Latest / Beliefs, Ballots, And BullDawgs / Wednesday July 15, 2026
Transcript
- Greg: Hey, what's up, everybody? Welcome back to Beliefs, Ballots, and Bulldogs. I'm your host, Greg Miller, and today is Wednesday, July 15th. When is the last time you were truly in awe of God? Not thankful, not relieved, not turning to Him to ask for something. I mean, genuinely just overwhelmed by who He is and His majesty and His power. When's the last time you opened your Bible and stopped because what you're reading just took your breath away in amazement. When's the last time you got so engrossed in prayer that it just got away from you and you forgot to look at the clock? When's the last time you stood during a moment of worship and truly thought more about God than you thought about yourself? I'm starting to wonder if maybe one of the greatest challenges or dangers facing us as Christians today isn't persecution, it's not politics, it's not culture. It may not even be a sense of unbelief. Maybe it's just straight up familiarity. Maybe we've just become so familiar and so comfortable with holy things that we've stopped treating them as holy. Today, I want to spend a few minutes and we're going to read from the the the prophet Malachi chapter one. Malachi chapter one verses six through fourteen. Bear with me. It's a little wordy and it's going to take a little while, but we want to read the entire thing. A son honors his father and a servant his master. If I am a father, where is the honor due to me? If I am a master, where is the respect due to me? Says the Lord Almighty. It is you, O priest, who show contempt for my name. But you ask, how have we shown contempt for your name? You place defiled food on my altar. But you asked, how have we defiled you? By saying that the Lord's table is contemptible. When you bring blind animals for sacrifice, is that not wrong? when you sacrifice crippled or diseased animals. Is that not wrong? Try offering them to your governor. Would he be pleased with you? Would he accept you, says the Lord Almighty? Now implore God to be gracious to us. With such offerings from your hands, will he accept you, says the Lord Almighty? ⁓ 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 the rising to the setting of the sun. In every place, incense and pure offerings will be brought to my name because my name will be great among the nations says the Lord Almighty. But you profane it by saying of the Lord's table. It is defiled and of its food. It is contemptible. And you say, what a burden. And you sniff at it contemptuously says the Lord Almighty. When you bring injured, crippled, or diseased animals and offer them as sacrifices, should I accept them from your hands, says the Lord? Cursed is the cheat who has an acceptable male in his flock and vows to give it, but then sacrifices a blemished animal to the Lord. For I am a great king, says the Lord Almighty, and my name is to be feared among the nations. That's a long passage, but I think it's something that we can all relate to. The people here in Malachi, the story he's telling us is that people hadn't abandoned God. And I think that's what makes this passage a little troubling and maybe a little unsettling is, you know, we can all relate to this. They were still bringing their sacrifices. They were still going through the religious motions, so to speak. They were still showing up, but something inside had changed. their hearts have changed. And instead of instead of bringing God their best, which is what we're called to do to bring our first and our best, they brought him what was left over. They brought him blind animals, lame animals, diseased animals. And they were essentially making sacrifices to him that they wouldn't have made to an earthly ruler. They were they were in a nutshell saying by their actions that God deserves whatever is convenient to us. And that's where God comes back and asked him a fairly devastating question. He says, would you offer that to your governor? In other words, you wouldn't treat an earthly leader this casually. Why are you treating the Lord of the whole universe this way? I think it's important, but before we start pointing fingers, we all need to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, truly, how often are we just giving God what's left? The leftover minutes after we've scrolled social media, the leftover energy after a long day at work. The leftover attention after we've been watching television for hours, the leftover thoughts right before we fall asleep. We all like to say that God comes first, but does our calendar agree? Does our attention agree? Does our generosity agree? Does our prayer life really show that God comes first? It's hard question for a lot of us, but it's an honest one. I think one of the great tragedies that we deal with here in modernity for Christians is that we've just become accustomed to the miracle. Like, think about it, we own multiple Bibles. I've got two sitting right here within arm's reach. We can listen to sermons whenever we want to. We can have worship music