Do We Really Love God?

There is a phenomenon within the male species of humanity that is global in size and in its reach. It's a phenomenon that many of us would recognise. It frustrates wives, it humiliates kids, and it receives a simple note of approval from other men. Because we all understand what this phenomenon is. You see, it's a phenomenon of the comfortable pair of dad shorts or tracky dacks.

You know what I'm talking about. Every bloke has one. It's that pair of shorts that always lie somewhere near the top of the drawer. They can quickly be whipped out when all the guests have left after dinner. They can quickly be put on on a Saturday when the lawn has been mowed or when that spot on the couch needs a bit of warming when the sport is on.

The comfortable pair of dad shorts or tracky dacks is a worldwide phenomenon. It crosses borders and nationalities. I'm sure there's an equivalent for kilts or for sarongs. It's everywhere, in every culture with men in it. But there is something so good about a good pair of dad shorts or tracky dacks.

It's made of just the right material. It's just stretchy enough. It has just the right amount of breathability. The length is good, and it sits just perfectly with the male species, enhancing comfort levels, improving relaxation, and assuring you of a good time.

But what happens if our faith becomes like a comfortable pair of dad shorts? When we go through the motions of putting it on to be comfortable, when we go through the motions of worship services or devotional routines, what if, like a pair of dad shorts, we view our relationship with God as something comfortable, well worn, something that's safe? There is a danger in that, isn't there? Because instinctively, we seek to head towards a routine in life. We seek to head to things that are controllable, but God often shows himself to be out of our routine, to be uncontrollable.

So long as He's not interfering massively in our lives, however, we turn our worship and our service to God into something that is manageable, something that is timely, something that is ultimately comfortable. Now our question this morning is, do we really love God above all else? And then if we say we do, does it show in the quality of our worship and service to Him? Does it show in the quality of our worship and our service to Him? The prophet Malachi asked this question to the people of God many, many hundreds of years ago in the Bible.

Malachi lived roughly a hundred years after the return of the exiles from Babylon. By then, the powerful king Cyrus, the Persian king, had conquered Babylon and had allowed the Jews to return to their homeland and to start rebuilding the temple, according to Second Chronicles 36. However, the mighty Israel, the mighty Judah had now become a small parcel of land, not bigger than 30 kilometres by 40 kilometres. I wonder how big that is in relation to the Gold Coast. And it was inhabited by no more, scholars say, than 150,000 people.

This mighty nation of God. Despite the fact that the temple had been rebuilt, or a temple had been rebuilt, and despite the previous prophets like Zechariah and Haggai who promised a coming Messiah, a glorious King, a return of God's presence with His people to Israel, or more accurately now, Judea, the people of God only experienced spiritual destitution. There was no glory of God in this temple anymore. There was no miraculous hovering of the Spirit of God in the Holy of Holies.

The temple, the new one, was a disappointment to the people. A hundred years had passed and there were people that were still of that old generation who could remember the glorious Temple of Solomon. In the book of Ezra chapter three, it says that the people who saw this new foundation laid of the new temple, so much smaller, so much more humble, wept aloud, cried at the sight. Gone were the fireworks of that previous era. And the prophet Malachi lived in this time, the last of the Old Testament prophets.

The exile had been caused, he said, or we know at least, by the abandonment of people towards God. They had started worshiping other gods, other idols, but now the exile was over, and a new generation had come into the promised land, and they had reformed and they had repented of that, and so they earnestly sought to worship God again, only God. But a generation had now passed since this return. And the problem, a new problem had started to arise, and that was the problem of a dead faith, the issue of a dead orthodoxy among God's people.

There was a spiritual decline in worship and service to God that while on the outside looked earnest, on the outside looked noble and heartfelt. In reality, however, it saw believers who were all too ready to make compromises and to dilute the requirements of a holy God in their service and worship to Him. And it's in response to the cynicism and the religious depression of his fellow Israelites that Malachi's prophecy comes as a wake up call to renewed covenant faithfulness. And that's what we're going to read this morning.

So we're going to read a snapshot of Malachi's prophecy in Malachi chapter two this morning. I hope you can find it somewhere among the minor prophets of the Old Testament. It's the very last Old Testament book in fact. And perhaps you've never read it before, but we're to read Malachi chapter two, verses one to nine. Malachi 2:1.

