Tithes And Robbery

The Exodus: God's Miraculous Deliverance from Egypt 0:21

Way back in the book of Exodus, way back in the book of Exodus, you'll find the story of the people's escape from Egypt. Do you remember the story? There was oppression. The people were oppressed.

They cried out to God and God raised up a deliverer. What was his name? Moses. Not Charlton Heston.

Moses was raised up to deliver the people. And you remember God sent Moses to the people. He sent him to Pharaoh. And the result of the interaction, I guess that's the most benign way I can describe it, the result of the interaction that Moses had with Pharaoh resulted in 10 plagues that came down upon Pharaoh and his house.

Now, let's pretend for a moment that you witness these things with your own eyes. Let's pretend that you saw these plagues. Some of them might have been explainable, you know, frogs and lice and the like. But how about a river changing to blood?

How about the hailstones? How about the death of the firstborn? Now let's presume that you saw all that. You saw the signs from above, the manifest signs of God's manifest power come down upon Pharaoh.

Then let's say that you left Egypt following God's man Moses. You left Egypt and as you went, amazingly, miraculously, in the sky, you were guided. You were led by a pillar of fire by night and a cloud by day. And then you're led to a place that, interestingly, interestingly, it's right next to the Red Sea, and for a moment, you doubt.

For a moment, there's some anxiety, because you can hear the hoofprints coming. You can hear the chariots from Egypt coming, and there's the Red Sea before you, and yet, in that moment, what does God do? The Red Sea parts. God opens a means and a path for your rescue at a moment you needed it most desperately.

You pass through safely the waters that would otherwise have devoured and swamped you. And then what happens? Pharaoh tries the same thing. It doesn't work out so well.

The waters close in upon Pharaoh, upon the chariots, washing away the enemy who had pursued God's own. Let's say you saw all that. Let's say you had seen that with your own eyes. Do you think that you would have some trust and some confidence in this God?

You saw miracle after miracle after miracle. God heard your prayers. God answered your prayers. He said to deliver.

He took you out. He dealt with your enemies. You saw clouds and fire in the sky and all that. Do you think you'd have some confidence that, okay, things are going to go pretty good?

We're in a wilderness and this is kind of an odd place to be, but God's got this.

Israel's Unbelief in the Wilderness 2:43

Do you think that would be your approach? Well, it wasn't the approach of the Israelites of that day. What did they do? Well, you remember they got a couple days in and their tummies began to grumble, and as their tummies grumbled they called out Moses, and through Moses they called out God, and they said, God, you're dropping the ball.

God, you're dropping the ball. Specifically they said this, they said, oh, oh, that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by pots of meat, when we ate bread to the full. But you, you brought us out into this wilderness to kill the whole lot of us, the whole assembly, with hunger.

What a harsh accusation this was, given what God had just recently done. It's not like he just did this to a different people in a galaxy far, far away. He did this to them. He blessed them.

He provided for them. He protected them. He dealt with their enemies. He did all that.

And when they get hungry, they throw them under the bus. Now, do you remember how God responded to their accusation?

The Provision of Manna: God's Grace to Doubters 3:57

Well, He responded, as He usually does, with grace. Listen to these words. He spoke to Moses. He spoke to Moses and He tells them this.

He says, I've heard the complaints of the children of Israel. Speak to them, saying, At twilight you shall eat meat. In the morning you will be filled with bread. And you shall know that I am the Lord your God.

And so it was that quails came up at evening and covered the camp. In the morning dew lay all around the camp. And when the layer of dew had lifted, there on the surface of the wilderness, there was a small round substance as fine as the dust on the ground. And so when the children of Israel saw it, they said to one another, what is it?

For they did not know what it was. What do we call that substance? You're playing the home game. What do we call that substance that appeared on the ground?

What is it? Manna. Well, in Hebrew, the word manna literally means, what is it? They did not have a word for it.

Here you have a people who they think God has left the building, right? They think God has left them to die in the wilderness. They think it's game over, that this is the end. They look around and they say, well, we're in the wilderness.

There's nothing here. There's no options. There's no source of provision that we can see. And even though God did neat things in times past, He's done with us now.

