3:6-12 – Robbing God Context: Malachi is dealing with God’s people who have grown apathetic & despondent. Their lives are showing this in their marriages, in their cynicism and in their stinginess. He will address this latter issue in our text this morning. Let me just put my cards on the table. I don’t particularly like preaching on money. This is because of how many Christian leaders have abused this in the past. I fear to be associated w/ them. But, I am also deeply committed to expository preaching which means I preach on what God puts before me in His Word and it rather frequently speaks of $, Mammon, our wealth. 3 very important points before I do this: 1. Please refer to Worship 101 if you are new. Please believe us on this. 2. I don’t know who gives what. If I look at you on a point, do not assume anything. 3. I am preaching to myself as well. Read: Pray: Intro: Nobody likes a Scrooge. Scrooge comes from Ebenezer Scrooge who was miserly. We look down on stingy people. Ex. from this past week: Politician (O’Rourke article) Before we throw any stones (which is fun to do at politicians), we should examine ourselves. It’s easy to judge the Scrooges we see but harder to look honestly into our own hearts.

Stats on giving in the church are not encouraging: 1. Xians give around 2.5% to church (not clear if only to church or overall). Site after site points out that this is less than during the Great Depression (3.3%) 2. Estimated that 10-25% of any given congregation actually gives a tithe (10%) 3. NT Times ran article in 2016 that sited evidence that religious giving was down 50% since 1990. Dropped by ½.

It doesn’t appear most Christians have a lots of reasons to point fingers. The stats do not speak of a vibrant faith in God that translates into joyous & generous giving. We look more like the scrooge-like believers of Malachi’s day.

I. The problem of stinginess (6-9). II. The promise of generosity (10-11) III. The purpose of giving (12)

I. The problem of stinginess: 4 problems we can deduce in 6-9

1st - Incongruent with God’s unchanging mercy & faithfulness – v. 6

A. When it says, I do not change, there are 2 ways that God doesn’t change:

1. He is faithful to his covenant promises. He is absolutely unwavering in his commitment to fulfill the covenant - Num. 23:19 - PP

2. His faithfulness to his covenant promises is because he is unchanging in his character. Lam. 3:22-23 -PP off-

He is abounding in hesed (steadfast love, mercy) & is faithful to the end. Because God never changes & always keeps his word, they are not destroyed. That’s who God is. They also were unchanging in their identity.

B. Notice that this vs. refers to them as the Children of .

Jacob was the father of and he was a scoundrel. He was not faithful, he was a deceiver but God bore with him & blessed him. And God changed his name from Jacob to Israel as a sign of both God’s favor & Jacob’s new identity

It is interesting here that Malachi reverts back to Jacob’s original name. It’s deliberate. He’s saying that they behave like their father & describes that in 7

C. They too were unchanging in their identity & deserved to be consumed. But because God was unchanging in steadfast love & faithful to keep his word, they still lived on as a nation.

To respond to God’s mercy & faithfulness (the only reason they even had life) with tight fisted stinginess was incongruent with God’s lavish mercy on them.

2nd - Stinginess is a prob. b/c it is to rob God. – v. 8

A. Can a man rob God appears to be a rhetorical question calling for the response, “NO” How can a mere man rob God? Impossible.

But there was a sense in which they were robbing God. They were living as if they were the rightful owners of all of their things. And the visible sign that God had given them to remind them that he is the owner of all was the tithe & contributions.

B. Lev. 27:30 – lit. “tenth”. A tenth of all prod. was holy to the Lord. It was his & they were to offer it to him. C. The contributions or offerings were above & beyond tithe & could be any material possession or cakes of leavened bread & it included certain portions of animals that were sacrificed. They were food for the priests.

All of the tithes & offering were absolutely essential for the worship of God. The whole priestly order (the tribe of ) lived upon these tithes & offerings. When tithes & offerings were absent, they had to return to farming which meant that the temple would fall into disrepair, sacrifices were neglected & the whole system of worship fell off.

The point is, all of these tithes & offerings belonged to God & God required them for a loving purpose, for their own good. But they were holding on to these as if they knew better than God and is if they were the rightful owners and not God. Stinginess is a form of robbing God b/c it denies his rightful ownership of all.