And now this admonition is for you, O priests. If you do not listen, and if you do not set your heart to honour My name, says the Lord Almighty, I will send a curse upon you and I will curse your blessings. Yes, I have already cursed them because you have not set your heart to honour Me. Because of you, I will rebuke your descendants. I will spread on your faces the offal from your festival sacrifices, and you will be carried off with it.

And you will know that I have sent you this admonition, so that My covenant with Levi may continue, says the Lord Almighty. My covenant was with him, a covenant of life and peace, and I gave them to him. This called for reverence, and he revered Me and stood in awe of My name. True instruction was in his mouth, and nothing false was on his lips. He walked with Me in peace and uprightness and turned many from sin.

For the lips of a priest ought to preserve knowledge, and from his mouth men should seek instruction because he is the messenger of the Lord Almighty. But you have turned from the way, and by your teaching have caused many to stumble. You have violated the covenant with Levi, says the Lord Almighty. So I have caused you to be despised and humiliated before all the people because you have not followed My ways, but have shown partiality in matters of the law. So far, our reading.

Not very uplifting, not very encouraging, but in this passage this morning, the prophet Malachi takes on the people of God. In this passage, particularly the priesthood, but in the whole book, the people of God, and specifically regarding the worship of Him. In verse 14 in chapter one, if you flick back there, you'll see that Malachi highlights the hypocrisy of the worship of God when His people promise one thing and deliver the other. Verse 14 says this: Cursed, this is God saying, cursed is the cheat who has an acceptable male sacrifice in his flock and vows to give it, but then sacrifices a blemished animal to the Lord. For I am a great King, says the Lord, and My name is to be feared among the nations.

Malachi shocks his listeners with this. He gives them a shock therapy by painting this remarkable picture. You bring to God your blind, your lame, your sickly animals as token sacrifices to Him, and you wouldn't dare to think to do this to your Persian governors. Malachi dares his countrymen to test the quality of their gifts by giving it to their human leaders in chapter one. And the sad reality is this: a mere governor or a master or a slave or a father will receive greater honour than what was being offered to the God of Israel.

Chapter one, verse six, God says, a son honours his father and a servant his master. If I am a father, God says, where is the honour due to Me? If I am your father, where is the honour due to Me? If I am a master, where is the respect due to Me? God says in verse 14, but I am a great King.

And again, in the context here, that title, great King, was referred to as the emperor. King Cyrus, I am an emperor, God says, and I am feared among the nations. Yet you give Me the leftovers. Worst of all, in chapter two, Malachi highlights the partiality of the priests that were the mediators of this worship of God, the Levites who couldn't care less. And Malachi shifts his attack from the people of God and focuses it on them in this passage.

Why? Why them? Because it was their responsibility to guard the temple, to guard the worship of God from this sort of defilement. It was their responsibility to inspect all the sacrifices before they were made, to see whether they were blind or lame or sickly. Apparently, God's mediators had deluded themselves into thinking that when it came to the worship of God through these sacrifices, something was better than nothing.

At least God got something. Lukewarm is better than cold. But we know, don't we, throughout Scripture that God says He would rather not receive any of such sloppy, irreverent, hypocritical worship. Just stop, guys. Please.

Since the priest had failed to guard the purity of this worship, the Lord threatened to punish them in a manner that fitted their crime. Because they had shown contempt for God, God said, and failed to honour His name, they would be despised and humiliated before all these people they were to lead. Because they had defiled God, He would figuratively defile them by spreading offal on their faces. Other translations call it dung. In fact, they would be enveloped by this waste.

They would be consumed by it. God is literally saying He's gonna rub their faces in it. And they would be carried off in this, He says. And according to Leviticus 4, this offal, this waste is commanded in the Levitical laws to be carried off and burnt, destroyed, got rid of, and God is saying this is gonna be you. Why would God say these harsh words?

Because these leaders of God presumed to bless the people of God as if Israel's sacrifices had been acceptable when they clearly were not, when they clearly were never acceptable in God's eyes. They had condoned half-hearted, lukewarm worship of God, and the worst thing is that these people who brought sin offerings to be atoned for could have been unsaved. Do you understand the severity of this accusation? Because these priests themselves were lukewarm, the people under them may have been lost eternally. Puritan commentator Matthew Henry writes in his commentary here, nothing profanes the name of God more than the misconduct of those whose business it is to honour it.

