... Running Over
Malachi 3:6-12
We are fond of telling our Children "It is more blessed to give than to receive." We try to teach them that generosity is an important value and as long as they can, they should be free handed with their own blessings from God and pass them on to others. We try to teach them to share and keep them from being selfish.
There is something wonderful and mysterious about giving. Most of us felt quite helpless on September 11 when the planes crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. People were uncertain what could be done. One man said, "I feel about as useful as a Belgian Chocolate."
The one obvious way to help occurred quickly to many people and to the news services, giving blood. Everybody has some and it doesn’t cost to donate. But the gift is a little painful and is very personal. On Tuesday September 11 alone, the American Red Cross received over 60,000 pints. And when the Casino in Atlantic City that was collecting closed at 8:00 that night, they still had a two hour waiting line.
By the next afternoon, News services told people to wait or make an appointment to donate blood. The Red Cross had all they could use at the time and wanted people to stop coming to the collection centers and consider coming later when the supply had been depleted.
But people did not quit giving. More blood was donated and people began sending food and bottled water for the rescue workers. Finally the Red Cross asked for people to send cash donations instead. The word went out over the news stations that people should make no more donations of stuff. There was no where to go with them. The generosity of a nation had been taxed to its limit and the giving kept on coming. By Friday night, a Red Cross fund raiser was on almost every channel.
Again on Christmas of 2004 when the tsunamis hit Asia, donations flowed. Eastern Mennonite Missions alone received over $120,000 in donations. At the same time, EMM’s other ministries are suffering and creative work is being done in the board to find ways to come up with money to support the church planting, development, and medical missions that are part of the ongoing program. As long in the past as I can remember, and now again the Red Cross begs for blood donors. There have never been adequate supplies to cope with much smaller emergencies. The week of September 11 and Christmas 2004 are the only times in my life that I have seen living examples of the passage that describes the building of the Tabernacle.
They received from Moses all the offerings the Israelites had brought to carry out the work of constructing the sanctuary. And the people continued to bring freewill offerings morning after morning. So all the skilled craftsmen who were doing all the work on the sanctuary left their work and said to Moses, "The people are bringing more than enough for doing the work the LORD commanded to be done." Then Moses gave an order and they sent this word throughout the camp: "No man or woman is to make anything else as an offering for the sanctuary." And so the people were restrained from bringing more, because what they already had was more than enough to do all the work.
Exodus 36:3-7 (NIV)
They were not always so generous. Occasionally a wake-up call is necessary.
In today’s passage, God is giving His people a wake-up call.
"I the LORD do not change. So you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. Ever since the time of your forefathers you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you," says the LORD Almighty.
"But you ask, ’How are we to return?’
"Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me.
"But you ask, ’How do we rob you?’
"In tithes and offerings. You are under a curse—the whole nation of you—because you are robbing me. Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this," says the LORD Almighty, "and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it. I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not cast their fruit," says the LORD Almighty. "Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land," says the LORD Almighty. (Malachi 3:6-12 NIV)
Compare this state of affairs to the passage we read earlier. The people were so excited about worship that they gave till there was a surplus. This was during the time of the beginning of the program. Not only did they have to begin paying an entire twelfth of their population, they had an extravagant building program to fund. It was the most expensive stage of the endeavor, the launch. Now there isn’t even enough to support the ongoing program.
Malachi wrote his prophecy about 100 years after the Jews returned from Babylon and rebuilt the Temple. Since that time, temple worship had become kind of mundane for some. The Mosaic Covenant has fallen out of fashion and some abuses have begun taking root.
Among those abuses are:
• Unclean sacrifices
• Sinful priests
• Defiled marriages
• An impatience for God’s judgement on evil
Beyond that there are some who are still upholding righteousness, but they are getting impatient with God and want Him to move faster to accommodate their taste. The book of Malachi addresses all these issues in four short chapters.