in our pockets that we can listen to any time of day. We talk about the resurrection so often that sometimes I think we might forget just how astonishing it really is. I mean, imagine hearing for the very first time that the creator of this entire universe became a man, a human being, lived an absolutely perfect life, sacrificed himself and died for people who rejected him in the moment, then rose from the grave and offers free forgiveness to us all. That's a story that just shouldn't become ordinary. And yet, if we're honest, I think for all of us, sometimes it does. routine in and of itself isn't bad. just routine can become a little dangerous when it replaces reverence. when it becomes so mundane that you forget to truly appreciate how special this is. We live in a world that that treats everything as common, know, entertainment is around the clock. It never stops you. Your notifications, you can get notified of anything from anywhere in the world, no matter where you are. Everything is constantly competing for our attention and everything seems to be urgent or at least it's packaged that way. It makes nothing these days feel sacred. We've lost the ability to slow down, to just marvel in amazement at what he's done, and to be, as the Bible calls us, to just be still. And the result is sometimes I think our worship becomes rust, our prayers can become monotonous and almost repetitive or rehearsed, and our faith, which should be an amazing and awesome thing inside of us, our faith can just become common and familiar. The issue here in Malachi wasn't the animals. was the heart behind the animals that were being offered. God's never looking for perfection. He's looking for reverence. He's not measuring the size of the sacrifice. He's measuring the sincerity of the worshiper, the sincerity of the one bringing the sacrifice. And that's still true today, in my opinion. God's not impressed by your image or your appearance. He's moved by knowing that your heart is fully committed and devoted to Him. So let me ask you something, if someone from the outside just watched your life for a week, would they conclude that God is the greatest treasure in your life? Would they conclude that you have placed Him at the center of it all? Not because of things you've posted, not because of what you claim or what you say, but simply because of how you live. Would they see someone who just stands in awe and in amazement of our God? Or would they see someone who's become pretty comfortable with Him? Comfort can very quickly and very quietly become complacency. And complacency is absolutely one of the greatest and truest enemies to genuine worship. Now, what I do love about this passage, and none of us like confrontation, but confrontation in this case coming from God is coming from a good place. He confronts his people because he loves them. He doesn't expose complacency to shame us. He exposes it to restore us, to bring us back to where we need to be. Every warning in scripture is also an invitation to, in this case, to rediscover the wonder and amazement, to remember who God is and to stop treating him as just an item on our schedule. And we need to really return him to the center point of our lives. I've said it on here and I'll say it again. One of the greatest quotes I've ever heard, and I think it was Pastor Mark Pettis that said it, Church of the Highlands, he is either Lord of it all or not at all. And there is no in between. It's imperative that we place Him at the center of our lives, and it is never too late to bring God your best. Maybe today's message isn't meant for someone who's walked away from God and who's lost their way. Maybe it's for some of us who've been walking with Him for years, but we've been walking with Him for so long that we've just become so familiar with the grace that maybe we've just forgotten how amazing and how awesome it is. Maybe we've become so accustomed to those moments of worship that we've forgotten the sincere love and power of the one we're worshiping. Maybe we've become so busy talking about God that we've stopped just talking to Him or standing in awe of Him. So this week, I'm going challenge you. Don't just read your Bible. Slow down and let it read you back. Don't just say your prayers. Sit there and linger for a moment in God's presence and just try to absorb what He's putting inside of you. Don't just be present and attend worship. Worship with the expectation of meeting and feeling the power of the living God. The moment we lose our sense of wonder, we begin shrinking God down to the size of our routines and size of things that we can comprehend. And we don't want to let this happen. Bring Him your best. Bring Him absolutely your whole and entire heart. Stand in awe of His absolute holiness and remember. He's still the same God that spoke galaxies into existence, part of the Red Sea, walked out of an empty tomb, and knows you by name. As always guys, before we get out of here, just remember, get in your Bibles, say your prayers, love one another, and tell the truth. God bless.