The God Who Says, 'Test Me'

7From the days of your fathers you have turned away from my ordinances, and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says Yahweh of Armies. “But you say, ‘How shall we return?’ 8Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me! But you say, ‘How have we robbed you?’ In tithes and offerings. 9You are cursed with the curse; for you rob me, even this whole nation. 10Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house, and test me now in this,” says Yahweh of Armies, “if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there will not be room enough for. 11I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast its fruit before its time in the field,” says Yahweh of Armies. 12“All nations shall call you blessed, for you will be a delightful land,” says Yahweh of Armies.

God sent us into the world in order to lead us into heaven once we have believed in Christ, received forgiveness of sins, and been born again as his children. When we receive Christ, we come to believe firmly that God the Son created all things, and that thrones, dominions, and every ruling authority were created for God. That faith makes mature believers able to judge the world rightly, and through the wisdom God gives, to discern even spiritual things. When we receive God’s wisdom and our spiritual eyes are opened, we come to believe that the world will be judged and that those who are saved will enter the eternal world.

When our view of the world changes, the life that until now was unstable and uncertain becomes, through Christ, a life of hope that looks to the future, and a life of freedom in the truth, like a prisoner whose chains have fallen away. Only those led by the Holy Spirit can enjoy this blessing, and you are free to enjoy it to the full. But the priests, though they had received God’s special blessing, gave their hearts to the world and to idols, and their fear of God vanished. Once the priests became corrupt, God could no longer forgive sin through their sacrifices, so he took on a human body and came into the world himself.

The apostle Paul describes this holy event in his letter to the Philippians in these words.

Philippians 2:5-11

5Have this in your mind, which was also in Christ Jesus, 6who, existing in the form of God, didn’t consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men. 8And being found in human form, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, yes, the death of the cross. 9Therefore God also highly exalted him, and gave to him the name which is above every name; 10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, those on earth, and those under the earth, 11and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

The only way God could forgive human sin was for Jesus to become flesh. Jesus was righteous and without sin, yet he became the atoning sacrifice for sinners, and then at last God exalted him. Jesus was lifted up when he humbled himself, and when he laid down his life for sinners he became the Christ who holds great authority. Christ is Lord over all, then, now, and forever, and so every knee must bow, of those in heaven, those on earth, and those under the earth. Only when we confess that Jesus Christ is Lord can we give glory to God.

In my last sermon I spoke in detail about Abram and Melchizedek. Tithing had not yet been made law, yet Abram gave a tithe to the priest Melchizedek. This shows that God’s people in those days tithed in faith as a way of life.

Deuteronomy 14:22-23

22You shall surely tithe all the increase of your seed, that which comes out of the field year by year. 23You shall eat before Yahweh your God, in the place which he chooses, to cause his name to dwell there, the tithe of your grain, of your new wine, and of your oil, and the firstborn of your herd and of your flock; that you may learn to fear Yahweh your God always.

The tithes the people brought were used for the priests and Levites who served in the temple, but the tithe brought at the end of every third year was also used to feed not only the Levites but the poor and the foreigners until they were satisfied. God gave the law so that his people could live sound and healthy lives, and he commanded them to be careful to keep it. He gave the law in this way to teach them rightly what lay at the root of the tithes Abram and Jacob had offered, and to bless the godly people who kept the whole tithe. If the incarnation was the way God showed his love, then obedience to his word is the way we can show him our faith.

God said that if they brought their tithes so that there would always be food in his storehouse, he would open the windows of heaven for them and pour out a blessing until there was not room enough for it. This shows how much a life of obedience matters. When Jesus rebuked the scribes and the Pharisees, he said that they faithfully tithed mint, dill, and cumin but treated lightly the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faith. In saying this he was reproving the Pharisees, whose faith was a pretense: they kept the law carefully, yet their lives were evil. Tithing matters, he said, but it matters more to hold to justice, mercy, and faith and to make God known through the way we live. In other words, to people who prided themselves on having done God’s work by paying their tithes, he set the moral standard for his followers far higher. Only when we show right conduct, living by the word, will God approve our faith.

Amos 4:4-5

4“Go to Bethel, and sin; to Gilgal, and sin more. Bring your sacrifices every morning, your tithes every three days, 5offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving of that which is leavened, and proclaim free will offerings and brag about them: for this pleases you, you children of Israel,” says the Lord Yahweh.

