Drift

Samuel Prime · Tidal Church Moncton · November 9, 2025 · Malachi series

Samuel Prime teaches from Malachi 2 and the start of chapter 3, showing how the priests and people drifted from God. Worship is more than Sunday songs, and unfaithfulness to others starts with a drifting heart. God lovingly refines and draws us back.

More from Samuel Prime · The Malachi series

Topics: Relationships, Discipleship, Worship

Transcript

[0:00] I will never forget the day that me and my mentor sat down. We consistently would, read through the Scriptures together, and there was no necessary structure. There was no real pattern. We just opened up the Scriptures and we'd talk about them and wrestle through them together. And I'll never forget the day that we're going through the book of John, and we got to John 6, and we got to kind of the, towards the end of it in verse 66, where it says, "At this point many of disciples turned away and deserted Him." And then Jesus turned to the 12 and asked, "Are you going to leave as well?" And my mentor looked me in the eyes and he said, "Sam, I think when the going gets tough, you are one of the ones who would turn away."

[0:49] And I stood up getting ready to walk outta that room and said, "The audacity of this man to look at me and say that when the going gets tough, when things get hard, that I would walk away from Jesus." And, you know, I thought, you know, parents tend to like me. You know, my friends like me, my teachers all like me, and I think I'm a pretty decent guy. But he looked at me and he said, "I think you're one of the ones who would turn away." And it made me so upset because he continued and he didn't stop there. He didn't just say, "Hey, I think you would turn away." And he said, "This is how I know this. I see this in how you worship God with your life and how that bleeds into your relationships and how you do not honor the risen Christ."

[1:42] And I was mad, I was angry. I was like, who is he to tell me that I would walk away? Like, who is he to tell me that I would walk away from the risen Christ when things got tough? And the truth is, as I was hurt, not because he was wrong, but because he was right. And he didn't tell me that to hurt my feelings. He didn't tell me that to kick a man while he was down. He told me that because he wanted me to, he wanted to see me grow in my relationship, in my love with the Lord. And last week we started our series in Malachi. And what we saw is we saw that the people of Judah were in a pretty rough spot. And so rough, in fact, they were actually doubting God in His goodness.

[2:31] Today in our series, we're gonna be learning a little bit about how they got to that spot in the first place. And similarly to me in the story that I just shared, we were not, they were not at risk of drifting. They had drifted. They were not at risk of spiritual drift. They had drifted. And what we're gonna see is maybe that it is not God that has drifted, but rather us. Malachi paints this picture of what happens to a humanity when a humanity drifts far from Him. Furthermore, this morning, we're gonna discover what happens to us when our hearts drift far from Him. In fact, I would go as far to say what A. W. Tozer, a pastor and theologian, said to be incredibly true, that every man, person, whatever, is as close to God as they want to be, that every person, as close to God as they want to be.

[3:32] In Malachi chapter 2, we're gonna start in verse 1, and we're gonna kind of go verse by verse there a little bit. And then we're gonna be jumping around all throughout the chapter. And so if you have your Bibles, please turn there with me. It'll also be on the screen behind me. Malachi 2:1. But before we do that, I think we need to pray. Heavenly Father, Almighty, Counselor, a wonderful God, we stand before You, and all we stand before You in all of Your beauty and Your majesty. And Father, I just pray that as I share Your Word, I pray that You would speak to us. And Father, as You speak to our hearts, the power of Your Holy Spirit, I pray that You would give us the courage and the strength to respond how it is You want us to respond.

[4:17] Father, we love You. We worship You. God, we praise You. We give You this time and this space completely uninterrupted, for how it is You wanna move. We pray this in the powerful, the mighty name of Jesus Christ. Amen. And so in Malachi 2:1, it opens up and says, "And now, priests, this warning is for you." And so who are the priests? What's the deal with the priest? Well, the priest's job was to connect the people of God to God by offering sacrifices and worship to Him. And the Scriptures continue on to say, "If you do not listen and you do not resolve to honor My name," says the Lord Almighty, "I will send a curse on you and I will curse your blessings."

