This week, we have been looking at another detour that the Jewish people had taken that had gotten them off track when it came to their relationship with God. Wednesday, we saw that throughout their history, the Jewish people failed to follow God’s command to bring a portion of the resources that God owned and that God had provided them and offer them back to God as an act of worship. And as a result of their failure to give God the honor and reverence that He deserved as their provider; as a result of their selfishness and rebellion, the Jewish people were not receiving enough rain; entire crops were failing. Yet, despite the curse that they were under, the Jewish people continued to rob God.
Today, we will see Malachi, after providing the evidence to support the accusation that the Jewish people had taken a detour that had dishonored God, communicate God’s promise to the Jewish people if they changed the trajectory of their lives so as to get back on track when it came to their relationship with God in verse 10:
"Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house, and test Me now in this," says the LORD of hosts, "if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows.
Now this verse tends to be one of the most misinterpreted and misapplied verses in the entire Bible. Proponents of the Prosperity gospel will often use this verse as a proof text to support their belief that “the more you give to God, the more you get from God”. This verse is also used to support the statement “you can’t out give God”. So is Malachi promoting a “name it and claim it” mentality here? Is Malachi telling us to try to out give God, so that God can give more to us?
To understand what God is communicating through Malachi here, we first need to answer several questions. First, we need to answer the question “Why is God commanding the Jewish people to bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house?” The reason why God was commanding the Jewish people to bring the whole tithe into the storehouse was because the Jewish people were being unfaithful and disobedient by failing to follow God’s command to bring a portion of the resources that God owned and that God had provided them and offer them back to God as an act of worship.
And because they were robbing God through their disobedience, there was not food in the storehouse. The storehouse was a part of the temple grounds where the tithe and offerings that helped support the Levites and priests were stored. And as a result of the Jewish people’s failure to follow God’s commands when it came to giving, there were no resources to feed the Levites and priests.
Second, we need to answer the question “What does God mean when He says test Me now in this?” How are the Jewish people to test God? Now proponents of the Prosperity Gospel would say that the test is to try to out give God. However, the issue before the Jewish people that God is addressing is not one of gaining greater prosperity; the issue before the Jewish people that God is addressing is their taking a detour that has gotten them off track when it came to their relationship with God and had dishonored God.
The test that God is referring to is His statement in verse 7: “return to Me, and I shall return to you”. In others words, God is saying “test Me in my promise that if you repent and change the direction of your life away from the detour that you have taken and get back on track to follow Me, that I will return to you and you will experience the relationship with Me that you previously had.”
Third, we need to answer the question “What is God referring to when He says “if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows.”? In the Bible, we see the phrase “open the windows of Heaven’ used on three occasions. On two occasions, this phrase was used to describe how God opened the windows of Heaven when He flooded the earth in the days of Noah. The third instance of this phrase is found in 2 Kings, when an unbelieving official sarcastically stated that even a flood of Divine provisions from Heaven could not remedy a famine that was being caused by a siege of the Jewish people by a foreign army.
God is painting a word picture for the Jewish people that just as God flooded the earth in the days of Noah, if the Jewish people changed the trajectory of their lives so as to get back on track when it came to their relationship with God by being obedient to His commands, God was promising that He would lift the drought that was a part of the curse and bring forth rain in abundance. And the rain would be so abundant that the resulting blessings of crops would provide an abundance of resources to meet the needs of the nation who had been suffering as a result of their disobedience.
You see, the issue is not prosperity; the issue is obedience. And just as the detour of disobedience that the Jewish people took by robbing God resulted in a curse of a famine, the repentance and return to obedience to God’s command would result in God’s provision and blessings. We see Malachi reinforce this reality in verses 11:
"Then I will rebuke the devourer for you, so that it will not destroy the fruits of the ground; nor will your vine in the field cast its grapes," says the LORD of hosts.
