Test Me in This

Will a person rob God? It sounds like a ridiculous question. How could anyone steal from God? But that is exactly what God asks his people. And their answer is: who, us?

Malachi is the last of the prophets in our Old Testament. His name means my messenger. He speaks to the people of Judah some years after the temple has been rebuilt. The excitement of coming home from exile has worn off. The temple is standing, the priests are serving, but hearts have gone cold. People offer God their sick and lame animals instead of their best. They keep the good portions for themselves. And the book of Malachi is written almost like an argument. God says something. The people answer back with a question. Then God explains. Today's conversation is about money and gifts, and about trust.

It starts with good news. “For I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.” God has not changed. That is the only reason his people are still here. Ever since their ancestors' days, they have wandered away from his ways. But God still holds the door open. “Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of hosts.” And the people reply, as if puzzled: “Wherein shall we return?” How exactly are we supposed to come back? We didn't know we had gone anywhere.

So God gives them a very practical answer. “Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings.” A tithe was a tenth of what a family harvested or earned. God's law asked his people to bring it, to support the Levites who served at the temple, and to care for the poor, the widow, the orphan and the stranger. But the people had been holding it back. Keeping a little more for themselves. And all the time, their crops were failing and pests were eating the fields. They were trying to hold on tight, and they still did not have enough.

Then God says something he says almost nowhere else in the Bible. He invites them to test him. “Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.” Prove me. Try me. See if I don't. God promises to stop the devourer, the locusts and pests, from destroying their crops. The vines will not drop their grapes before harvest. And all the nations around will call them blessed, because they will be a land of delight.

The storehouse was a real place. The book of Nehemiah describes the storerooms in the temple where grain, new wine and oil were kept for the Levites, singers and gatekeepers. In Nehemiah's day the people stopped bringing these gifts, and the Levites had to leave the temple and go back to work their own fields to survive. Nehemiah rebuked the leaders, and then all Judah brought the tithe of grain, wine and oil into the storehouses again.

Test me in this. You'll find this in the book of Malachi, chapter three, verses six to twelve. A God who does not change, who invites a tight-fisted people to open their hands and trust him. So here is a question to carry with you. What are you holding on to tightly that God might be asking you to share?