[5:08] He says, "Yes, I have already cursed them because you have not resolved to honor Me." Who are the priests? Where did they come from? Well, the priests came from the tribe of Levi. And when the Israelites moved into the Promised Land, the tribe of Levi did not get a portion of that land. And the reason they didn't get a portion of that land is because they had an all access pass to the temple. Their portion was the Lord as priest. And so their blessing was not a piece of dirt. Their blessing was a relationship with the Lord. And what the Lord is saying to these priests is based on your heart, how you bring Me defiled and leftover worship, your blessings are going to be cursed.

[5:53] He says, in other words, you are walking away from Me and My curses might just be to let you do it. This is similarly to what it means in Romans 1, where it says that the wrath of God, that He would turn us to our own desires. It's actually that God's kindness, that He would rebuke us and wake us up so that we don't miss out in a relationship with Him. We hear this passage of Scripture about rebuke and curses, and we say, how could such a loving God do that? But He's a loving God because He wants us to want Him and need Him. He doesn't force us to love Him because if He forced us to love Him, that would not be love and or true authentic worship.

[6:40] He continues on to say, "Because of you, I'll rebuke your descendants." In Malachi's context, this warning is directed to the priest, the descendants of Levi. What this meant is this wasn't just some general shot at legacy, the priests of Levi. It was continued. So these children were meant to continue the priestly line. And so their unfaithfulness wouldn't just hurt this generation of priests, it would continue throughout their lineage. It threatened to corrupt the entire priesthood for generations. And so God's rebuke here is not about some generic family legacy of keeping the name alive, but about preserving the integrity of the Levitical calling. And the Scriptures continue and it says, "I will smear on your faces the dung from your festival sacrifices, and you'll be carried off with it."

[7:33] Man, why don't we write a worship song about that and call it "D-Face," right? Like that would be a song that I don't think many of us would wanna sing. And so what this is saying is, it's saying, when you make an offering, almost the whole book of Leviticus is about instructions to the Levites on how they are instructed to worship. And the Old Testament worship was very prescripted and specific. It involved sacrifices and rituals, and it was limited to one place and one people at one time in one particular nation. But in the New Testament, worship is no longer to priests or a particular nation. It's open to anybody who calls Jesus Christ Lord. Worship moves from being centered on a temple and sacrifices to being centered on Jesus Christ Himself and expressed through the lives of believers, through the power of the Holy Spirit.

[8:22] So there were specific things that you're supposed to do with the offerings, and you're supposed to take all the guts and the dung out and the RAs out on the outside of the temple and you would burn it because God doesn't want it. It's gross. And these jokers were bringing in lame, sick, blind offerings that were not even properly prepared, and they were offering on God, they were offering unto God dung, and God wasn't okay with that. And just like the dung of the animal, we're not allowed in the temple, that's what He's saying here to the Levites. He's saying, I'm gonna take you out with the crap that you were supposed to remove before you gave it to me. And the verse continues on to say, and you'll know that I have sent you this warning so that My covenant with Levi may continue, says the Lord Almighty.

[9:08] And what I want us to know is there's a difference between a covenant and a contract. A contract is something that says, Hey, I'll do my part. You do your part and we're good. A covenant, on the other hand, is saying, no matter what you do, I will keep my word. And so if you read the rest of the verses from this point out all the way down to verse 9, you see how far the priests have drifted from where they started. God's covenant with Levi was a life that was marked with life and peace and awe. The priests were people that walked in integrity. They were supposed to teach truth. They lived close to the heart of God. But somewhere along the way, they lost their reverence. They stopped guarding truth and started catering to people's comfort.

[9:56] They stopped leading people towards God and started to lead people away from Him. And here's why this matters to us here today. If you lose your awe of God, you eventually will lose your accuracy. When God is no longer at His rightful place in your life, everything else becomes to become scattered. And that's what happened to the priests. They stopped bringing God their best and started bringing Him whatever was convenient and easiest. And so the point I'm trying to make here, I'll unpack this a little bit more, is simply this, when we stop honoring God as holy, we start offering Him what is hollow. When we stop respecting God as holy, we start offering Him what is hollow.