Or He went on vacation or a hiatus or something like that. Here we're left to fend for ourselves. He's left us to die. It's game over.

Why? Because they looked around at their temporal circumstances and they thought that God couldn't or wouldn't come through for them. How wrong they were. And in that moment God says, I've heard their complaints.

I'm going to show you what I'm going to do. I'm going to give them a source of provision so unique and so unexpected they won't even have a name for it. I will demonstrate to them that I can provide for them in ways that they could never even dream up, in the midst of whatever circumstances or whatever wilderness might befall them.

I will show them, and they will know that I am the Lord their God. They will know as I provide this thing, this substance that they've never even seen before. They'll know it comes. It comes from My hand.

See, God always planned to take care of it. Sometimes when things are going great in our lives, we say, okay, God's got me. He loves me. Things are going well.

But then we enter into our own wilderness. We enter into some phase in our lives where things aren't going as well. For many of us, this current season is one of those times. And so they, and sometimes even we, we ask, well, what's God doing in the midst of this wilderness?

He's left the building. With Elvis, He's departed. God says, no, I always intended to come through for you. Oh, you of little faith.

I always intended to come through for you. Even providing means that you don't even have a word for. The most unexpected ways I can deliver you if you trust me. If you have faith in me.

Gathering According to Need: Daily Trust in God's Provision 7:00

In any case, the people learned shortly thereafter how to begin to gather this manna. This particular provision, you remember, they learned how to gather it. Exodus 16 says this, Then the children of Israel, they did so, and they gathered, some more, some less. So when they measured it by omers, he who gathered much had nothing left over, but he who gathered little had no lack.

Every man had gathered according to each one's need. And Moses said, Let no one leave any of it till morning. It says, you gather it, you consume it, you don't hide it till tomorrow. Let no one leave it till morning.

Notwithstanding, they did not heed Moses. Notwithstanding, they didn't listen to what Moses had said. They did not heed him. But some of them left part of it until morning.

The exact opposite of what Moses told them. The exact opposite. Some of them left part of it till morning and it bred worms and it stank. And Moses was angry at them.

I'll bet he was. Moses was angry at them. And so they gathered it. Then, going forward, they gathered it every morning, every man, according to his need.

Not according to his whims, his desires, his dreams, but according to his need. According to his need, the people gathered what they needed for that particular day. And there was trust, implicit trust, that God would provide again tomorrow. That God who had taken care of them yesterday, the day before and today, He would still be the same God tomorrow and would do what He said He would.

That is the hardest sort of confidence to have. Sometimes we can count our blessings. We count our blessings, we start adding them up and go, wow, look what God has done. How great thou art, right?

But then God says, trust me tomorrow. Trust me that I'll do tomorrow what I've done in days past. And put me to the test by giving your best today. By not worrying about hoarding up all the blessings as if it's a one-time shot.

Trust Me that if I came through for you, for I will continue to come through for you in the time yet to come. Well, the people didn't. Didn't trust God in that way. And as we saw in Exodus 16 there, many, they didn't trust Him, so they tried to stockpile God's blessings.

They said, oh, mercy me. God might change, He might get angry, He might go away, He might go on vacation, He might be sleepy, and He might forget to provide. So we'll just keep a little extra for tomorrow. They started to stockpile it.

They were trying to fill up their barns, their coffers. Meanwhile, guess what? The storehouse of the Lord was running dry.

Malachi's Day: Holding Back the Best from God 9:45

On Malachi's day, people were holding back. Let's fast forward to Malachi's day. We've talked a little bit about what was happening in the time of the Exodus. Let's think of the days of Malachi.

In Malachi's day, God had demonstrated His provision. In recent years, God had delivered the people. Now, in Moses' day, they were delivered from Egypt. In Malachi's day, they had recently been delivered from whom?

The Babylonians. They were taken out of Babylon, and they were restored to the promised land. And if you read the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, you'll see the temples were built, the walls were built, God provided. They were exiled for the exact time frame that Scripture prophesied that they would be.

And in God's time, You brought them back, You put them in their home, built a temple, built a wall. He made provision for them. And yet they didn't have confidence that that provision would remain. And so you remember what we saw earlier in Malachi?

