Perhaps you found yourself before in a vehicle in the back seat, maybe in a cab, or an Uber, in a crowded city, where the traffic is crazy, and you get kind of nervous about your safety. You think, what in the world am I going to, we're going to crash. You ever been like that? Maybe you're in another country. You're on a mission trip or a vacation and you're in the vehicle and somebody's driving and you're thinking, this is nuts. Either they have no laws here at all, or nobody cares about them. And you get uncomfortable, uneasy about your safety in the back of the car. There's something that I do is kind of a trick to kind of fool my own brain. I just pretend that the windshield is a movie screen. And I'm just watching a movie. Try this sometime. And I'll think, well, that's not me in there. That's like a car chase scene in an action movie. You ever do that? you'll think, whoa, I'd hate to be those people right now. That was a close one. And I try to detach myself from the reality of where I am right now. I think we do that sometimes with the Bible. We don't really see ourselves in the story. We want to picture that we're outside of it, and we see what's going on in the story of scripture. For example, the book of Malachi that we're going to be in the next few weeks, and we say, wow, those people are a mess. I'm glad I'm not those people. I'm glad I don't do that. Or we look at the condemnation from the Lord, and we say, wow, God's really disappointed in those people. I'm glad I'm not those people. We have a tendency to do that, to want to watch it as if it's happening to someone else. And instead, I think we need to make sure we put ourselves right in the vehicle with the recipients of this writing of Malachi and say, what does this have to say to me? I want to find myself in the story. And so while this is written, 2500 years ago, a place on the other side of the globe, we can kind of stand back and see what a mess they were and God's word through his prophet to them. And we don't realize that we're often guilty of the same thing. We're often need, we often need to hear the same message from the Lord. So there's my challenge for you today and in the coming days, and really, whenever we open up the word of God, is where am I in the story? Well, I'm not guilty of the exact same things they were guilty of. Are there principles here that apply to my life? So let's go back and see where we are, where this is coming from. And let's dive into the text here before. So Aaron read it for us earlier in the service and see, what does God have to say to us today about our attitude, that's similar to the attitude of those who 1st received this word from the Lord. The book of Malachi, Malachi is a prophet, the last book of the Bible to the Old Testament to be written. It's the last book placed in the order of the Old Testament. It was written around 430 to 450 BC. So just think roughly 500 years before Christ, and roughly 2,500 years ago. Just kind of give yourself a historical context here. Now, Ruston, last week kicked off a series. He went into a lot of detail about the historical backgrounds of this. If you missed last week. I encourage you to go back, go to our website or our podcast, our social media, and you can find sermons from the past. Anytime you miss one, go back and catch one of those. Our team does a great job of making those available for you to stay caught up even when you miss. And so we go back here and we see that what has happened is the Israel, the nation has recently returned to the land. So let me give you a little historical background. If you go back to the very beginning of the Bible, the book of Genesis. Very early in the book of Genesis, God makes a promise to a man named Abram. We call it the Abrahamic covenant. And you really have to understand that because that traces its way all throughout the scripture. So it makes this promise to Abraham. I'm going to make a great nation of you. I'm going to give you a promised land, and eventually I'm going to bless all the nations of the world through you. And so we trace that story through the Old Testament. God does indeed cause a great nation to descend from Abraham. He gives them this land. He leads them to the land. And then at one point they're living in the land, they are so disobedient, so rebellious toward the Lord, that they get kicked out of the land. We called that the exile. So sometimes you hear that word exile. a preacher will say to you, read in a book, What is the exile? Simply remember this. The exile was a time when the children of God were so disobedient, they kicked him out of the land. And so for the Israelites, in this case, it was at the hands of the Babylonians, they had become so disobedient, so rebellious, that the Lord allowed the Babylonians to conquer them and carry them off into captivity. Now, the Persians