[10:42] In other words, when God stops being real to us, everything we offer Him becomes fake. When God stops being real to us as our personal Lord and Savior, everything we offer Him into our lives begins to become half-hearted and fake. And so why does this matter to us? You might be going, this was written to a very specific group of people, you know, thousands of years ago. Why does this matter to us today? You're like, we're not priests. Well, this wasn't written to us, but it is for us. And we know that in the New Testament, there is no position of priest, but all of Hebrews is about one thing, that Jesus is the great high priest, and He didn't bring a sacrifice. He was the sacrifice. He did away with the old sacrificial system.

[11:30] And in fact, in AD 70, they tore down the temple and there was no place to make a sacrifice. And again, because Jesus is the one true holy, perfect sacrifice, we don't need to make traditional animal sacrifices anymore. You don't have to have a travel agent between you and the Lord. You can go straight to Him. And when Jesus died on a cross, there was an earthquake that ran right through Jerusalem and right through the temples, and it tore the curtain and the Holy of Holies that separated the presence of God from the people of God is gone. And now we can come to the Lord like children of the Most High God, and walk into the throne room and say, Dad, here I am. So Malachi is talking to the priests, and there are no church in the priest today except everyone that considers themselves a follower of Christ is a priest.

[12:23] You're like, what? What does that even mean? 1 Peter chapter 2, verse 9. It says, but you are not like that. For you are a chosen people. You are royal priests. Now how about that? You can go home, you can tell your mom, your dad, your grandparents. You can say, I'm a priest. The Scriptures continue on to say, a holy nation, God's very own possession. And as a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for He called you out of darkness into His wonderful light. You see, the priesthood of believers, as we call it in the New Testament, is a fulfillment of what the priests were supposed to be in the Old Testament and Malachi too. And so we are supposed to be people that preserve truth, that reflect the image of Christ, that are transformed by His grace and His mercy, and to not be conformed to the world.

[13:17] And the reason that this is important to us is because where we are confronted with Scriptures that say, I will smear on you the faces of the smear on your face is the dung from your festival sacrifices, and you'll be carried off with it. We go, man, I don't want dung smear to my face. That's pretty nasty. And we know that God has some very strong language when we dishonor Him in our times of worship. Worship in the Scriptures is serious business. And hear, don't hear what I'm not saying. If you don't call yourself a follower of the word of Christ, if you don't have it figured out, if you're still trying to figure out where you land and what you believe and your friend brought you, and you're sitting here with your arms crossed and you're like, what's happening? And your friend's like, this is hilarious. We're talking about dung in church.

[14:03] And you're like, I don't know, man, this is pretty intense. I want you to know it's okay. You got time. Figure it out. But if you call yourself a follower of the risen Christ and you roll up into the presence of God and treat Him as if He was common, there are serious warnings in the Scriptures about this kind of attitude. And that is what Malachi is warning them of. Now let me ask you this. When you come to church, when you show up on a Sunday, when you come and you sit here and you sing songs unto the Lord, what are you offering Him? What are you offering the Lord? We know that the sacrificial system was done now, which means that we don't sacrifice animals to the Lord, but rather our lives we are supposed to sacrifice and say, Jesus, You can have all of it.

[14:55] And so what is it that you are giving unto the Lord? Is it dung? Is it crap? Or are you bringing your best before the Lord? What is it that when you roll into church, you are bringing God? Are you bringing Him the first and the best? Are you offering unto the Lord what He is worth? Which is everything? At my last church, I got up to preach on a Sunday and, and you know, I was super honored and privileged to have the opportunity to preach God's Word. And you know, I studied, I did my research, I prepared a message. I got up and I preached it. And I was like, yeah, I probably did okay. And that week, I took people and met people for coffee. I actually did some marriage counseling. I did a whole bunch of other stuff and I preached and I got down and I sat there and me and the Lord were doing some work.

