There’s a bumper sticker you can buy in the USA which says “Honk if you love Jesus! Text while driving if you want to meet him!”
Honk if you love Jesus. Do you love Jesus? So how do you show it? We know loving Jesus is a really important; worship is the first line of our mission statement – this church exists to worship God.
And we know worship is more than just singing.
One of the greatest Archbishops of Canterbury of the 20th Century, William Temple, said this: “Worship is the quickening of conscience by God’s holiness, nourishment of mind by His truth, purifying of the imagination by His beauty, opening of the heart to His love, and submission of will to His purpose. It is the greatest of human expressions of which we are capable.”
Malachi’s Challenge
That’s all well and good. But in the real world, does our love for God stay constant? No. If we’re honest, the tide of our affections for God rises and recedes. Spiritual commitment in our busy lives has seasons of growth (when we love God a lot) and seasons of decline (when we love him less).
What does decline in worship look like in the 21st Century church? The American humorist and columnist Erma Bombeck put it this way, “We sing ‘Make a joyful noise to the Lord’ while our faces reflect the sadness of one who has just buried a rich aunt who left everything to her hamster!”
There was a time in Israel’s history, About 400 years before Christ, when all the warning lights of spiritual health and vitality were starting to flash. Everything seemed to be in decline at the same time. Standards in leadership were dropping. Faithfulness in marriage was waning. Financial generosity was falling. Morals were decaying. Spiritual commitment was weakening. Quality in worship was in freefall.
There’s a reason why it was all going wrong at the same time. It’s all connected. When my worship is tired and joyless and detached it’s a sure sign that there other things in my life that aren’t right with God.
If you were to grade the state of your heart, the quality of your worship this morning where would you put yourself on this scale? What mark would you give yourself out of 10?
When Israel was slumping about the 2-3 mark God raised up a straight-talking preacher called Malachi to challenge mediocrity and question the standards that people had accepted in worship.
Many years before Malachi’s time, in the Law of Moses, God had told his people that whenever it was time to worship, they should walk among their herds of livestock and select the very best specimen they could find and bring it to the temple to present as an offering to God.
It had to be one year old; that is to say in its prime. They had to find the choicest lamb, the one that would attract the most interest and command the highest price at market. It had to be the best they had. That’s the benchmark. And for many years, God’s chosen people did that. They presented prized, unblemished lambs as their worship offering.
By the way, we don’t ever need to do that now because Jesus, a man in his prime, God’s very best and with no sin offered his perfect life for us. That old way of worship has been abolished by Jesus forever.
But listen to what God had to say at that time through the prophet Malachi:
When you offer blind animals for sacrifice, is that not wrong? When you sacrifice lame or diseased animals, is that not wrong? Try offering them to your boss! Would he be pleased with you? Would he accept you?” says the Lord Almighty…
Oh, that one of you would shut the temple doors, so that you would not light useless fires on my altar! I am not pleased with you,” says the Lord Almighty, “and I will accept no offering from your hands. My name will be great among the nations, from where the sun rises to where it sets.
You see what’s going on here? Instead of selecting the very best lamb from their herds, they would look high and low for the worst bit of mutton they could find in the whole field.
A blind one, a lame one or diseased one that was all scrawny and thin. And they’d bend down, pick it up and walk up to the temple, place it on the altar and say “This is for God! I hope he likes it.”
And so God raised up Malachi to tell them, “No! God… doesn’t… like it. It offends him. It upsets him. In fact, it would be better if you didn’t offer God anything at all than just give him the worst you’ve got and whenever it’s convenient for you.”
What do you think about that? Are you thinking, “Well, hang on a minute. Surely a little is better than nothing! OK, it wasn’t great but at least they gave something!
But, to God, nothing is better than just anything. Jesus said the same thing in Revelation 3.15-16. “How I wish that you were either hot or cold. But you are neither. You are tepid!” We like a cold salad or a hot roast dinner but no one enjoys lukewarm soup do they?
I don’t believe we ever really consciously say, “Oh, I’ve thought this through and I’ve decided I’ll just give God the scraps; it’s only God, he won’t mind.” No.
The problem is we drift, we drift, towards giving God leftovers –
- leftover time - I’m really busy this week
- leftover money - It’s really tight this month
- leftover gifts
- leftover love
- leftover energy
And every now and again God speaks to us about all this and we wake up and notice how far we’ve let ourselves drift and we refocus our priorities. So how far the right on that scale is worshiping God in your life at the moment?