have defeated the Babylonians and the Persians have allowed Israel to return home. It's all God's plan. God allows them to be captured by the Babylonians. God allows the Persians to defeat the Babylonians, so that Israelites can return to the land. Now they're back in the land. The wall has been rebuilt, the temple has been rebuilt, and prophets are speaking of great days ahead, and yet, the people begin to grow frustrated. things are not quite like they thought they would be. The expectations have not been met. Those promises of God aren't coming about fast enough for them. And the apparent delay in the fulfillment of God's promises that they see has led to disappointment and discouragement. And that disappointment and that discouragement has given way to spiritual apathy. See, this is what happened for them. Their expectations were not met. Things were not as easy and as good as they had hoped for. They were still under Persian rule. Yeah, we're free from the Babylonians, but we're still under the authority of the Persians. And that came with taxation, and that taxation led to great economic hardship for the people. And then they looked around them, and they saw delay injustice. that seeing that the wicked were prospering. They began to say, God, where are you? Have you abandoned us? Do you still love us? Trust and dealt with that last week. So their disappointment led to doubt, and their doubt led to disobedience, and their disobedience gave way to apathy. They now had coldhearted worship, a lack of devotion and spiritual compromise. Maybe you've experienced that. Hey, you experienced that before. It doesn't seem like God was answering your prayers the way you wanted it. You wondered if God still loved you. You wondered if God was still in control of what was going on, and that led to disappointment in your life, and that gave way to disobedience in your life, and that gave way to a spiritual apathy in your life. If you ever been there, you can understand the setting here. And so because of their disappointment and their discouragement, they were not offering God worship with all their hearts as he had called them to. And last week, we saw the reminder. In the early verses, that God did indeed still love them. If you miss that, go back and catch that. The 1st question was, God, do you really love us? And God says, yes, indeed, I still love you. Now the tables are turned. Last week, the question was, God, do you still love us? Now the question is, do you still love God? Last week, Malachi argued that God indeed still loves them. Now it's their love that's called into question. The real love, the real question, the real issue is not God's love for Israel, but Israel's love for God. It's a contrast made here. God had been their faithful follower. God had been their faithful father. Yet they failed to give God the honor that he deserved. They failed to honor God with their sacrifices and their acts of worship. Now let's think for a minute, has much changed in 2500 years. We still see ourselves here. We still face times in our lives where we have spiritual apathy, our devotion grows cold, our worship becomes just ritual, our commitment wanes, and the words of Malachi still ring true in our lives today. Let's look at them. Verse six, let's see what's going on here. Verse six, a son honors his father, and a servant is master. If then I am a father, where's my honor? And if I'm a master, where's my fear? says the Lord of hosts to you, O priests, who despise my name, having affirmed God's unconditional love in the previous verses. Now he gets to the issue of their guilt. Yes, he still loves you, but your unfaithfulness must be addressed. You've had that conversation probably with your own kids at times. I love you, but you can't do this. I love you, but there's something that has to be dealt with. And God is saying here. Yes, I love you, but we got to talk about your attitude toward me as your father is what he's saying. And God begins to question here the sincerity of their devotion. Now, Russ had noted this last week. We'll see it again this week. You'll see it throughout the whole book. The structure is kind of questioning back and forth. God asks a question and then they kind of ask a defensive question back to God and it kind of goes back and forth here. We going to see that unfold here. So God asked the question. Where is my honor? Where is my fear? I'm supposed to be, your father supposed to be, your master? Where is the honor? Where's the fear that you should be showing me? Now I want you to notice these 2 words here, fear, in verse 6, and despised, fear, and despised. Let's contrast those for a minute. What does it mean to fear the Lord? We see the lot in scripture. What it means if you're the Lord, is to recognize his greatness, to respect his power and authority and our life, and