Immanuel Sermon Audio
Malachi (39:66)
All right, find Malachi in your Bible right before the book of Matthew, last book of the Old Testament, number 39 out of 66, so we made a lot of progress, the last night we'll talk about the minor prophets, last night we'll talk about an Old Testament book, next week we move on and just plunge on with Matthew. So find Malachi, we're gonna look at several passages in the book, we're not gonna read it all the way through, you can do that on your own, I suggest you do that or encourage you to do that, it won't take you very long, it's just four chapters and the last chapter is really, really short, so you can look at Malachi in its entirety. Malachi is a book about, most basically it's a book about worship, okay, and we're gonna talk about the history and where it fits and all that stuff, but I just wanna, to get you thinking about worship a little bit, how many of you would say that when you worship God, sincerity from your heart would be a good thing, that you should be sincere in your worship, okay, I think we would agree with that and I think that the people that Malachi talked to or the people that read his book, I think they would agree with that too, they would say no, you should be sincere when you worship, they would agree with that, but is it possible to be sincere and wrong at the same time, it is, right? Would you sincerely hate another person, chuckles, I'll take that as a yes, could a person sincerely love sin, I think they could, they'd be settling for something lesser in their life, but they could sincerely love it, could a person sincerely worship a false God, okay, could a person try to worship the true God and feel like they're being sincere in it, but possibly do it in an unbiblical way, the answer to that is yes, and one example would be in the book of Second Chronicles, it talks about some of the people worship the Lord and it says, "LORD, all capitals, Yahweh, they were worshiping Yahweh, but instead of going to the temple where God had told the people to gather for worship, they were going to the high places to the pagan shrines where idolatry was taking place, and they were trying to worship the true God in the wrong place and in the wrong way," and God looked at that and just said, "This is not good, this is not right," and I think if you would have backed those folks into a corner and said, "What are you doing? You need to be sincere," and they would have said, "We are sincere, we're worshiping the Lord, we're doing it from our heart on and on and on," they would feel like it was right and God says, "No, it's not right," and the whole book of Malachi is about the people and how they are worshiping and whether or not it's acceptable or not acceptable to God, and so it's very easy to apply this book to our lives and the message is really not that complicated. So Malachi is the last of the minor prophets, number 12 out of 12, and you know that these guys are minor because the books are shorter, not because their message is not important or their ministry was not important. In the history of Israel, Malachi fits in right at the very, very, very end, right? Not only the last book of the Old Testament, but in just this story of the Old Testament, it comes right at the end. So they fought for the Promised Land in the conquest with Joshua. The judges ruled and that was a really bad, dark, twisted time in Israel's history, and then there was the monarchy under Saul that failed, under David that failed, under Solomon that failed, and then there's the division of the kingdom, Rehoboam and Jeroboam split the kingdom. Both kingdoms, Israel and the North Judah and the South rebel, God sends them into exile, and then he brings a tiny remnant back, a tiny, tiny remnant. When you read about the number of people that came out of Egypt and into the Promised Land and you read some of the censuses and the names that took place in chronicles, we're talking about thousands upon thousands upon thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of people, and you get to this remnant that came back and it's almost pathetic, the number of people that came back, but that's how God wanted it to happen. He brought this small, remnant back in the return. So here's the breakdown, this is the last time you get to look at this, so kiss it goodbye. Here's the breakdown of some of the Minor Prophets, Hosea, Amos, Micah, Jonah, all before the northern kingdom of Israel is conquered by Assyria and those folks go into exile. That happens, Assyria comes and defeats Samaria, then you've got Nahum, Habakkuk and Zephaniah, right before Jerusalem is conquered, the southern kingdom is conquered by Babylon. And then the next group is Joel and Obadiah, right after Babylon takes Judah into exile and then right here at the end you've got Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi after the people come back from exile in around the 5th century. So here's the timeline just so you can visualize it, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi all in the blue at the end and you notice right there that you've got three blue marks on that timeline and underneath it says returns from exile. Go to the slide that lists those three returns from exile, okay? You had Zerubbabel, Zerubbabel led a group of people back and they rebuilt the temple and we talked about the book of Haggai a couple of weeks ago. Haggai's job was to go, they'd spent 18 years doing everything but building the temple. They started to build the temple, then they got busy with all sorts of other stuff. Haggai's job was to go and say, "Hey, your house looks great. Now go build God's house. Do the one thing He sent you back here to do first. You haven't done it." The late obedience is not obedience and so that was Haggai. Ezra came back and his job was to teach the people the law and the great theme verse in the book of Ezra is Ezra 7 and 10, Ezra described, set his heart to study the law of God, to do it and to teach his statutes in Israel. That's a good pattern for your life, study, then do, then teach somebody else. That's what Ezra did and then Nehemiah came back to build the