TEXT: Malachi 3:6-12 TITLE: Return to Me With Your Offerings VIDEO Who helps you make important decisions about your money? A financial consulting firm recently ran this commercial. Watch this. Open your Bibles to Malachi 3:6. The question is not, Can you trust God s counsel and wisdom on financial matters? The question is Do you trust Him? or Will you trust Him enough to obey? Our financial resources are a big deal to God. He cares about how we get it, how we spend it, how we save it and how we give it. That is abundantly clear from our text. Read Malachi 3:6-12. What we see here is a culture of selfishness and greed that had so saturated a group of people that they were guilty of robbing God. But that was just a symptom of a much deeper spiritual problem. Malachi 3:7a - From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. We ve been talking from Malachi about how to battle back from spiritual apathy. It had set in so deeply in these people s lives that it no longer bothered them to sin against and disobey the Lord. And the Lord calls to them in this matter, Return to Me and I will return to you. And yet their hearts were so rebellious and hardened that they question God, But how shall we return? This wasn t the sincere question of someone who genuinely wants to know how to make things right with God. This is a defiant question. And when the Lord answers they become even more defiant. Malachi 3:8a Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me. But you ask, How do we rob you? In tithes and offerings. So God is putting His finger on their stewardship the giving of their tithes and offerings. In those days God s people were primarily farming people. They had fields and vineyards in which they grew crops for food. They had herds of sheep or goats where they got wool, meat and milk. So when the Lord blessed them with an increase in these things, the Law of Moses commanded them to bring at least a tithe (literally the tenth ) of that increase to the Temple. These offerings were placed in a special storehouse next to the Temple to be distributed to the priests and through the priests for the work of the Lord. Now today when we think about tithing our currency is not crops or animals, but money. We write checks or transfer money from our account by online giving. And that money goes to the church to be used for the expenses of Gospel ministry. So when the Lord is checking our spiritual health, one of the most reliable tests is to take a look at our bank statement. How has He blessed us, and what have we done with those blessings? God is the ultimate financial consultant. And from His Word we learn that giving is an overflow. First, it s an overflow of 1. OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD (v.7)
One thing we ve learned in our study of Malachi is what it looks like for people to not have their relationship with God right. They were far from God. ILLUSTRATION I remember the story of an older couple who owned an old car that had a bench seat in the front. Remember those? And when they were younger the wife used to scoot over and sit next to her husband. Remember that? Well those days were in the past and they were driving along one day and the wife said, Honey I remember when we were so in love we used to sit right next to each other in the car. The husband behind the steering wheel glanced over and replied, Well, I didn t move. If you realize you are far from God, guess who moved? When the Lord says in v.7, Return to me, the word is sometimes translated repent. He s calling for a dramatic turnaround a hard pivot in their relationship with Him. The Lord says, Return to Me. It s a spiritual move. James 4:8 says, Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. That tells me that at any given time I m as close to God as I desire to be. Today, if you have that awful feeling that things are not right with God, that s the conviction of the Holy Spirit. What you do with that conviction is crucial. Let it drive you to God. Take that first step to return to God and He will return to you. Interestingly, for these people that first step is a financial one. When they ask, How are we to return? God is very specific. They were to return to sacrificial giving to Him. Now of all the things that God could have said, He put His finger on this. You may have never thought of what you do with your money, whether or not you give to God s work, as having anything to do with your relationship with God. But clearly it does. You cannot separate your relationship with God from your money. So let your giving flow out of your relationship with God. Also, let it flow out of your understanding of 2. THE OWNERSHIP OF GOD (vv.7-8) Whether we acknowledge it or not, He owns it all. Malachi 3:7b-8a - 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. Everything we have comes from Him and belongs to Him. We are simply managers of it. That s why withholding tithes and offerings is considered here as robbing God. ILLUSTRATION When Nan and I first God married we had a good friend who worked at a church as a financial secretary. She was responsible for depositing offerings and paying bills for the church. We were shocked one day to learn that over a period of years she had embezzled tens of thousands of dollars from the church where she worked. She was robbing God. It was an embarrassment to her husband and a financial blow to the church. But according to Malachi the same thing happens when we withhold our tithes and offerings.
