Worship Matters

Please turn with me in your Bibles to the book of Malachi.  Two Sunday nights ago we started our study of this book and picking it up again this evening and we’ll carry it on over the next number of Sunday evenings, working our way through each of the chapters.  We’re looking tonight at Malachi chapter 1, beginning at verse 6 and going all the way through chapter 2, verse 9.  Malachi 1:6 through chapter 2 verse 9.  Let’s read this together and remember that this is God’s Holy Word.

“A son honors his father and a servant is master.  If then I am a father, where is my honor?  And if I am a master, where is my fear says the Lord of hosts to you, O priests who despise my name.”  “But you say, how have we despised your name?”  “By offering polluted food upon your alter.”  “But you say how have we polluted you?”  “By saying that the 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?  Present that to your governor.  Will he accept you or show you favor, says the Lord of hosts, and now entreat the favor of God that He may be gracious to us.”  “With such a gift from your hand will He show favor to any of you, says the Lord of hosts.”  “O that there were one among you who would shut the doors, that you might not kindle fire on my alter in vain.  I have no pleasure in you says the Lord of hosts, and I will not accept an offering from your hand, for from the rising of the sun to its setting, my name will be great among the nations and then every place incense will be offered to my name and a pure offering, for my name will be great among the nations says the Lord of hosts.”  “But you profane it when you say that the Lord’s table is polluted and it’s fruit, that is its food may be despised, but you say, what a weariness this is, and you snort at it says the Lord of hosts.  You bring what has been taken by violence or it is lame or sick, and this you bring as your offering.  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 Lord what is blemished.  For I am a great king says the Lord of hosts and my name will be feared among the nations.”

“And now O priest this command is for you.  If you will not listen, if you will not take it to heart to give honor to my name says the Lord of hosts, then I will send the curse upon you and I will curse your blessings.  Indeed I already cursed them because you do not lay it to heart.  Behold I will rebuke your offspring and spread dung on your faces.  The dung of your offerings and you shall be taken away with it.  So shall you know that I have sent this command to you that my covenant with Levi may stand, says the Lord of hosts.  My covenant with him was one of life and peace and I gave them to him.  It was a covenant of fear and he feared me, he stood in awe of my name.  True instruction was in his mouth and no wrong was found on his lips.  He walked with me in peace and uprightness and he turned many from iniquity.  For the lips of a priest should guard knowledge and people should seek instruction from his mouth for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts, but you have turned aside from the way, you have caused many to stumble by your instruction, you have corrupted the covenant of Levi says the Lord of hosts and so I make you despise and abase before all the people in as much as you do not keep my ways, but show partiality in your instruction.”

Let’s pray now together that the Lord would bless the preaching and hearing of his Word. 

Father in heaven, we believe that all Scripture is God breathed inspired by you and profitable for teaching, for reprove, for correction and for training and righteousness.  The man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work and so Lord we pray that this part of your Word would speak to us, would mature us, would help us to grow in the likeness of Christ.  We ask this in Jesus’ name.  Amen.

Well dear people of God, we began our study of the book of Malachi last week with the wonderful reminder that God loves us.  It is the opening declaration of the book, it sets a stage for everything that comes after in the book of Malachi.  We have those words in chapter 1 verse 2, Words of the Lord where he says, “I have loved you”, says the Lord.  Well God’s people needed that message as we were reminded of that first sermon.  They had returned from exile in Babylon, the temple in Jerusalem had been rebuilt, and yet the former glory of Israel had not returned.  Israel was kind of the size of a postage stamp in the middle of a vast Persian empire.  The temple was restored, but the glory of that new temple in no way matched the glory of Solomon’s temple, and the prosperity that had been promised by some of the prophets was missing and so Israel looked around and they said we’re back in our land, we have a temple again, we have walls around our city, but they began to lose hope at the kind of morbid condition that they found themselves in and with that loss of hope they also lost their zeal for the Lord.  And so, here in the Book of Malachi, Malachi brings a call to renewal and the place where he begins is with worship, the worship of Israel in those days, and it really makes sense, doesn’t it, because what is the most fitting response by the people of God to the love of God.  When God says, “I love you”, what is the best response that God’s people can bring to that wonderful statement or that wonderful truth?  And I think you’d agree with me, it’s worship, isn’t it?  When God says, “I love you”, the response of God’s people is to worship Him, to worship Him personally, to worship Him corporately.  Worship is the best expression of our devotion to God and just the opposite is true as well.  If there is one place more than any other that signals spiritual sickness or disease among God’s people, it is going to be found in our worship.  And a drift from true worship is what marked Israel.  Their worship had grown cold, their zeal for God was zapped, their forms of worship showed it, their leaders were mired in sin, and Malachi’s message was meant to correct the diseased worship of Israel and call them back to the kind of worship that God had commanded.

