As they're heading back there, you can turn with me to the book of Malachi. We are continuing our series, Malachi: Reformation and Renewal. Just to give you a brief preview to kind of catch us up with where we're at, we are in our second to last message in Malachi. The final message is actually going to be the meditation on Christmas Eve. So I encourage you to come back. Malachi is the last book in the Old Testament. So if you've got a Bible with you and you're looking for it, the very end of the Old Testament. If you see the book of Matthew or any of the Gospels— Matthew, Mark, Luke, John— you've gone just a little bit too far. Back up a little bit. It's the last of the Old Testament prophets. It's the last revelation that God gave to His people before 400 years of prophetic silence. And He's calling His people as they've begun to drift away from Him back to spiritual renewal and spiritual reformation. So that's where we find ourselves this morning. Again, in the book of Malachi.
Now looking at chapter 3, verses 6 to 12, you can follow along with me or look up on the screen as well. Hear God's holy and authoritative word. For I, the Lord, do not change. Therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed. 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? Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say, how have we robbed you? In your tithes and contributions. You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you. 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. I will rebuke the devourer for you so that it will not destroy the fruits of your soil, and the vine in the field shall not fail to bear, says the Lord of Hosts. Then all nations will call you blessed, for you will be a land of delight. Says the Lord of hosts. The word of the Lord, may He write its truth upon our hearts.
Would you bow your heads with me? Oh Lord, we sit under the authority of Your word this morning. We want to encounter You, the living God. So we ask that You would send Your Spirit, we ask that You would strengthen weak knees, Lord, that you would give us an attentiveness. Lord, blow out the cobwebs that come from late nights and early mornings. We want to hear from you this morning, Father. So God, we ask now as you speak, give us ears to hear. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
Well, on paper, Jack Johnson had it all. Not just a generic name, but a bunch of other great things in life. His life was really things that little kids dream of. He was a professional hockey player. He still is a professional hockey player. He plays for the Columbus Blue Jackets. I was actually surprised there's even an NHL team in Columbus. But he plays for the Columbus Blue Jackets. He's in the prime of his career. He's been playing for 9 years, so he's not one of those guys that was just a blip on the professional sports scene. He's a good hockey player. He's 27 years old. He's signed multiple lucrative contracts in the tens of millions of dollars. Everything seems about as perfect as you'd expect for a rich, successful, handsome, single professional athlete. His parents are close to him. They made a commitment to him early in his career that they were, they were gonna follow his career. They were gonna make trips no matter what the distance, where it was in the world, they were gonna see him play. And so when he was playing for the LA Kings, his parents would fly out across the country to the games in LA. When he was then traded and signed with Columbus, that they would make the trips and the trek up to Columbus consistently. No game was ever too far away. Apparently, one of the things that can be stressful for a pro athlete is handling their finances. I wouldn't know what it's like to handle millions and millions of dollars, but I guess it could be stressful. Well, the parents recognizing that said, "Don't worry, we'll take care of finances for you." One of the things they actually do in these leagues now is they instruct the rookie players, "When you come into the league, you're going to have more money than you've ever had in your entire life. You've got to find financial advisors you can trust." And so, Jack, wanting to be unhinged from the stresses of all that money, said to his parents, "You take care of it." They said in return, "Don't worry about it. You go play hockey. Do the thing you love. We will make sure all of this is in order." So you can imagine Johnson's surprise when he started getting massive bills in the mail for things he'd never purchased. He asked his parents about it and they said, "Don't worry about it. Like we said, we'll straighten this out. You just play." Trusting his parents, he said okay. But then creditors started calling. And then more creditors, and more aggressive creditors. They started to hound Jack Johnson. Soon he found that he was being sued multiple times to the tune of $6 million. None of it made any sense. He hadn't made these purchases. He hadn't taken out these loans. He didn't know why these people were pursuing money from him. He had made up to this point $18 million over the course of his career. He had tens of millions still to come. But according to the creditors and the loans that have been taken out in his name, he was actually dead broke. He had $50,000 in assets and was on the hook for millions of dollars at high interest rates. What had happened? His parents had abused his trust. The people he assumed would be the most likely place to go for help with his finances had turned around and treated him like a never-ending piggy bank. They borrowed over $15 million against his name, and the details are just gut-wrenching. Expensive stuff, luxury cars, $800,000 to renovate their home in Manhattan Beach, massive loans against his future earnings after they had spent everything he already had. It was crushing. By the time Jack got to the bottom of it, he realized his assets were basically completely depleted. Everything he would earn over the course of his career, he now owed to people. He was crushed. He'd been robbed by his own mother and father.