to take him seriously as our creator and as our Lord. Now, and they say, can I love God and fear God at the same time? Absolutely, that's what scripture calls us to do. We're to both love God and fear God. Think of examples of that. Winter is coming. Bill, I saw we rolled the coat rack back out here. I don't like to see that. That's a bad sign that the coat racks are coming out. That means pretty soon people are going to wear coats because it's cold. And you're going to go home at some point, maybe if you have a fireplace, and you're going to enjoy the warmth of that fireplace, and you're going to enjoy the warmth of that fireplace. You're gonna love the warmth of the fire, but you're gonna tell your kids, don't play with the fire. Don't play with the fire. So you can love fire and fear fire at the same time. I love that it keeps me warm, but you don't go playing around with it. I liked it when I go home. I can flip on a light switch and the lights come on. I love electricity. But a lot of men will tell you, I'll do home improvement projects, but I'm not going to touch the electricity. Guys will say electricity scares me. I'll mess with these projects, but I'm gonna call a professional. If I've got to fix the electricity. You can love electricity and fear electricity at the same time. You can go to the Grand Canyon, and you can stand at all at the magnitude and the beauty of the Grand Canyon, but you don't want to walk right up to the edge and stand on the edge. You can stand back and be in awe of the beauty of it, but no, there's not, it's not safe to just wander carelessly right up to the edge of it. He said, that should be your attitude toward God. You should have feared him. You should see his greatness and his power and his authority in your life. And yet verse 6 says, God says, instead you despise me. You despise me. What does it mean to despise? Despise means to think little of. To treat as if it's insignificant or worthless. And he's saying here, rather than taking God seriously, they considered their service to him that's unimportant, not worth the trouble. When they should have respected his power and authority, they should have stood at all of his glory, they treated God as insignificant. How? Continue on number six. But you say, how have we despised your name? By offering polluted food upon my altar? But you say, how have we polluted you? By saying that the Lord's table made to be the spies. You'll see what's happening here. Every offense God brings, they meet with a defensive question. Maybe this sounds familiar. Maybe you've had similar arguments with your own teenage children, where you say something and then they come back with a question, I see some moms like side eyeing their kids in the crowd here. My daughter when she was a teenager. We would argue about her room. I thought she should keep a room cleaner. And I would go in a room and I would say, Kalen, you got to clean your room. And she would say, what do you mean? And I said, I mean, clean your room. And she goes, what do you mean, clean my room? I said, your room's a mess. What do you mean, my room's a mess? Well, there's stuff over the floor. What do you mean there's stuff over the floor? I'm like, 0 my gosh. I'm just sitting in this loop, right? Like everything I say is met with this, what do you mean? What do you mean? What do you mean? That's the people responding to the prophet Malachi here. Every time he says something, they go, what do you mean? You despise my name. What do you mean? You're putting polluted food on the altar. What do you mean polluted food on the altar? So what he's saying here is you guys are defiling it. You're despising me. You're treating me as worthless by the offerings you're bringing and laying upon the table. Let's talk about what's happening here. This is in a day where God was worshiped in the temple through a sacrificial system. Now, all of that foreshadowed Jesus. The reason we don't bring animals to Northland and sacrifice them is because Jesus was our sacrifice. They were doing this day after day, year after year for generations, to point to Jesus. Now Jesus has come, his death on the cross is our ultimate sacrifice. He's our unblemished, perfect sacrifice for our sins, so we're made right with God through the sacrifice of Jesus. In that day, they're bringing animals to the temple to sacrifice to God, because it's pointing to what we're going to see as the sacrifice of Jesus. And God gave them very clear instructions. And there's a lot we could say about that, but the one thing you need to know about that today. It's found in a couple places. Leviticus 22, verse 20 says this. You shall not offer anything that is blemished, for it will not be acceptable for you. And then Deuteronomy 1521. But if any has a blemish, the animal you're bringing has a blemish, if it is lame or blind or has any serious blemish whatsoever, you shall not sacrifice it to the Lord your God. Here's the instruction. Bring me perfect animals. They can't be blemished, they can't be lame, they can't be sick, they can't be blind. I want your best when you bring it to me is what God had said. Now look at verse eight. 