From A Cheerful Heart

DEVOTION

MALACHI

FROM A CHEERFUL HEART

Mal 3:8-12

8 "Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me. "But you ask, 'How do we rob you?'

"In tithes and offerings. 9 You are under a curse — the whole nation of you — because you are robbing me. 10 Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this," says the LORD Almighty, "and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it. 11 I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not cast their fruit," says the LORD Almighty. 12 "Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land," says the LORD Almighty.

NIV

How could anyone ever think it is appropriate to rob God? When many people, especially those of the world think of robbery, it would be as a crime, such as robbing a bank. However, God is speaking of not giving to him what is his due. If we do not bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, it would seem we would be under a curse. But wait, this is Old Testament stuff, it has been finished. We are under a new covenant, we no longer are under the Law, for Jesus fulfilled the Law and therefore we too, being in Christ, have fulfilled the Law and are no longer subject to it. Yet, it seems we do take some of that Law and want to live by it, such as the Ten Commandments. They are part of the Law. We also still consider tithing as a practice we should observe. We make every effort to bring tithing into the New Testament, but what we find is words depicting giving, such as the Lord loves a cheerful giver. However, the first part of the verse says that a man must give as he has decided in his heart, not under compulsion or reluctantly. It is not about the law, a hard-fast rule of law, it is out of love for the Lord that we give, that we bring a tenth of our income into the house of the Lord so there might be food in the storehouse. However, although we firmly believe the Lord does indeed open the floodgates and does pour out a blessing so large we do not have room to contain it, we might have missed the point of the storehouse. The Hebrew words translated as storehouse are the two words that mean house and depository. Joseph, while he was in charge in Egypt collected grain, putting into a depository or storehouse so that when the time of need came, the people could have grain. Of course, he sold it to them and made the Pharaoh even richer, but the point was the same. A storehouse is a place we bring our tithe so that when we have a need the tithe is there to give it out. But we have turned it into something else. We have made the tithe for the purpose of paying for a church and all the staff within it. We have created budgets and forecasts of future needs informing the people of how much we are either ahead or behind in our budget and sometimes we even ask for a special offering when the budget has a shortfall, and cannot meet a special need. It has become a business ordeal and we may have missed this whole truth. If we are to bring our tithe into the storehouse, then the storehouse needs to be a storehouse, not a church budget. Yes, we need to pay for the staff. That is the way we run things today. Yes, we need to pay for the heat and air conditioning, and lights, and all that stuff. That is the way we do things in this culture. Yes, that requires a budget, it is the way of the world, and it has to be if we are going to conduct the affairs of the church. But let us not confuse all that as tithing as onto the Lord. For if we were tithing as the intent in the Old Testament, then we would have so much of a blessing we would not have room enough to contain. Do we? Are we blessed that much? Are their poor people who tithe? Are there people of God who are just getting by? Maybe they are not tithing. But what of us who are? Are we simply living based on our income level? Is that a blessing we do not have enough room to contain? It seems this is a true conundrum. How much of the Old Testament do we pay attention to and how much do we tie into the New Testament and how much of both do we just pay attention to the portions we want? How much have we changed to meet what we think is how it needs to be in our time and place? Then we get into the rules or regulations of just what do we tithe on, gross or net income? It just gets messy and maybe we need to just give as we have decided in our heart and give cheerfully.