And so, the message tonight is entitled this, Worship Matters.  And I’m calling it that for two reasons.  One, because this is a sermon and this text that we’re looking at tonight is about the matters or stuff of worship.  And I’m also calling it that because even more how we worship really matters.  It really matters to God, and it ought to matter to us.  And so we’re gonna look at two things or two ways that God’s people worship God in adequate ways and then we’re gonna end the message looking at a few ways that our worship can be restored, revived, and brought in line with how God desires it to be. 

That first way that Israel wandered.  The first way is that they brought wearied worship to God.  Wearied, W E A R I E D, wearied worship.  And they did this by bringing polluted sacrifices to God.  And so, the Lord begins in our text, a son honors his father and a servant his master.  If I then am a father where is my honor, and if I am a master where is my fear, for you have defiled my name.”  Israel came back to that, and they said to the Lord, “Well how have we defiled your name?”, and then the Lord gives the answer, verse 7, “By offering polluted sacrifices on my alter.”  It’s clear what kind of sacrifices those were.  Malachi lays it out for us and laid it out for God’s people.  The polluted sacrifices were blind, lame, sick animals, inferior animals, we could call them leftovers or maybe we even call them seconds.  Sheri and I were just talking I think within this last week and we had gotten some vegetables out that we had bought at one of the local stores and Sheri said, “Ya know, these vegetables aren’t always that great”, and I said, “Well I think the store, ya know, sells us seconds”, right, they’ve got a little blemish, a spot, a bruise, they don’t last as long as vegetables we might get from another store.  They’re seconds.  And that’s what Israel was bringing to God in worship.  They kept the prime animals for themselves.  Verse 14 reminds us of that.  God says, “Cursed be the cheat who has a male in his flock, and he vows it, this is what I’m giving to the Lord, but then he goes and sacrifices the Lord was blemished.”  He kept the best for himself.  And they thought that the Lord would be pleased with this.  The Lord kinda has a satirical, kind of a mocking statement in verse 9.  “And now and treat the favor of God that he may be gracious to us, but with such a gift from your hand will he show favor?”  In other words, God’s people are saying, hey if we bring these sacrifices to God, He has to be pleased with them, I mean we’re bringing offerings, we’re bringing sacrifices, we’re doing what the Lord wants us to do, He has to bless us.  And yet God says, “How can I show favor when you brings these kinds of offerings.” 

You see what they were doing people of God is this, they were taking worship into their own hands.  They were doing it on their terms.  They were offering to God compromised worship and they knew better.  Leviticus 22:17-25, Deuteronomy 15:21, and 17:1 says “Animals that are blind, disabled, mutilated, that have a scab, they are not to be offered to the Lord.  No blemished animals.”  You might say, why, I mean, what’s the problem with that?  And the answer is simply this that God is holy and He deserves holy, unstained, not unclean, in other words clean offerings.  He is a holy God and the kind of offerings that need to be brought to God are holy offerings, not unclean offerings, and yet Israel was saying, “It’s good enough, it’s close enough, God wants us to bring offerings, we’re bringing offerings to the Lord, it will do, it’s fine.”  And so, they’re wearied worship was characterized by these polluted sacrifices that really stem from something else, deadened hearts. 

All throughout the Book of Malachi, we saw it in this text as well, you have this exchange between God and His people.  God speaks, the people object and the Lord will say, “But you say”, God says, “But you say” and back and forth it goes between God and His people and it shows that instead of listening to God, Israel had wanted to debate God, and that says something about their heart doesn’t it, that in their hearts they were unwilling to submit to God, that in their hearts they knew better than God.  God, this is what you say but we have an answer for you, and they wouldn’t listen, and they wouldn’t submit, and they wouldn’t bow before the Lord, and all of this led to a weariness in their worship.

