The Standard for Giving [B]

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We’ve got to look at the whole thing, and it really deals with the corruption of the people. And even when he talks about the tithe in here, he’s really talking about the corruption of the people. The problem wasn’t just that they hadn’t given enough money.

The problem wasn’t that they had just forgotten to give their 23%. There was a spiritual problem that went deeper for the people of Israel. It was after their time with Babylon and Persia when they’d been sent into the exile, and suddenly God has brought them back.

He’s restored them to their land. And everything, folks, if anything, should have gotten their attention. It should have been 70 years in captivity to the Babylonians and being dragged off to another country that was not their own.

And yet, I’ve told you, they learned their lesson. They seem to have learned their lesson about idolatry, but not their lesson about wandering. And the people had wandered far away from God, and that’s what he deals with, by and large, in chapter 3.

Starting again in verse 6 tonight, we’ve talked about what I believe Malachi is not saying. It’s time to look at what Malachi does say. Malachi 3, verse 6 says, For I am the Lord, I change not, therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.

Now, we could easily gloss over that verse and move on to the rest of the stuff about tithing, but I want us to camp out on that verse for just a second and think about what he’s saying. We think, oh, I’m the Lord, I change not, da-da-da, and we read on. He says, I am the Lord, I change not, therefore, because of that, ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.

In his wrath, God could have destroyed the people of Israel at any time. And you know what? He would have been absolutely justified in doing so.

And you know what? If anybody were to think that that’s an anti-Semitic statement, God could wipe the United States of America off the map at any given time, and he would be absolutely justified in doing so because he’s God and he’s holy, and we as a nation have sinned against him in countless ways. It’s not just peculiar to Israel.

but God had made covenants and promises to Israel. And God says, I am the Lord, I change not, and for that reason you’re not consumed. It’s telling the people of Israel, this is not just about God changing, it’s telling the people of Israel that the only reason that you’re not destroyed, the only reason I have not wiped you off the face of the earth for your behavior, is because I am God and I keep my promises.

Imagine the depths of sin that they had fallen to that God is making that kind of a statement. There were times before that they had sinned and God didn’t come in with quite such strong language. He would condemn the sin.

But for God to say that my goodness, my grace, my mercy, and my desire to keep my promises, my nature to keep my promises, is the only reason you’re still around. Folks, they had messed up bad before God. He says in verse 7, These ordinances he talks about are the Old Testament law.

They had been given this covenant that if they were to keep the law, that God said, we’ll walk together, I’ll be your God, you’ll be my people, you’ll keep the ordinances that I’ve set forth for you, you’ll keep the law that I’ve set forth for you for your own good, and to make you a peculiar people, to keep you separate from the countries around you, to remind you that you’re separate and that you’re special to me, and again, for your own good, and I’ll take care of you. And Israel had time after time after time rejected this covenant with God. Even from the days of your fathers.

This isn’t something that the people of Israel had just stumbled into, that all of a sudden one generation passed away and the next grew up and they were bad. This had been going on for quite some time. It had been growing progressively worse.

And we see that over and over throughout history. I’ve heard Brother Jack make the statement before that every generation seems to lose a little something. Folks, I firmly believe that.

My generation may be, you know, in contrast to the days of Noah, not so bad. when God said every thought of their hearts was only evil all the time, all of them. I don’t think we’re at that point.

But certainly in recent memory, my generation is probably one of the most hedonistic, one of the most pagan generations of people that has existed certainly in this country, probably since its founding. You know what? We’ve built on the foundation of my parents’ generation.

And they may be built on the foundation of their parents’ generation. And so on and so forth. For the last however many years, we have been gradually wandering away from God.

It didn’t just happen that the generation of people born around the time I was all woke up one day and came of age and said, hey, let’s reject God. It was things that had been building for decades. Things that had been taught.

Things that had been driven into their minds in the prevailing culture. Folks, that’s what was going on in Israel. They didn’t just wake up one morning and say, I think we’re going to disobey God today.

They had learned it from their parents who had learned it from their parents. even from the days of your father’s year, gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of hosts.

But ye said, Wherein shall we return? How is it that we’re supposed to come back? Or why would we come back?