And a pastor and an elder listens to this and you feel the weight of that. And as we listen, as we hear the sad state of affairs in the spiritual dryness in that time of Israel's history, we might sense the heat of resentment, the scorn of judgment stirring up within us about these leaders of worship, these leaders of men who would wilfully be negligent, who were wilfully undisturbed in their consciousness about this act, about this attitude that led people, the people of God, into a perilous condition before Him. There's something inside and innate us human beings that truly despises hypocrisy of this nature, especially among people who should know better. That is why we despise paedophile priests who should have been guardians and protectors of these young people.

That's why we hate corrupt politicians because they create and maintain laws which govern the rest of us, but they're above the law. We despise hypocrisy until perhaps it comes to the hypocrisy of our own hearts. Then we're far more forgiving. When we find ourselves caught in the no man's land between good intentions of serving and worshiping God, but face the reality of half-hearted attempts that really miss the mark. In our passage this morning, there is a great weight on every pastor, on every elder, on every deacon, on every ministry leader, people who have been called to step up and step up to that plate.

It's a reminder to check our integrity and to return to the duty of equipping the saints for works of service. God says in Malachi 2 that He had made a covenant promise to the house of Levi, the ancestors of these priests, that because they had served God so faithfully during the exodus, because they were the only one that stood up for the holiness of God, that they would be mediators and leaders, that they would be champions for the holiness of God. God says that this promise to them was a covenant of life and peace. There was a true instruction in their mouth in that time. They taught in a way that would bring people to know God better and deeper and have an affection for Him.

God says, they revered Me and they stood in awe of My name. And so as leaders, whether that be Sunday school or worship leaders, whether you are a teacher here in this church in Sunday school, or whether you are a Christian teacher during the week, do you revere the God of the holy name? But I think this can be drawn out to every believer also. God says that the entire nation of Israel, in Exodus 19, verse 6, would be for Him a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, the entire nation of Israel. We know in First Peter 2 that the apostle Peter talks of the church as a royal priesthood, all of us.

So as Christians in your workplace, you carry that set apart holy nature of Christ with you wherever you go. And the question this morning is, is there true instruction on your lips? Do you revere and stand in awe of the God you serve and His reputation? Now perhaps you can sit back and you've evaluated this and you have checked your motives and your heart this morning and sense that while there's probably a bit of tweaking to do, I am serving and worshiping God sincerely in my church, in my family, in my career. You may be an elder that works long hours during the week and then comes and sits through a church council meeting here at night, and goes and visits the sick and prays for them.

You may be a parent busting down the doors of the pastor's office to get their kids into catechism class because you are the spiritual head of your house, and that is the right thing for your kids to be doing. Better yet, you're hoping and wanting to volunteer in doing that for other people's kids. You might be a young person wanting to bring their school, or doing it already, bringing their friends into church, running a small group for them. You may have weighed up all these ways of service to God, worship of Him, and you've also importantly weighed up your motivations behind these, and you feel that while there might be a little bit of tidying up to do, you feel that you are giving God your best. Friend, be encouraged this morning.

You are blessed. Jesus says in Luke 11:28, blessed are those who hear the word of God and obey it. Fortunate, happy, lucky are the ones who hear the word of God and do it. But perhaps this morning, you are challenged by the feeling that you may be pretending to offer your best to God, but really just giving the rest to Him. You sense that you have been giving God your leftovers and that is in your life or in your finances or in your energy or even your affection towards Him.

Finding that you are promising your commitment to the community of believers that you're in, reality, however, giving them a cursory glance, a nice firm handshake on a Sunday morning, a friendly wave as you drive out of here in the car park. But do you know your brother? Do you know your sister?

Have you inquired about their spiritual life? Have you sought out their burdens? Have you made yourself available to them to invest in them? The apostle James tests this thought when he says, suppose a brother or sister is without clothes or food. If one of you says to him, go, I wish you well, keep warm and well fed, but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?

James says a faith that courteously says, God bless, without real investment in finding out whether they really are experiencing the blessings of God, it is a dead faith, or at least a dying faith. For some of us, we might need to hear the pinch of God's frown on shallow faith this morning. And this can be in all the areas of worship of God or service to Him. It can be globally.

