Grace Baptist Church, Nokomis, IL.

Text:

“Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say, ‘How have we robbed you?’ In your tithes and contributions. You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you. 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, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need. I will rebuke the devourer for you, so that it will not destroy the fruits of your soil, and your vine in the field shall not fail to bear, says the LORD of hosts. Then all nations will call you blessed, for you will be a land of delight, says the LORD of hosts.” (Mal 3:8-12 ESV)

It takes a lot of audacity to steal from God. It’s like trying to pick on the biggest, strongest, toughest guy at school. You wouldn’t dare! Yet the Israelites dared to do it, and then had the audacity to deny any wrongdoing (v. 8). They stole from God by not giving to God what God had required. Because of this, they were cursed. Their disobedience to God’s commands caused them to not receive blessings (v. 9). When we disobey God, we fail to receive the fullness of God’s blessings and are cursed.

The Lord then went on to tell us the solution to this problem (v. 10a). There is great blessing in obeying God (v. 10b-11). The Israelites were invited to test God in this. God was telling them very straightforward: “you can’t out-give Me.” Picture heaven opening up and pouring out unimaginable riches upon people. God is over all of the wealth of the earth, and He distributes it as He sees fit. Everyone around the Israelites, though they may not know God, will recognize that their God has blessed them (v. 12). When we obey, we are not to do it for our own personal reward. We are not to obey halfheartedly, but fully. We are to obey so that the nations around us will see the greatness of God.

After all that I’ve said so far, I think I need to pull back just a little lest I be misunderstood. I don’t think the promise of wealth made in this text applies to every individual all of the time. The promise was given to the nation of Israel. As a people, they were robbing God because they didn’t see the value in trusting God. But God’s response was, “If you would trust Me, you would see how rich you could be!” God loves a cheerful giver (2 Corinthians 9:6-11).

All of this has immense spiritual application for us as well. The point of the Old Testament law is not to teach us moral behavior, but to point us to Christ. We rob God most often not with our pocketbooks, but with our hearts. We owe God everything, yet we often give Him so little. And because we rob Him (and in the very act of it), we are under a curse: the curse of sin. God is saying to us, “If you would only trust Me, you would see how rich you could be!”