Make no mistake about it, that robbery was a relational statement. The way they robbed him and fleeced him said everything about their relationship. You think about how can he ever hear from his parents, "I love you," again, without thinking about the fact that they stole everything from him from under his nose. It was a relational statement. If we look at our text this morning, we see this text is a relational statement. This text, this message being given by the prophet Malachi God gives the prophet Malachi this message to give to the people because our first point as we see this morning, God desires relationship. God longs for relationship with His people.
A similar kind of relational strife that Jack Johnson and his parents are experiencing is going on between the people of Israel and God. God is crying out for spiritual reformation and spiritual renewal because God is an intensely personal God. He's doing all these things, all these oracles we've seen in the letter, in the book of Malachi, because God wants to bring His people back to Him. He's not sent primarily because God is just ticked off that rules are getting broken. You can sometimes imagine God, I think, I thought this way when I was a little kid, almost like God was like an upset principal. You know, like He's sitting in the principal's office, and I spent a little bit of time in the principal's office, so I knew what that was like. You just felt the horror, that sinking feeling in your gut. But you know, I had this idea of God as He's in the principal's office, and every once in a while He kind of comes out and appears and gives a message, but it's usually just, "Be quiet in the hallways!" "Keep it down out here!" You ever have that idea that that's kind of what God is like? But that's not what Malachi presents to us. No, the true picture of God is that He's a promise-keeping God. He never changes. And this promise-keeping, unchanging God longs for His people to return to Him. It's not, "Keep it down out there!" Please come into my office. I want to get to know you.
6 · The pastor synthesizes the book of Malachi, arguing that all of God's commands—about worship, leadership, marriage, and justice—are not arbitrary rules but stem from His desire for His people to draw near to Him relationally
What we see this morning in this text is that God calls us to return to Him. God calls us to return to Him relationally and He's always ready to receive us. He's always ready to receive us. That's the point of all this talk in Malachi renewing worship and reforming leadership, the exhortations to remain faithful in marriages, to take justice seriously, all of those different things, even though you wouldn't see it initially, they stem from God's desire to draw near to His people. More accurately, they stem from God's desire for His people to draw near to Him.
7 · The pastor exegetes Malachi 3:6, explaining that God's unchanging nature is central to the text because Israel had begun to doubt God's love and assume He had changed
That's the point of verse 6. God hasn't changed. In fact, by His very character, God never changes. The fact that Malachi has to remind them presupposes that in Israel, people are mumbling. They're assuming. They're thinking God is changing. Why does the letter start out with a reaffirmation loves them and has chosen them. Because they are starting to wonder, "Maybe He doesn't love us anymore." Israel thinks that God has shifted. But the same covenant-making, promise-keeping, forgiving and delivering God still exists. He hasn't broken relationship with them, although there is a growing sense in Israel that there is a broken relationship. God hasn't broken the relationship, His people have. We tend to have that kind of marred view of God. He's the grumpy principal. He's the perpetually upset deity just waiting to zap somebody for stepping out of line. We have this idea that maybe God is somehow aloof and at a distance and just sort of putting up with us. Perpetually keeping us at arm's length. In reality, God is intensely relational. He created us for His pleasure. God takes pleasure in knowing and being known by His people. He created us to worship. That's what worship is. It's drawing near to God and finding joy in His presence. When God inspires the psalmist in Psalm 16:11 to write this, that's what he has in mind. He says, "You make known to me the path of life." You make known to me the place where if I walk this way, I'm going to know life and abundance and deep pleasures and abounding joys. You make known to me the path of life, and this path of life is in Your presence where there is fullness of joy. At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore. That's not just a statement, that's an invitation. That's God inspiring words to say, come and walk on the path of life. Come close to Me. 'Come near to me.' Return home. And God promises, 'If you repent, if you return, I'll return to you.'