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. See, this should have brought perfect animals to the Lord. Instead, verse 8 says, they brought those that were lame and blind and sick. They weren't offering their best to God only what is crippled and diseased. See, these are animals they are trying to get rid of. They weren't bringing their best to God. It wasn't going to cost them anything to bring blind animals. An example, again, I'm not this isn't a bad thing that people have done this, but just by way of illustration. There have been times over the years at Northland, where someone will get, I remember one time someone got a new computer. And they called me up and they said, yeah, our computer got really outdated, and it was given us trouble, and so we went out and bought a new one, and we're wondering if the church wants our old one. So they're saying, we have a thing that is no longer of any use to us. We're one if the church would like to have it, or someone would say, a husband would say, yeah, my wife, she doesn't like this couch anymore. It's kind of torn up, getting ratty, and she wanted to get rid of it. So we went and bought a new couch. And I'm wondering if the youth group would like to have our old one. What are they saying? This thing that my wife just really wants to get rid of. I wonder if the church would like to have it. He said, I'm saying, it has nobody. Sometimes people say, we're gonna throw it away, but my wife said, wait, before we throw it away, call up the church. That's what they're doing with these animals. They're saying this is a worthless animal, but let's see if we can take it to the temple and we'll get rid of it at the temple. And so God was saying, look, that's not your best. You should be bringing your best before me. And instead you're bringing what is crippled. It's a similar way that you take things to the thrift store. We do that, nothing wrong with that. You got that stuff you don't need anymore, don't want anymore. You drive it up to the thrift store. But let's not kid ourselves like we're making a big, generous donation to the needy. We're just trying to get rid of something. That's better than throwing it away. Take it to the thrift store. It'll go under a good cause, but we don't get to sort of count that as like a generous sacrifice before the Lord when I took the junk out of the basement to the thrift store to get rid of it when I was cleaning out the house, right? That's what they're doing. They're just trying to get rid of stuff of no value. And he says, you should have brought your best. You said to the priest, you're letting people bring things that are less than their best. And then he says, Try that with your governor. Look at verse eight. What's going on here? Present that to your governor. This is a reference to their Persian governor. Remember, they're still under the authority of Persia. And they owe to Persia taxes. And so he's talking not about sacrificing an animal to a Persian governor, but giving an animal as a tax to a Persian governor. And he said, try that with your governor. You're giving your best to your governor and your worst to the Lord. You are more fearful of the governor's rejection than God's rejection. And you're giving greater respect to your earthly rulers than you're giving to the Lord. And then verse nine. Now, verse nine, I think is sarcasm. I think it's meant to be taken as a sarcastic comment. And now entreat the favor of God, that he may be gracious to us. With such a gift from your hands, will he show favor to any of you, says Lord of Host. What is he saying here? He's saying, go ahead and beg God for help. while offering this pitiful offering. Or in other words, he said, how dare you come to the Lord and ask him for his favor when you show such little devotion to him with the blind sheep you're bringing as your sacrifice? Treating God like a genie in a bottle and not a king on a throne? When you want something, you come running to God, but you're not really going to lay down your very best before him. Then verse 10. Now verse 10. It's a hard verse. It's probably the hardest hitting. It's certainly the hardest hitting verse in this passage, maybe the whole book. I think we'll go through this whole book between now and our Christmas series. My opinion, there's not a more convicting verse in all the book than verse 10. Listen to this. Oh, that there were one among you who would shut the doors. That you might not kindle fire on my altar in vain. I have no pleasure in you, says the Lord of Host, and