[15:46] And He said, "You did all these things. You did marriage counseling, you did, you know, like, shepherding, you preached, you taught, and you didn't invite Me into any of those spaces throughout the week. And He said, "You didn't offer Me anything. And yet you had the audacity to stand up and say that I am your everything when you gave Me nothing." And the words that kept replaying in my mind as I sat there in tears were, "You worshiped Me with your leftovers."

[16:31] Are you worshiping the Lord with your leftovers? Where are you worshiping God with what's left? Where, what's with what's left? Where are you not listening to Him and just going through life like you are the god of your own life? Maybe the truth is, our problem isn't here on a Sunday. It's maybe that we haven't, it's maybe that it isn't that we haven't stopped singing, but that we've stopped remembering who it is we are singing to. Maybe we've gotten comfortable in God's presence where we treat what is holy and sacred like it is common. Like you can run into it when you're in the grocery store. Like it's just another thing on your grocery list to do where it's like, "Oh, came to church, experience the presence of God today." Maybe it's that we've stopped treating God like a holy God and started treating Him like He's common.

[17:22] And maybe for some of us, worship has become a playlist where we put it on and we don't think about what we're singing or who we're singing to. And maybe that's all worship for us has become, where we stand in church and we sing some songs, but the way that we live our lives does not reflect that of a risen Christ. Maybe we show up, we fold our arms and we say, "I don't really like that song very much. I don't like what that preacher said. I don't like what, you know, I don't like this. And man, it's too dark in here and the music's too loud," and you do all this stuff. And maybe this is crass, maybe this is too harsh.

[18:08] I don't care. Like, this isn't a karaoke band. We don't show up to entertain you. We don't show up to have a good TED Talk and a message that makes us feel good. We don't stand here and say like, "Oh, like I'm gonna like, I'm gonna come and be encouraged today and my life's gonna be good. And this is a self-help session." That's not what this is. It is an opportunity for us to offer our hearts unto the Lord. Worship all throughout Scripture is distinct. It is sacred, it is set apart. Worship is a chance to say, "God, You are still first in my life. God, You are my everything." And the hard reality is, sometimes we roll into church and we sing songs like, "God, You are my everything."

[18:58] And then we go out and we live our lives like it didn't mean anything. The songs that we just sung 10 minutes ago. We've turned worship into something that all it is is we sing some songs and that is it. But worship is more than that. It is what we do when nobody is watching. It's how you talk to your spouse when you're angry. It's whether you scroll mindlessly before bed instead of giving just two short minutes to thank the God who gave you breath today. It's to give God your first and your best in the morning, not your leftover attention at night. And the harshness of this is, we've learned to worship God with our mouths, but not with our lives.

[19:46] We've learned to say all the right things, to say all the, to sing all the right songs, but we have not realized God's place in the cosmos as the Lord Almighty and the Most High God, the Lord of angel armies, of all majesty and beauty. We raise our hands in here, we worship God, and then we go out there and we roll our eyes at people out there. So let me ask you this. Have you stopped offering God your best? Maybe it's your time. Maybe He gets whatever's left after work, after, you know, the ball game comes on, after, you know, after you cook dinner. Like maybe you give Him what's left of your time. Maybe it's the relationships. Maybe you've stopped submitting to the risen Christ in decisions about who you date or how you parent.

[20:39] Yeah, I'm gonna talk about money too. Maybe it's your money. Maybe you've been trusting your math more than you have His promises. Maybe it's your heart. Maybe you've been in a season where you've stopped expecting God to show up because the disappointment taught you that it's safer not to have any hope at all. Maybe it's in our prayer time and our personal prayer time. And even after the service, are you praying like you're bringing God a shopping list instead of standing before the almighty sovereign King of the universe who invited us as children to come before Him and experience His glorious presence in majesty? Or are we bringing Him a half-hearted, lame shopping list?