8 · The pastor signals a structural shift from the first major movement of the sermon (God desires relationship) to the second major movement (the unexpected means by which we return to God), heightening the listener's attention by acknowledging the text's surprising turn
That's the thing we also see that's a little bit unexpected. We see initially that God is relational. He's desiring a relationship. If we don't know where the text is going, if we've never read it before, it takes an unexpected turn. God is relational. He calls us to return to Him, to come back to Him. And then we see our second point this morning.
9 · The pastor introduces the sermon's second major claim: one of the ways we return to God is by giving
We return— one of the ways we return to God is by giving. That seems a little strange, doesn't it? We return to God by giving. Israel offers a rebuttal. Now, if you've been with us for a while, you know in Malachi, this happens time and again. Malachi is acting like a prosecuting attorney, right? So he presents the charges against Israel. These are the things you're doing wrong. You're not trusting that the Lord loves you. Your worship has become just perfunctory and lukewarm. You're just going through the motions. Your leadership is corrupt. Your marriages are ending in divorces. You're accusing God of being unjust. Well, now He says, "You're far from Me. You need to return to Me." And of course, they rebut, "Why must we return?" It could almost read, "How shall we return?" There's a sense that they're so blinded by their sin that they don't even realize there's relational distance between them and God. They don't even realize how fractured the relationship is. That's one of the things sin does to us. We become calloused to the fact. There's that tragic statement in the Old Testament when the Spirit of the Lord departs from Saul. He doesn't realize it's gone. That's what sin does. It hardens us.
10 · The pastor exegetes Malachi 3:8, unpacking God's rhetorical question 'Will man rob God?' The expected answer is no—God is the Lord of Hosts with armies of angels protecting Him
Why must we return? they say. How do we return? God gives a stunning statement. Will man rob God? It's meant to be rhetorical. It expects a negative answer. Of course, man doesn't rob God. If anybody's got a sweet security system on His palace, it's God, right? This is the Lord of Hosts, right? The Lord of angel armies. He's got an army protecting all of His goodies. Man can't rob God. Obviously. Yet, Malachi says, yet the Lord says, you are robbing Me. By not bringing their tithes and their offerings, Israel hadn't just failed to give. You don't bring your offering, the assumption is I'm just not giving the way I'm supposed to. Malachi, speaking for God, says it's not just that you're not giving, it's that you're robbing the Lord of hosts. That's a chilling statement. Most of us don't think in those terms, do we? But there it is. Failure to give of your first fruits to the Lord is the equivalent in God's eyes of robbing Him.
