The Great Heist. By Matthew Everhard. An expository sermon from Malachi 3:12-18 originally delivered at Hudson Presbyterian Church on October 28th and 29th.
Every seminary student who wants to be a pastor can tell you that there are two things that we are afraid to preach about. Two biblical truths that we dread. Two things that we know we will have to preach about one day, but we want to put off for as long as possible. Can you guess what those two things are? The number two most dreaded topic to preach about is hell. Trust me, preachers enjoy speaking about hell just about as much as you like being warned about it, ok? Do you know the number one topic we fear, tithing! I guess that means that we would rather preach about eternal hell-fire than to have to talk about financial stewardship with our people! We simply do not want to become the caricatures of the fire breathing preacher, or the corrupt money beggar! But you know what? If we want to be faithful, if we want to be obedient to Christ, if we want to have biblical ministries we must talk about both. And so today, I will take on my own top fear as we read Malachi this morning.
As we launch right into Malachi’s teaching on tithing, I want you to notice a bit about his style of writing. Notice how Malachi is recording a dispute between God and His people. He is recording a sort of verbal sparring match going on between God and Israel. God says, “Return to me” Well how are we supposed to do that? “You are robbing me.” How are we doing that? It’s all throughout Malachi. In fact, when you outline the whole book of Malachi, these verbal disputes show up as the main pillars of his teaching. Does anyone here have kids that argue like that? They debate just about anything you say? You say, “Eat your dinner” they say I can’t eat that! How am I supposed to eat that? You say, “Get dressed, get your clothes on” they shoot back, I can’t pick out my own clothes are you crazy! (Joke: And those are just the teenagers, you should hear the little kids talk back!). If you know someone who disputes every statement that you make, they either have a maturity issue, or they are just flat out disobedient.
Let’s have a closer look at our passage this morning. Verse 7, “Return to me and I shall return to you says the LORD of hosts. But you say, ‘How shall we return.’ Will a man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say ‘How are we robbing You?” In your tithes and contributions. Notice that the flow of the passage moves from the general concept of repentance, to the specific concept of financial faithfulness. In Israel’s case, one of the reasons they are in such bitter dispute with God is that they just will not let their stated faith in God, their said religion, translate into obedience in their actual lives. And so God gets specific. How shall we return? Let’s have a look at your heart. Because your pocketbook is a looking glass into your heart’s priorities.
Robbing God—God Owns it all. Can you stop for a moment and imagine God accusing you of robbing Him? The whole idea just seems so absurd, doesn’t it? Yet Scripture teaches us that God is the owner of all things. He is the owner of the “cattle on a thousand hills” (Ps 50:10). That’s actually an understatement! The first theological concept that we have to understand when it comes to giving is that God is the rightful owner of all things. Including your home, car, your salary. You don’t actually OWN anything. It’s all on lease for use in the Kingdom. If you never understand that, you will always think of financial giving as a hassle and never a duty that ought to be performed with joy.
Robbing God—Are We Really Thieves? At the same time, most of us just don’t picture ourselves as thieves, do we! Most of us will never, ever, go out at three in the morning, dress up in all black clothes, pull a ski mask over our faces, put on gloves to hide the prints, brandish a gun and rob someone else’s home, or a gas station, or a bank! That is just so far beyond our comprehension, that we would never consider ourselves criminals in this way! And just how does someone rob God anyway? Would we have to bring a revolver to the gates of heaven and “stickup” St. Peter? No that’s too silly, would we have to sneak into the church late at night and crack the combination to the safe room where the deacons keep our treasury of Presbyterian gold? (We actually don’t have a safe like that, but I’ve heard the mega church down the road does).
Shock and Alarm: These words from Malachi are meant to shock and alarm Israel. “Will a man rob God? Yet you are robbing me.” He is accusing them of robbing the creator, God of the universe. And now I am going to try to shock and alarm you this morning. Some of you are doing the very same thing. You say, No! That can’t be! I love God, or at least I like Him! I would never rob God! And yet this passage stares us in the face. How does one rob God? By withholding your tithes and offerings.
Excuses: Verse 10 clearly says “Bring the full tithe (the full tithe) into the storehouse.” You don’t have to be a Hebrew Scholar to guess that the word “tithe” literally means “one tenth”. And yet some of us here have made every excuse to avoid bringing just that. Some people say, “I can’t possibly give a tenth of all I make because I make so little money I can barely pay the bills!” Do you know that is the same excuse that people who make double your salary make? No matter what you make chances are you are pressing that salary as far as it can go. And if giving isn’t a priority of your heart, it will never be a priority of your checkbook! Have you ever found yourself saying, If I just made $X I would be able to give a full tithe! Guess what? If you ever get to that number you will probably say the exact same thing, only with a higher excuse value! Others out there give faithfully but they keep telling themselves, “I’m working up to it! I’m working up to it. I’m giving four percent now. Next year maybe I’ll give five.” Can I ask you a question? When are you going to get there? I have a feeling that your holding back has a lot less to do with your personal budget crisis than it does your spiritual obedience problem. Let me suggest something this morning that is crucial to understanding this concept: Tithing is not about the numbers. Its not, its really not. It makes absolutely no difference whether your salary is $100 or $100,000—tithing is about spiritual, faithful obedience to Christ, our Lord.
