Transcript

One day, a man called his church and said, “Can I speak to the head hog at the trough?”

The secretary thought she heard right but asked, “I’m sorry. Who would you like to speak with again?” The caller repeated, “Can I speak to the head hog at the trough?”

The secretary answered, “Well, if you mean the preacher, sir, then you may refer to him as ‘Pastor’ or ‘Brother,’ but I prefer you not call him the ‘head hog at the trough!’”

The man replied, “Well, I was planning on giving $100,000 to the building fund.”

And the secretary responded, “Hang on. I think the big pig just walked through the front door.”

As we continue our series, “Right on the Money,” we come to a familiar passage in Malachi that is often mistakenly used to require a tithe of the Church today, which puts people under the law, in bondage, and under guilt.

We’ve looked at the details of what the tithe entailed under the law. In Malachi, we learn of the consequences of not obeying God’s commandments concerning the tithes.

Malachi 3:6-8:

“For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed. Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the LORD of hosts. But ye said, Wherein shall we return?

“Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings.”

The Lord God speaks in the first person in this passage. And the Lord says of Himself, “For I am the LORD, I change not.”

God is immutable, or unchanging, in His essence and attributes. He does not increase or decrease in any way. His knowledge and power are never greater or less. He is never wiser or holier or more righteous or more merciful than He ever has been or ever will be.

And because God does not change, there can be no failure in His plans and purposes. God can be counted on. He does not waver or falter; He is forever faithful.

As it’s been said, “All that God is, He has always been; and all that He has been, and is, He will ever be.”

This statement about God’s unchanging character is sometimes interpreted to mean that God does not change and will always require a tithe of His people, whether of Israel in the past or of the Church today.

But it can be demonstrated from Scripture that while God never changes, He does change His dealings with mankind at different times in history according to His perfect will.

And when God established the present dispensation of grace, He taught the Church that we are not under the law today, and thus, its tithes do not apply to us, the Body of Christ.

God gives this statement about His immutability in light of His covenant of the law with Israel and His just reaction toward sin and disobedience and the necessity of consequent curses and judgment under the law. God always kept His covenant promises of both blessings and curses under the law. That never changed.

Verses 1-5 tell of the refiner’s fire and future judgment that will come against the wicked and ungodly in Israel when the Messiah returns at His Second Coming.

But because God is unchanging in His promises to Israel, “therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed,” or destroyed or annihilated.

As Jeremiah stated in the popular verses in Lamentations, “It is of the LORD’S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness” (3:22-23).

Because of their stubbornness and rebelliousness against God and His covenant of the law, Israel could have been completely consumed and wiped out.

And yet they were not consumed, because God, Who is unchanging and merciful, had made an unconditional covenant with their fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Israel’s existence was due only to the Lord’s unchanging character and unswerving commitment to His covenant promises.

God is faithful to His covenant promises in the Abrahamic and Mosaic Covenants. Israel was chastened and cursed under the law when they disobeyed it, but God never destroyed Israel completely, and believing Israel will be blessed in the end.

Because God changes not, it is certain that everything God has promised Israel will be fulfilled, literally, just like everything He has promised the Body of Christ will be fulfilled.

The Lord reminded Israel of her history in verse 7, “Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them.”

God changes not, and Israel hadn’t changed either in her disobedience to God and turning away from the ordinances of His law.

Many generations in Israel had gone away from God and His law. “From the days of your fathers” takes it back to the earliest times and the days of their coming out of Egypt. Israel’s history is a long, sad record of recurring departures from God.

All along the way, the people had deviated from the straight path that God had prescribed for them to walk in under the Mosaic Covenant. They had disobeyed and failed to keep God’s covenant requirements and conditions, and they paid the price for it.

As Ezra prayed and confessed on behalf of the nation, “Since the days of our fathers have we been in a great trespass unto this day; and for our iniquities have we, our kings, and our priests, been delivered into the hand of the kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity, and to a spoil, and to confusion of face, as it is this day” (9:7).

Verse 7 then states, “Return unto Me, and I will return unto you, said the Lord of hosts.”

The Lord graciously invited Israel to return to Him. The message of all the prophets could be summed up in the word, “Return.” This is the Old Testament term for repentance.

“Return” invited Israel to reverse its course and turn 180 degrees. They needed to turn away from their rebellion and disobedience to the law so they would not be cursed. And God desired that His chosen people turn to Him in faith and obedience.

Israel needed to return to God by renewing her commitment to His covenant of the law. And God promised here to return to them if they would do so.

Because God changes not and is always faithful, Israel was thus assured that this would take place. And God returning to them meant that He would bless them as a result.

But in response to God’s invitation, verse 7 states, “But ye said, Wherein shall we return?” Or, “How should we return?” “In what way shall we return?”

This is not a sincere request for information but a cynical query and a declaration of innocence. The implication is that they sensed no need to return; they deny that there was a problem. They wondered, “How can we return when we have never gone away?”