11 · The pastor provides extensive historical and canonical background on the situation Malachi is addressing
I don't usually feel a whole lot of conviction when I read Scriptures saying, "Thou shalt not steal." The Scriptures that condemn the thief aren't ones that feel real sobering to me. Most of us probably read Scriptures about pride or maybe it's anger or lust or dishonesty and those feel close to home. Those feel convicting. I'm not a thief. But Malachi intensifies the issue. It isn't just the one who steals from his boss, the one who steals from his neighbor. It's not just the parents who are fleecing their wealthy son. It's the person who fails to tithe and give generously who is the thief. Now, to give a little background on what's happening here. A contemporary of Malachi is Nehemiah. The book Nehemiah tells the exploits of this guy. He's a cupbearer in the Persian court under the Persian King Artaxerxes. So they were taken off into captivity. Their captors were conquered by Persia. They experienced a degree of grace under the Persian rule. And so the Persians allowed remnants of Israelites to head back. Nehemiah had favor with the Persian king, Artaxerxes, and so he went to him and said, "Can I go back to my people? Can I help them rebuild the walls of Jerusalem so they can find protection?" The Persian king says, "Yes, go do it." So Nehemiah goes back. You know the story of Nehemiah. They rebuild the walls. You got to remember, when a horde and an army comes in and conquers a people, they conquer everything. It's like the original Total war. That wasn't invented by Sherman as he marched toward the sea. That's old school. You come into a place and you burn the cities to the ground. You tear down all the walls. You go into their fields and you scatter stones and rocks so they can't plant and they can't harvest. You make the land uninhabitable. So Nehemiah goes back to restore the land, to clean out the fields, to rebuild the walls. He's put in place by the king of Persia as the governor of the people. But he has to take trips back to Persia. One of the things that happens, he goes back to Persia, he's restored the land, he's reinstituted the law, but while he's back in Persia, things start to degrade. In Nehemiah 13, we actually read about the reality. Things have gotten bad. There's been a breakdown in leadership. And one of the things that happens, Nehemiah 13 tells us, is the people have stopped giving. Specifically, they've stopped providing for the priests and the temple staff. The storehouses, it says, are empty. It actually goes further. It says there's a guy who actually takes the storehouses. So this part of the temple where they bring in the tithes and the offerings. So their grain offerings and the first fruits of their flocks, right? And they would store these in the temple. And the Levites and the priests who didn't work the land, didn't have farms, That's how they would live and subsist. That's how they made their living. They lived on the people. That's why God called them to bring those in. Well, in Nehemiah 13, it says they stopped giving. They cleared out the storehouses. And some dude comes in and actually kind of sets it up as his office. What happens is the priests and the Levites have to abandon the temple. And they have to go out to the field and start working to feed themselves. That's the contemporary situation that Malachi is speaking into. That's the breakdown that's happened. People aren't giving, and because they're not giving, the priests and the Levites aren't being fed, the temple staff isn't functioning. Now think about what's happening. For generations, they've been in captivity. Longing for what? To be back in the land and to have a temple again where they could worship God in. And now they're back in the land and they have a temple and they've stopped providing for it.
12 · The pastor draws out the theological significance of Malachi's phrasing: God doesn't say Israel is stealing from the priests or the temple—He says they are robbing Him personally
But notice what Malachi says. He doesn't say they're stealing from the Levites. He doesn't say they're stealing from the temple staff. He says they're stealing from God. Listen how particular it gets. It goes from a general question, "Will man rob God?" to deeply personal, "Yet you are robbing Me." Failure to give isn't just failure to support a church or a ministry. The point Malachi is making is failure to give is a failure of relationship with God. We don't usually think of giving in those terms, but God thinks of it that way. In the same way Jack Johnson thinks of his parents' declarations of affection as totally hollow, so God thinks of our worship and our professions of devotion as hypocritical when we don't give.
13 · The pastor steps outside the expositional flow to acknowledge the real difficulty of giving
Now, I want to recognize here, and I think Malachi is sensitive to it, tithing and giving aren't easy. In fact, it can be really hard. We live in a physical world, right? We have real physical needs. I get hungry if I don't eat food. If I don't eat food for a long time, I don't experience this for very often, but if I don't eat food for a long time, I'm going to die. I need shelter. I need clothing. There is a built-in, hardwired sense of the need for physical security. When we're not sure if we can make ends meet, there is a real temptation, an understandable temptation, to hold back. We can relate to that. But Israel faced that in spades. This is an agrarian society. Some of you probably aren't real familiar with how that works. I don't have direct experience, but I can still relate to how my grandpa processed things as a farmer. The faith he had to take every spring that what he put in the ground would come up in the fall and that he could pay off the bills. And so it speaks to his faith and his trust in God that even as he put things in the ground in the spring, he still gave over the summer, trusting God to provide.