Remember what we saw about their offerings? What was the heart of the people in Malachi's day? God says, offer your best lambs. Give your best sacrifice, that which is pure, undefiled.

That which pointed to Christ. Offer the best, the perfect lambs. And what were the people doing? Well, you remember this.

They were offering the most sickly, diseased, three-legged, buck-toothed lamb they got. Some were even stealing other people's lambs to offer that as if that was going to appease God. The people's mindset was the same as it was back in Exodus. They said, I need to hold on to what is mine.

I need to hold on to what I got. I will give God what it doesn't cost me anything to give. But I'm holding for tomorrow, tomorrow morning, that which is precious to me in case I need it. Because my trust is really in me, not in God.

That was the message in the Exodus, the message in Malachi's day. People were holding back. And they presumed that what little they did give God was appeasing Him, as if that's the object of worship, appeasing God. Well, God was not appeased, and God was not pleased.

The Charge of Robbery: Withholding Tithes and Offerings 11:45

“Will a man rob God? Yet you have robbed Me! But you say, 'In what way have we robbed You?' In tithes and offerings. You are cursed with a curse, for you have robbed Me, even this whole nation.”

— Malachi 3:8-9 (NKJV)

And so He asks them the most difficult question. He asked them the most difficult question phrased in the most difficult way. He said this, said this to His people in chapter three, in today's reading. He said, why are you robbing Me?

Why are you robbing Me? Let's consider what He meant. Let's consider that robbery. Let's consider that theft as we look at verses eight and nine once again and work our way through the balance of the text.

Verse 8, will a man rob God? And yet you have robbed me. But you say, how? In what way have we robbed you?

In tithes and offerings. You are cursed with a curse because you have robbed me, even this whole nation. You know, if a man were to walk into church, go up to the offering plates or the box we've got back there in the narthex, and was to take money out, if a man were to run in, grab the money out of the offering plate and run out the door, what would we call such a man?

Well, we'd say, he's a robber, he's a thief. He's stolen that which is not his. Well, the people of Malachi's day withheld from God their tithes and their offerings. They probably didn't see themselves as robbers.

But that's what God calls them here. See, those who were withholding, holding back, saving some until morning, they probably looked in the mirror, or whatever they used to reflect themselves back in those days, they looked in the mirror, they said, ah, what a virtuous one am I. And what a wise man I am, because I'm a steward.

I hold on, and I save for rainy days and the like. They probably looked in the mirror. They're pleased. They saw themselves as being virtuous.

Maybe they looked down the street and they said, well, Bob didn't give anything at all. Oh, Bob has got a reckoning coming. But me, hey, I give what I can. I give what I can.

And God understands. I know seasons where I give him something different. He hasn't smited me yet. He must be pleased with what I'm doing.

People probably thought God was hip. He was cool. He was with it. He understood.

Maybe they thought, because of their various hardships, and I'm undoubtedly life was hard in that era, but they potentially thought, well, let me reason with God. He can't possibly expect me to give my full time. After all, I can't, I mean look what has happened in my life, my vacation and the like.

The people probably had, to a man, a good reason in their own view for withholding. As scripture says, to the man, it's the whole nation that was doing this. It was the breadth and scope of God's people. They're withholding, that God was giving them everything, every provision, everything they could possibly need.

He had provided for them all that. All that I've wanted thou has provided. God has done so, and yet they kept looking to tomorrow morning. They kept looking to the future and said, but I might not have from His hand tomorrow the same provision I have today.

And so if I'm going to be a good steward, I need to hold on to something. That one lamb, that lamb's special. This lamb, you know, the sacrifice is coming out. We could offer this one.

What an insidious mentality it was. Where people said, God will be okay if I withhold from Him my best. Well, God's response is, you, you are robbing Me when you do it. Will a man rob God?

Yet you have robbed Me. And yet you say, how? Again, the people didn't understand. They didn't fathom it.

When they looked in the mirror they did not see robbers. They saw people maybe just trying to get by, just trying to get by. But again, that's not how God saw it. And so He uses the strongest possible terms to explain to them, to explain to every generation, what it is to withhold from giving God your best.

