What if you came to church this next Sunday and God locked the doors? How could that be? What will I do with my spotted three legged lamb?“Why doesn’t one of you just shut the Temple doors and lock them? Then none of you can get in and play at religion with this silly, empty-headed worship. I am not pleased. The God-of-the-Angel-Armies is not pleased. And I don’t want any more of this so-called worship!”~Malachi
“I am honored all over the world. And there are people who know how to worship me all over the world, who honor me by bringing their best to me. They’re saying it everywhere: ‘God is greater, this God-of-the-Angel-Armies.’
“All except you. Instead of honoring me, you profane me. You profane me when you say, ‘Worship is not important, and what we bring to worship is of no account,’ and when you say, ‘I’m bored—this doesn’t do anything for me.’ You act so superior, sticking your noses in the air—act superior to me, God-of-the-Angel-Armies! And when you do offer something to me, it’s a hand-me-down, or broken, or useless. Do you think I’m going to accept it? This is God speaking to you!
“A curse on the person who makes a big show of doing something great for me—an expensive sacrifice, say—and then at the last minute brings in something puny and worthless! I’m a great king, God-of-the-Angel-Armies, honored far and wide, and I’ll not put up with it!”—
Great stuff, Archie! We, as a church, need to do some self-judging. This is not a bad, negative thing! On the contrary, it’s a good thing! A necessary thing! And it will increase the honor we bring to our “God of the Angel Armies”! Keep pokin’ us, brother!
Rich Glenn
Well! When you put it that way…
I am wondering what my best might look like this Sunday?
I am confident that your best will be the best you have at the moment! And that’s all we can really give, isn’t it? :^)
I don’t know, Archie…it seems to me that you are focusing on a time and place when worshipers (Jews) didn’t have a Spiritual reality, where everything was done in the flesh and the natural world.
Today God wants worshipers who worship “in Spirit and in Truth”, and our “best” is only to be found/seen while we are in Christ.
God looks at you through the Son, so your ‘best’ should only be concerned with how much you are Christ-like, or how much you have allowed the Spirit to make you a ‘new creation’. Know what I mean? Your ‘best’ is not how good you can look, or how well you can present yourself, or how much you can strive in the flesh to be righteous. Your ‘best’ is how much of your being you have turned over to Christ and allowed Him to live through you, so that when the Father looks at you, He looks at your through the filter of His Son. Then your worship is based on the Spirit within, and a heart devoted to Christ, and that becomes a fragrant offering to the Father.
Appreciate your thoughts, Gordon. The story does change when Jesus dies for our sins. But, I don’t think God’s expectations of us does. He still wants us to bring our best and as you say, “through the filter of His Son”.