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“Bring all the
tithes into the storehouse so there will be enough food in my Temple. If you do,” says the Lord of Heaven’s
Armies, “I will open the windows of heaven for you. I will pour out a blessing so great you won’t
have enough room to take it in! Try it! Put me to the test! Your crops will be
abundant, for I will guard them from insects and disease. Your grapes
will not fall from the vine before they are ripe,” says the Lord of
Heaven’s Armies. “Then
all nations will call you blessed, for your land will be such a delight,” says
the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. Malachi 3:10-12(NLT)
Yesterday
we shared the “cause and effect” nature of sin; today let’s take a look at the same
principle applied to the opposite of sin – trusting God.
Malachi
the prophet offered a challenge to his contemporaries – put God to the test! Now that sounds ominous, as if one is
supposed to get all adversarial with the Almighty. But that’s not the tone Malachi is
suggesting; his purpose is to encourage the people of Israel to begin believing
in the promise of God by changing their ways to come in line with what they say
they believe, that JHWH, Jehovah God is their God.
Specifically
Malachi is referring to the ancient practice of tithing, dedicating a tenth
(10%) of what you harvest (earn) to God, and bringing it faithfully to God’s
house. The Lord’s promise concerning
this is heaven’s blessing on everything.
Admittedly
this is one of those statements issued to the nation of Israel, and you always enter
dangerous territory when you adopt someone else’s promises as your own. Or if you take what is promised to a nation
and try to make it fit for an individual.
However,
stewardship in Scripture is a universal principle of worship towards God, and
nations, as a whole, do not worship; people worship. And in this case, applying a worship
principle to a worshipper is not a stretch – it’s a given!
Short
answer here is: when you worship, bring
your tithe!
Now,
I may have just stated the reason why a lot of people have deleted church from
their to-do list. Call it worship-plate-phobia
or just plain selfishness, but, there it is!
Here
in America we live in the most affluent society on planet earth. Yet among self-proclaimed Christians stewardship
(depending on which source you consult) never gets above 2 or 3%; that’s a
far-cry from the tithe!
Is
there a reason many churches in the U.S. are closing their doors?
Is
there a reason the U.S. economy teeters dangerously close to
recession/depression?
Is
there a reason food lines are longer, and the storehouses have to turn more
away?
It
might be that our obsession with material things, accumulating wealth and
gathering prosperity, while ignoring the most basic stewardship principle of
all is catching up with us.
Perhaps
we have sown to the wind, and are reaping the whirlwind.
Trusting
JHWH with our finances should be a simple thing for people who claim to have
trusted Him with our eternal souls. And
that, especially when the promise is blessing from above so great it overwhelms
the imagination!
For You Today
This
stewardship principle of bringing the tithe to the house of JHWH is more than a
duty to be observed; it is more the Christian way of living life in
Christ.
After
all, when you serve the One who gave everything, 10% starts looking like such a
tiny amount.
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