With a self-righteous attitude, Israel could not see that they had ever left God, so they couldn’t understand how or why they needed to return. Their response was not a reception but a rebuff of God’s merciful call to return to Him.

Israel didn’t think they had done anything wrong that they needed to return to God. Thus, God told them directly and clearly, “Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed Me.”

Israel had stolen from God what was rightfully His by divine law.

The promised land belonged to God. And the Israelites tithed the produce from God’s land. This produce was declared to be “the Lord’s: it is holy unto the Lord” (Lev. 27:30).

Ten percent of all of Israel’s agricultural produce wasn’t theirs; it belonged to the Lord. The tithe was holy and separated unto God and was given to the Levites as their inheritance and in support of them and their service at the temple.

Not to give what belonged to God was to rob Him. God called it robbery because they had unlawful possession of what rightly belonged to God.

Beyond this yearly 10% tithe were also the 10% tithe for the annual feast days and the 10% tithe for the poor every 3 years, all of which averaged a 23 1/3% tithe every year.

God told Israel they had robbed Him. When confronted with this sin, they brazenly asked God, “Wherein have we robbed Thee?” Or “How [or in what way] have we robbed You?”

God’s answer was “In tithes and offerings.” Israel had withheld the tithes and offerings (Num. 18:21-32) that the Law commanded them to bring to God.

The tithes and offerings must be understood in the context of God’s “ordinances” within the Law of Moses, as verse 7 makes clear. This tithe under the law was not money, but agricultural produce from the promised land.

The offerings included the firstfruits from the harvest, which were separate from the tithe.

The offerings were given in addition to their tithes.

Since the temple was God’s “house” as verse 10 says, failure to support its ministry and the priests and Levites who maintained God’s house through the required tithe was equivalent to robbing God Himself.

The tithe robbed the service and worship of God, because it was to be given to the Levites, who served at the temple. The priests and Levites lived off and depended on the tithe so that they could carry out their spiritual duties in the temple.

Nehemiah was a contemporary of the prophet Malachi. And Nehemiah 13:10-11 states, “And I perceived that the portions of the Levites had not been given them [meaning the tithe]: for the Levites and the singers, that did the work [that is, in the temple], were fled every one to his field. Then contended I with the rulers, and said, Why is the house of God [or the temple] forsaken?”

Not paying the tithe forced the Levites to work in the fields to survive and to provide for themselves and their families, and thus the service of the temple suffered as they had less time to work in the temple, and they had to abandon their responsibilities there.

Malachi 3:9-12:

“Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation. Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.

“And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the LORD of hosts. And all nations shall call you blessed: for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the LORD of hosts.”

Due to their disobedience to bring the required tithes and offerings, verse 9 states, “Ye are cursed with a curse.” The nation was experiencing a curse of God at that time.

The nature of the curse can be determined from verse 11: locusts had invaded the land and were eating and devastating the crops and vegetation, and there was a blight which caused the grapes of the vineyard to drop off before they ripened.

The Lord told Israel through Malachi that they were cursed because, “ye have robbed Me, even this whole nation.” The whole nation was under the curse.

We are not the “nation” today. Israel was that nation. We’re the nations, the Gentiles.

We are the church, made up of believers from all nations.

And we do not rob God by failing to tithe under grace. Israel was under the covenant of the law which commanded tithes and offerings from the promised land in support of the temple’s worship.

It is actually IMPOSSIBLE to obey the laws concerning the tithe under grace. The tithe was only agricultural produce that was sown and reaped from the promised land given to support of the Levites who served at the temple.

In God’s plans, Israel is set aside in unbelief currently and temporarily. We are not under the law, and we are not Israel. And there is no temple, and thus there are no Levites there to support with the tithe.

But for the Israelites in Malachi’s day, as the second temple stood, and God’s program with Israel was in force, and they were under the law, to fail to bring the tithe brought a curse.

Israel was told in Deuteronomy 11: “Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse; A blessing, if ye obey the commandments of the LORD your God, which I command you this day: And a curse, if ye will not obey the commandments of the LORD your God, but turn aside out of the way which I command you this day…” (11:26-28).

The tithe was a commandment. Thus, not obeying this commandment brought a curse. And God detailed the curses with Israel if they did not obey the Law in Deuteronomy 28, and among the long list of curses it says,

“Cursed shalt thou be in the city, and cursed shalt thou be in the field…And thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron…thou shalt plant a vineyard, and shalt not gather the grapes thereof…All thy trees and fruit of thy land shall the locust consume” (vv. 16-23,30,42).

God does not change, His promises are unchangeable, and He is faithful to them. Thus, because Israel had gone away from God’s ordinances and had not kept them (v. 7), they were “cursed with a curse” (v. 9), just like Deuteronomy 28 said they would be.