wall in 444 and so most scholars say that Malachi was around 460 BC, somewhere right in the middle of all these exiles coming back, Malachi is preaching and teaching and he's writing this book. He's quoted in the New Testament a lot, Jesus quotes the book of Malachi, Paul quotes the book of Malachi, Mark and Luke both quote the book of Malachi and literally Malachi means my messenger which is a pretty fitting name for a prophet of God. We've talked about a lot of these major prophets and minor prophets, sometimes their name means something that you say, oh that's sort of profound, that fits with his life, sometimes it has almost nothing to do with it. This time is pretty good, his name means my messenger and the overarching message is that God wants 100% from his people, not 75, not 80, he's not looking for a bell curve average of fall over on the right side, the positive side, he wants 100% for his people and the thing that Malachi is really frustrated with and that God is speaking to the people about through Malachi is that the people are just not worshiping God the way that they should worship. One quick time out before we move on, you understand when I say that the book of Malachi is a book about worship, you understand that does not mean the book of Malachi is about the first part of church that happens before the sermon when we all stand up and we sing together and then worship stops and we listen to the sermon and then we have a little bit more worship at the end and then we're done and then we have the biblical view of worship, that all of your life, everything you do, everything you say, everything you think ought to in some way shape or form ascribed worth and glory and honor and praise to God. That's what we're talking about when we talk about worship and so Malachi when I say it's a book about worship, he's looking at the lives of the people and he's saying you're not giving God 100% and he doesn't want anything less than 100% and so it's a worship problem and so we're going to talk about what Malachi has to say about true worship. Here's the first thing he has to say. Worship involves how we treat other people, how we treat other people. One of my last semesters in school when I was finishing up my class work in my PhD program, I took a class called Cultural Anthropology, it was a missionary class and it sounds kind of boring especially for something to take it seminary, it was maybe the most helpful class for me thinking about how to be a pastor of any class I took it seminary and one of the projects I had in the class is we had to pick a people group, any people group on planet earth and if you didn't know this there's about 6,000 of them and a people group is sort of a group of folks who share a common culture, a common language, a common world view and they're just sort of, that's their circle. Some people groups are millions upon millions of, hundreds of millions of people. Some people groups are hundreds of people, very, very small and so I picked for my people group the Nanettes and these people are really cool. They're reindeer herders and they live in Siberia and it's really cold and really barren when they live. Like if you want to know what it looks like just imagine West Texas, like go out in the country and look out at West Texas, get rid of all the mesquite tree/bushes and you're just looking at that dirt and then just imagine it's zero degrees all the time forever it never warms up, that's where they live, it looks exactly like that and they herd reindeer and somehow they find food for these reindeer to eat and there's lots of interesting things about them. That's one of the coolest things about these people, I think this is really cool. When missionaries went to them and started learning their language, they're trying to connect with them, how do we share the gospel with them, in this language learning process they realized these people don't have a word for religion. There is no, we keep talking about this, they have no clue what we're talking about. They have religious beliefs, you understand that but when they try to say to them what is your religion or how do you practice your religion, they just sort of look at them like you people are crazy from the United States or wherever the missionaries were from. We don't understand and there was just this, they're totally talking past each other and here's the reason. In Western culture we think of you have secular life, secular things, work, building homes, managing a McDonald's, working in the oil field, raising your kids, stuff and then you have religious life, stuff you do here, reading your Bible, having your quiet time, praying and we divide those two things and we say well we have regular life stuff and then we have religious stuff and in our culture most of this everyday life stuff can pretty much stay the same and you can sort of change the religious stuff around and this really isn't affected at all because we have this very strong tendency to keep those two things separate. The nannettes look at it and say religion is just life. If you want to know how to say religion in their language, it's just life. You can't separate it, you can't take the things that you believe about spiritual things and detach that from how you relate to people and do other things and they understand something really important that we don't understand very well and that is that true worship and involves how you treat other people. We think true worship means you come in this room and you close your eyes and you raise your hands and you focus on God and you just sing with all your heart. Okay that's great but if you do that here and then you leave and you treat people like garbage what you did in here is totally worthless and that's what Malachi is trying to say to the people. True worship involves how you treat others. For example, God cares about how you treat your family and the specific examples in the book of Malachi involved marriage and the two big things you can look at the verses later on your own, the two big things that God was upset with the people about was number one they were marrying people of other