Look at verse 14, chapter 1.  “But you say”, so here’s the Lord again, “But you say what a weariness this is and you snort at it says the Lord of hosts.”  You see for Israel what happened is the worship of God had become one big burden, a heavy weight, a load, offering unblemished sacrifices, pure ones, the kind that God had commanded in the Old Testament, worshiping on His terms had dragged them down and they were bored with it.  No fervency, only a fatigued duty.  It can happen, can’t it people of God.  It can happen in our worship too.  We go to worship, but do we have to?  Night church, again, the sermon is so long, I don’t get what the pastor is saying, I mean some of those songs, Here I raise my Ebenezer.  What is an Ebenezer after all?  I don’t get it.  And we get bored with it, it’s a burden, we’re going through the motions, and our heart has been lost.  This is what God’s people are saying, what a weariness this is, had enough, and they snort at it, a sign of their contempt.  What all this was about people of God is that they actually despise God Himself. 

That’s the way the Lord began, verse 6.  “O priest you despise my name.”  You see the root issue in wearied worship is really this, that God’s people were wearied with God Himself.  We’ve had enough of God, well, we love God, but He’s okay.  You see danger in worship is not only the fact that, ya know, we might do something heretical or really off in worship.  We’d say, well that’s false worship, you ought not to do that.  But I wonder if just as much of a danger is this, that we kind of fall into a malaise about worship.  Well, it’s Sunday again, yep, this is what we’re supposed to do, yes, I guess I’ll show up, go through the motions halfheartedly, not caring, wearied and bored with the whole thing.  That was problem number one.

Problem number two comes in chapter 2.  This is called wandering worship and this marked not by polluted offerings, but actually by polluted priests.  That’s what chapter 2 is really directed at.  These priests in Israel they had a duty.  Verse 1, the Lord says, “And now O priest this command is for you.”  They were given a command and that command as you see in verse 2 was to honor the name of the Lord.  That is what these priests were to do, they were to help God’s people and they themselves were to honor God’s name and they did this by serving in the temple.  They were the ones who offered sacrifices to God.  Think about prophets in the Bible, they spoke for God to the people.  There’s a downward direction, prophets speaking for God to the people, and it’s just the opposite for priests, priests speak for the people to God.  There’s an upward direction, so they offer their prayers, and they offer sacrifices to God and these priests they stood in the line of Levi. 

In verse 4 of chapter 2 we have that account or that line about a covenant that God had made with Levi.  God had set the tribe of Levi apart for service in the temple.  It was the tribe of Levi that actually came to defend the honor of God at the time of the golden calf, and the Lord says, “I am going to set you apart, you are going to be ordained for service to the Lord.”  So, these are all the things that priests were to do and yet what Malachi is saying is that they failed, and the failure of their ministry led God’s people to wander.  You can see the problem of the priests a few different places in these verses.  If you look at verse 2, you see first of all they failed to listen so God says, “If you will not listen, if you will not take it to heart to give honor to my name.”  It was absolutely clear in the Bible what their job ought to be, what their ministry should be about.  You read through the second half of Exodus, you read through the Book of Leviticus and there’s a detailed job description of how God should be worshiped and what the responsibility of the priest was, but they did not listen to the voice of the Lord.  God spoke and they ignored what he had to say.

The second thing that they did is they turned aside from the way themselves.  This is found in verse 8.  Another words, they themselves did not live according to the commands of God.  There was a gap between their life and their doctrine.  There’s a reason why Paul says to Timothy, “Keep a close watch on your life and your doctrine, both of those things together”, and these priests failed in it, they profess one thing, they lived another.  And this is a great reminder to us, isn’t it that before the church ever needs the gifts of their leaders, it needs the holiness of their leaders.  Israel had priests who tried to offer a holy sacrifice while living unholy lives.  They failed to listen to God, they turned aside from the way, and then verse 8 as well, they failed to instruct God’s people.

There’s a number of things that are listed here about what a priest ought to do.  One of those things is that the lips of a priest should guard knowledge, verse 7 says.  Why?, because they are a messenger of the Lord of hosts.  They are to instruct God’s people, they are to protect the Word of God, they are to promote the Word of God, they are to bring the Word of God to the people of God and yet Malachi says, “You have caused many to stumble by your instruction.”  They led God’s people astray.  If we could summarize all this, the priests did not listen to God’s Word, they did not live by God’s Word, and they did not preach God’s Word.  Do you see this, they had a Word of God problem.  They didn’t listen to it, they didn’t live by it, they didn’t preach it, and teach it, and there’s a great rebuke from the Lord in this passage.  “Their offspring would be rebuked, there would be generational consequences of their sin.  The waste of the animals that they were offering God says, “The waste of those animals is going to be smeared on your face”, you’re gonna walk around with dung on your face and just as you would take the entrails, the guts of the animals and you’d sacrifice the animals and put the guts over there so that’s what’s gonna happen to you, you’re gonna be sent away to the dump pile.  And then the Lord says, “Ultimately I will make you despise and abased before all the people.”  In other words, their ministry of the Word would be rejected because of their unfaithfulness.  Reminds us, doesn’t it, of things that we say happen in our own day.  Shrinking churches, shrinking denominations and people scratch their heads and say, “What’s going on, why is this happening”, and there might be a whole host of reasons, but often it’s this one.  Shrinking churches and denominations due to strained pastors and their theologies.  The very same thing that God said would happen to these priests, they’re going to reject your ministry of the Word because you have been unfaithful.  And you see what the lesson is here people of God?  The lesson to these priests and the lesson for the church is this, as goes the pulpit so goes the people.  As goes the pulpit, so goes the people of God.  If failure in the pulpit, you’re a failure among God’s people.  If strengthen the pulpit, you’ll have strength among God’s people.  You ought to, and I know you do, but you ought to demand a strong pulpit and praise God we have one here.  But never give up on that, require that of us pastors, and guard it elders, guard what happens here.  Let’s say you had wearied worship; you have wandering worship. 