14 · The pastor expounds the theological purpose of sacrificial giving
To give requires sacrifice. It's always a sacrifice. This idea of a tithe that Israel is presented with—10% of your gross, the firstfruits—that's a sacrifice. But that's also the point. It's an exercise of faith. There's not much faith or sacrifice if the giving always happens after every need is met, after we're sure we've been able to save up for the rainy day. There's a little bit left over, and so We've been able to get a new car and go on a sweet vacation, and then after all that's done, there's actually a little bit to give back to God. That's not the kind of faith God's calling Israel to. When we give first, then it's fundamentally an action of faith. That is, it's a fundamental action of moving towards God relationally. To give requires that we trust. Trust that God will provide for our needs. Do you see why Malachi says giving is the way we return to God? Do you see why he's making that point? Relationally, returning to God involves giving because it reminds us who the ultimate owner of things is. A lot of times when we fail to give, it's because we're under the mistaken notion that the money is ours to begin with. This is my money. I've earned it. These are my crops. So I'll do with them what I please. And then when it's all left over, I might give some of it. But that's a mistaken notion. Malachi is showing them, no, it's called stewardship for a reason. You're a steward of this money. You're a steward of these things, these possessions, these crops, these beasts of the field, you're stewards of them on God's behalf. They're resources given to you for Kingdom purposes. And let's be honest, it does serve the Kingdom to make sure that the members of the Kingdom are fed and clothed and housed. So that's not something forgotten by God. But when we give, Or if we don't give, it's a statement about what we think about the Lordship of Christ. When we give or when we don't give, we are confessing what we believe about the Lordship of Christ. Do we really believe that Christ is Lord? That He is Lord, as Colossians says, over all things? Things, that His Lordship extends to governments and geopolitics from Persia in the ancient world to D.C. in the modern world? Do we believe that Christ's Lordship extends to markets and the price of gas and commodities and the wiggle room that that gives you in your budget? How many of you saw the price of gas drop and thought, I can now give more? I saw the price of gas drop and I thought, "I can actually afford the Christmas gifts this year!" His Lordship encompasses our employment status. His Lordship encompasses material possessions. Giving generously is a relational returning to God. Why? Because it confesses Lord, this is all yours to begin with. And it confesses, Lord, I trust that you will provide and meet my needs.
15 · The pastor tells a recent personal story of a teenage girl in the congregation who raised chickens and gave some to the pastor as a tithe
It doesn't mean it's easy to do. A couple weeks ago, Elise Laporte met me in the back of the church and kind of threw me off. She said she had some chickens to give to me. And I thought, "Chickens? Huh? Chickens? Okay." Well, she had sent an email explaining that she had been raising chickens, and what she wanted to do was tithe on those chickens. So what initially seemed really strange to me, that someone would want to give me their chickens, suddenly made much more sense. She was tithing her chickens. That was really cool.
16 · The pastor draws out the application for parents: the teenage girl's tithing reveals good discipleship by her parents
She was thoughtful enough to realize it's not just the money I make from working at Starbucks as a teenager, from working at Sonic or wherever it might be, but it's the produce. Now, a quick aside, that says a lot about her parents. I don't think that just happened out of nowhere. That's good discipling of a young person. We're gonna raise these chickens and you need to know when these chickens are of age and we're gonna chop their heads off and pluck them. That was the nice thing, they actually were plucked and beheaded. Like, initially I was like, you have chickens? I don't know if I have a chicken coop. That was literally my first thought. I'm a farm boy from Iowa. Somebody says they have chickens, I'm assuming, all right, I'm gonna be cutting their heads off and watching them run around my backyard. Thankfully we got a fence. It takes those suckers a little while to die. But she had already plucked them. But that's intentionality on the part of her parents. And I thought, what a sweet statement of discipleship. One thing I think you can do, parents, to teach your kids about the nature of giving and the practice and habit of giving, show them how you give. Show them how you do that in your budget. If you give them an allowance, here's an idea. Here's another idea. Make it easy for them to give. If you give a dollar and you just give a dollar, that's not easy to tithe on. If you're gonna give a dollar for a weekly allowance, give them 2 quarters and 5 dimes. It's easy. If you're gonna give them $10, give them a $5 and 5 ones. Walk them through. We're going to take $5 of this and we're going to save it. And we're going to take a dollar of this and maybe we're going to bless one of our siblings with it. And then we're going to take a dollar and we're going to give back to God's church. A side over.