[21:28] I'm not saying that God doesn't care about the things that you want or desire, but do you desire Him more than what you want? Those things. And Malachi in this passage reminds us that He doesn't want half-hearted offerings. You don't need perfection. He wants you to show up and be present with Him. He simply wants you to spend time with Him. He wants your attention, your affection, your awe. So what are you bringing before the Lord today? Is it reverence and respect for God's place in heaven and earth? Or is it routine? Is it passion for the God of the cosmos or distraction marked by endless scrolling and anything you can fill your time with except spending time with Him?

[22:15] Is it surrender or is it convenience? Is it raising your hands passionately but never experiencing and reflecting the image of Christ outside these walls? Because worship is a daily choice to say, "God, You are first in my life. You get my first and my best." Not just in public, but in our homes, in our cars, in our jobs. But most importantly, in your heart. And the reality that we're gonna see here in the Scriptures in Malachi is drift never stays private. The drift that you feel within your spirit where God, where you've forgotten God's place in heaven and on earth, that never stays private. It spreads when awe fades and worship becomes routine.

[23:01] Your relationship with God doesn't just drift. It spills over into how you treat others. The same heart that brings half-hearted worship on Sunday often brings half-hearted love on Monday to the people around you. And that's what Malachi starts addressing next. But before we do that, I want to talk about verse 10 where he says, "Do we not all have one Father? Did not one God create us? Why do we profane the covenant of our ancestors by being unfaithful to one another?" And this is the second time in these scriptures that Jesus, that the Lord is likening Himself to a Father and he wants us to understand that He isn't some far off God who doesn't care about us, but rather we are just all His kids.

[23:47] And I really hope this helps make His anger make a little bit more sense. 'Cause He's not upset with little peasant subjects. He is fed up and upset that His children are betraying their own siblings. He's upset that they betrayed one another and it's serious. And verse 11, it says, "Judah has been unfaithful. A detestable thing has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem. Judah has desecrated the sanctuary of the Lord, of the Lord loves by marrying women who worship a foreign god." The people of Judah weren't turning themselves to idols, but they were cool flirting with women who would most certainly entice them towards idolatry. Friends don't flirt with idolatry.

[24:34] It is not a question of how close you can get to greed or lust or power before it infects your soul. Don't give it the chance. Amen. And if you've got friends or a social media algorithm that entices you towards idolizing wealth or power or greed or prestige or one politician over another or one point of view over another, I think it's time to cut those ties. Also, I speak from experience where I quite literally, I'm gonna take this passage literally for a second where I've dated people that I should not have dated who did not love Jesus above everything else in their life. Where to the point where my dad and my brother both stood up at my wedding and said the words, "Buddy, I didn't think you were gonna make it, son, I didn't think you were gonna make it."

[25:25] Flirt to convert doesn't work. Don't compromise. Verse 13, "Another thing you do, you flood the altar, the Lord's altar with tears. You weep and wail 'cause He no longer looks at you with favor or your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands. You ask why. They're going like, why, Lord? Why are You doing this? Is it because the Lord is the witness between you and the wife of your youth? You've been unfaithful to her though. She's your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant. Didn't the Lord make you one with your wife in body and spirit? You are His. The man who hates and divorces his wife," says the Lord, the God of Israel, "does violence to the one that he should protect," says the Lord Almighty. "So be on guard and do not be unfaithful."

[26:16] Depending on what translation you're reading, that verse might sound a little bit different. The Hebrew here is messy, where it literally says, "And no one has done this. And a remnant of the Spirit is to him." I know it's not exactly coffee mug material. You might not wanna print that and put that on a t-shirt. Maybe keep Philippians 4:13. My best shot at what this means is this. No one who does this has the Spirit left in him. You are like, whoa. No one who does. This is a Spirit left in him. What Malachi's saying is, he's saying, you can't walk in the Spirit and live in betrayal at the same time. You cannot walk in the Spirit and live in betrayal at the same time. The presence of God and the practice of unfaithfulness cannot coexist comfortably.