Again, I told you this morning that throughout the book of Malachi, Malachi speaking on God’s behalf, Malachi being a prophet, and what he says is the Word of God. God reveals the Word to him through his Holy Spirit, and then Malachi speaks to the people on God’s behalf. Throughout this, God gives Malachi a series of conversations that Israel wasn’t really needed for because God says what they would say.

And I don’t know, sometimes my wife will ask me a question and then answer it herself. And I’ll look at her and say, dear, am I even needed for this conversation? And she’s done the same thing for me, to me, I should say.

Israel was not needed for this conversation because here God is playing both parts. And he tells them, you’ve broken my laws, you’ve ignored everything I’ve told you, it’s been going on for decades, for generations. And he says, return to me, come back to me and do the things that you’re supposed to do, and I’ll return to you.

Now that doesn’t mean that God had stopped loving Israel. If God didn’t love Israel, he would have just let them wander off on their own. It doesn’t mean that God wasn’t still God over Israel, but as far as his hand of blessing, his hand of protection and provision, If they would come back, if they would return to doing what God had told them to do, God would provide the blessings that accompany that.

But you said, wherein shall we return? Their question wasn’t a question from a contrite and a repentant heart saying, oh God, how do we get back? Their question was, what are you talking about?

What is this comeback of which you speak? Wherein shall we return? Folks, they didn’t even realize.

They had gotten so far away from God, they didn’t even realize how far away from God they were. It’s like one of the verses, I want to say it’s in 1 Peter, but don’t quote me on that, where he talks about having our conscience seared with a hot iron. That we can ignore God and ignore God and ignore God so much that, for lack of a better word, the nerve endings in our conscience are deadened like we had been touching a hot iron or a hot stove or something like that.

You know, eventually it’s going to stop hurting because we’ve killed off all the nerve endings if we just keep doing it over and over and we’re not going to feel the stove. Well, folks, that can happen with our conscience. We can ignore the drawing of the Holy Spirit.

We can ignore God so much that we don’t even feel the conviction anymore. Folks, they had wandered so far away from God, they had no reason to think anything was wrong because they’d wandered so far away from God they couldn’t see Him anymore. They didn’t realize they had a problem.

He says in verse 8, Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee?

Again, another conversation God has with Himself. How can people rob God? I mean, think about that.

He’s God. How can anybody rob Him? It all belongs to Him anyway.

The money in my pocket, not that there’s money in my pocket, maybe a quarter, but the money in my pocket belongs to God. Now, whether I choose to recognize that, whether I choose to give it back to Him or not, it’s still His. And ultimately, He can take it away if He wants to.

But they didn’t recognize that. He says, will a man rob God? You can’t really rob God.

You can’t steal things from Him. They’re His. But in a sense, they had robbed God because they had neglected the tithes and offerings.

They were expected to bring, folks, just like we’re expected to give. Anything I said this morning was not talking about, oh, we’re not expected to give. We as Christians are expected to give.

Now, some of us may think 10% and then above and beyond. Some of us may think the standard is whatever the Lord leads. But the disagreement there is relatively minor because we’re just talking about the degree of what we’re supposed to do.

Ultimately, we should agree on the fact that we as Christians are expected to give back to God. We’re expected to give. We’re expected to contribute toward His work.

And in the Old Testament, God’s people were expected to contribute. They were commanded. It was part of the law.

You could be punished. I’m not suggesting we bring back that system. But you could be punished for not doing this.

And they as a nation had neglected this. See, before the sacrifice of Christ, you had work going on in the temple constantly. Now, there were certain sacrifices they only did at certain times of the year, but as far as I understand it, there were sacrifices, there were intercessions going on in the temple constantly for the sins of the people.

And there was an entire priestly class that they spent their entire time in the temple before the Lord, serving as these mediators. And they needed some way to support these men. I mean, they’re in there every day making intercession on behalf of the people of Israel.

That would be a full-time job. If I had to go before God, ladies and gentlemen, and deal with every sin committed by this congregation. Folks, you couldn’t afford me by the hour.

No offense to you. I’m not saying you’re horrible, awful people. But we all sin, and we all sin constantly.