Here we see God paint two additional word pictures for the Jewish people when it came to the blessings that they would receive as a result of changing the direction of their life away from the detour that they have taken by robbing God and to get back on track by following God’s commands. First, God paints a word picture of restraining the wild locusts that would often ravage crops after a drought. You see, what would happen during seasons of drought was that locusts would continue to lay eggs that would not hatch, but instead would accumulate until the rains returned. Then, after the first rains broke the drought, the eggs would hatch and proceed to devour everything in sight. God is explaining to the Jewish people that He would not only send forth rain in abundance; God also would restrain anything that would damage the resources that God would provide as a result of the rain.
Second, God paints a word picture of a vine filled with grapes. One of the consequences of the curse that the Jewish people were experiencing as a result of robbing God was that grapes would be cast to the ground. In other words, the grape vines were barren and would fail to produce any fruit. God is explaining to the Jewish people that He would not only send forth rain in abundance; God also would ensure that their crops would produce the resources that they needed as a result of the rain.
God’s point in both of these word pictures is that as the Jewish people changed the direction of their life away from the detour that they have taken by robbing God and got back on track by following God’s commands to give the resources that were His back to Him and to His mission in the world, they would experience the blessings and the resources to be the vehicle He used to advance His kingdom in the world. We see this reality revealed for us in Malachi 3:12:
"All the nations will call you blessed, for you shall be a delightful land," says the LORD of hosts.
God’s promise to the Jewish people was that as they changed the direction of their life that had taken a detour and got back on track when it came to their relationship with Him, that the world around them would see the evidence of God’s activity in their lives and call them blessed. When God says that the Jewish people would be a delightful land, this phrase literally means a treasure or jewel. God’s point here is that the faithfulness and obedience of the Jewish people would result in them being a reflection of the glory of God and would result in them being the vehicle that God used to reveal His glory to the world.
And it is here where we see Malachi reveal for us a timeless detour that can get us off track when it comes to our relationship with God and can result in us living a life that dishonors God. And that timeless detour is this: We take a detour when we rob God of His resources in order to advance our kingdom instead of His. Just like the Jewish people of Malachi’s day, when we take the resources that God has given us to manage and choose to invest those resources in a kingdom for ourselves here on earth instead of investing a portion of those resources to advance God’s kingdom in the world, we begin to take a detour that gets us off track when it comes to our relationship with God and that dishonors God.
Now a natural question that often arises here is “Well Dave, I am a new covenant Christian; I am not under the Law. And since the tithe is an Old Testament concept, I am not bound by any percentage when it comes to giving. And since the New Testament says that God loves a cheerful giver, then I only have to give what would make me cheerful. So, for those of us here that would consider ourselves “new covenant Christians” which we all are if you have a personal relationship with Jesus by the way, and justify that as a reason as to why you are not bound by the “10 percent rule”, here is my question. In light of all that God has generously done to rescue you from your selfishness and sin, what percentage do you think would reflect the heartfelt joy that you feel in response to His generosity?
Is the heartfelt joy that you feel as a result of what Jesus has done for you the same as the joy you feel when your waitress brings your meal to you at the restaurant? Because most people give that waitress 10%; I mean that is the cultural standard isn’t it? So, why are we so put off at the idea of giving God at least a tip when he comes to responding to His activity in our lives but we give almost no thought to giving a waitress a tip?
Here is another question to consider: What would happen if we embraced using God’s resources to advance His Kingdom instead of ours? Here’s what I mean: let’s just say for the sake of argument you are an average American Christian. Now the average American Christian gives approximately 2.5 percent of their income to church. In other words, God gives the average American 100% of His money and the average American gives God 2.5% of His money back and then spends the remaining 97.5 % however they please. What would happen if the average American Christian gave God a tip? What if the average American Christian gave God 10% of His money instead of 2.5 % of His money?
Now what would happen if we were no longer average and gave God a tip? What type of environments would we be able to create where people could explore faith, grow in their faith, and experience genuine and authentic community? What could we do in terms of staffing? What could we do in terms of missionary support? Engaging our community by loving and serving them in real and practical ways that would open the door to share the claims of Christ and the message of the gospel?
You see, we take a detour when we rob God of His resources in order to advance our kingdom instead of His. A detour that dishonors God because we place advancing our kingdom over advancing God’s kingdom. A detour that limits our ability to be the vehicle that He uses to advance His kingdom and enhance His reputation in the world.
So here’s the question: are you robbing God?
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