[27:06] When you cheat on the covenant, it's not just about breaking trust with your spouse. You're pushing back against the very Spirit that made you one in the first place. And so God's not being cruel here. He's saying, "If you still have My Spirit in you, you won't be able to live like this in peace." The Holy Spirit does not make room for double lives. He makes war on them. Like the same scriptures, the scriptures that say the Spirit that made you one is the one that you're pushing back against. So this passage of scripture talks specifically about men divorcing their wives. And what I wanna say here is, at that time in the Old Testament, women legitimately could not divorce their husbands. And so it speaks to the men. And so I'm a man, I'm not a woman.

[27:53] So, I'm gonna speak to the married men in the room for a moment. If you show up to church and your arms are crossed and you say, "I feel far from God," and you think that God is far from you and you are not far from God, and yet you engage in pornography on a consistent basis, if you are liking and following people that you should not be liking and following, if you do not give your spouse a hundred percent, that you vowed to give your spouse a hundred percent, if you are somebody who does the chores and think that that's enough where you don't have to date your spouse. If you look at another woman lustfully, the New Testament says to look at another woman lustfully is to commit adultery in your heart.

[28:43] The scripture speaks to that. Keep the covenant that you made to her at the altar, depending on your translation. In verse 16, there's a phrase that pops up that says, "God hates divorce." And I wanna talk about this for a minute 'cause I know it's an uncomfortable one. God is saying that He hates divorce, not divorced people. God hates divorce, not divorced people. He hates the act. And I want you to know that Jesus spent time with the broken and the messy. He didn't shame them, He shared a meal with them. So while God hates divorce, we as a church are still called to love them through it. I wanna speak to those who have been divorced and have gone through it.

[29:31] I need you to hear me that God does not hate you. God does not hate you. He hates what has been done to you. Do not believe the lie from the pit of hell that rejection from spouse means rejection from God. If you were the one that walked away, He's calling you to make things right. In whatever way is safe, "Return to Me and I will return to you." To the married couples in the room: Fix your stuff. You maintain your car, your home, your marriage deserves the same care. Stay in the Word. Love your spouse. Get counseling. Kill any foothold of infidelity before it kills you. Malachi says the unfaithfulness covers your clothes with violence because betrayal leaves blood on everything.

[30:21] And to the singles in the room, slow down, slow down. You do not need marriage to find purpose or meaning. Please let God shape your heart before you enter into vows that you cannot keep. Here's what I need you to know. Unfaithfulness to people always starts with unfaithfulness to God. Maybe you're sitting here and you're thinking, like, woo, I'm good. I'm not married. I don't, like, I'm not, like, toying around with anything. Well, the Scriptures, if you jump down to Malachi 3:5. It says, "At that time, I will put you on trial. I'm eager to witness against all the sorcerers and adulterers and liars. I will speak against those who cheat employees of their wages, who oppress widows and orphans, or who deprive the foreigners living among you of justice.

[31:13] For those people do not fear Me, says the Lord of Heaven's Armies." What we see in the Scriptures is the heartbreaking reality that the priest, the people of God no longer feared Him and had become corrupt. The world could no longer distinguish the people of God from the world. And my question that I would ask us here this morning is, has that become a reality? Has it become a reality for us, where we stand in church and we wear the badge as Christian, but we live our lives in a way that does not reflect the image of Christ? How we become a people who worship God with our words and not our actions to the point where we no longer listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit when He convicts us and bring things through our mind that we need to surrender down to His feet.

[32:05] And this passage kills me. It's hard because I think all of us fit into one of these categories, and we'll talk about that in a minute. But you might look at this and be like, yeah, I don't really know. It says, "Have you deprived the foreigners living in your land of justice?" And you don't gotta look too far to know that the hatred that people have towards people that do not look like them is rampant. Like, you roll into Tim Horton's and you order, and then you go through the window and then you're like, mean, and have an ill heart towards the person who is not from Canada. And literally all they did to you was exist. And God says, that's not okay.