Folks, it’s almost a full-time job just keeping a short list of accounts with God about what I’ve done and what I’ve thought and confessing what I need to confess. These people were constantly on behalf of Israel. These men were there offering sacrifices and offering incense and all the other things that God had said to do.

And they were teaching the people the law, And they were instructing and they were doing all the things that needed to be done to try to keep Israel on the straight and narrow path and in good standing before God. And so the people of Israel would contribute money to the support not only of these men, but of the work going on in the temple. They would bring offerings.

They would bring animals in. And some of these offerings were set aside and God had said, you know, these sacrifices, even the sacrifices you bring to me, I’m going to say we’re going to put a portion of that aside for the priests and the Levites to eat. Folks, all of this that they brought, we may think, oh, there was a temple.

They could go in and worship any time. They could do that. No, there was a very, I mean, folks, five books back here explaining the laws of what they were supposed to do.

I mean, a thick portion of the Bible explaining what they were supposed to do in temple worship. And these guys were there making it a full-time job overseeing that. And this was given to the support of them so that they could do that.

And it would have been very difficult for the temple worship, for the rituals, for the things that they were expected to do to go forward without the people contributing to the work of the temple. And when they neglected the offering, when they neglected the tithes, there was no money. There was nothing for these men to eat.

There was nothing for them to be able to do. There was no support for them. There were no animals for the offering.

Folks, there was nothing. It’s not like today where, you know, folks, I’m grateful for the salary you pay me, but any group of believers, any church, can get together and we don’t even have to have a special building if one’s not available. We don’t necessarily have to have a paid man if one’s not available.

Believers in China meet secretly in houses and have church together and wherever they are, they meet. And it doesn’t take a huge investment of resources to do that. Folks, it was not so with the temple worship.

And for them not to give, for them not to contribute, meant that the temple worship, the whole thing fell apart. And God says, you’ve robbed me in tithes and offerings. You are cursed with a curse, for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation.

Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house. See, that’s what he’s talking about when he says that there may be meat in mine house. It was the provision for the sacrifices, it was the provision for the priests who were in there on the people’s behalf.

And prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it. God had always promised Israel that with obedience came blessing. And what he’s telling them is that if you’ll just go back and do what’s expected, if you’ll just go back and do what you said you’d do, watch and see if I won’t live up to my promises.

And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground. Folks, when he says they were cursed, they literally were cursed. They had decided not to give because their hearts were wrong before God.

They had basically neglected the worship and service of God. When he’s talking here about the tithes, the tithes were important, but they were a symptom of something deeper. Their hearts were not right before God.

They had neglected the worship and service of God. And God was willing, God was willing through the Old Testament to use anything necessary to get their attention and bring them back where they needed to be. Now some of the things He did were as punishment for their disobedience, but I like to think that a lot of the things He did were chastisement as well, like a parent would do for a child to get their attention when they were unruly and bring them back where they needed to be.

And when they had decided, we’re not going to worship and serve God anymore. We’re not going to give to the worship in the temple. We’re not going to do all these things.

God had literally cursed them. It wasn’t just a spiritual curse. They had locusts and they had all these sorts of things.

Eating the land and eating the very things that they thought were going to make them wealthy and prosperous, that they were trusting in. And here’s our provision. We’ve got all the food we need.

We’ve got all the resources we need. And God says, just like the quarter in my pocket, that if He wanted it, He could take it. There it goes.

There go the crops. There goes the grain. There goes everything that you put your trust in.

Who was Israel to trust in them? And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes. He says, I’ll pour down blessing on you.

If you’ll just come back to me. It’s not just that they were to give the money. It’s that their hearts were to be right before God.

And as a result of their hearts being right, they would give what they were expected to give. But if their hearts would return to God, if they would just return to Him, He says, I’ll pour out blessing on you. I’ll rebuke the devourer.

The curse that I’ve put on the land, I’ll take away. And he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground, neither shall your vine cast her fruit before time in the field. Their plants were rotting, their crops were rotting.

This will not happen, saith the Lord of hosts. And all nations shall call you blessed, for you shall be a delightsome land, saith the Lord of hosts. Your words have been stout against me.