When Jeroboam, who had been made king of northern Israel, would not turn from his sin, the priests all fled to Judah in the south, and Jeroboam had no choice but to appoint ordinary people as priests. But for those who had never properly learned the law, offering sacrifices as the law required was no easy matter. The people of the south were no different, but the people of northern Israel held a faith that worshiped idols, so the tithes they offered out of habit all went to idol worship. Judah in the south also believed in God and in idols at the same time; they grew careless about tithing and even offered blemished sacrifices to the holy God. When the people stopped tithing, the priests could no longer give themselves wholly to the tabernacle and had to take up worldly work as well.

In Nehemiah 13:10 we read that Nehemiah found the Levites had not been given their portions, so the Levites and singers who did the work had each fled to their own fields. Because the people did not tithe, the Levites, who had received no inheritance from God, had to go out into the world and work to make a living. As a result, they could not give themselves faithfully to God’s work. The priests, forced to juggle the work of the tabernacle with worldly work, neglected to teach the people; the people in turn never learned the law and fell into sin, and the vicious circle went on. Priests with no inheritance were meant to receive the tithe and in return study the word, teach the people, and offer sacrifices in the tabernacle, but none of that was happening at all.

The spread of divorce and mixed marriages in northern Israel and southern Judah shows that they had no intention of keeping God’s law. Even if people with such a faith had tithed, the money would have been nothing but a means of getting on in the world, and such giving could never be an offering in righteousness that God would accept. We must offer our lives as a holy, living sacrifice, because the tithes and offerings God accepts are those his people give freely and willingly.

Malachi 3:7

7From the days of your fathers you have turned away from my ordinances, and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says Yahweh of Armies. “But you say, ‘How shall we return?’

Yahweh, in whom there is no falsehood or change, told the descendants of Jacob that if they turned from the way of sin, he would return to them. God kept giving his people chance after chance and warning them so that they could return to faith, but they had closed their ears and shut their eyes, and so they did not know how corrupt they had become. They had left the holy God and did not know they had left; they were under a curse and did not know they were cursed. Their pride had reached its height, and they could not understand his word. Just as only those who knew they were unclean could go and wash in the pool of Siloam, these people, blind to their own sin, talked back to God instead. God was angry because priests and people alike practiced sorcery, committed adultery, swore falsely, oppressed the hireling in his wages, oppressed the widow and the fatherless, deprived the foreigner of justice, and did not fear him. Numb to sin, as though their conscience had been seared, they had no fear of judgment. When God told them to turn from the way they were going and return to him, they asked how they should return; plainly they had not been listening at all when he spoke to them.

When God rebuked them, asking whether a man would rob God, they complained, asking when they had ever robbed him. Such people bring to mind the saying that a stone is heavy and sand is a burden, but a fool’s provocation is heavier than both. They did not grasp the word that exposed their sin, so God told them plainly that they had had the audacity to rob him in tithes and offerings. Even after he had said this, they offered polluted bread, brought sacrifices with spots and blemishes, and divorced and married foreign wives instead of raising godly offspring. They knew that God had brought their ancestors out of Egypt and led them into Canaan; even so, they did not fear God but lived only for the world and for themselves.

I looked it up, and the dictionary defines an offering as giving up what is most precious to you. The faith that can offer what matters most to us is possible only where there is hope for the Kingdom of God and gratitude for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Was it really money that God wanted from his people? Did he come into the world and die for the sake of money? If the people simply bring their tithes and offerings and attend worship, will God really open the windows of heaven and pour out enormous blessings? God would not have wanted their pretended faith; he would have wanted a true life spent striving to live by his word. He says the whole nation was cursed because it robbed him, and from that we can see what he wanted: the genuine faith and life of a people able to bring the whole tithe.

Had they truly believed in God, they would not have divorced or married foreign wives, practiced sorcery, committed adultery, or given themselves to pleasure. Had they believed that God is the owner of the world and of heaven, they would have tithed honestly to help the Levites do God’s work, and they would have cared for the poor widows, the fatherless, and the foreigners.

John 6:28-29

28They said therefore to him, “What must we do, that we may work the works of God?” 29Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”

The work of God is to truly believe in Jesus, whom God has sent. If you want to be faithful in God’s work, believe in Jesus truly and live by the Lord’s word; that in itself is doing God’s work well. So we who believe in Jesus Christ must help the poor as the word says, and give honest tithes and offerings so the church can do its work, and in this way take part in the saving of souls.