I will not accept an offering from your hand. What's he saying there? You know what? I'm so tired of these blind sheep. I think you should just shut the whole thing down. Wow, what a word from the Lord. I, I, if you, if you're not going to bring your best, then lock the doors of the temple, tell this to the priest, priest, shut down the temple, because I'm tired of the blind sheep that the people keep bringing me. Imagine, Nathan Perkable's our one of our custodial staff here. He's the one who opens up the building every Sunday morning. He beats all of us here. And he unlocks the building, he turns on the lights, he makes sure everything's looking good for the day. Imagine Nathan calling me on Saturday and saying, Matt, I got a word from the Lord. And the Lord said, don't unlock the church tomorrow. I said, what? He said, yeah, the Lord said to me, I'm so tired of these empty ritual of these people that I'd just rather you not unlock the doors in the morning. That's what the Lord is saying here. What a hard word that is to hear, that he'd said, rather you just close the whole thing down, then keep bringing me your empty offerings. Better to have no religion at all than a religion that fails to give God, our very best is what he's saying. If you're not going to use this place for its proper purpose, then don't show up is what he's telling the people. Verse 11. For the rise in the sun to its setting, my name will be great among the nations. 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 Lord of hosts, but you profane it. When you say to the Lord, when you say that the Lord's table is polluted, and it's fruit, that is, its food, may be despised. What does this say? The rising of the sun to its setting? This is an idiom, figure of speech, to talk about all over the world, from the place the sun comes up to the place the sun goes down, over the entire land, my name one day will be worshiped with pure offerings. This is looking forward. Looking forward to a future time where God's name will be honored everywhere by those who offer pure offerings before him. What he's saying here is what you are failing to do in your day. What will one day be done among all the nations? One day. My name will be praised everywhere. What a shame that you dishonor it today with your careless attitudes and your sacrifices. In verse 13. But you say, I hear they're going to answer back. But you say, what a weariness this is. And you snort at it, says the Lord of Host. You bring what has been taken by violence or is lame or sick. And this you bring is your offering? Shall I accept that from your hand, says the Lord. Now verse eight. He addressed the blemished offerings. They brought what was what was sick and blind. And now he says, you're bringing what's taken by violence, what's been stolen. didn't even cost you anything. And this is what you bring before me. And he goes even further in verse 13 to address the attitude of their heart. Not only are you bringing sick animals, you're even doing that with a bad attitude. You're bringing me the worst of your flock and you're complaining about that. So not just your efforts are terrible. Your attitude's terrible, is what he's saying. You're complaining that worship is a weariness to you. You're complaining that worship of me has become a burden to you. You bring what is stolen, and injured, and sick, and all the while complaining. How can I accept that? From your hand, he says. And then verse 14. Cursed be the cheat. Who has a male in his flock and vows it. And yet sacrifices of the Lord what is blemished. You had the best of your flock, and you promised me the best of your flock. And then when you show up, you've got the worst of your flock. From a great king, he concludes, I'm a great king, says the Lord of Hosts. And my name shall be feared among the nations. You despise my name when you should have feared my name. Verse 8, 9, you wanted my favor. Verse 14, he says you get my cursing. You're just good enough attitude. It's not acceptable to me. Now, what do we do with this? You say, well, I've never brought a sheep here, let alone a blind sheep. I've never went through my flock and picked out my worst animals to bring up to the church. So what do I do with this? We got to put ourselves on the story. We would ask ourselves some questions. Is there some way in our day that we're guilty of the same thing in the attitude of our heart? Let me ask you 3 questions for us to consider 3 questions together. Number one, am I giving God the honor he deserves? Am I giving God the honor he deserves? Verse six, they failed to honor God's name. God is their father. God is their master. He's worthy of respect. See, it wasn't about the animals, about the attitude. It wasn't about a blind sheep. It's about an attitude that thinks a blind sheep is something that I should bring before