Among these problems is abuse of Temple worship
• The people have been back for awhile
• They have begun feeling the strain of rebuilding a city from the ruins
• The Temple is there but the priests are corrupt
The citizens have begun to be motivated to quit giving at the Temple. There is no doubt that when people feel financial pressure, they quit giving to God’s work. That is as common as holding off on funding a person’s hobbies because the bills have to be paid.
Not surprising at all.
In fact the people felt justified. After all the priests were corrupt and they had begun to lose respect for them. This isn’t just their own inborn connection between integrity and respect, this is something that God has helped along. He told the priests that He had seen their corruption and:
... I have caused you to be despised and humiliated before all the people, because you have not followed my ways but have shown partiality ... Malachi 2:9 (NIV)
• When people get used to the house of God
• When finances are tight
• When the leadership is not doing what should be done
Giving gets cut off.
This is something that still happens today. I have heard of more than one church "starving a pastor out" because they did not like him any more and their system did not allow for a better way of ending his leadership. The people simply quit giving till there was nothing left in the checking account to pay him and he was forced to move on. Sometimes the whole thing turned into a real struggle.
Interestingly enough, God does not see that as a reasonable response. He had encouraged the people of Israel in their loss of respect for the priests, but He saw Israel’s giving as something different only incidentally connected to the support of the priests.
And that is surprising, because the specific giving Malachi is talking about here is the tithe.
What is the tithe?
According to the Law of Moses one tenth of everything you grew, raised or earned was set apart as Holy to God. Interestingly enough, the fact that it was holy did not keep people from legally benefitting from its use.
• If a man had ten sheep one (chosen at random) was his tithe and it was holy to God
• He was then to take the sheep to the Temple and eat it
• He was to take his family along and make a celebration out of the event
• He could sell it and use the money if he needed to, but then he owed 12 percent for his tithe instead of 10
In most ways we continue to treat the tithe the same way here. A considerable portion of next year’s budget will come back and benefit the people who are giving the money. The building will be kept operating, Sunday School books and Our Daily Bread will come to you periodically. Miscellaneous money will be spent on small things that make our worship here or our gatherings possible and more meaningful and enjoyable.
Oddly enough when we realize this we tend to feel guilty about it. We want to ask, "hey, I gave that money to God’s work and now I feel like I just gave it back to myself. What is going on?" In fact, I have heard reprimands phrased that way. "The American Church uses its money on itself more than on ministry."
That was part of the intention. God did not want the Israelites to lose the benefit of their money, He just wanted them to use it in complete awareness of His presence. He wanted to make sure that the money He gives is not all spent in faithless grasping for necessities or in random and thoughtless ways without remembering where it came from or who gave it to start with. He wanted to make sure that people made their relationship with Him a priority.
How do we define our priorities?
What do we spend money on?
• Food
• Rent or Mortgages
• Utilities
• Transportation
God says, “All that is fine, but don’t forget Me."
Tithing for Israel served several functions:
• It was a way for them to set one tenth of their profits aside and benefit from them in the presence of the LORD
• Every third year it was set aside for the upkeep and support of orphans, widows, refugees and the Levites who ministered among them
• Levites were in turn to tithe on their support income to support the priests
We have a similar structure. A portion of your giving supports Dawn and I in our work among you. A portion of it pays Yvette who keeps our church building clean. This is a ministry as surely as what I do is a ministry. A portion of it goes to support outside ministries that reach beyond our grasp:
• Cornerstone Pregnancy Center
• Mission Teens
• Cumberland Christian School
• Gregg and Sharon Brubaker in Lithuania
• Eastern Mennonite Missions
• The wider Lancaster Conference work
• Our Bishop who works with many churches
So some of your money stays here and benefits you and some of it benefits others. But all of the use is ministry related. That is the way it was in the Old Testament and that is the way it is now. It is a good arrangement.
But now we see what has happened. The Jews in Jerusalem had begun associating their giving with the support of the priests and Levites whom they no longer respected. There was a relationship. But God is now making the point that the relationship is only incidental.
They thought by withholding their tithe they were depriving the priests, but God says they were robbing Him. What is more, he says that they had wandered away from Him and that their lack of giving had played a significant role in that wandering. If they would tithe again, they would be taking steps to return to God.