You know what, we see it in several books of the Old Testament, the way that they treated God, when things would begin to get good, and they would wander away from God because they didn’t need, or at least they thought they didn’t need to trust Him day by day for the sustenance. You know, it was easy to trust God, or I should say, they had no choice but to trust God when things were bad, when they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years and had nothing to eat, had nothing to drink, and the water that they had came from God saying to strike the rock, and there was water, God provided the water. There was nothing to eat, and so God provided manna every morning.

They had no choice but to trust God, and so that’s what they did. But once they got settled, and once they were prosperous, and things grew, Why trust God anymore? We’ve got the food on the ground.

Like I’ve told you many times before about a preacher friend of mine visiting Baptist churches behind the Iron Curtain and telling them, we’ll pray for you in your persecution and being told, we’ll pray for you in your prosperity. Because when things are good, we tend to forget about, they’re good because God’s been generous to us. They’re good because God has blessed.

They’re good because God has made them good. And so what they were hoping for was this time of prosperity, this time of plenty, and God says, if you’ll just return to me, that’s what there will be. All nations shall call you blessed, for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the Lord of hosts.

It says, your words have been stout against me, saith the Lord. They had spoken hard things against God. Again, he has a conversation with himself.

Yet ye say, what have we spoken so much against thee? So God says, you’ve said some pretty harsh things to me. And Israel says, what did we say?

God, what did we say that was so bad? And so God answers and says, you have said it is vain to serve God. And what profit is it that we have kept His ordinance and that we have walked mournfully before the Lord of hosts?

He says, not only here have they themselves thought it was vain, it was pointless to serve God, but they’ve actually said that. They’ve told other people. They’ve encouraged other people that, hey, it’s pointless to serve God.

Folks, we wouldn’t have to go far to hear that today. People would tell us, that church thing you’re doing, it’s pointless. The prayer, it’s pointless, all these things.

And these were supposedly God’s people who were telling other people that to worship and serve God was pointless. and what profit is it that we’ve kept his ordinances and walked mournfully before the Lord of hosts? To walk mournfully before the Lord of hosts doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re sad all the time.

But I believe to walk with him in reverence. So what does it profit? They’re asking, okay, if we were to keep God’s laws and we were to reverence him, what’s in it for me?

The attitude of the people. They say, God, what have we said? Really, what did we say?

You’ve taught other people that it’s pointless to serve me and you’ve asked what’s in it for yourself. And now we call the proud happy. It used to be that pride and ego were vices, even in their day.

There was a time when it was considered a bad thing to be prideful. And now the people that our society lifts up the most as heroes are the most prideful. He says, you’ve called the proud happy.

A lot of times when we see happy in the Bible, it means the same as blessed. I’ve seen some translations that in the Beatitudes, they say happy are the poor in spirit. And I guess that makes sense, but for me the word happy just doesn’t quite cover all of the bases that the word blessed does.

But in verse 15, and now we call the proud, we call the prideful happy or blessed. They’re the good ones. They’re the ones we look up to.

And they that work wickedness are set up. They that tempt God are even delivered. It was the wicked people, the corrupt people that were advanced in society.

Well, we have no idea what that’s like, do we? It was the corrupt people that got ahead. And everybody looked at them and said, good on you.

And even they that tempt God, those who rejected Him, who ignored His justice, they were delivered, they were set free. There was no legal consequence for their violation of the law, for their oppression of other people. And they had the audacity to say, God, what have we said?

What have we done? Folks, they had rejected God in every conceivable way except possibly in name. And say, yeah, we’re still God’s people, but acting nothing like it.

And so when He comes to them and talks to them about these things, He does talk to them about the tithe. but it’s a symptom. And it would be wrong for us, it would be wrong for us to say, okay, so the principle here is this.

It would be wrong for Malachi to say, so God’s talked to you about the tithe, then the answer is to give more money. If your heart is not right before God, it would be wrong for me to tell you that the answer is just give more money. Just try to do more.

Just try to be better. Because what that would be, would be slapping a band-aid on a sucking chest wound. Our outward actions, our outward goodness, do not impress God in the slightest. Even if they had started giving the tithe, even if they had started attending temple worship, even if they had started doing these things, it would not have fixed the problem because the problem was that their hearts were far from God.