17 · The pastor anticipates an objection—that it's easy for a teenager to give because she has no bills—and flips the objection into a theological point
Now, you might hear the story of a teenage girl giving chickens to her pastor and sort of scoff. Well, it's easy for a teenager to give. What does she have to be stressed about? There's no bills for the teenager to pay. She can tithe her chickens because she knows that her father is going to provide for her needs, right? Hmm. A teenage girl can tithe from her chickens because she's confident. She trusts. That her father will provide for her needs. That he loves her, and because he loves her, he's going to draw near to her, and he's gonna care for her. That's exactly how God wants us to understand our giving. An act of faith that he's not aloof, he's not the mad principal, He's not the angry deity. He's a Father who loves His people. He wants us to draw near to Him, to return to Him by giving.
18 · The pastor signals the transition to the sermon's final major movement: the ultimate object of our return is not merely the act of giving but the person of God Himself, the great Giver
And then our final point this morning, He wants us not just to return to Him by giving, He wants us to return to the great Giver Himself.
19 · The pastor reiterates that the controlling theme of Malachi 3:6-12 is relational renewal, not merely financial compliance
The theme of this passage is renewal of relationship between God and His people. It's not obvious the first time read the text, it looks like God's sending the cops because they're ripping them off. But it's about relationship. It's about renewal of relationship. In fact, in the text, God says literally, give generously and put me to the test. Give generously and test me and see if I won't open the windows of heaven and rain down blessings on you. Just see if you come and you fill the storehouses on earth. See if I don't just inundate you with everything you need. Have your vineyards be full of grapes. Give you a harvest like you've never seen before. Livestock that are fruitful like you've never seen. See if I won't do it. Put me to the test.
20 · The pastor addresses the prosperity gospel's misuse of Malachi 3:10, explaining that while the text does promise blessing, it is a particular promise given to a specific historical audience in a specific situation
Now, I want to recognize here, this text is a proof test, a proof text for the prosperity gospel. The prosperity gospel, the health and wealth gospel, is that idea of sort of name it and claim it. If you have faith, God will bless you. Specifically, as it deals with money and material possessions, if you sow bountifully, you will reap bountifully. Look, Malachi 3 says if you give a bunch, God's going to give you a bunch. I heard of a pastor one time, one of my family members in the church, said, "Everybody reach into your pocket and pull out a dollar." And they all hold up a dollar. And then went through the whole scheme of telling them to place that dollar in faith in the offering plate and see it return a hundredfold. That's prosperity theology. If you give loads to this church, if you give to this ministry, we'll send you some special water in the mail. We actually did that in college as a joke once. Peter Popoff's Magic Holy Water. God promises he's going to load your bank account. Your 401(k) is going to explode. Malachi is giving them a promise, but it's a particular promise for a particular situation that has general application. And that's where we have to be careful. Here's what I mean. It's a particular promise that's given in a particular set of historical circumstances. This promise, you give like you're supposed to, you give abundantly, and I'm going to shower you with blessing. Test me. That's God's words given to an original audience through an original speaker. God's words given to Malachi, to Israel, in a particular situation under the governorship of Nehemiah as they returned from exile from Persia. That's the context it's given in. We know that God keeps His promises. He says at the beginning of the passage, "I don't change. Look back over your history, Israel. Time and time and time again, I promised and I delivered." I promised and I delivered. And now I'm saying test Me. Test My faithfulness. I think they did it. And I think God poured out blessing upon the people of Israel in the time of Malachi. But I don't think Malachi's point, I don't think the point of Malachi 3 is that we now have carte blanche to put God to the test and then expect prosperity. He said test Him and He's going to pour it out. No, He said test Him through the prophet Malachi to His people in a particular situation, a particular application. If I give, God guarantees a 15% return on my investment. There's pastors that would preach that from this text. That's not the sentiment God is trying to stir up. And we know this implicitly when we interpret His other promises, right? When He promises Abraham, Abraham, believe Me, go to this land you've never seen, and I'm going to make your descendants like the stars, and there's going to be kings that come from your line. Do any of you read Genesis and think, I'm going to have a brood, and I'm going to have kings that are going to come from my line. God promised it. He's faithful to His word. Oh no, we implicitly understand God's faithful to His particular promise to Abraham, and that teaches us general application about how to trust God. We don't look at the promise made to King David that he's going to have an heir who will eternally sit on his throne, read in the New Testament that heir is Jesus, and now think, "Man, someday Jesus is going to be my descendant." No, that was the promise that God gave to David. That's how we interpret this. I understand it's a promise whose particulars are bound by historical context.
