Malachi 3:6-15--Robbing God

Malachi 3:6-15
English Standard Version

Robbing God
6 “For I the LORD do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed. 7 From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the LORD of hosts. But you say, ‘How shall we return?’ 8 Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say, ‘How have we robbed you?’ In your tithes and contributions. 9 You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you. 10 Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the LORD of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need. 11 I will rebuke the devourer for you, so that it will not destroy the fruits of your soil, and your vine in the field shall not fail to bear, says the LORD of hosts. 12 Then all nations will call you blessed, for you will be a land of delight, says the LORD of hosts.

13 “Your words have been hard against me, says the LORD. But you say, ‘How have we spoken against you?’ 14 You have said, ‘It is vain to serve God. What is the profit of our keeping his charge or of walking as in mourning before the LORD of hosts? 15 And now we call the arrogant blessed. Evildoers not only prosper but they put God to the test and they escape.’”

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The only reason that Judah is not being consumed by fiery judgment right now as they deserved is that the LORD does not break His word or change His mind or change who He is.  He is the same yesterday, today and forever, His love endures forever, and heaven and earth will pass away, but His Word will never pass away.  These are all promises that we see other places that are reinforced here in today's passage.

They are really not that different than their fathers that turned aside from the LORD's statutes and did not keep them--that's every generation of Israel so far, but it's probably supposed to provoke memories of those that sinned and died wandering around in the wilderness to give Israel some idea of the justice that they deserve.  They never deserved to enter the Land or receive any of the blessings of the covenant because they never kept the covenant.  Instead of deserting them (for they have already deserted Him), the LORD calls them back through repentance and asks them to return.  He knows they don't know how to return though, so He gives them prophets to help them see their need for repentance and to guide them through the process of returning to Him--He will even send His own Son as the Prophet promised in Deuteronomy 18 to call His people to repentance and to shepherd and save His people.

The LORD once again points to the theft that the people are committing by offering substandard sacrifices as an outward sign of something going on inwardly that they need to address through repentance.  Like David they should be praying "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me."  They should also be praying along with David from Psalm 51, "Cast me not away from thy presence, O LORD" and "Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, and renew a right spirit within me."  The whole nation is guilty of robbing God of the tithe that He deserves.  They are trying to trick other people into believing they are being obedient and pious while keeping much of what belongs to the LORD and His priests to themselves.  They aren't offering enough in quality or quantity for the sustained service of the priests and the Levites and God is calling out the whole nation for it.  Without their regular tithes and offerings there is also no system to take care of the poor and indigent as the Levites were responsible for taking care of the treasuries in their towns that would take care of the needs of the community.  By robbing God, they are also hurting their ministers and those who were in desperate need of what would call welfare.

All the LORD can and will do if He's not going to destroy them is adjust the flow rate of the blessings He is pouring out on them so that they take notice.  It's like a faucet with a valve that the LORD can open wider or close to reduce the flow rate (or turn it off completely if He needs to).  There is some indication that the LORD is going touch the fruit-bearing plants through various means of making them less fruitful as long as the people withhold what rightfully belongs to the LORD.  I say that because He promises that as soon as they starting bringing in the full amount of the tithe and stop trying to rob Him, He will protect the Land and its crops from all the things that would devour the fruit on the vine, cause the vine to be less than fully productive or cause the ground to be infertile.  This will certainly get the people's attention.  As a result, when they return to the LORD and are extremely blessed and favored by Him again, all the nations of the world will take notice and will glorify God because of it.  

God already knows that some of them will harden their hearts in response to the LORD's correction.  They will say things like "There is no profit in serving the LORD," because all they were in it for was the profit for themselves (this is an old version of what we would call The Prosperity Gospel today, which is a false gospel).  The people that were in it for themselves will quickly desert the LORD because they never truly had a relations with Him.  They are unwilling to have a real relationship that leads to true transformation on the inside that leads to transformation on the outside (change of nature and character that leads to a change in behavior that everyone will notice).  They look at the world (especially the Gentile nations around them) and they evaluate in the here and now that it looks pretty profitable to be wicked, so they do the risk-benefits analysis for themselves focuses only on what they can see with their physicals eyes and decide they are better off living in the kingdom of this world and they want nothing to do with the Kingdom of God.  Unfortunately, there is something that should be a part of their valuation that they cannot see with their physical eyes, and that is the Day of Judgment we were discussing in the last few passages.  In that Day, the LORD will send those who rejected Him and made themselves citizens of the kingdom of this world to the place prepared for the devil and his angels far away from the place of peace and blessing that He prepared for those He has made righteous and made a part of His family through Adoption.  There a group of people that like Esau would despise their birthright and inheritance that are eternal and trade if or a bowl of stew in the here and now.  Just like Esau, these people will be rejected and they will end up with exactly what they deserve because they will be unwilling to accept the sacrifice that was made on their behalf because it will require their total surrender and obedience to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords and they will not submit themselves to anyone or change for anyone.  They like who they are, they take pride in their sin, and they demand the God that they say they don't believe in to bless them in the midst of their unrepentant rebellion.  That's not how it works.