faiths and when you read in the story line of the Old Testament right I gave you that story line, conquest to the return from exile. One of the biggest problems all the way back in the period of the judges was this intermarrying with people of other religions and mixing religions and falling away from worshipping the Lord and worshipping Baal and Asher and all these other gods and when you come full circle and you see the people come back from exile after all the disaster that brought on them and Malachi says you're doing the same thing you're doing the exact same thing that got you sent into exile in the first place it's shocking but that's one of the things that they were doing and another thing that they were doing is tolerating wrongful divorce. It just was not an issue for them they didn't care about it one way or the other marriage was very cheap to them and it was a sort of a throwaway culture of marriage where divorce was just it is what it is you know it's unfortunate but it's just part of life and there was no no one upset about the prevalence of divorce in the day and God looked at that and through Malachi he says look you can go to the temple you can have your little quiet time all you want but if you don't understand that I care how you treat other people and that includes your families and in particular your marriage then your worship is worthless it's worthless you've totally missed it you've separated these two things and they can't be separated another thing that God cares about in worship involves how we treat with others God cares about how we treat our neighbors how we treat our neighbors and I want you to look at one verse here in Malachi three five Malachi three five God says then I will draw near to you for judgment I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers against the adulterers against those who swear falsely liars against those who oppress the hired worker in his wages in the widow in the fatherless against those who thrust aside the sojourner and do not fear me says the Lord of hosts in that list he talks about sorcery adultery lying cheating dishonesty oppression injustice and he's saying you think you can just treat people however you want to treat them and you can come to the temple and sing songs and bring your silly little sacrifices if those two things don't line up all the sacrifices in the world are worthless I don't care about worship that doesn't translate into how you treat other people namely your family and your neighbor okay secondly worship involves our abilities and our money your abilities and your money that's part of how you worship the first thing you see here is that God demands our best God demands our best and look at Malachi chapter one verse six okay you remember the story the storyline we talked about earlier and those waves of exiles that came back and you remember the rubber bell was the first guy back and he was supposed to rebuild the temple and it took him a while but eventually Haggai kicked him in the backside and they got the thing built and they started offering these sacrifices again okay look at Malachi one six as a son honors his father and a servant as master if then I am father where is my honor and if I am a master where is my fear says the Lord of hosts to you oh priests who despise my name God says the priests the leaders of worship despise me and look what the priests say how have we despised your name they don't agree no no no we're worshiping you we're doing what you told us to do we don't despise your name God says verse seven yes you do by offering polluted food on my altar but you say how have we polluted you in other words they're still arguing with God which is a bad idea saying well we don't despise your name no no no we're not polluting the altar by saying the Lord's table may be despised verse eight when you offer blind animals and 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 and treat fate the favor of the Lord of God that he may be gracious to us which was such a gift from your hand will he show favor to any of you says the Lord of hosts and you can go on it goes all the way through the beginning of chapter two but basically God says look you're not giving me your best you give me your throwaways yes you are bringing a lamb and offering it at the temple but instead of bringing a spotless pure perfect the best that you have you're bringing the one that's running into the fence blind you're bringing the one with the crippled legs that's not going to live anyways you're taking the junk in your life and you're bringing that to me is some sort of sacrifice not acceptable it's not acceptable on two levels first of all because that's not what God had commanded them to bring in the Old Testament laws and Ezra had come back after the temple was built and Ezra taught them the law this is what God expects of you they weren't doing it secondly as we're right here on the doorstep of Matthew those sacrifices point forward to who Jesus why do they need to be spotless why do they need to be perfect why do they need to be the best that the people had because it was a picture of what the Messiah was going to do for him one day God wasn't going to send leftovers to save his people he was going to send the best to save his people and so God was not pleased that they were not giving him his best and you and I read that today and we say well you know I don't think I'm in danger of messing that one up last time I checked nobody's putting goats in the offering boxes before church I didn't see Jerry Reno trying to stuff a chicken in there last week chicken's squawking and Jerry's trying to get it in the little slot nobody's doing that but what do we do in our relationship with God when it comes to serving in the church and our time do we I'm not talking about you I mean you guys this is not an issue for you I'm just talking about the collective we in Odessa right people who are not here on Wednesday night do we give God the best of what we have or do we give him what's left over I know you have to work I know you have to work a lot more hours than you get to serve at the church it's not a guilt