Now this passage also has to say something about worthy worship.  If we’re to ask this question, how do we protect and how do we promote faithful worship of God, what do we do when wearied or wandering worship is happening.  Let me give you four things from these two chapters.  First of all, we need to recenter ourselves upon the greatness of God, God’s greatness.  I see in the midst of the section about polluted offerings, especially this chapter 1, the Lord reminding Israel of who he is.  Look at some of the markers, the self-identifying markers.  Verse 6, verse 8, 9, 11, 14, God identifies himself in three ways in these verses.  He calls Himself father, calls Himself master, calls himself Lord of hosts and calls Himself the great king.  And why is God doing this, why is God stacking up all of these self-descriptions for Israel, for this reason to remind them of his greatness so that they would worship him accordingly.  God in a sense is saying, remember who I am.  If your worship is going to be aligned rightly, you’re going to bring me faithful, worthy worship, you must remember who I am.  If I am a father, he says, where is my honor, but that’s exactly who I am, I’m your father.  If I am a master, where is my fear, it’s exactly who I am, I am your master, your Lord.  Seven times he calls Himself the Lord of hosts in these verses.  He is the Lord of armies of angels all who worship Him and if they worship Him, shouldn’t we worship Him?

And then verse 14 he calls himself the great king.  “I am a great king”, says the Lord of hosts.  God is going to great lengths to remind Israel, to remind us of who He is so that our worship would reflect His greatness and His glory.  Part of weary worship is due to being wearied with God Himself, then we need to be shaken and reminded of who God is so that we aren’t weary or bored with Him.  We’re coming to worship this great God and king.  I took a look at a Westminster confession of Faith chapter 2.1, and that reminds us of who our God is.  Let me quickly read through it.  “There is but one only living and t4rue God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute, working all things according to the counsel of his will, most loving, gracious, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, the rewarder of them that diligently seek him, and withal most just and terrible in his judgments, hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty.”  How can you be bored; how can you be bored before a God like that?  So, when you come to worship friends, who are you coming to and what gift would you bring this God?  God’s greatness, second God’s Word.  There was a failure of the priest to abide by the Word of God, he mentioned that already, and we need to let God’s Word determine our worship.  We have to have a Word centered worship if we are going to stay or keep from drifting as Israel did.

Ezra was contemporary of Malachi when God’s people returned to Jerusalem to build the temple, Ezra was sent to teach them the Word of God.  He set his heart to study the law of the Lord to do it, to teach his rules and statutes in Israel.  He returns and he brings the word, we must be Word shaped, and Word centered.  This is why we believe in something called the regulative principle, two principles to drive worship, the normative principle, the regulative principle.  The normative principle, we can do anything as long as the Bible does not forbid it.  That’s not the principle we worship by.  The regulative principle is this, we will worship only in the ways that God has commanded.  You see the difference?  Looking for how does the Bible direct our worship and that’s how we are going to worship rather than I am going to look for prohibitions and everything else is on the table.  Sometimes we think the regular principle is restrictive right, but friends, what freedom it gives, freedom from manmade traditions, freedom from the latest fad that comes along because we’re guided by the Word.  So let’s make sure our worship is Word shaped worship.  We sing the Word, we hear the Word, pray the Word, we preach the Word, see the Word and the sacraments.