Malachi 3:10

10Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house, and test me now in this,” says Yahweh of Armies, “if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there will not be room enough for.

God’s word that we should bring the whole tithe and then test him to see whether he will bless us or not is a word that gives his people great strength. No other nation in the world ever received such a promise, but to Israel God made it himself. Only when there is food in God’s storehouse through the people’s giving can the Levites do their work and help the poor, keeping them alive. God promised that he would open the windows of heaven for those who give themselves in this way to his work and to the saving of lives, and pour out a blessing on them until there is not room enough for it.

In Deuteronomy 28 God promises that if you listen to Yahweh’s voice and observe all his commandments, Yahweh your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. If you obey his word, he says, you will be blessed in the city and blessed in the field; blessed will be the fruit of your body, the fruit of your ground, and the young of your livestock and of your flock; blessed will be your basket and your kneading trough. You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out; your enemies will be struck down before you, and those who come out against you one way will flee before you seven ways. All the peoples of the earth will see that you are called by the name of Yahweh and will be afraid of you. In short, he says, you will see for yourselves the windows of heaven opened. But these blessings come with a condition: only those who listen to God’s commands and keep everything he commands will receive the blessing of heaven, a blessing beyond anything this world can give.

Malachi 3:11

11I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast its fruit before its time in the field,” says Yahweh of Armies.

God said that when his people honestly gave him the tithes and offerings that any of God’s people ought to give, he would hold back natural disasters and keep the grain they had sweated to harvest from being ruined. He speaks with such deep feeling about a giving that is only what they owe, not to collect money from his people but to help them keep from sin. To those who do not obey, he speaks the very opposite of the blessing: you will be cursed in the city and cursed in the field; your basket and your kneading trough will be cursed; the fruit of your body, the fruit of your ground, and the young of your livestock will be cursed. As those words show, God could simply curse the disobedient and be done with it. Yet he does not want to curse his people, and so he told them to show their obedience by bringing tithes and offerings.

God wants to bless the fields of those who are faithful and obedient to him: to keep insects from eating the grain and from gnawing at the grapes, so they can reap as much as they have labored for. If God helps them bring in an abundant harvest, they will prosper more each year, and their families too will live in peace. This is a life under God’s protection, and this is how we receive the blessing he pours out when he opens the windows of heaven. If next year is better than this year and our children grow up healthier, that is the blessing God has given. But we take it for granted, and so we do not give thanks. No life is harder than working yourself half to death only to have no rain fall, locusts devour everything at harvest time, and the grapes drop before they ripen. When rain comes in its season, grain ripples in the fields, and grapes hang in heavy clusters on the vine, that blessing will pass on to our descendants. But if we rob God, we fall under a curse: drought comes, the wicked plunder the grain, swarms of locusts eat it all, and worms gnaw the unripe grapes until they drop to the ground. Nothing is more foolish than failing to thank God in times of plenty and calling on his name only when life falls apart. That is why God told them to test him and see whether honest tithing would truly bring them prosperity or a curse.

God told them plainly that when the nations saw Israel blessed by God and prospering, they would call their land delightful and call them a blessed people. May you receive these blessings and enjoy them.

Friends, God has promised that those who give God what is rightly his will enjoy his blessing, and that he will cause not only them but their descendants to enjoy it too. He tells us plainly what kind of life he will bring to those who obey his word and to those who do not.

To rob means to seize by force or to take by deceit. Sin drives a wedge between God and us. When God tells us in Scripture not to steal, it is a promise that he will restore our relationship with him and bless us. As he has promised, God will always remember those who bring the whole tithe with a thankful heart, and he will help them escape the paths of suffering. We can be safe only if we walk with the Holy Spirit, who has prepared a way of escape from the work of evil spirits we cannot even see. If we receive the blessing God pours out when he opens the windows of heaven until there is not room enough for it, we will not only be able to save many souls in this world but also keep our own salvation.

Your life of living out your faith is the living sacrifice, and that, I believe, is what God wants his people to look like. You know there is no greater blessing than salvation. So I hope you will give yourselves to God’s Kingdom and the salvation of souls, and obey his word.