21 · The pastor clarifies the proper interpretation of Malachi 3:10: while it's a twisting of the text to promise guaranteed financial returns for giving, it's also a neutering of the text to fail to recognize that giving is still a return to blessing—though that blessing may or may not be material
That's what we have here. Tithe and give generously, God says, and I will open the storehouse. I will pour blessing on you. In Malachi's day, they did that and they received it. That's the particular application for them. For us, there's a general application. It's twisting the text to guarantee that every one of you who gives the next few weeks is going to get back a bountiful 2015. We're going to pass the offering plates at the end of the service, and if you give $50, your income will increase 5% in 2015. That's a twisting of this text. But it's also a neutering of the text if we fail to recognize that giving generously to the Lord is still a return to blessing. That blessing may or may not be material. God can give material blessing. He still does. But we do know for certain because giving generously represents obedience and it represents faith that it's a physical act of spiritual returning. You ever think of your giving like that? When I give each week, it's a physical act of my spiritual trust, my spiritual returning to the Lord. In the same way, the baptism this afternoon is going to be a physical act testifying to spiritual realities. That Ursula has died with Christ, that she will be raised with Christ. We're going to see that physically in the baptism. That's what giving is. It's a physical act of recognizing I trust you. I believe I'm returning to you. In doing that, we know that we will receive the greatest gift. God himself. That's the promise Malachi gives to all God's people here. If you return to me, I will return to you.
22 · The pastor synthesizes the entire passage, reiterating that the controlling theme is relational renewal
This whole text is about renewing relationship. God longs for us to return to Him. Test me. If you desire intimacy with the Lord of Hosts, then draw near to Me and I will draw near to you.
23 · The pastor applies Hebrews 4:16 as a New Testament echo of Malachi's promise, exhorting the congregation to draw near to God's throne of grace to receive mercy and help
Hebrews 4:6 gives us the promise. Let us now, because of what we know of Jesus, Draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace, that we may find benevolence and help in the time of need, that God will provide for us. Have you ever felt distant from God? Maybe you're feeling right now, maybe for this week or the last day or maybe for the last 6 months or a year, you've just felt like there's a growing chasm between you and the Lord. There are a myriad of things you can do to seek to cross that chasm. There's a great book out there, "When I Don't Desire God" by John Piper. I encourage you to read it. One of the things Malachi tells us It's so counterintuitive. You feel distant from God? Give. As a symbol of repentance, as a symbol of returning, and he will draw near to you. Because when we give generously, we draw near to the great giver.
24 · The pastor traces the biblical-theological theme of God as the great sacrificial Giver throughout redemptive history: providing manna in the wilderness, multiplying the widow's flour and oil for Elijah, enabling the Macedonian and Corinthian churches to meet the needs of the persecuted Jerusalem church
The Lord of hosts, Malachi starts out this text saying, never changes. He's the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. The Lord of Hosts never changes, and he has been and he is now and he will be in the future the great sacrificial giver, whether it's daily manna from heaven for Israel wandering through a barren, inhospitable wasteland on their journey from Egypt back into the Promised Land, Whether it's the widow obediently feeding the prophet Elijah and finding that her flour and her oil never run out. Whether it's the impoverished church of Macedonia or the wealthy church of Corinth together meeting the needs of the impoverished church in Jerusalem as they suffer religious persecution for the name of Christ. God always proves Himself. Time and again in Scripture and human history, God proves Himself as the great the greatest sacrificial giver. He always provides perfectly for the needs of His people.