In the days of King David after a time of great generosity by the people of God the king offered a prayer of thanksgiving to God. 1 Chronicles 29:14 - But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand. So our giving should flow out of our relationship with God, out of the ownership of God, and it should flow out of 3. OUR WORSHIP OF GOD (v.8) It s not just an obligation it s an opportunity to worship. ILLUSTRATION I heard the story about a couple of guys who were in a plane crash and they ended up being stranded on a deserted island. One of the guys was really bummed about the fact that no one would even know where to begin to look for them and they would be stranded forever. The other guy was very upbeat and optimistic about everything. His friend said, How can you be so optimistic in a time like this? We re hopelessly stranded. His friend replied, I m a member of a Baptist church in a building program and I made a large financial pledge. Trust me, my pastor will figure out a way to find me. Thankfully, that s not the way we do it here at our church. Now I hear people argue against tithing saying that it was the OT law and we as NT believers are no longer under the requirements of the Law. Certainly, we are no longer under the requirements of the Law to please God. Christ has fulfilled that for us. But the tithe was taught in the Bible before the Law was given. Long before Moses, when people were blessed they gave a tithe of that blessing to the Lord. If one has been blessed with much, why wouldn t they want to give much? Jesus rebuked some of the spiritual leaders of His day Matthew 23:23 - Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices But you have neglected the more important matters of the law justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former (the tithe). Yes, as NT believers we are no longer under the Law but under grace. But grace doesn t release us from generosity; it releases us for generosity. How could we think that legalism would produce more generosity in God s people than the grace of Christ would? ILLUSTRATION We are not legalistically bound to giving 10%, but it s a great place to start. It s sort of like the training wheels that help us until we reach the greater freedom of whole-hearted generosity in giving. Tithes and offerings have always been a means of worship.
1 Chronicles 16:29 - ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name. Bring an offering and come before him; worship the LORD in the splendor of his holiness. I encourage you, however you give your offerings in an envelope on Sunday, online sometime during the week, or by mail before you do, stop and give thanks to God. Our giving flows out of our worship of God. Also it flows out of our 4. OUR PARTNERSHIP WITH GOD (vv.9-12) In giving our offerings, God allows us to be partners with Him in doing His work. Malachi 3:10a - Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Now I mentioned earlier that some of the tithes and offerings were placed in the storehouse, referring to special rooms in the temple for keeping the grain and other things brought to be used in the work the priests were commanded by God to do. So as the people gave they were partnering with God in His work. But they were also partnering with each other to do God s work. The tithes of the people were all stored together and distributed by the responsible leaders. And this storehouse giving is an important principle in giving. We re always better together. In the NT the offerings were brought to the pastoral leaders of the church to be distributed according to the needs in the work of the Lord. Offerings were used to support the elders (pastoral leaders) of the church. They were used to help the poor. Offerings were used to fund the expansion of the Gospel to other lands. God intends to fund the work He has commanded the church to do through the giving of tithes and offerings by members of the church. The NT gives instructions for how offerings are to be handled. 1 Corinthians 16:2 - On the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with his income, saving it up, so that when I come no collections will have to be made. First, it was to be done as part of the gathering of the church each week regular offerings. Second, they were to set aside a sum in advance sacrificial offerings, not just leftovers. Third, they were to be given in keeping with their income proportional offering. Maybe you know you should tithe, but you look at the money that s coming in and the money that is going out and you can t see how they could possibly begin to give. It s a matter of faith. Trust God and begin to obey Him. If you re struggling with even starting to tithe, I suggest that you start with baby steps. Pray about it and find ways to simplify your life so you can begin to have money to give. I know people who gave up cable television so they could begin to give. Others had a garage sale so they could begin to give. Others took on a part-time job. God will honor that. Maybe you re stuck
in giving pattern and you need to grow to be more proportional in your giving. Trust the Lord and take a step up. Malachi 3:10b - 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. Wouldn t you like to live under an open heaven? So our giving should flow out of our relationship to God, the ownership of God, our worship of God, our partnership with God and other believers. But it also flows out our submission to the 5. LORDSHIP OF GOD (vv.10-12) Four times in this passage the Lord refers to Himself as the Lord Almighty (vv.7,10,11,12). That name of the Lord means Lord of hosts. The angelic hosts (countless angels) are at His command. He orchestrates all the workings of the universe, as well as your life and my life. He is Lord and He reserves the right to ask of us whatever He wishes. Jesus put it this way: Matthew 6:24 - No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money. And when we don t handle our money God s way we are saying we love our money more than we love God. As you think your relationship with God through Jesus Christ you must understand how invasive He is. When you put your trust in Christ His Lordship invades every aspect of your life. Today we ve been talking about your finances. But Christ also invades your thought life your sex life your recreational life your family life your job everything. The Gospel tells us that we are saved through faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. So you can t earn your way to heaven by giving. But if you re a non-believer being drawn to Christ today, you need to understand this: When Christ enters your life He intends to invade every area of your life. And it s not to make us miserable. It is to release us to a life of joy beyond description. Listen, it s not the demands of Christ that make life miserable for us. It s our own selfishness that makes us miserable. Christ came to set you free from that.