trip about compare raw hours it's a it is a question about priorities and what's most important what do you give him in your personal relationship with God that's not just back off the corporate aspect but just personally in time that you spend talking to God in time that you spend reading the word do you give him your best or do you give him your leftovers somebody in our church texted me this morning and they had come across an article on Facebook and the article was I think 14 reasons why you should memorize an entire book of the Bible and they probably weren't talking about Leviticus they're probably talking about Romans or Ephesians or something like that but the article was saying you should you should memorize an entire book and so the person sent me the link and said what do you think about this and I said well I've never done it I think most people could do it I think most people think they couldn't do it but if it was important to you you could do it I guarantee you I could get on the Spotify account if you don't know what some of you may not know what Spotify is Spotify as you get on the internet and you pick any song you want to listen to and we we have that I could get on Spotify and I could pick some oldies or maybe some classic rock songs and I bet it be songs you haven't heard in months maybe years and I bet immediately you could just start singing along just you know the words it would just come right back to you it was important to you you gave time to it you learned it you can go to the Muslim world and it is not uncommon for Muslim children in grade school to memorize the entire Koran front to back and you say well how long is the Koran it's almost the exact same length as the New Testament they do it it's not difficult and so I'm not saying you should memorize an entire book of the Bible I'm not saying you have to I'm not saying you're a bad Christian if you don't I haven't done that all I'm saying is we ought to think God wants my best do I really give him my best or do I give him my leftovers do I give him the scraps worship involves your abilities and your money second thing under under this idea is that God demands you are all and I could have put there that God demands a tie because that's the particular issue in Malachi but really what he demands is they're all and I'll try to explain to you what I mean there look at Malachi three reading in verse six for either Lord do not change therefore you oh children of Jacob are not consumed that's a great verse I'm just tell you right now you could spend a month meditating on that verse that's a really good verse from the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them returned to me and I will return to you says the Lord of hosts but you say how shall we return well a man robbed God yet you are robbing me you say how have we robbed you no one broke into the temple and cracked the money box open nobody dipped their hand in the plate when it was coming around says in your ties in your contributions okay did you hear that in your ties and your contributions two things in mind there in your ties and contributions verse nine you are cursed with a curse for you are robbing me the whole nation of you that's serious language by the way God saying you are stealing from me verse ten bring the full tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house and thereby put me to the test says the Lord of hosts if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need I will rebuke the devourer for you so that it will not destroy the fruits of your soil and your vine in the field she'll not fail to bear says the Lord of hosts you understand these are people who made money through agriculture so when he's talking about agriculture he is saying I will take care of you bring it all of it that's required and test me and see if I won't take care of you verse 12 if you do that and I do what I say I'm gonna do all the nations will call you blessed for you will be a land of delight says the Lord of hosts here's the reality for the people then and especially a hundred percent true for us today when you think of this idea of a type of giving God ten percent of what he has given you we by default hear that and what we say is God wants one out of every ten of what belongs to me I have worked for it I have sweat for it I have given my time and my energy for it and God wants one out of ten and maybe if you're somewhat spiritual you say you know one out of ten that's not too bad only ten percent and so we feel like okay God wants that much I will I will try to bring that much but when you approach it with that mentality of God wanting ten percent of what you have here's what you will always be tempted to think you will always be tempted to think well I've got this one thing this month well I got this one other issue right now so maybe not the full amount maybe less but I'll build back up to that that's the goal that's what I'm shooting for when the biblical view is what God is saying to the people here in the promise that follows him bringing up the issue what he's saying is everything you have his mind I gave it all to you you don't have anything everything that you think is yours really belongs to me and I am so kind I'm letting you keep 90% of it that's the right mentality to say what is mine is not really mine what has been entrusted to me is God's and he is good enough in generous enough to let me hold on with to ninety percent and do what I want to do with it here's the danger and even that mentality is that you say okay ninety percent for me ten goes back to God thank you God for letting me keep the ninety in your satisfied with the ten but the issue that God brings up for the people is that you are robbing me in the tides the ten percent and what the contributions that means it's not enough to say it won't work to say God is taking ten percent of what's mine won't work it won't work to say God is letting me keep ninety percent of what is his what you really ought to be thinking is God has given me everything that I have how much do I need and how much can I give back to him and to others and here's the reality okay