3rd - Stinginess is a prob. because of what it reveals of the state of our heart – 7-8a

Tension: There is a GENERAL call to return, to repent. They then inquire, how shall we return? They’re saying in essence, we don’t even know how we’ve gone astray They pridefully thing they haven’t turned away & the problem must be with God.

So at this pt., the answer to their question could be virtually anything, right? Stop worshiping other gods. Stop being so apathetic. Stop treating your wives wrongly divorcing them. All things they were guilty of and needed to repent of. He could have taken any of the 10 commandments or their blind pride.

But he puts his finger on ONE thing: their stinginess—not b/c this was their only sin! It is rather b/c this is like a sort of litmus test of the heart. did the same thing many times. He did this with the rich young ruler. He did this with the Pharisees whom he criticized as lovers of $. And Paul does so w/ Corinthians though he is not challenging their lack of faith by stinginess so much as praising their faith by generosity.

But the pt. is the same that how we use our $, our mammon, our resources, indicates something very profound about the state of our heart. So much so that God puts his finger on this one area in his call to return to Him. Stinginess reveals a heart that distrusts God at core.

4th - Stinginess is so bad that God must curse it – v.9 A. What curse? We see the essence of the curse in the following verses. It is a curse on the land in the form of drought, pestilence & crop failure. In an agricultural society, this is everything. It means dire poverty.

B. And it is exactly what God said would happen if they did not keep covenant. Background is terms of Mosaic Cov. laid out in Dt. 28—blessings & curses. Dt. 28:20-21 This is exactly what God who does not change said he would do.

The Israelites excused their stinginess b/c they said they did not have enough to give b/c of the drought & pestilence. God is to blame. But God is saying that it is actually the other way around. The reason they don’t have is b/c they were unfaithful & refused to trust in God, giving to him their tithes & offerings.

So their stinginess was a grave heart problem: It was incongruent with his mercy & faithfulness. It was a denial of God’s rightful ownership over all. It revealed that their hearts were far from him & that they had broken cov w/ him

But if stinginess was the problem that brought a curse, then the fruit of repentance in generous giving would bring the opposite—great blessing.

II. The promise of generosity – vrs. 10-11 - 2 Commands & 2 Promises

1st Command: Bring the full tithe (w/ offerings) into the storehouse. Storehouse – lit. house of supplies. I.e. the supplies needed to run the temple & take care of the Priests & Levites.

2nd Command: Put me to the test: This may seem odd at 1st b/c in various places we’re told not to test God. Passages like Dt. 6:16 command us not to put the Lord our God to the test. The word for test is not the same in these 2 passages: In Dt. it means, “try, test, or tempt” fr. a posture of cynical unbelief. Here it connotes testing fr. a posture of honest doubt w/ goal of encouraging faith in God (Hill). God says, test me to prove my faithfulness to my promises.

God was calling his people to take a risk on him. Risk your comfort, risk giving your things away (though you are poor) and see if I don’t respond in this way! We are then given the 2 promises of how God will respond: 1st Promise: I will open the windows of heaven for you & I will pour down blessing upon you until your storehouses are full.

Here is God’s promise to bring rain again upon the dry land so that they might have their storehouses of provisions full. Bring your tithe into my storehouse and I will fill your storehouse.

2nd Promise: 11a

Devourer – refers to crop destroying pests or pestilence. This was one of the curses prophesied if they were unfaithful to His covenant.

God promises to remove these locusts or pests that are destroying their crops.

And the result of the rainfall & removal of pests is stated at the end of 11. The Lord of Hosts is the one who has all the hosts under his control. All the armies of angels, all the earthly armies & even the stars. He says, test me in this and see if I am not faithful to do all that I say. I will supply all of your needs.

And he has great, global purposes behind his blessing them:

III. The purpose of giving -12

A. Isr. was not an end in itself. God, who made the whole earth, every nation & every people, is concerned with Israel as a means to something greater as well.

It says they will be a delight. A delight to whom? A delight to God, yes. But also a delight to the nations. They were blessed & were to be a blessing. Gen. 12:1-3. And Malachi prophesies how this will look: Mal. 1:11.