And He says that this is robbery, highway robbery. The Hebrew applies something akin to assault. Cracking God over the head with a pipe and taking His wallet, so to speak. That's the sort of connotation.

Not merely withholding a little bit. This is robbery. And again, there's always, in Malachi's day, days of the exodus, our day, it always seems like there's good reasons. When the people of Moses' day were given that manna, again, they thought it might disappear, and so they needed to hoard a little extra.

And almost every generation can relate to that impulse. And I trust you can too. Can at least relate to the impulse. To trust in yourself and to trust what you have in your hands more than what God has promised He will provide.

It's easier. And again, the people of Malachi's day were doing this, and they called themselves good stewards, undoubtedly, as they did so.

True Stewardship: What Is Poured Out, Not Hoarded 16:51

Let me stop here and make a peripheral observation. Do you know what stewardship is, scripturally? Stewardship, for some of us, is this idea, well, I've got to be good stewards, right? I've got to sock enough money away for a rainy day.

Good stewardship, in our context, often in church context, good stewardship as well. We've got to have this amount of money stored up in this amount of money, and we've got to be careful about where we put our money, and what missionaries we support, and what we give. We've got to be good stewards.

Is there a kernel of truth in that? Sure. However, however, scripturally, time and time and time and time and time and time again, when stewardship is addressed or referred to in the pages of the book, stewardship is demonstrated through that which you pour out, not that which you put in your pocket. Good stewardship, scripturally, is about that which is poured out into ministry, into kingdom work.

Money that's not buried in the ground, but is expended for the use of the kingdom which is to come. Good stewardship is about investing our treasures, our time, our talents. For some of us, that's the problem. The sermon is not just about finances, to be clear.

For some of us, the problem is that we're withholding from God our time and our talents and our resources. We're not engaged in local ministry, local church, perhaps in the way that we could be. We're not lending our giftedness to others in the way that we could be. We're not advancing the kingdoms in ways that we could be.

We're taking things that God has given us and we're sticking them in the dirt or we're holding on to it. For mourning. What was Paul's valedictory? Paul's valedictory was all about, I'm poured out as a drink offering.

Let that be your eulogy. Let someone say of you that you were poured out as a drink offering. Your life was not about acquisitions and mergers, but your life was about pouring yourself out. Your talents, everything God has given you for the benefit and welfares of others and for the kingdom.

That is stewardship.

Defining the Tithe: The Tenth Given to God 18:43

Let's look at verse 10. Verse 10, bring all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. All right, a question we might ask right now is this: what is a tithe? You all have been in churches, you know, for years, most of us.

But I'll bet you that if I ask everyone to explain tithe, we'll get as many different definitions as there are people. So what's a tithe? What's a tithe? And furthermore, or were tithes just an Old Testament thing?

When we talk about tithes, is that just, well, that's what they did back then, but now not so much? How do you answer that question? Well, generally, there's a lot of confusion on these issues. I'm not entirely sure why, because I think it's fairly straightforward in Scripture.

We'll take the time to study it. But the issue has been made cloudy over the centuries. Perhaps this issue of tithing has been made cloudy, perhaps by those with a vested interest in gaining very much, and perhaps by vested interest in those who want to give very little. The issue has been confused.

So what is a tithe? Well, in Hebrew, the word is simple. It means tenth. In other words, to tithe is to give God 10%.

10% of what you have. Now, the principle of tithing was demonstrated right from the start. It was demonstrated right from the beginning. In a way, you could say that the sacrifices of Cain and Abel were a form of tithe.

If you go further in Genesis 14, you can see what Abraham gave to Melchizedek, who was a type of Christ, that this was a tithe. He gave him a tenth of his spoils. Later on, in the days of Moses, the tithe was codified. It was codified into the Mosaic Law in places like Deuteronomy chapter 12, Leviticus 27.

And sometimes we remember that.

The Three Tithes of the Old Testament 20:28

We remember, okay, so there is a tithe that is scriptural, involves 10%. but something that we forget or haven't studied is this, that in the Old Testament there are actually three types of tithe. There are actually three types of tithe, not just one blanket tithe. There was three types. Now, the first of these tithes went to the Levites, went to the priesthood.