It can be locally. It can be in the family. It can be missions ministries or mercy ministries. It can be in church planting. It can be in how you do your daily devotional life, your prayer life, your hospitality.

It can even be in the promises you make to your children at their baptism that you realise you have compromised on those promises. Perhaps we need to be honest and realise the need to be shaken loose from an inactive, easy, balanced lifestyle faith. What a curse that thing is. I hope we are aware of the Gold Coast and the idol of lifestyle balance. We move to the Gold Coast for a lifestyle.

We have to be honest about that, don't we? We move to the Gold Coast for a lifestyle. And yes, we can and should proudly say that it is a God-given blessing to have comfort. Comfortable dad shorts are great, but it is a terrible curse when comfort grows into an idol because it consumes you and you will always chase comfort and never find it. When Malachi addressed the cold, dead orthodoxy of faith that was simply going through the motions, he challenged the believers to dig deeper, to change lifestyles even.

In the context of a disappointing temple with a tabernacle where God's present presence didn't hover anymore, where God's glory didn't shine anymore, in a time where God's power was not a daily occurrence anymore, Malachi challenged the people that despite this disappointment, despite the sense that they may not experience God in a way that their ancestors did, it wasn't God's love that was to be questioned, but their faithfulness to Him. We know as well, four hundred years later, in that intertestamental time, there was a silence and God was silent for a very long time. His glory and His love, however, did come in Jesus Christ. And while Israel still wrestled with what it meant to love God truly and rightly, from one generation to the next, God gave them a visible persona of His love, of His glory. John 1 says, the glory that tabernacled with His people. Here was the perfect priest.

Here was the perfect mediator who did not skimp on the sacrifice, who did not, with one eye, look at the sacrifice and mark it off as good enough. Here was the priest who would make a heartfelt intercession for God's people. Hebrews 9:11 writes this: when Christ came, the author writes, He came as a high priest for the good things that are already here. And Christ went through the greater and the more perfect tabernacle that is not man-made. He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves, but He entered the most holy place once and for all by His blood, obtaining eternal redemption for His people.

The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. How much more then? How much more then will the blood of Christ who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself unblemished to God the Father, how much more then will He cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death? So that what? So that we might serve the living God.

How much more will He cleanse us so that we might serve the living God? We may have realised that in our worship of God, through our acts of service, or our representation of God to our neighbours, that we have offered God lame, sickly, blind sacrifices. But our hope this morning is that Christ offered an unblemished, perfect sacrifice on our behalf, thereby cleansing not simply us outwardly, but cleansing us in our consciences from the acts that lead to death. And notice the order here, friends. Notice the order.

So that we might serve. Same word serve is worship, the living God. So friends, in response, let us give God our first and our best because we are living sacrifices now, supported and motivated by the Spirit of God that cries, Abba Father from within us. Living sacrifices to God. Let us give Him our best, our utmost for His highest.

In our duties as spiritual heads of homes, fathers, dads, husbands. In our duties as shepherds of God's flock, elders, pastors, as representatives of Christ in the workforce, as servants in this church of God, be worshippers of God, both in word and deed. Let's pray. Father, there are youth groups that need running. There are discipleship groups that need to be filled. There are Bible study groups that need studies of Your word.

There are small groups. Father, there is so much need in this world for mercy. So much need in this world for missionaries. There are so many kids that need the love of a godly parent. Father, forgive our lame sacrifices.

Forgive our comfortable faith. We ask, Lord, that our lives may be moved more and more to bring You unbroken praise, and we know, Father, that we will mess up. We know, Father, that we will miss the mark, but Father, today we commit ourselves again that we will do it better than we did before. We will do it better. And may there be glory that comes from us and our lives that reflects back to You. May people look at our lives and praise the God in heaven on that day when He comes.

May we be light and salt in this world. And Father, ultimately, amazingly, we thank You for our unblemished sacrifice in Christ. Not only the sacrifice, the Lamb of God that came, but the high priest who mediated that sacrifice, who inspected the sacrifice, who said that it is good enough, that it is perfect. Father, we receive that forgiveness as well on our failed attempts. And we thank You, Lord, that it is not up to us and our efforts.

It's not because of our inadequacies even that we will lose anything. Father, may we remember that because of this unblemished sacrifice, our consciences have been washed clean from the acts that lead to death so that we may serve, worship the living God. Thank You for this, Lord Jesus. Amen.