God. Verse 8. They brought sacrifices to the Lord, that they wouldn't dare offer as a tax to their governor. You bring these blind sheep, you wouldn't give that to your governor. So the people of Malachi's day put their Persian governor ahead of their lord and master. Are we guilty of the same? Does God have the highest priority in our lives? This is a hard pass to wrestle with us a lot. I had 3 weeks to study this because I was out the last couple Sundays. And just convicting to me. God, what are the blind sheep in my life? Do I really bring you my best? Do I really put you first? Are you really the priority of my life? We use the word worship? the English word worship. You know, the, the, the, uh, evolution, the etymology, that word, it comes from an old word worthship. Worship means to give worth to something. When you worship God, you're saying God is worthy. He's worthy of my time. He's worthy of my commitment. He's worthy of my giving. He's worthy of my service. He's worthy of my sacrifices. And so we ask the question, is God really worthy? Do we really see God as worthy of our very best? Would others buy the excuses I give to God? Go a few days or weeks without speaking to your spouse. and see how they feel about it. And yet we'll go days or weeks without really praying to the Lord. Go to that friend who's trying to text you and you won't answer back those texts. See how that goes for your friendship, and yet we'll go days ghosting our time with the Lord in his word and in prayer. Try to tell a professor or a teacher tomorrow that you didn't do the assignment because your weak was just really busy. And see how that goes before the professor. Tell your boss, you won't be coming to work for a few weeks because you got some things to do around the house. Or come April. Tell the IRS. You don't plan to pay your taxes this year because of that car you bought. No one's buying this, right? No one else in our life buys our excuses. But we think we can offer those to the king of heaven, we're so guilty of this. Is Jesus worth our sacrifice? Is he worth it? Is he worth it? 2nd question, am I giving God my very best? Verse 8, they offered the blind, the lame, the sick. Verse 13. They offer what was stolen, verse 14. They vowed their best, but brought their worst. When have we been guilty of this? Offering God our very best. Asked, really consider. What are the blind sheep in our lives today? What are the blind sheep we offer up to the Lord? Something interesting, despite will of illustration, once in a while, I'll run into someone in public that I haven't seen in a long time. There'll be a member of our church, and they haven't come for a long time, and I've reached out to them, their life group leader, maybe their deacons reached out and haven't heard from anyone. And I'll think, wow, this person has decided they're not going to come here anymore, or maybe they got offended by something, or maybe they found a church with better preaching or something, and they're going off there. And then I'll run them in public and they'll get really excited. And they'll say, hey, Pastor Matt. And I'll say, well, that's weird that you called me. I don't say this. But I'm thinking, this is a really weird encounter. And so I'll go over, and they'll be sitting with a friend or a coworker, and they'll introduce me, and they'll say, this is my pastor. And I think, that's a really odd thing for you to call me. Because I haven't seen you in months. And then they'll say, yeah, he said Northland Church, the church I go to. I'm thinking, no, there's, you don't go to that church anymore. This is a really weird conversation we're having right now because you have not come in a really long time. And I wonder how many times we treat the Lord that way. This is my lord. And he says, your lord, that's a funny thing for you to call me. Is there really evidence in our life that he's the Lord of our life? Can you really say, yes, by the way, you live your life? There's evidence that you bring me your best. And then third, this is something we're guilty of. We need to consider this question. Am I giving God genuine worship or burdensome ritual? Am I just going through the motions? And if I'm honest, I'm quite bored right now. And I'm treating I'm cheating God from the true worship. He deserves. Verse 9. They were cheating God while seeking his blessing. I'll bring you a sheep because I need something from you, but it's not going to be my best sheep. All the while, verse 13 says they complained that worship had become a wearisome burden. To the point where in verse 10, God said, just lock the doors. Just lock the doors. Because your offerings are not your best, and your attitude is terrible, and this has just become empty ritual, and not true worship. We go through seasons of that. We need to say, is it real? Genuine worship. I love