And what this passage deals with overall is that the problem in Malachi’s day was not that they didn’t give enough money, it was that they had decided to neglect the service and worship of God Almighty. And so I won’t tell us that this applies to us in the sense that we need to do exactly what He. .

. Folks, I’ve gone over. I looked down at the clock last time and it was 15 until.

We’ll wrap this up. It would be a mistake for me to say any of these things He told us, this is exactly what we need to do. We need to go back and obey the Old Testament law.

We need to go back and obey all the ordinances. We need to go back and tithe. We need to go back and just try to do better and be better.

Folks, but there are principles in here that apply to them and apply to us today when it comes to what God is willing to accept and what God’s not willing to accept. And God rebuked three things that Israel refused to do. First of all, Israel refused to obey the laws and covenants that God had given them.

We see this in verse 7. The laws and covenants, they had refused to obey. This boils down to the very simple fact that they refused to obey God.

Folks, God is not willing to accept it when we have refused to obey Him. We cannot refuse to obey God and expect everything to be alright in our relationship with Him. Remember, the root problem of all of this is that their hearts were not right before God.

We cannot refuse to obey God and credibly claim that our hearts are right before Him. God rebuked them for their refusal to obey the laws and commandments He’d given them. Now for us, that does not mean, going back to the sacrifices and the Passover, but we are under a law as well.

We’re under the law of Christ. We’re under the principle, love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and mind and strength, and love thy neighbor as thyself. And folks, we are given instructions in the New Testament to follow. And when we refuse to obey God, we cannot do that and claim that our hearts are right before Him.

Second of all, God rebuked Israel’s refusal to give to the support of the work of His temple. When they refused to give, folks, they were robbing Him because they were taking away from the worship of the temple. When we refuse to give to worship, and I’m not just talking money, we cannot claim that our hearts are right before God.

If we’re not willing to give to God’s work financially, if we’re not willing to give our time, if we’re not really willing to give our effort. Folks, I say this knowing that I fall short of this too, but we should come in on Sunday, and it shouldn’t be where we’re rushing in here at the last minute, and I’m glad I got here, and then I’m glad I got that over with, let me go on about our week. We should be spending time throughout the week preparing for what’s about to go on in this place on Sunday.

And when we refuse to give to the worship of God, whether it’s our money, whether it’s our time, whether it’s our effort, whether it’s our attention, when we are unwilling to set aside things to give to God, in order to worship Him. And I thought Brother James said it very well this morning to me at the door that he considers his giving part of his worship to God. I like the way he said that.

But whether it’s money, attention, time, effort, any of the other things, if we are not willing to set some things in our life aside to give to God as part of our worship, we cannot claim that our hearts are right with God. And third of all tonight, God rebuked Israel’s refusal to walk in a loving relationship with Him. Ladies and gentlemen, he tells them in verses 13 through 15 that their words had been stout against him.

Their words had been harsh, that they had considered it vain and pointless to walk with him. They considered it nothing. It’s all too common to say with our mouths, yes, we consider our relationship with God to be of importance, but then we can’t show it by our checkbook, by our calendar, by any of the other things that really matter, that really show where our priorities are.

If we can go a week without talking to God in any serious way, other than when something really bad happens and we need Him, or we think that’s when we need Him. Folks, we cannot claim our hearts are right before God. If we go throughout the week and we go through our lives and our business dealings and our family and we give no thought ever to what God wants from any of those situations, if we give no thought to God throughout the week, period, we ignore Him instead of walking lovingly with Him through the week, and we show either with our thoughts or our actions that we consider it a vain and pointless thing to walk with God, we cannot claim that our hearts are right before God.

Folks, the money’s a symptom. the time is a symptom the effort is a symptom all of the outward things that we do or don’t do are symptomatic of what goes on in here Israel’s heart was not right before God and he rebuked them for it our hearts can just as easily wander away from God and we’ve got to be on guard we’ve got to watch for these things not so we can fix it by doing these things but because these things are signs that our hearts are not right before God that things have gotten out of course

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