-Transcript-
00:36 Thanks for joining me again at the cafe. Great to be back here. Hey, if you tuned in last time we were talking about cause and effect, how God’s love is great and what do we do, what effect does it have on us.
00:48 To recap a little bit, we spoke about Malachi chapter 1 verses 1 through 5. We looked at this great scripture of the Prophet Malachi’s speaking, God really speaking through him about how God chose his people.
01:02 How it was a predestined love and it was a great love and others, they’re mistaken. They believe that they’re gonna rebuild and everything’s gonna be great and they don’t know that they won’t and that God truly will prosper those that are his, amen.
01:20 And we talked about making that connection of look we’re not Israelites by blood necessarily, though some may listen to this, but what we are is we are children of God and we are in that body of Christ if we’ve been saved, amen.
01:30 And this message really is for the saved Christian here today, those that have accepted Christ as Savior. We’re talking about do we recognize God’s love and I mentioned this example of that loving husband and the wife’s response
01:42 and the husband had helped, he took that wife in when she was helpless and poor and he gave and he didn’t take and he taught her great things and he was patient, took her back when she went astray.
01:52 He loved her beyond what she could dream of having. He even gave his life to save her life. It was a perfect pure love and that wife’s response was indifference, confusion, lack of satisfaction, you know indifference not making a strong effort to know her husband.
02:08 Confusion about who her husband is and if he really loved her. Lack of satisfaction, looking to others to satisfy her desires. Rebellion, doing what wouldn’t please her husband but would grieve him.
02:17 Pride, thinking she was justified in her actions that she did the saving of her own life. And lack of giving, spending her resources on herself and her interests and not giving to the causes that would please that great husband.
02:28 And lack of recognition, not mentioning him to anyone, not giving him glory.
02:35 You know this largely as I mentioned last episode is the church today and how the church relates to God and don’t think oh that’s the church entity and not me individually.
02:44 Honestly for honest with ourselves, does this not describe us? Indifference and confusion, lack of satisfaction, rebellion, pride, lack of giving, lack of recognition. You know I know there’s a faithful few in a lot of churches.
02:58 We have that. We have a faithful few that come. Amen.
03:09 I understand that and they are saints of God and guess what this scripture is addressing? The priests, the ministers and as I address my congregation when I preached this on a Sunday morning not long ago, I said you all are in the ministry and this is for the ministers of God. Amen.
03:16 So this is related to us even those of us that say hey we do a lot for the church.
03:22 We still need to check our hearts and the reason why is we need to understand God’s love towards us and when we understand his great love towards us then we can be used by him.
03:32 Does that make sense here today? I hope it does. When we understand how much God loves us then all of a sudden we can start getting busy for God because we are grateful and we’re humble and we’re left without wanting anything.
03:47 We’re not coveting. We are just desiring fellowship with him. We are loving our place in his kingdom.
03:52 We’re loving the fact that we are co-heirs with Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. We’re understanding that this is a spiritual battle and that we’re understanding we need to go to God and during times of temptation and trial and it just changes our whole mindset when we understand this predetermined love, this great incredible love of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.
04:11 And so now that we understand his work, his finished work on the cross, the idea that he loves us so much and now that we understand our lowly position, the idea that we fall short often, that we’re still in his flesh, that we need our Lord and Savior, let’s look at how we give back.
04:30 Are we giving God our best or our worst or somewhere in between? You know, knowing God loves us, do we return that great love with our best or worst? You know, think about this.
04:42 If you know someone loves you, someone appreciates you, do you not want to give them your best? I was on a call with a client of mine earlier and they were giving me a compliment which I appreciate. Amen.
05:01 I really appreciate it. And that compliment would make me want to work a little harder for that person because I understand that they viewed me in a positive light and I want to do a little better for them. Amen.
05:06 How much more so with God? As he compliments, as we look at him and who he is, we look at his love for us and his desire to have a closeness with us, do we not want to give him our best?
05:19 Let’s look in Malachi. We’re gonna pick up here in chapter 1 verse 6. A son honoreth his father and a servant his master. If then I be a father, where is mine honor? And if I be a master, where is my fear? Wow.
