you come today with a joy that only the Lord can supply? Or have you come this morning, simply to say that you’ve done it? When we gather as the church we are gathering to express the fullness of joy and to recognize the worthiness of God. John Murray wrote in an essay on worship, “When we come together it is to worship God. Everything else really rests upon this. Whatever we may do, in worship, if it is not directed to the worship of God, no matter how decorous and embellished our exercises may be then it is not worship. If we go to the house of God simply because it is custom or to fill up a quota of exercises, then we are not worshipping God.” Just quickly too, notice in Psalm 95 and even in what Murray said, worship is more than just an individual exercise, it is a community event! The fullness of worship is felt as the people of God come together. We bring something out of each other that doesn’t come out on our own. We must all come together to worship in spirit and in truth and the best way to do that is by recognizing together the worthiness of God. We must all be big God believers. What this also means is that we must embrace what it means to be Christian. This means that we don’t attempt to water down what worship is or what it is about, to Brandon Lake’s comment a few weeks ago, we don’t remove the Christianese language to make it more accessible to non Christians because worship isn’t about them. I would much rather sing together great songs that are doctrinally rich than to sing something from people who simply know how to make a good sounding song with Christian terminology. You mean to tell me that we would be off singing something that just keeps saying, “This is how I fight my battles” over and over and we never hear how to do it? No, let us Christians embrace the Christianese and fully express as loudly as we can the worthiness of our God. One of my favorite songs right now, so rich in doctrine so rich in truth, listen to these words and tell me no that isn’t beautiful and that isn’t a song rich in spirit and truth:

Come, behold the wondrous mystery He is the perfect son of man In His living, in His suffering Never trace nor stain of sin See the true and better Adam Come to save the hell-bound man Christ, the great and sure fulfillment Of the law in Him, we stand

Come, behold the wondrous mystery Christ, the Lord upon the tree In the stead of ruined sinners Hangs the lamb in victory See the price of our redemption See the Father's plan unfold Bringing many sons to glory Grace unmeasured, love untold

Come, behold the wondrous mystery Slain by death, the God of life But no grave could ever restrain Him Praise the Lord, He is alive

What a foretaste of deliverance How unwavering our hope Christ in power resurrected As we will be when He comes

No it is not the thought that counts when it comes to worship it is the full recognition of God’s infinite worthiness of all praise and glory that counts when it comes to worship.

God’s Name Will be Great

One last thing that I want us to look at one more time is Malachi 1:11 “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,” says the Lord of hosts.” God is great among the nations. God is and always will be great. But He is pointing to a time where the name of God will be great. Where the name of God will be great on earth as it is in Heaven. It is as if God were saying, “If my name is not worshipped in Israel, my name will be worshipped in the nations.” Where Israel fails, true worship will abound around the world. What we see take place years after Malachi is that this begins to happen. Here we are almost 2,500 years after Malachi and Jesus Christ is proclaimed around the world. From the rising of the sun to its setting, Jesus is proclaimed. In Jesus Christ, a pure offering is offered once and for all for sins and a time is coming when the gathered multitude of all of God’s people will come together and praise His name forever. Daniel 7:13–14 says, “I kept looking in the night visions, And behold, with the clouds of heaven One like a Son of Man was coming, And He came up to the Ancient of Days And was presented before Him. “And to Him was given dominion, Glory and a kingdom, That all the peoples, nations and men of every language might serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion Which will not pass away; And His kingdom is one Which will not be destroyed.” The name of Jesus Christ will be proclaimed in the nations. There will never be a moment where God will ceased to be praised. A.W. Tozer in his amazing book The Knowledge of the Holy writes this: “Were all human beings suddenly to become blind, still the sun would shine by day and the stars by night, for these owe nothing to the millions who benefit from their light. So, were every man on earth to become atheist, it could not affect God in any way. He is what He is in Himself without regard to any other. To believe in Him adds nothing to His perfections; to doubt Him takes nothing away. Almighty God, just because He is almighty, needs no support.” So I ask you this morning, God will be praised in all the nations but will He be praised by you? Will you worship Him not just today but every day in spirit and in truth? Dear friends, He is worthy of your praise, He is worthy of your affections, He is worthy of your song. Come to Jesus today. Come to Him and admit that you have not worshipped Him that was truly deserving of all praise, honor, and glory. The idols in your life cannot save you and they will never be enough and they will never bring you true and lasting joy. But Jesus Christ alone can! Won’t you come to Him this day? Won’t you ask that He would cast your sins as far as the east is from the west? He is good, He is Lord, He is Savior. Won’t you entreat the favor of God so that He would be gracious to you. Here’s our heart Lord take and seal it, seal it for your courts above. Now is the time, now is the hour, now very well could be the day of your salvation. So come and take it and see He is worthy of it all. Let’s pray and then we will respond.