Remember, Levites didn't have a land of their own. They relied on the people's provision. Well, the first of these tithes went to the Levites and the priest. A second tithe that we see in scripture was used for the feast of tabernacles, specifically identified to that utility.

The third tithe, every two out of seven years, was used to serve the poor. A tithe is mandated to serve the poor. Furthermore, these tithes, when they were given, they were not strictly gold or even reach in your wallet and break out of 20 or what have you. That's not what it was.

That's what a tithe was more often involved livestock, harvest offerings, and the like. And as a side note, that's why verse 10 of today's passage talks about bringing the tithe into the storehouse, not to the bank account, into the storehouse, because people brought material offerings to God, not just cold, hard cash.

General Equity: When the Application Passes but the Principle Remains 21:36

Now, given that the tithes of the Old Testament involve things like the Levites and the temple and the Feast of Tabernacles and storehouses and the like, you cannot mechanically apply the same prescriptions that were given in that context in the Old Testament economy. You cannot mechanically apply them to the New Testament economy, or things like the temple and the Feast of Tabernacles and the like are no longer in play.

Certain aspects of the Old Testament tithe are not relevant or applicable in the present. And because of that, because of that, when people say that the Old Testament tithe remains in place, in a strict sense, if you define it on the same terms by which people gave in the Old Testament, that's not entirely accurate.

Again, the exact mandates given to Old Testament Israelites don't necessarily carry over to a church that lacks Levites and temples and feasts and the like. However, however, that you're listening years on, however, that does not mean, does not mean that the principle of tithing itself has been abrogated. Not one iota. You see, it's possible for certain manifestations of a law to pass while the general equity of that law remains.

Let me give you an example. In the Old Testament, you're familiar, there's a law, Levitical law, that dealt with the clothing that the Israelites were to wear. And if you remember, that law said you shall not wear clothing of mixed fabrics. If you had silk and tweed, you didn't wear them in the same outfit.

Now why was that? The food laws. Why could I eat this and not eat that? What was the point and purpose of those laws?

Things that we no longer currently follow. What was the point and purpose? Well, the Old Testament laws were routinely used to tutor the people. To tutor the people in spiritual principles.

In fact, Paul says as much in Galatians. He says that these laws existed to teach the people something that they didn't fully understand without a rounded Old and New Testament understanding of the history of redemption. When you give someone a law that says you shall only wear clothing with one fabric, when you tell them there's certain foods that are clean and certain foods that are unclean, the tutoring God was doing was teaching them about holiness, being separate from the world.

Specifically, they were inundated by the cultures around them to accept the pagan practices of these cultures and the beliefs and the idols of these cultures. Well, God told them, you shall not. You shall have no other gods before me. You won't take their beliefs, you won't take the beliefs of the Moabites, the Philistines, the Edomites and the like, you won't fuse them together.

Now all the other nations did that. They took the various beliefs and they blended them together into a melting pot. It's called syncretism, this idea of blending. Well, God knew that that would be destructive, destroy his people.

He said, you will not blend mixed beliefs. Well, guess what? The picture of fabrics and not blending different fabrics was meant to tutor them externally about a spiritual inward truth. Foods they could eat and the like, it was the same thing.

So many of those Old Testament laws, in fact, many of them that we have trouble understanding, like the fabric one, the here and now, were used to train and to tutor people at that time. Of course, now we have a full and more rounded understanding of the various issues that were at stake, which is why these same things are not in play at the moment.

You can wear clothing with different fabrics. I see, I think, just about all of us are. And yet, even as we can wear this different clothing, different fabrics, the general equity, the general equity, the principle that was being taught back then with regards to clothing remains in play today. We still should not take our beliefs and blend them with the world around us.

We still should not serve both God and Belial. We still should not take the doctrines of the world and try to infuse them in with Scripture. It doesn't work. We're seeing that in our own present age when people are trying.

The principle of the law remains in play, even if the exact application of the law may be different. The same is true with regards to the Old Testament tithes. Yeah, we don't have Feast of Tabernacles and the like, but the principle of giving and giving God our best, that remains. The principle of 10% and then some remains, irrespective of exactly how it was codified to Old Testament Israel.

I hope you can see this distinction.

