Friday January 13, 2o22

Hello friends, I pray your week has been productive and blessed. I have been studying and reading quite a bit this week in preparation for my upcoming sermon on Sunday and for my schooling. Today I want to continue to look at our passage from earlier in the week, except I will focus on a different part of the pericope (look it up!). 
Malachi 3: 8-10
8 “Will a man [m]rob God? Yet you are robbing Me! But you say, ‘How have we robbed You?’ In tithes and [n]offerings. 9 You are cursed with a curse, for you are [o]robbing Me, the whole nation of you! 10 Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be [p]food in My house, and test 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 a blessing until [q]it overflows. 
In my last entry I focused on God's promise to bless those who follow his commands, specifically in the area of generosity. Today I want to look at the initial accusation that God leveled at the people of Israel. He said: "Will a man rob God!" This is a different accusation, compared to the rest of Malachi, where God had asked "why do you dishonor me," among other things. The Lord accuses the people of robbing Him, not because they were not following the commandments (as in other areas of Malachi), but because the people did not understand the fact that everything they have already belongs to the Lord. Their land, crops, animals, families...everything they had belonged to the Lord. The Lord simply asked for a small portion of it back (which is the tithe). The people of Israel were unwilling to give back to the Lord the small portion he commanded them to give. 
What about us though, we are not under the law of Moses, so how would this apply to you and I. For those who argue that tithing is not a New Testament principle, I say: you are correct! Nowhere in the N.T. do we see this particular law restated by Christ or any of the disciples. Here is the question though: does the principle behind the law still remain intact? If it's still true that all of our earthly blessing belong to the Lord, then the principle remains intact....as a matter of a fact, Jesus actually calls us to a higher standard than that of the law. 
This is where the idea of stewardship comes into play...I will be expanding on this idea on Sunday. HORRAY! We get to talk about giving! LOL.