from a pastor's perspective and from a guy who has an accounting degree and crunch is loves crunching numbers and thinks that's exciting almost every Christian in the United States of America can afford to give more than ten percent almost all of us can I've met two or three people in my entire life ministry is a pastor that I would say I don't know if you can give ten percent of what you got and actually live on it on the ninety and I've said to those people you need to give as much as you can but you don't need to worry about ten percent and I would say to the other ninety nine point nine nine nine nine nine nine nine percent of people I would say if you take this seriously a tie though to be a baseline for us and we ought to work from that to the quote unquote contributions saying what God has given me he hasn't just given me for me to enjoy he's given it to me so that I can be a blessing to other people what is the least amount that I can keep and what is the most amount that I can give that's totally upside down from how our society thinks it's totally upside down from how most Christians in our society think but what Malachi is trying to say to the people is God demands you're all don't just sort of pat yourself on the back with you've hit a benchmark of a certain percentage that's not the point he wants your best and he wants you're all okay number three worship involves how we approach God how we approach God put the picture up there anybody know who that is Dwight Eisenhower and I read a story about Eisenhower a biographer was writing about him after he died and said you know president Eisenhower was a very fervent believer in a very vague God he was a very fervent believer in a very vague God meaning if you looked him in the eyeball and said do you believe in God he would to the day he died say absolutely with conviction in his voice and from his gut say yes say okay tell me about that God he's up there is that good enough he exists he's there I believe any and what you see in Malachi is that's not remotely close enough I heard another story read a story about a Presbyterian pastor named George buttrick that's him as a young man and then him as an older man wearing his his Presbyterian robes and he was taking a flight one time and he was working on a sermon and you can tell from the pictures he probably wasn't working on a laptop so he probably had a real Bible not his iPad and he was scribbling on a legal pad or something like that he's working on this sermon and the guy next to him on the plane leans over and says what are you doing what are you working on what do you do for a living and buttrick says well I'm a pastor and I'm working on my sermon for this weekend and the man looked at him and he said religion hmm I don't get caught up in all the complexity I just like to keep it simple the golden rule that's my religion buttrick said interesting and the flight went on and they talked back and forth and eventually George buttrick said what do you do for a living guy said ah I teach astronomy I have a PhD I'm astronomer and I teach at the university and buttrick said astronomy huh you know I don't get caught up in all the complexity of astronomy I like to keep it simple twinkle twinkle little star that's my astronomy to which the guy said no no no no there's a lot more to it than that you can't have a simplistic view of astronomy and think that you understand it and buttrick made his point and you understand the point to be a very fervent believer in a very vague God means zero zero and Malachi is saying that to the people that they need to understand the truth of who God is they don't need to be satisfied with these nebulous vague generic ideas about God and so here's the things that he wanted the people to understand about God okay number one God is loving great and sovereign those may not seem like they go together in the same bullet point but they're all in the same verses in chapter one you can read that later he's loving and he's great and he's sovereign he has compassion and care and concern for his for his people he's great and that he's not like the other so-called gods he's not like us he's different than us and he's sovereign we talk about that a lot in the Old Testament we're going to talk about it a lot in the New Testament it means God does whatever he wants to do whenever he wants to do it he doesn't ask advice or permission he knows everything the beginning from the end unlike Doc Brown and the DeLorean that we watched a minute ago the days of your life have been written all of them before your unformed substance was even anywhere in your mother's womb he had written them all out he knows he's in control he's sovereign second thing is that when you know him you fear him when you know him you fear him met with a group of guys the other day and we were studying some passages of scripture and one of the guys a fairly new believer said we're looking at a verse that talked about fearing God and he said what does that mean fearing God said it was pretty simple it means you fear him well I've heard some people say it means you respect him or you said they had a word for that if that's what they were talking about they could have used the word respect or admired or looked up to they use the word fear and that's what they mean that you fear God number three knowing God leads to trusting God and that's the balance to fearing God okay you got to have both of those you got to have a fear of him acknowledging that he can do whatever he wants to do whatever he wants to do it and he's not going to ask you for advice but you also trust him because you know that he's good and he will always do what is right knowing God leads to trusting God and that last point there chapter four verse four to six leads to the final point of the book and it's really simple Malachi ends with hope and it ends with a warning ends with hope and ends with a warning and let's just look at the end of the book we'll just read the whole last chapter here Malachi four one says behold the day is coming burning like an oven when all the arrogant and all evil doers will be stubble the day that