A Blessing To Tithe

Money can be a very frustrating thing, because you just never seem to have enough of it. Right? Comedian Bob Phillips says, “Money used to talk – then it whispered. Now it just sneaks off . . . [and] today a dollar saved is a quarter earned . . . [and] the economy is [just] terrible [right now]. At the beginning of the year, the politicians promised things would improve by the last quarter. Well, I’m down to my last quarter and they haven’t improved.”(1) How many of you can identify with what he’s saying? Keep in mind that I’m just trying to lighten the mood with a bit of humor.

Many of us feel like we are just scraping by and then the church – it seems – comes along asking us for money. We feel like we can’t make it if we spare a penny more, and so we don’t give to the church. Did you know that “only about four-percent of professing Christians tithe?”(2) And among this four-percent, “Mormons lead all of the other denominations in per capita giving. They average slightly more than seven-percent of their annual income given to the church. Southern Baptists, however, are giving just over three-percent of their incomes.”(3)

Many of us are afraid to give because we feel that our income is just too far spent and that we have way too many financial obligations to spare anything. For those who are self-employed, such as farmers, the government can take up to thirty-percent of their annual income, if there are no tax deductions. Giving an extra ten-percent after losing nearly thirty-percent can feel like you’re being drained alive. I must admit that it takes a whole lot of faith for a person to tithe in a situation like this.

More than likely, each of us has some money to spare, but we’re afraid that once we’ve given it, then some emergency will arise and we’ll wish we had it back. From what we see each and every day of our life, it’s no wonder we hold on to what little we have. It seems hard to make it. With both financial obligations and the daily trials, it appears to be true that when it rains it pours!

However, did you know that the Bible tells us that both our financial troubles and our daily trials will lessen or even cease if we go ahead and give to the Lord as He asks us? That’s what God says in our passage of Scripture that we’re going to look at this morning. If you’re really curious about how this is possible, then let’s dig into God’s Word!

Robbing God of Tithes and Offerings (vv. 7-9)

7 “Yet from the days of your fathers you have gone away from My ordinances and have not kept them. Return to Me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord of hosts. “But you said, ‘In what way shall we return?’ 8 Will a man rob God? Yet you have robbed Me! But you say, ‘In what way have we robbed You?’ In tithes and offerings. 9 You are cursed with a curse, for you have robbed Me, even this whole nation.

Malachi was written sometime after the Israelites were returning from the Babylonian exile of 587 B.C. This book describes “a time when the hopes of the returned exiles had turned bitter. The people had become cynical and careless in their acts of worship.”(4) They were cynical because of the continued delay in the glorious future that God had promised them.(5) So, what was the heart of the problem? The Lord said in verse 7, that the people had not truly returned to Him. He said, “Return to Me, and I will return to you.”

So, what was the main purpose of the Babylonian exile from which the people had just returned, and did the people learn their lesson that God tried to teach them? What evidence did God use in order to show the Israelites that they had gone astray from Him, and what did the people need to do in order to prove that they were truly ready to return to God?

To answer the first question, the Lord allowed the Israelites to be taken into captivity because they had been worshipping and serving their own passions and desires, and they were bowing down to false gods and idols. The Lord utilized the captivity as a means of purifying Israel. Many of the “rotten apples” – so to speak – died off; and others, in their time of trial, learned that they really needed to lean on God and become totally dependent on Him.

We see, however, that many people had not learned their lesson. Instead of looking to see what God was trying to teach them and moving ahead in faith, they were bitter because they had to endure such hardship. Many people were holding a grudge against God, or they had failed to notice His provision and deliverance; therefore, they didn’t see any real value in worshipping the Lord. They likely reasoned that it’s pointless to worship a non-existent God. So, instead of serving and worshipping the Lord, they continued to serve and worship the god of self. They looked out only for “number one.”