• I wonder if we see that
• We think of Bible reading and prayer
• Visiting the sick
• avoiding certain sins
• church attendance
as maintaining our relationship with God. But God makes the point that giving is as important as any of these disciplines. You cannot expect to neglect your giving and see your spiritual life flourish. It is as important a discipline as any other spiritual activity. It is a simple principle, if you don’t give, your spiritual life will suffer and you will experience frustration in your life.
Storehouses
God tells the Jews to bring their tithe into the store house. The store houses were two things.
One was the side rooms in the Temple. These rooms are mentioned in the description of the Temple without too much explanation, but studies of other temples that were similarly built show what kind of rooms they were and how they were designed.
The other store houses were actual buildings throughout the kingdom. Levites maintained these storehouses where the people’s gifts were stored and used in out lying areas.
This way the gifts that were meant to maintain the Levites, the needy and the priests were collected at the Temple and redistributed. And God wanted these storehouses full.
• Filling the storehouses was not an endorsement of the priesthood
• it was obedience to God.
Obedience to God carries a reward
Test me in this, says the LORD Almighty, and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.
The reward is the promise of abundant fruit for our labor.
• God has not promised to make us filthy rich so that we never have to work again
• He has not promised to shower us with useless stuff that we can satisfy our flesh on
• He has not promised us more money than sense
He has promised us so much of what everybody needs that we cannot use it all.
Why?
First of all, He makes this kind of a promise, because He wants to give us the opportunity to continue giving
When I was a kid we had a garden, and in that garden we had cucumbers. My dad and mom decided to tithe their cucumbers and gave 1/10 of the cucumbers to the ministry staff of our church. Now, not me, but most of my family likes cucumbers, but that year we picked over 110 cukes.
We couldn’t keep them all, you can only make so many pickles. The more we gave away the more we got. We didn’t want any more pickles. We didn’t know what to do with them. So, we gave cucumbers to everybody we knew. It was fun having such an abundance we could afford to be generous. People love to receive the fruit of hard labor, without having to work for it.
Now tithing from your garden is not a guarantee of a bumper crop, but God makes this a promise, because He knows we have needs. He also knows our insecurities. Notice that he put the blessing in agricultural terms, even though the prophecy was addressed to a bunch of people who lived in the city.
Farming is not a science, it is an art. Any horticulturalist will tell you that, and anybody who takes farming seriously and does not apply science is asking to fail. But farming is one of a few things you can do in this world completely right and still fail. We are dependent on something that nobody can control. The weather.
God controls the weather and he promises that the weather will be on the farmers’ side if they will tithe. God will take the guess work our of our security. He will reassure us of what we cannot predict. The farmer will be sure of a satisfactory crop.
What is it that you are insecure about? Your job? Your health? God promises security. But obedience is the price.
• Your job can prosper
• Your family can feel the security of plenty
• God warns that insecurity and lack are sometimes the results of close fistedness
• Both your spiritual well being and your physical well being are tied to your giving habits
You can’t afford not to give.
God wants to be close to you:
• That intimacy can only happen if we draw close to Him
• We cannot draw close to Him without giving
• 10% is the guide for our giving - it is not easy
• But God tells us we can be sure of security if we give
• He tells us that we can experience an abundance that allows the joy of giving to overflow
If we have not experienced God’s blessings of security and abundance, maybe we need to examine our giving.
Let me encourage you to ask yourself how you decide what to give.
• Is it whatever you have left over for the week?
• Is it a small but standard amount like a dollar or two?
• Perhaps you are afraid to give too much because you don’t think your bills will be met.
The Bible sets the standard at a tenth. If you are not giving 1/10 of your income to God, then let me encourage you to figure out what proportion of your income you are giving. Step it up by a percentage point or two. Begin moving toward God’s standard and see if He does not bless.
Our security and income are not about the bottom line.
The bottom line is not about mathematics.
It is about generosity to God - who in turn shows us the dimension of Himself that blesses.