is coming shall set them ablaze says the Lord of hosts so that it will leave them neither root nor branch but for you who fear my name the son of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings you shall go out leaping like calves from the stall and you shall tread down the wicked for they will be ashes under the souls of your feet on the day when I act says the Lord of hosts remember the law of my servant Moses his statutes and rules that I commanded him at horrib for all Israel behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes and he will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers lest I come and strike the land with the decree of utter destruction so at the very end there and you realize if you're looking in your Bible you turn the page and you're in the New Testament we're that close that one page right there from flipping the page is about 400 years but nothing else happens in there this is it this is the end of the story before you get to Jesus and it ends with remember the law of Moses the commandments and the statutes and I'm going to send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes remember the law of Moses we have a tendency to hear that and say he really wants us to keep all those rules but you remember what Jesus said to the disciples he's walking on the road to Emmaus with him after the resurrection says that he opened the scriptures he opened it says in Luke 24 the law the rules the part that Moses wrote down all that stuff that we have a tendency to think is just sort of boring dry irrelevant stuff Jesus opened that to them and said I want to teach you how this points to me the Messiah yes there's some things you need to obey in there and you need to get that but the real reason that was written is so that you would see how it points to me and so when Malachi says remember the law of Moses he's not just saying obey obey obey obey he's also saying when you look back to the scriptures and you understand what it's saying you're going to get that it's pointing you straight to Jesus and lo and behold he's right there on the very next page and then he talks about he's sending Elijah the prophet and you can read in the gospels about a guy named John the Baptist and it just so happens that he lived in the same place Elijah lived out in the desert he wore the same thing Elijah wore Camels hair and a leather belt he ate the same thing Elijah ate bugs dipped in honey and he was hairy and he was crazy and he was a prophet and he was loud and he freaked people out and Jesus said look you guys know that Elijah is supposed to come and if you have faith to believe it that's him you're waiting for him to come down out of the heavens in some kind of chariot like he went up there understand the prophecy is fulfilled this is the guy preparing the way of the Lord turning the hearts of the fathers where they need to be to receive the Messiah and then you think about Jesus we talked a few weeks back about Jesus on the amount of transfiguration with the disciples and who's there with him on the amount of transfiguration Moses and Elijah the great writer of the law the great representative of the prophets and what are those two guys talking about with Jesus Luke says they're talking about Jesus Exodus you're leaving somewhere not the mountain this earth and that's going to happen when you get to Jerusalem like you're marching to Jerusalem and you seek and you save the lost by dying for their sins on the cross and so it ends with this sort of warning don't forget what Moses said don't forget that Elijah is coming pay attention pay attention but it gives you great hope that for those who fear my name this is verse two chapter four the son of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings and we believe that that is the last prophecy in the Old Testament canning canon pointing us straight forward to Jesus Christ and next week we get there we flip the page we put the Old Testament behind us and we pick up with the gospel of Matthew and we will talk about a genealogy of Jesus and here's a challenge for you okay for next week talked about memorizing Scripture tonight maybe you could memorize Matthew one verse one to seventeen you say oh you have lost your mind I'll just tell you this I haven't memorized an entire book of the Bible but I have memorized that and when my oldest daughter was five she had it memorized and next week I'll show you the trick so be here next week and we'll jump into Matthew let's pray Father we love you help us never to be satisfied with vague ideas about who you are and what you're like but help us to come humbly to your word and to believe the things that we read here we want to know you and all of your glory and all of your splendor and all of your attributes Father help us to understand that worship and our relationship with you extends into every single nook and cranny of our lives nothing escapes your notice nothing escapes our relationship with you and what it means to worship you Father forgive us when we think about worship as something that takes place in this room and help us to understand that it involves how we treat other people it involves how we use our opportunities it involves how we use our money it involves how we think about you Father help us to understand that you have done everything needed to save us by sending Jesus and we believe that this Old Testament law points forward to Jesus we believe that John came to prepare the way and that the Son of righteousness came and brought healing to those of us who needed it Father help us to understand that in response to what you have done you are calling us to give you everything that we have everything that we are Father you deserve it you are worthy of it and we pray that you will continue to grow us and work in us and work through us Father even as we pray that we know our shortcomings and we know that we're prone to wander from you and so we thank you that you never change and because you never change we are not consumed thank you for your faithfulness thank you for your promises we love you we pray in the name of Jesus who saved us amen alright