Richard Wurmbrand was an evangelical Romanian pastor who suffered serious persecution from the communist leaders of his country. In 1948 he was taken captive for leading an underground mission to preach the gospel. He spent 14 years in prison including three years in solitary confinement. As his daily food, Wurmbrand received one bowl of dirty soup every day, and one small loaf of bread every week. Yet even these miserable conditions could not quench his passion for Christ or his desire to reach out to others. And so every ten days he “tithed” one bowl of soup completely to another prisoner, and every tenth week he “tithed” his loaf of bread as well. Amazing. Would you be able to do that? Could you be able to give in that way? It is my conviction that if you can develop the Kingdom-minded vision to give during seasons of abundance, neither the devil nor the most dangerous conditions in the world will be able to stop what the Holy Spirit will enable you to do during the worst of times. Unfortunately, the opposite may be true as well. If your heart is bent on personal survival and financial independence now, there is no telling how desperate you could become when times are very hard.
Test Me: Listen to the words of Malachi again verse 10. Bring the full tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the LORD of hosts, (see) if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down a blessing until there is no more need. Do you know that this is the only place in Scripture where God specifically says, “Test me on this!” Not test this process, test this technique, test this program, TEST ME! Rely on ME! Try ME out! Just do it and see what happens! God is practically daring us to obey Him in this area, and as the Bible says, He is waiting to open the windows of heaven and pour down a blessing until there is no more need! Now I am not going to stand up here this morning and promise you that if you give $1 to the offering plate, you are going to win the lottery this week and find a corresponding check of $1 in the mail! A lot of the blessing that God may be waiting to pour out on you may not even be material. In may be a gift in the spiritual realms. It may be a fuller reliance on the goodness of God. He may take you to a deeper level of discipleship. It may be prayer barrier removed. I don’t know, but I do know this, if God makes a promise, and He stakes His own honor and reputation on it, He will deliver.
Personal Testimony: Now let me stop right there because some of you are thinking. Wait a minute. You’re on staff here right? Aren’t you living off of our financial gifts? And you would be exactly right. But let me tell you that one of the most important decisions that Kelly and I ever made, is to tithe directly from our paycheck back to the church that supports our ministry. From the day that Kelly and I got married until the day we die, we will be giving at least 9% back to the church and another one percent directly to foreign missions abroad. Its just part in our discipleship that Christ has brought us to. And can I tell you that God has been so faithful to us! We may not make the top salary in this church, in fact I know for a fact that we don’t, but we have never missed a payment on our bills, we’ve never missed a day of food. We’ve never gone a day without clothes. God has always supplied all of our needs!
Africa: I will never forget the way they took the offering in Africa. Everything about those worship services was stirring but especially the offering! After the pastor’s message, the plates were brought out just like we do, but they were not passed down the aisle, but brought to the front of the altar. And the people would literally dance, dance! up to the altar with their gift! Sometimes it would be money, but a lot of times it was tomatoes, or sugarcane, or even a live chicken! Whatever they made, they gave back one tenth! If they were a farmer they would lay on the altar one tenth of the harvest, if they sold jewelry, they would bring jewelry to the altar! And the church would take those very gifts to feed the pastor or the poor in the area! What a beautiful picture of giving! But I loved that dance because it signified the joy by which we ought to give our gifts to the Lord! Can you imagine if we did that here? I’d love to see some of you dancing up here.
Joy: You see joy in giving is one of the most authentic signs of Christian maturity. If disputing and arguing is a sign of immaturity, giving with joy and delight is one of the signs that Christ has truly taken a hold of a believer’s life, that His kingdom has become a priority. That’s why verse 12 says, “Then all the nations will call you blessed, for you will be a land of delight, says the LORD of hosts.” Do you have that joy? That dancing delight? If not, maybe it’s because all of your energy is being exerted squeezing your fist so tight.
C.S. Lewis said this, “If our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc. is up to the the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot because our charitable expenditure excludes them.” Wow.
Can I ask you a question this morning? Is there any discernable difference between your lifestyle and everyone else like you? If not, maybe it is time to rededicate your life. To redevote your priorities to the Kingdom of God. Our passage from Malachi this morning closes like this, “Then those who feared the LORD spoke with one another. The LORD paid attention and heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared the LORD and esteemed His name.”