God’s Excellence
Have you ever wondered to yourself why God sets such high standards of excellence in worship?
Is God a critical father, a perfectionist, who feels that whatever his children do is not up to the grade? No. He just doesn’t like worship that has no heart, no passion.
Is God somehow needy and insecure, calling for affirmation in praise worship to make him feel better about himself? No. God doesn’t need us to supply anything lacking in him.
He delights forever in the wonder of:
- his infinite perfections
- his unparalleled glory
- his unprecedented greatness
No. The reason God calls for nothing but the best in worship is because he himself never gives anything but the very best.
Everything God is, does and gives is absolutely top of the range.
For example, how many marks out of 10 would you give God for the job he did in creation? From the complexity of subatomic physics to the incredible variety and beauty of the earth’s flora and fauna, to the delightful symmetry of the sombrero galaxy it is all stunningly good.
What about the story of the Old Testament? How well did God do there?
- His magnificent deliverance from Egypt
- His extraordinary provision in the desert
- His outstanding patience during centuries of unfaithfulness from Israel
- His excellent protection from numerous enemies...
Then on into the New Testament, where God gave his very, very best; his only Son... Think about:
- his wonderful nativity
- his unprecedented wisdom
- his astonishing healings
- his flawless innocence
- his precious death (even in the throes of agony he opened the gates of heaven to one last scoundrel)
- and then his textbook resurrection.
I mean, Jesus didn’t just defeat death and triumph over the grave. As if that wasn’t enough, Jesus did it with class… He even
- folded up the grave clothes and left the tomb nice and tidy
- rolled away a two ton stone without anybody noticing
- did an impression of the gardener that would have fooled his mum
Everything God has ever done for you, and especially in Christ, has only ever been of the highest quality and of the utmost excellence. Nothing but the best.
Think about all this and find the answer to this question: “So, what kind of lamb am I going to present to God, this God who has only ever given the very best for me?”
Ending
Maybe our reading from John 12 will help you answer that question. I just love v3.
Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
What do you know about nard? It comes from a very rare plant that grows in the foothills of the Himalayas. In Jesus’ day, nard had to be transported from northern India, via Persia to Roman occupied Judea. Nard was rare, exotic, luxurious and expensive.
Has anyone here ever smelt the fragrance of pure nard?
I met a man called Mark Marx last year at a training day for healing on the streets. Mark had, a year earlier, accidentally let drip one drop of pure nard onto his Bible. Just one drop!
A full year later, his Bible still had this incredibly strong and indescribably sweet fragrance on it. It’s a difficult aroma to put into words but, if you twisted my arm, I’d say it reminded me of something like a cross between Chanel n° 5 (which is a very fine scent as you ladies will appreciate and a very expensive one too as you gentlemen will be only too aware) - a cross between Chanel n° 5 and the smell of fresh laundry. I just love that smell. It means clean socks!
Nard has an incredibly clean, pure, fragrant, intense and aromatic bouquet… Just one drop and you can still smell it a year later.
This woman poured out a whole pint of it all over Jesus’ feet.
No wonder v3 says “the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.” It must have been.
Oh, that that would be a picture of fervent and fulsome worship in All Saints’! An undignified passion and an uninhibited love for Jesus that just fills the church. Do you want that?
Verse 3 says “she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair.” There was an unashamed intimacy about that act. Mary’s offering was profoundly personal. It was from her heart, not just with the mind.
Oh, that that would be a picture of heartfelt and personal worship in All Saints’! Worship that is real, worship that’s got depth and soul. Do you want that?
And finally, v5 that one jar of perfume was worth a year’s wages. According to the Office of National Statistics, the average income in Britain today is £26,000. Fancy spending 26 grand on a bottle of scent!
The point is not that only the wealthy can offer the best worship. The point is this: worship that is nothing but the best costs me something.
And I say this within a framework of grace but:
- It costs me my free time to establish weekly worship as a top priority
- It costs me my sanity to arrive on time if I possibly can (and sometimes that is not possible and that’s O.K. I’ve had four kids and several unreliable cars. So I know!)
- It costs me physically to worship with all my strength even when I don’t even feel like standing up
- It costs me a little dignity to raise my hands and shout to the Lord
But oh, that this story would be a picture of the gloriously lavish and abundantly sacrificial worship in All Saints’!
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 19th June 2011
Acknowledgment: some material on the Malachi passage taken from Bill Hybels 2000 GLS talk "Leadership Excellence."
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