A Plea of Ignorance...

For the past several months at the church where I serve, we have been looking at a letter in our Bibles called the book of Malachi as part of a series of talks called “Detour”. This week, I would like for us to pick up where we left off last week. And once again we will see Malachi accuse the Jewish people of taking another 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. So let’s look together as Malachi makes his accusation, beginning in Malachi 3:7:

"From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from My statutes and have not kept them. Return to Me, and I will return to you," says the LORD of hosts.

Malachi begins this section of his letter by making another accusation against the Jewish people. This accusation, if communicated in the language that we use in our culture today, would have sounded something like this: “Throughout your history as a people and a nation, you have continually taken a detour by not following My commands that I have given you to keep and observe. Instead of following My directions, you have gotten off track in your relationship with Me by taking a detour to follow your own desires”.

Malachi, after revealing the accusation that God had against the Jewish people, then reveals God’s promise toward the Jewish people: “Return to Me, and I will return to you”. Now this word return conveys the sense of repentance, which literally means to change the direction of the trajectory of one’s life. In other words, God is saying to the Jewish people “repent and change the direction of your life that has taken a detour so that you can get back on track when it comes to your relationship with Me. I promise that if you change the direction for your life back towards Me, I will be there for you”. After revealing God’s accusation and promise, Malachi records the Jewish people’s response in the second half of verse 7:

"But you say, 'How shall we return?'

The Jewish people responded to Malachi’s accusation with a question: “How shall we return?” The Jewish people pleaded ignorance: “What do you mean that we have not been following Your directions? What do you mean we have taken a detour? Where did we get off track when it comes to our relationship with You?” We see God’s response to their plea of ignorance in verse 8:

 "Will a man rob God? Yet you are robbing Me!

Here we see God respond to the Jewish people’s plea of ignorance with a rhetorical question and a statement. First, God asks a rhetorical question: will a man rob God? Now, the answer to this rhetorical question seems obvious, doesn’t it? I mean, how can any human being rob God? God is in Heaven outside of space and time, a distance that is far too distant to traverse. And even if we could traverse that distance, how would we rob the all-powerful Creator of the Universe? And while the answer to the rhetorical question should be a resounding “No”, that is exactly what God accuses the Jewish people of doing: “Yet you are robbing Me!” We see the Jewish people’s stunned response in the second part of verse 8:

But you say, 'How have we robbed You?'

The Jewish people repeat their response of ignorance: “How have we robbed You?” God responds to their ignorance by providing the evidence of their robbery and the consequences that should have clued them into the detour that they had taken that had gotten them off track when it came to their relationship with God in the remainder of verse 8 and verse 9. Let’s look at the evidence together:

In tithes and offerings. "You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing Me, the whole nation of you!

Here we see Malachi reveal the reality that the Jewish people had taken a detour when it came to keeping God’s command to bring tithes and offerings. Now to understand the evidence that Malachi is presenting on God’s behalf against the Jewish people, we first need to understand what Malachi is referring to when he talks about tithes and offerings. The word tithe literally means a tenth. The Jewish people had been commanded by God to give 10% of the produce and proceeds of their labor as an act of worship to God in recognition of God as their provider. This act of worship was then to be given to the Levites, who were responsible to worship and minister to God and His people, in order to support them.

Tomorrow, we will look at God’s command concerning the tithe and how the Jewish people had taken a detour when it came to following God’s command…