[32:50] God says, that's not okay if you go through the list. So these are some of the questions that come out of it. Have you belittled others in your speech? Have you hated another person or wished them evil? Have you refused to control your temper? Have you willfully entertained impure thoughts? Have you allowed yourself to be conformed to a consumer mentality? Have you paid your employees a living wage or failed to give them a full day's work for a full day's pay and actually walk in integrity? Have you knowingly and willingly deceived another person? Have you cheated on your spouse by looking at someone else? Lustfully? Have you sought revenge or hoped something bad would happen to somebody? And I stand here and I need you to know this drift is not fixed by following rules. Drift, spiritual drift.

[33:37] And your relationship with the Lord where you have fallen away is not fixed by following rules. It is fixed by a relationship with the Creator of the universe where you worship Him. And when you come before Him and He points things out in your life, you're willing to humble yourself before the King and lay them down at His feet. It is a willingness to come before the Lord and risk your reputation for a relationship with Him. And when we cherish Him above everything else and how we live, how we talk, how we lead, our hearts realign and our obedience begins to become natural. And I know I'm saying a lot of things here. And that list maybe hit you hard. Maybe you felt something lift up in your heart, in your spirit or your stomach, and you thought, yeah, you know what?

[34:29] That's me. Maybe you stand here, sit here and you feel like you're, you know, you've been falling apart or like the weight of your compromise is crushing you. But what if what you're going through right now isn't punishment but rather refinement? If we actually go to the beginning of chapter 3 in Malachi, it says, "But who will be able to endure it when He comes? Who will be able to stand and face Him when He appears? For He will be like a blazing fire that refines metal or like strong soap that bleaches clothes. He will sit like a refiner of silver, burning away the dross. He will purify the Levites, refining them like gold and silver, so that they may once again offer acceptable sacrifices to the Lord."

[35:19] When God talks about a refining fire, it's not Him coming to destroy. A refiner, a gold, a silversmith doesn't waste silver. They'd be a really bad gold or silversmith that they wasted silver. And so what He does is He heats up, the impurities rise to the top, and He knows it's pure when He can see His reflection in it. And that's what God does to us when we're willing to submit to the God of the universe. He brings things up in us that we know should not exist. And He refines us until our image looks like Him. You see, when we drift, God doesn't just watch us float away and say, good luck. He comes after us with fire and soap.

[36:04] Not the gentle kind of soap either that, like, smells really good. We're like, oh, you wash your hands. You're like, oh, that's really good. I worked on a farm, they had soap that was like super gritty to get the smell off and it would, like, make your hands all raw. It's that kind of soap, like, it cleanses and it cuts deep because He loves us and does not want us to live comfortable lives where we compromise on every little thing. And some of us are in the refining right now, wondering why life feels heavy or that God feels distant, but maybe it's not distance. Maybe it's fire. Maybe maybe He's doing what only fire can do, burning away what doesn't belong so His image can shine again. And the hard thing is, a man can bow his knee and yet stand in his heart.

[36:52] And Tozer wrote this, he said that Christians don't tell lies. They often go to church and sing them. He wrote that Christians don't tell lies. They often go to church and sing them. "Lord, we give You our heart. We give You our heart." What I'm trying to say is to come and worship Him and sing and profess to worship God when our hearts do not belong to Him is basically mockery. Proverbs 23:26 says, "My son, give me your heart." He's not looking for hands that will just do His work. He's not looking for feet that will just go where He goes. He's not looking for minds that will just, just like think all the time.

[37:39] He's looking for your heart. He's looking for your heart. And I can't help but think in the Gospels where the disciples are all sitting around the table and they go, and each one of them called Jesus Lord. And then it gets to Judas. And instead of calling Jesus Lord, he calls Him rabbi, he calls Him teacher. And I have to ask you, is Jesus your Lord or is He just your rabbi? Is Jesus your Lord, where you trust Him with everything with you, where you worship Him with your whole life, where you allow yourself to be refined by Him, or He's somebody who you think just has good things to say and makes me feel better and makes it so I can live a good and comfortable life?