the song. Micah, you do such a great job choosing songs that line up so well every week with the text and we sang that opening song. The king is in the room. You believe that? You came through those doors this morning to worship King Jesus. The king is in the room. And we sang, Jesus, we bow only to you. We're laying down all of our crowns. We've come here to worship King Jesus. And then we sang right before I walked up here, Jesus be the name that gets all the glory. I wonder how many times in my life God would say, just stop singing. If you don't mean it, stop singing, just sit this one out. Because you're saying things with your lips that aren't true in your heart right now, our worship has become burdensome ritual, let it be genuine worship before the Lord. So what do we do with this? We ask the question each week. Now what? What's the application of this text to my life? We see the problem that was addressed 2500 years ago. We asked some questions to try to identify the blind sheep of our own life. Let me give you 3 words of encouragement. Number one, bring your best. Bring your best. God knows when we bring our best. Several years ago, Mason and Michael were really little. Micah came running in the room, really excited, a handful of pennies, probably about 10 pennies in his little hand. And he said, look at all these pennies Mason gave me, and all I had to give him was $one. I said, all right, guys, we're done unsupervised exchanging of money here, okay? You can fool your brother, but you can't fool your father. Okay? We can fool our brothers with our acts of worship, our acts of service, but the Father knows if we brought our best. Am I bringing my best before the Lord? God is not a thrift store. Where we donate our things of little value, where we give him the leftover time of our life, where he gets the leftover energy. He deserves our best. We give him our best. Let's ask that question every day of our lives. Let's ask that on Sunday. Is God getting my best on Sunday morning? Do I really come here to worship the king in the room or is this a wearisome obligation that's easily easy to skip the slightest inconvenience? What if we said worshiping the Lord on Sunday with the gathered church is the centerpiece and highlight of our weekend? You know, if I weren't a pastor, I'd probably be maybe if I weren't a follower of Christ or serious about it, I think I'd be one of those tailgate guys. I'd have the bus, the old school bus, painted red, and I'd have my spot in lot A, or wherever that is, and Nick would be there with me, and I'd call Nick on Thursday, and say, Nick, I'm bringing the wings. You got the rotel, and we'd be planning for it. And we decide, what time are you going to get out there? I think we need to be at about 6 a.m. We're going to get out there. We're going to have his RV and my old school bus parked in line, ready to roll in, to put up the tent, to hoist the flags, because this is the highlight of our week. Everything's been pointing to this moment in time. What if the worship of King Jesus were like that? Where everything we did in the week pointed to coming here together with the gathered church and lifting up his name together. What if I was prayerful throughout the week? What if I got up early on Sunday and prayed for this moment in time? What if I got here on time and excited? I was at Disney World? He had to get there early and they did the rope drop. You guys are a Disney family. We were like, rope dropped it. What if we rope dropped worship? What if we rolled in here and there's a rope out there and says, just a crowd waiting to drop the rope to get in the room to worship King Jesus. We're not going to try that. But what if we got that excited? What if we locked in? And said, God, you get every moment of my attention. As we lift up your name, as we dive into scriptures, we pray before you. What if every week, every day of our week was like that. When our alarm goes off and our pillow pops off the pillow, what if God gets the best of our day? What if he gets my very best in the ministries I serve in? Never going to mail it in? Never going to be just the thought that counts. He's going to get my best. Bring your best. Leave the blind sheep at home and bring your best every day when you wake up before the Lord. Second, make the sacrifice. True worship is costly. This pass is convicting to me on 2 levels. One personally, I think I'm guilty of blind sheep in my life. And second, I realize late in my study, this is not to the people, it's to the priests. He's and the priests have lowered the bar. The priests have said it's okay to not come to the Lord with all of your heart. I think I'm guilty of that as your pastor sometime of soft selling the spiritual disciplines. Soft selling what it means to serve the Lord. Let's not soft sell anything. It's hard to serve the