25 · The pastor acknowledges the providential timing of preaching on giving the Sunday before Christmas, humorously noting his illness bumped the sermon schedule
It might seem odd to preach a sermon on renewing giving the Sunday before Christmas. But in affirming the Lordship of Christ, I'm going to recognize I got sick a few weeks ago so we could bump the whole thing and this was God's plan. And so here we are preaching a sermon on giving the Sunday before Christmas. But really, when we think about it, isn't this the perfect time to preach a sermon on giving? And I'm not talking about, "Well, preach a sermon on giving so they can give their year-end gifts and you'll get a tax break and then it'll help the budget." No, not at all. It's the perfect time because we can remember how God has drawn near through the self-giving and self-impoverishment of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, on our behalf.
26 · The pastor pivots to the New Testament's motivation for giving: it doesn't command tithing because it does something better—it points us to Jesus, the supreme Giver
The New Testament doesn't demand and it doesn't command 10%. It also doesn't say you don't have to give 10% anymore. It just changes how it goes about stirring it up. The New Testament doesn't demand it anymore because it doesn't have to. You know what the New Testament does? The New Testament does something much better. Again and again, points us. It points us to the eternal Word of God lying in an ignominious manger. When we give, we return to God. And in our generosity, as we draw near, we are reminded in fresh ways no one has given more than Jesus. He gave himself freely to rescue mankind from our sin, to rescue people from their blindness and their brokenness. When we couldn't and when we wouldn't repent and return, when we didn't know we needed to repent and return, The Son of Man came to us. This is the perfect season to consider the way Christ's self-impoverishment is the grace that begets all the graces of generosity. The firstborn of creation is willingly born into a stable's poverty. The High King of heaven becomes the servant of all. The one whose majestic glory cannot be contained in all the universe, he's, he's clothed in fragile flesh. He who commands every molecule subjects himself to men and their mocking. The breath of life surrenders his last breath and dies on a shameful cross. Heaven's wealth takes on poverty to death's grave so that He can make us rich. 2 Corinthians says, "Yet..." There's another "yet," right? "Yet you rob God." Fast forward to the end, 2 Corinthians. Yet for your sake, he, Jesus Christ, became poor. Christ's poverty is intensely personal. It's so personal that anyone who has experienced its bounty knows the great lengths God goes to return to us. And so we gladly turn to God in giving. Because we remember in this season the precious, humble glory of Bethlehem and the awe-inspiring wisdom and sacrifice of Golgotha. And when we think of that, we realize, what is too generous? In human terms. What is too sacrificial in human terms?
27 · The pastor closes the sermon by reading 2 Corinthians 5:14-15, which synthesizes the entire argument: the love of Christ, demonstrated in His death and resurrection, controls us so that we no longer live for ourselves but for His lordship and kingdom
2 Corinthians 5:14: For the love of Christ controls us. The love of the great sacrificial giver controls us because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, and therefore all have died. And he died for all that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him, for his lordship, and for his kingdom, who for their sake died and was raised.
28 · The pastor leads the congregation in a closing prayer asking God to give fresh eyes to see the gift of Jesus, to draw near to the congregation as they draw near to Him, and to fill them with the Spirit so they might comprehend the riches of Christ's love and respond with generous giving
Would you bow your heads? Father, give us fresh eyes to see the gift of your Son. We want to draw near to you, Lord. We want to remain near to you. We want to have you draw near to us. We want to sense your presence. We want to sense your welcome. We want to sense the assurance of your Spirit. We want to have wonder and amazement and joy and satisfaction stirred up within us as we consider the gift of Your Son. And we want to be generous in response. So Lord, I ask, Father, Draw near to us. Fill this place with your Spirit that we would know and comprehend the riches of the love of Christ for us. We pray this in his name. Amen.