05:31 So God’s saying we don’t honor him as those that are serving God. And as a father, we don’t fear him, right? As a father and a master, we don’t fear him. O priest that despised my name.
05:49 And ye say, wherein have we despised thy name? And then here we see God pointing out what the priests at that time were doing.
05:58 He offered polluted bread upon my altar. And ye say, wherein have we polluted thee? In that ye say, the table of the Lord is contemptible.
06:06 And if you offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? Here God is saying, they’re acting ignorant. They’re saying, well, what have we done wrong? And God’s saying, you’re supposed to give me your firstfruits. You’re supposed to give me your best offering.
06:18 And you’re giving me the blind and the maimed and the sick animals. You’re giving me the worst. And I could go into this, but there’s a lot of levels to why God is criticizing them for doing this.
06:29 But I’ll go on for time’s sake. And ye offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? And ye offer the lame and sick, is it not evil? Offer it now unto thy governor. Will he be pleased with thee?
06:41 Or accept thy person, saith the Lord of hosts? Now this verse here, Malachi 1:8, I’ve preached on maybe about a year ago.
06:48 The idea, why would we give God less? Almighty God, all powerful creator, why would we give him less than we would give our boss or our local politician or whoever?
06:58 And God’s saying, you’re bringing these weak, broken sacrifices to me that are supposed to make things whole and bring me honor and glory. And they’re pathetic. And they’re not good enough.
07:12 And you wouldn’t even do that for the governor, but you’re gonna do that for me? Again, think about this. What does that say about our mindset when we don’t give God our best?
07:21 Okay, verse 9 here. And now, I pray you, beseech God that he will be gracious unto us.
07:30 This hath been by your means. Will he regard your persons, saith the Lord of hosts?
07:35 Verse 10. Who is there among you that would shut the doors for naught? Neither do you kindle fire on my altar for naught.
07:48 Here God is pointing out that they won’t do anything without getting some kind of reward for it. Again, how can you sacrificially to give to God if you’re expecting something for everything you do?
07:56 To finish verse 10 here. I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord of hosts, neither will I accept an offering at your hand.
08:02 You know, I find this verse very interesting. This is the second part of verse 10 of Malachi 1. I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord of hosts, neither will I accept an offering at your hand.
08:11 You know, if God has no pleasure in them doing this bad stuff, right? Not giving good offerings, wanting a kickback all the time, wanting something in it for them.
08:22 Well, does that mean that if we do good, if we go above and beyond, that God will have pleasure in us? I do. I believe we can bring God pleasure by doing good, bringing our very best to him, giving our very best to him. And it says, neither will I accept an offering at your hand.
08:40 That means that God’s expectation of his people is to bring their very best. And we’re not just talking about money. I’ll get to that in a minute.
08:45 But we’re talking about bringing our very best talents, skills, time, charity, on and on.
08:52 Verse 11, for from the rising of the sun, even unto the going down of the same, my name shall be great among the Gentiles. And in every place incense shall be offered unto my name.
09:04 And a pure offering for my name shall be great among the heathen, saith the Lord of hosts. I love verse 11 because we can identify with the people of Israel.
09:12 And in fact, we can identify if you are in the ministry, if you’ve been in the ministry, we can identify with the priests here and saying, we’re not giving our best.
09:19 But then I love verse 11 because we also can identify with the idea for most of us here that we are Gentiles, that we are heathen, that we are considered part of the group that is not Jewish, not God’s people.
09:30 And what we see here is that they are the ones that are going to be offering the right offering, the pure offering, and his name will be great among us. And so we see that God both is reprimanding his people but also complimenting those to come.
09:44 Verse 12, but ye have profaned it in that you say the table of the Lord is polluted, and the fruit thereof, even as meat, is contemptible. He said also, behold, what a weariness is it?
09:56 And ye have snuffed at it, saith the Lord of hosts. And ye have brought that which was torn, and the lame, and the sick.
10:02 Thus ye brought an offering. Should I accept this of your hand, saith the Lord? Here we see that again they’re bringing awful things to God, to sacrifice to God.