The Widow's Mite: Christ Raises the Bar on Giving 26:01

And the principle of giving to God, really 10% and higher. You see that throughout Scripture. You see it in Paul's travels and his epistles. You see it in Christ's ministry.

You remember the story of Christ. He's seated by the temple. He's watching the people. He's watching the people come in and they're giving.

Putting money in the offering box, so to speak. Scripture says that Jesus sat down opposite from the temple and watched all this go down. And He watched some significant contributions being made. He watched as people brought chickens, as they brought the different animals.

He watched as they bought the proverbial bag of money with the dollar sign on it and heaved it on in and were proud about what they had done. He watched all that go down. He watched people give, and He looked in the motivations of why they were giving, because He could see their hearts.

He looked in their hearts, and He saw gifts great and small, but it was only one gift that caused Him to stop the presses. One gift that He had to call His disciples to come over and check out. And see what He had just seen. One gift that made the heart of Christ jump for joy to see it given.

Mark 12, we read this. Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put in. And He watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts.

But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins worth only a few cents. And yet calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, Truly, truly I say to you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all of the others. And you imagine the disciples, their eyes, they went boing.

They're just saying, what? And then He explains. He said, they, you see, they, all those others with their bags of money with the dollar sign on it, all of them, they gave out of their wealth. They gave out of their wealth.

But she, she gave out of her poverty and she put in everything, all that she had. Life to live on. Luke 12, Christ says this, sell your possessions, give to the needy, provide yourself with money bags that do not grow old, with a treasure in heaven that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys.

Finally, listen to this from Luke 6, give and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. When you hear those words, when you hear Christ's excitement over the widow, when you hear this picture of give, give, give, when you hear this picture of pouring out to God and He will pour out to us, when you hear this picture, does your mind say, that's 10% and that's all?

Probably not. Christ actually raised the bar. The bar in the New Testament is not lower than it was in the Old Testament. It's higher.

There may not be a vested percentage attached to it. But there is. There is a motivation by which we give God our best. What does that look like to you?

When we hear how Christ praised the widow who gave all that she had, the bar wasn't lower. Christ says, sell your possessions and give to the needy. The bar has not been lowered. It's been raised.

Arguments over 10%, they missed the point. A New Testament argument can be made. We're actually called to a higher standard. You know, someone once told me the last thing to be converted on a man is his wallet.

The last thing to be converted on a man is his wallet. When you hear God's words on these things, these words convict us. They convict us, but they remind us that this is the reason why we're here. We are given things that we might give back.

We are blessed to be a blessing. You know, he who finishes with the most toys doesn't necessarily win. But that's the predominant worldview of our age, and our culture in particular. Is it a worldview you've adopted?

You know, we're called to be introspective. Let's see now.

Bring the Tithes and Test Me: God's Invitation to Trust 30:18

“Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in My house, and try Me now in this, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you such blessing that there will not be room enough to receive it.”

— Malachi 3:10 (NKJV)

Let's see now our remaining verses. Let's look at verses 10 through 12 to see what God has to further add to this topic. Verse 10. Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house, and try me now in this.

Now, let me stop there for a moment. There are certain times when we don't test God. Regularly in Scripture, this idea of testing God or tempting God, uh-uh, don't do that. But here, interestingly, fascinatingly, God says you can test Him on this issue.

You can try him on this issue to see how he responds. He invites you to take this particular test. He says, bring all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house, and try me now in this. Try me, if I will not open for you the windows of heaven, and pour out for you such blessing, that there will not be room enough to receive it.

And I will rebuke the devourer for your sake, so he will not destroy the fruit of your ground, nor shall the vine fail to bear fruit for you in the fields, says the Lord of hosts. And all the nations will call you blessed, for you will be a delightful land. Now, in its original context, remember, this passage was given to Israel.

This passage was given to Israel, and God was promising the nation that if they would do what he said, if they would live up to the mandates and commands he had given them, he had already given them a land flowing with milk and honey. There was no good thing he would withhold from them.

He was telling his people. People were constantly doing the other thing. So on the one hand, this message was given to the people of Israel a long time ago. And yet, remember the general equity?

The principle remains. You and I are called to try God in this, that if we give to Him, will He not give back? Will he not provide? The story of the widow, we don't know how that played out in the time yet to come.