[38:32] But 'cause the call of following Jesus isn't, "Hey, I'm gonna make you comfortable." That's a false gospel. The call of Jesus is radical transformation that costs you everything. When we approach the Scriptures, sometimes it can feel like it's a blunt instrument that hits us in the stomach or hits us on the arm and it hurts for a little bit. But when we open up the Word of God and we read it, it's like a scalpel. If you've ever been in surgery and under the knife, you would know that a scalpel leaves intricate pins and needles within us when we are healing. And that's what happens when we approach the Scriptures. It becomes like a scalpel into our hearts, cutting out the areas and things in our life that do not belong.

[39:23] Do you believe that Jesus is Lord of your life, or have you been living in a way that you just think He's a good teacher? When is the last time that you've experienced God and asked for not just His power, but just His beauty and His majesty, where you stand in awe of the Creator of the universe? And maybe today you feel far from Him, maybe you feel close to Him. Maybe you're just in a season where you're like, "I don't know what's going on, but all I know is I want Jesus." What we're gonna do is we're gonna pray, and I'm gonna just pause for a moment. If you're in the refiner's fire, if you're somebody where you, you know, you've stopped worshiping God and your relationships are jagged and broken, I would encourage you to come and receive prayer.

[40:11] The prayer team will be up here because God is a God of reconciliation, not of condemnation. But the truth of the matter is, we have to be willing to put our reputations on the line to follow the risen Christ. We have to be willing to say, people are gonna look at me weird and think that I'm an odd person to come and kneel before the risen King. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, Almighty Counselor, wonderful God, we stand before You in all of Your glory and Your majesty.

[41:07] I pray for those that have never experienced the true risen Christ. I pray that they would experience that right now in this moment. God, I pray that if we have struggled with infidelity, we would come and we would lay that down at Your feet. God, I pray that if we have struggled with hatred towards another brother or sister, Father, I pray that we would come and lay that at Your feet. Father, I pray that if we have bitterness towards foreigners in our land, Father, that we would come and kneel at Your feet. Father, I pray that if we have hardened hearts towards Your Holy Spirit, we would come and kneel at Your feet.

[42:00] Father, I pray for those that think You're a good teacher and somebody that maybe gives good life advice but have not revered You as Lord. I pray that they would come and kneel at Your feet. Holy Spirit, would You come and do what it is only You can do? Would people be set free? Would people be set free because they're willing to come and kneel and lay at Your feet? God, even right now we just open up the altar.

[42:48] There's no words to kneel but on the floor. But Father, we ask, I ask that if there's anybody, if there's anybody that needs to come and kneel before the risen Christ and say, "Jesus, I want You above everything," I pray that they would not let convenience stand in the way. I pray that they would not let comfort stand in the way. I pray that they would not let what anybody else thinks of them stand in the way. Father, I pray that You would call them to stand and kneel at Your feet. God, may we enter before the throne room before You in all of Your glory and majesty. God, may You meet us here. God, would You awaken Your church?

[43:34] Would You instill a spiritual renewal in the lives of Your people? Would You call people through a willingness and a boldness to come and to proclaim the gospel? Would You call pastors and teachers and shepherds and overseers? Would You call up marketplace leaders and people that need to come and to lead, but first need to submit to You? May they come and kneel at Your feet. I pray for those that have grieved the Holy Spirit. I pray they would come and they would kneel at Your feet. Jesus, we open this time up to You. Whatever it is You want to move, move. Jesus, we love You. We worship You because if the highest place we ever reach is at Your feet, Lord, then we've done it all.

[44:26] Jesus, we love You, we worship You, and we praise You in the powerful name of Jesus. Amen. If you feel the call, please come and kneel. 'Cause to be truthful, nobody cares. Nobody cares about what you got going on. 'Cause if you got business with God that you do not do, the only one that is fooled is you.