Lord. We don't want to lower the bar. I want to raise the bar. God is worthy of our time. God is worthy of our giving. God is worthy of our effort. God is worthy of it all. And so we do hard things. Do hard things. Life is hard. We try to make it as easy as we can. I was at Disney World. I was surprised with a number of rechargeable fans I saw, just people with fans walking around, just blowing air on them all the time. It's sometimes life just gets hot. I saw a stroller pushing this kid had 5 fans on the stroller. Five. I counted. I wanted to get a picture. They had one on each side blowing on the kid. It was probably too big to be in a stroller. That's another thing, walk, kid. And then my velocity, you're old enough to walk you're old enough to walk. And then on the handlebars, we had 2 more, one more fan on the kids, the kids got 3 fans, and then 2 more back at mom. Just rolling through Disney World with 5 fans. Life Florida is hot. Life is hard. I thank God for scooters. going to be a day where I got to take the great grandkids, and I'm going to need a scooter to get around Disney World. But I'm supposed to be on the scooters that probably didn't need scooters. Just too far to walk. They'd pop off the scooter and run to get in line. and then run back to the scooter through Disney World. Sometimes you gotta walk. And sometimes, and you know what, the Christian life is hard. It's just hard. And I apologize at times. I made it sound like it might be easy. The spiritual disciplines are hard, serving the Lord is hard. It's hard to get up early every day and get into the word of God. Get up anyway. It's hard to carve out time to join a life group or a discipleship group. Men, I know you got a lot going. Tomorrow night's Forge. You gotta get it to give up something to be at Forge tomorrow. Give it up anyway. Get here anyway. It's hard to serve in a ministry, to volunteer your time and maybe step out of your comfort zone, volunteer anyway. It's a sacrifice to give up money or PTO to go on a mission trip. Go on the trip anyway. It's hard to sacrifice financially, to give generously, give generously anyway, do the hard thing, forgive when it's hard, share your faith when it's hard, serve when it's hard. God forgive us for the blind sheep. God forgive us as a church when we lower the bar. Let's be reminded that life is hard, and Jesus is worth the sacrifice. Now here's the good news. If you're feeling some conviction about that, the whole theme of our series is this, and Malachi is that God is faithful to the faithless. He still loves us. He still loves us when we fail him. And if you realize right now, my attitude has been bad. I brought some blind sheep. I've had some spiritual apathy in my life. Here's the good news. Jesus was the unblemished sacrifice. He was the perfect sacrifice. And you don't get right with God by what you do for him. Thank God for that. We're right with God because of what Jesus did for us on the cross. And there was an unblemished sacrifice on a cross that paid the price for our blemished sacrifices we tried to offer to the Lord, and there was grace and there was mercy in Jesus. And so we come to him, and we seek that, and we trust in him, and we repent, and we have a renewed, a renewed attitude, with our eyes fixed on Jesus, to bring him, our very best. We're going to sing in a moment. You can pray right where you are. If you want someone to pray with you, Willie and Kathy are back in the prayer corner. They'd love to talk to you, to pray with you, whatever's going on in your life. There back there for you. You want to talk this week about something in your life. You say, I want to talk, maybe I'm not bringing my best. or something I want to talk to the pastor about something I need to change in my life, something I want to sacrifice I need to make. Put on their card, there what it says, I want to talk to a pastor, check that box. Let us talk to you. Right now, let's pray to the, let's bring our sheep before the Lord. Father, we come to you realizing that we often offer blemished sacrifices. We realize, we confess that we don't bring you our very best. You often get from us our leftover money, our leftover energy, and oftentimes we serve when it's convenient in all the other circumstances of our life aligned. We pray that we would bring you our best. King Jesus, you are worthy of our time. You are worthy of our sacrifice. You are worthy of our service. You are worthy of it all. You are worthy. So forgive us when we fail you. And we thank you for the unblemished sacrifice. On the cross, the price you paid for us. so that we could be forgiven. We pray this week, that Jesus, we would walk in grace and we would walk with our eyes fixed on you and that we would live our lives this week. offering up our very best to our king. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.