And yet I know this much, with absolute conviction, that widow did not die by the side of the road, penniless and foodless, without food and without shelter and the like. I have no doubt whatsoever that God's provision for her remained in the time yet to come. And that she's blessed all the more now in the present.

I believe that the general equity of these verses, these verses remain. But they cut against our nature. It cuts against our nature to respond. Our nature says, I have what I have.

And sometimes we say, because I worked for it. What I produced is the result of my hands. And in doing so, we discredit the God who gave us our hands to begin with. But we say, I've earned what I've earned, and I'll give God what I give God, and He'll be happy with that.

That is a default setting in North American evangelical Christianity. Which is why the national percentage of tithing is well under 10%, because that's what we do. We appease God with just a little bit. Yet God has given us every good thing, and He does not withhold anything that we need.

But it can be so hard. Not necessarily to believe it with our mind, but to believe it with our wallet, to believe it with our hands. It's hard sometimes to give God our best. And we come up with a thousand reasons not to do it.

But God says, test me in this.

The Deacons' Test: God's Blessing on a Mercy Ministry 33:22

You know, as a church, some of you are aware, our church's deacons did a wonderful thing. They took our existing mercy ministry program and they watered it, they tended to it, and it has grown. They nurtured this effort. And by nurturing it, we've reached out to more in our church in our community than we ever had in times past, in times recent past.

But at the outset, we had a certain amount of funds in the mercy ministry account. And of course, there's concern that if we suddenly start to give out more, if we suddenly start to bless more people, won't that deplete what we have? Of course, that's a concern, or at least a question. And yet our deacons, spiritual men as they are, they determined to test God.

To try Him where He's asked to be tried. To pour out and to provide for those in need. The widows, the orphans, the needy, those who are hurting. This has been demonstrated time and time again over the course of the past year plus.

Let me ask you, do you think that account is greater or lesser as a result? Well, I think we've shared in the past with you that it is far greater. We have more funds in the Mercy Ministry account at this point than we really ever have. In the midst of giving and blessing folks in ways that perhaps exceeded what we did in the past.

Our deacons, in a microcosm, tried and tested God's word to see if it were true. And God poured out a blessing that we're still receiving. The same is true for us as individuals. And I trust this morning that you would accede to the intellectual, propositional, theological truth of what we see in Malachi.

But the question is, what do we do about it? How do we respond? It takes guts to trust more in God than in ourselves. It takes guts to trust in God for a tomorrow that we can't yet see.

It takes guts to do it, and yet that's where faith is cultivated. Faith doesn't grow as rapidly or as strongly in the midst of abundance, but rather in poverty. In the midst of wondering what tomorrow is going to bring. That's where our faith grows the most.

And so God will appoint seasons in our lives, and perhaps some of us are in it right now. That's exactly what will happen. He'll put us in seasons to test Him and to try Him, but the good news is that He'll pass the test. He will respond just as He always had.

It's All His: The Call to Give God Our Best 35:55

This morning in closing, let me encourage you in this. When we consider all that God has given us, when we look out at the sun, the trees, mountains, and the like, when we look out at the brothers and sisters in our midst, when we look at what God has done for us, when we look at the infinite price that He paid, that Christ paid on Calvary, when we look at the broken body and shed blood that was given for us, when we look at all that God has done, holding nothing back that we needed, and in our moment of greatest need, He came through.

When we look at all that, how dare we quibble over tithes and percentages? Furthermore, when we recognize that it's all God's anyway. It's all God's anyway. Whatever you can hold on to, it's His.

He owns the cattle on a thousand hills. He owns everything that's in your wallet, everything that's in our bank accounts, everything that's in our hands, everything that we own. That we think we own. He owns it all.

When we consider that it's all His, how dare we cling and claw to grab back the Master's belongings? How dare we do it? This morning, the God who's given us every good thing and holds nothing back, He calls us to test Him in this. He invites us to test out his willingness to bless us even more in the time yet ahead.

Against the backdrop of all that he's already done. Against the history, the covenantal history of his promises. And our response boils down to this. It's simple.

It's either I will or I won't. What's your response this day? Let's pray.