Third, God’s worship.  We need to be reminded of what God wants in worship.  I want you just to quickly look at that first section we looked at tonight, chapter 1.  I want you to notice something.  In those verses, verses 6 through 9, and verses 12 to 14 are parallel sections.  Verse 6 to 9 and verses 12 to 14 parallel one another and in between you have verses 10 and 11, and they form the center, and I want you to look at those two verses particularly.  Verse 10, “Oh that there were one among you who would shut the doors that you might not kindle fire on my alter in vain, I have no pleasure in you says the Lord of hosts and I will not accept an offering from your hand.”  In other words, the Lord says, “I wish there was somebody who would stop it, stop the temple worship, shut the doors, no more temple worship, I can’t take your sacrifices any longer.  Cease.”  I with there were one who would come along and do that.

Then go to verse 11.  “For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name will be great among the nations and in every place incense will be offered in my name and a pure offering for my name will be great among the nations”, says the Lord of Hosts.  Another words, in that verse the Lord says, “Oh that there would be worship, worship by everyone, all the nations, Jew and Gentile, pure offerings not blemished ones, in every place may incense be offered.  You take those two verses and they sound like they’re saying opposite things, don’t they?  “Shut down worship, oh bring it on by all the people by all nations.”  They seem like they’re opposites until you see those two verses fulfilled in Christ.  Because you remember that Jesus said there would be a time when the temple doors would be shut.  In fact, a time when the temple itself would be no more.  No more worship, just in Jerusalem, and worship that would be engaged by all people, whatever your background, whatever your color, whatever your status, whatever your heritage, whatever your language, all people would come to worship Him.  This is what Jesus was talking about in John chapter 2.  When Jesus says, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.”  John says he was speaking about the temple of his body, his resurrection.  But do you see there, there’s an invocation for temple worship there.  No more temple because Christ has been raised.  Don’t go worship Jesus at the temple any longer.  He is the temple, and in fact we become temples of the Holy Spirit.

Then in John 4 two chapters later, he is talking to a Samaritan woman, a hated Samaritan and a woman to boot and Jesus says, we read the text tonight, “Woman believe me the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.”  But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.  God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth.  The Lord says, oh that there were one among you who would shut the doors.”  Well, there was one coming who would shut the doors, who would in fact expand worship given its true meaning.  This is a prophecy about the coming of Jesus and you see the way our worship will stay on track is only when we worship in the name and in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.  When we come in His name, when we approach the Father in his Name when we come in the power of the Lord Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit, then can our worship stay on track.  For you see, we have to come worshiping, this is the final thing, we have to come worshiping in the name and in the spirit of God’s son.  He is our great eternal high priest.  He is the priest that those Old Testament priests would never be.  Levi is the head of the priesthood and it’s described for us here in chapter 2:5 and 6, what he was like.  It says he stood in awe of my name, true instruction was found in his mouth, no wrong was found in his lips, he walked with me in peace and uprightness, he turned many away from iniquity.  All those things were true of Levi, but even more all those things were true of Christ.  He stood in awe of the name of the Father, in Jesus.  Jesus true instruction was found in his mouth.  In Jesus no wrong was found in his lips.  In Jesus he walked with a Father in peace and uprightness, Jesus turned many away from iniquity.  Jesus is our great eternal high priest. 

The Book of Hebrew says it so well in chapter 7, “The former priests were many in number because they were prevented by death from continuing in office, but he holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever.”  He is the great priest we need, he is the great priest these priests in Malachi’s day could never be and not only is He our great eternal high priest, but He is also our perfect sacrifice and offering, because he is pure, without stain, without defect.  As Peter reminds us in 1 Peter 1:18, “We have been ransomed not with silver or gold, but with a precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.”  All those offerings lame, blind, spotted, defected, blemished that Israel was bringing.  They couldn’t do the job, but we have a savior who is also our sacrifice, and he is unblemished, and he is spotless, and you see it is only through Him then that our worship can be acceptable to God.  And so, through Jesus and in His name, we come to our great God.  People of God do not come wearied but come in joy because of Christ.  Do not come wandering because He is the way, He is the truth, and He is the life, and His Word is truth.  Let’s pray together.

Father in heaven, we do praise you for the privilege of worship today, of gathering as your people, and we pray that you would accept our worship for the sake of Christ alone.  We realize we come with sinful hearts, but we come in the name of Christ, our perfect high priest, our perfect sacrifice.  We come not to a temple, come to this worship place, we could worship anywhere, but we come in the name of the Lord Jesus, and we come in spirit and the truth.  Be pleased we pray, not only today, tonight, but next week and weeks after that as we come to gather as your people to exalt your great name, and we pray these things in Jesus’ name.  Amen.