10:13 They’re bringing an incomplete, incompatible, I don’t know the word exactly offhand, but it is not the right kind of offering, amen. And the word here that I focused on with our congregation recently was weariness.
10:29 Ye said also, behold, what a weariness is it? See, God knows that nothing new is under the sun. And the same way that many people kind of go loafing into church or with their head down and say, oh what am I gonna do?
10:38 Or they’re trying to do their to-do list while the pastor’s preaching. It was nothing new, it is nothing new, and it was going on then as it is now.
10:45 And there is a weariness among many in the church. And why? Why is it? Because again, I don’t think people properly recognize who God is and how great his love towards us is, or else they would definitely be fearing him, respecting him, referencing him, giving the best to God, including their attention.
11:03 And then we have here verse 14, but cursed be the deceiver which hath in his flock a male, and voweth and sacrifice unto the Lord a corrupt thing.
11:12 For I am a great King, saith the Lord of hosts, and my name is dreadful among the heathen. And so here we see it cap off with Lord saying, cursed is the deceiver, one that has that proper offering available to themselves,
11:26 but, and they vow to sacrifice, oh I’m gonna give this to God, and then they give the corrupt thing, they give the opposite to God. How many in the church today are saying, I’m gonna give God my best, and in actuality they give God little to nothing.
11:38 You know, it’s a hard truth here today that I’m preaching, but it’s a truth nonetheless, and I believe the reason why the Lord called me to preach this was to get the church to wake up, to look in the mirror and say, what are we doing? Do we realize God’s love for us?
11:48 Because if we realize it, then we will want to give God honor, because in the scripture there was no honor of God. We want to fear God, because in the scripture they didn’t fear God.
11:57 We want to love the name of God, because in the scripture they despised the name of God, they hated the name of God.
12:03 We wanted to be, we want to be acceptable, because in the scripture they’re bringing unacceptable, low quality sacrifices, and we don’t want to do that.
12:12 We want to give God our best, and we want to give God something that we wouldn’t even give to our boss, or to our governor, or to whoever is important in our lives. We want to give God the very best.
12:20 You know, you know, the Bible calls us to make God number one in our lives, and if we make God number one in our lives, how can we say we never pick up the book?
12:28 You know, people will say, they’ll hear this message, they’ll say, well I never knew that. I never knew God expected our best, but that’s not an excuse, because God would respond, I believe God helped me get in my book, and read my word, and you’ll know exactly what to do.
12:39 You know, in the Bible, Jesus says, if you love me, follow my commandments.
12:46 You know, it’s very clear, if we love the Lord, we need to get in the book to learn the commandments, so that we could properly follow those commandments.
12:56 That is how we love the Lord. We can’t love the Lord, and then just ignore the commandments, or not learn them, and say, well we never learned them.
13:01 That’s silly. We need to realize that God has a program for us to follow, and we need to go ahead and follow that program. And specifically, when it comes to sacrifice, I want you to think about how much are you giving God of your charity?
13:11 How much are you giving God of your time? How much are you giving God of your resources? How much are you giving God of your money? How much are you giving God of your talents?
13:19 You know, there is a consistency here, where a lot of times, it’s little to none, little to none, little to none, and it should be, I’m giving God my very best.
13:27 I want to give God my whole heart. I want to, the things, the talents that God has given me, the ones that he’s given me, that maybe are above all the other ones, that’s God’s. That’s reserved there for God.
13:37 I want to use that for God. But many people will say, well I want to use that to earn a living, or for a hobby, or bring, you know, a name to myself, put on social media.
13:46 And God’s calling us here back to a truthful, honorable worship of him, and it’s a great thing to do.
13:52 And the next part here, the final part of this message, I’m gonna get to the reward, and there is a great reward for those that are willing to give God their best.
14:00 And so, as with everything, this is not just his word to bring him glory, it’s his word to help us have the best life that we can have. They both go together.
14:09 Thank you so much for joining me, and I look forward to concluding this message in the next part. Thank you, take care, and God bless.