Your repentance that shows itself in generous giving will result in great blessing for you so much so that you will be a delight to the nations of the earth to the end that they too become a part of my family of worshipers who are blessed as you are.

APP: What lessons are we to take away this morning?

I want to deal first w/ a difficult question that might come to mind: Is this just some tit-for-tat, cause-and-effect formula for material blessing? God’s financial planning guide to getting rich. You give away a tithe of all you get and some free will offerings above and beyond and God will outdo you & make you rich. This has been the line taken by many a gospel prosperity preacher. It does contain a grain of truth that I’ll deal with shortly but it’s ultimately a distortion of the teaching. Why?

1. It ignores the context. The root problem with the OT saints of Malachi’s day is not that they are poor & need more money so God is telling them a formula to fix it. The problem is that their hearts are far from God & they are no longer seeing God rightly: - they don’t see how merciful he has been & how faithful to his covenant & that they owe their very existence to him. - they don’t see him as the rightful owner of all they possess. - they don’t see how powerful he is as the Lord of host to provide for their every need. - and they don’t trust Him as Father, that He is good & will provide for them. Their pride is blinding them from seeing all this & repenting.

This is the root of the problem: stinginess is the outward symptom that shows all this. God’s primary call in this passage is not to give but it is to repent. & the sign that really shows they have truly repented is giving freely of their resources. To convert this into a formula for material wealth would only show a similar heart that doesn’t see God’s character & faithfulness as the source of our open-handed generosity

2. It distorts what is actually promised. God says he will bless them until there is no more need. Lit. he will fill their storehouse of food supplies so that they do not lack. He is promising to meet their needs, not their greeds , Paul & Jesus to name a few, would affirm God’s faithfulness to this though they were never wealthy but utterly content in God’s generous provision for their needs.

So the challenge this morn. is the same as that of Malachi. How do you view God, your resources, and yourself? And how does your giving show what you really believe?

1. Do you see God as merciful & faithful. He never changes in these things and it is the only reason that u have life: physically, spiritually & eternally. You have no other hope.

2. Do you see everything you own as ultimately coming from him? Even your job is a gift. And your ability to work is a gift. And an economy that provides such work is his gift. He really is the owner of all you have. Is that how you see him?

3. And do you see him as not just the owner but as the Lord of hosts who really can supply all of your needs. He can make all grace abound to you so that you have all sufficiency in all times.

4. And do you see him as your loving Father who actually delights to meet your every need? He loves to fill your storehouses of supply so that you lack nothing needful. And not just physically but, as Paul says, he enriches you with a harvest of righteousness so that you are enabled to abound in every good work.

5. And do you see yourself as but his faithful steward? Not owner but steward of all that God entrusts to you.

6. And do you see that God desires to bless you & meet your every need & give you abundant, over-flowing blessings so that you might be a blessing to the nations? That you and this body might bless those around us materially & spiritually. We are not blessed so that we be a cul-de-sac but so that we might be channels of grace

And, lastly, if you do profess to believe these things, does your giving show it? If someone were given access to all your financial records & could determine what you believe based on your giving, would they conclude that you view God thus & yourself thus?

In 2 Co. 9, Paul is willing to boil all of this down to one remarkable statement. He closes his appeal for the Corinthians to continue to be generous givers with this statement:

Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift! What gift? His free gift of salvation thru X. This is the one act that shows forth everything we claim to believe about God. His free gift of salv. shows how merciful He is in bearing all our sins for us. It shows how faithful he is to his promises in fulfilling the terms of the covenant for us. Jesus took our curse for our disobedience & he gives to us the blessing of his obedience God’s free gift of salvation shows how powerful He is to meet our deepest need, that we might rest assured he can meet our every need. It reveals the very heart of our Father who delights to provide for his children People sometimes ask me if I believe we should still give a tithe. I say, at least. The NT does not mention the tithe but gives a far more radical principle. It calls us to give open-handedly in response to God’s inexpressible gift. If he has provided eternal salvation freely through the gift of His Son, we can trust him wholly to supply every one of our needs. Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift that frees us to give likewise: sacrificially, generously & cheerfully.