And exactly like the law said, when they did not obey God’s commandment concerning the tithe, verse 11 says that the “devourer” or locust was destroying the fruit of the ground, and the vine was dropping the grapes before the time.

God’s solution was for Israel, in faith and obedience, to do what the law commanded them to do and to “Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat [or food] in mine house.”

“Mine house” refers to the temple, not the church. And again, when God says, “that there may be MEAT in Mine house,” we see that the substance of the tithe was about literal food, not money.

The Israelites needed to bring the whole tithe, not just part of what they owed to God, “into the storehouse,” located at God’s house, the temple in Jerusalem.

The “storehouse” was special rooms or storage chambers in the temple complex where the tithed grain and produce were stored.

The storehouse was also called the treasury or treasure house in the temple. It was a place for storing valuables, and this teaches that God considered His tithe to be valuable.

Nehemiah tells how Israel was to bring their tithes to the temple and putting them in these storehouses and chambers: “And that we should bring…the fruit of all manner of trees, of wine and of oil, unto the priests, to the chambers of the house of our God; and the tithes of our ground unto the Levites…” (10:37).

“And at that time were some appointed over the chambers for the treasures, for the offerings, for the firstfruits, for the tithes, to gather into them out of the fields of the cities the portions of the law for the priests and Levites…” (12:44).

“Then brought all Judah the tithe of the corn and the new wine and the oil unto the treasuries [or, the storehouse]” (13:12 cf. II Chron. 31:4-6,11,12).

Israel’s obedience in bringing the full amount of tithes that the Law required would prove God’s faithfulness to His covenant promises in the law.

The Lord said in verse 11, “prove Me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.”

God challenged Israel and called on her to test His faithfulness to His Word. If they would obey and bring the tithes into the storehouse, God promised to bless them abundantly.

Like the curse of locusts and empty vines that was taking place in Israel due to their disobedience to the law, God promised the same blessings due to their obedience as detailed in the law.

Deuteronomy 28:11,12 states, “And the LORD shall make thee plenteous in goods…in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy ground, in the land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers to give thee. The LORD shall open unto thee his good treasure, the heaven to give the rain unto thy land in his season, and to bless all the work of thine hand…”

The Lord promised that He would reward Israel’s obedience in bringing the tithe to the temple with incredible plenty. In keeping His Word, God would bless them with excessive abundance and open “the windows of heaven.”

The windows of heaven being opened refers to God providing abundant literal rain. In the days of Noah, when the flood came, Genesis 7:11-12 reads, “the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.”

And due to the rain, Israel would be blessed with a harvest that yielded so much and was so plentiful that there was not enough room to receive it all. God promised that there would not be enough storage room to preserve the food from such a bountiful harvest.

It would be in Israel, as Proverbs 3:9-10 says, “Honour the LORD with thy substance, and with the firstfruits of all thine increase: So shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine.”

In addition, in verse 11, God promised to drive the curse out of the land. He would rebuke the devourer, or drive the locust plague away, so that they would not destroy the fruit of the ground, and He would cause the grapes to develop fully on their vines rather than dropping off prematurely and unripened.

In verse 12, the Lord stated that as a result of all this, “all nations shall call you blessed: for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the LORD of hosts.”

Robbing God of the tithe had assumed national proportions, but now, if Israel’s obedience assumed national proportions, God promised that they would have national blessing and prominence.

The obedience to God would lead to fruitfulness in the land. And all other nations would take note and acknowledge the divine blessing on the Israelites, because their land would be such a delightful and pleasurable place. God would make them a blessing to all the families of the earth, which was God’s purpose for the nation from the beginning.

Malachi 3:8-10 is an example of spiritualizing the Scriptures and telling spiritual lies as a result. It is also an example of Scripture being taken out of its historical and dispensational context.

Many use this passage to teach “storehouse tithing.” The idea is that the church building, or the church congregation, or a denomination is the storehouse into which Christians should bring their gifts to God and give 10% of their income.

This kind of teaching fails to make the distinction between Israel’s temple and the local church under grace, or it just spiritualizes the temple into being the church.

God’s house in this passage is not the church today, but the literal temple in Jerusalem in the past. The storehouse is the literal storage room and chambers in the temple complex.

The Word of God says what it means and means what it says. It is wrong to spiritualize the storehouse into what a person wants it to be, or the church. The church is not God’s divine storehouse today.

And the tithe was literal food and produce, and this also should not be spiritualized or changed into what one wants it to mean, meaning money. The tithe is not money.

The windows of heaven that God opened for Israel and then poured out His blessing also can’t be spiritualized into what we want. Some are promised based on this that God will abundantly bless in proportion to one’s giving.

The windows of heaven being opened was God giving the blessing of literal rain for Israel’s crops in accordance with His promised blessings of obedience to His law.

And there is no principle of 10% giving with the tithe, because the tithe entailed more than just one basic annual tithe of 10%. It was never that basic. Depending on the year, it could be 10% one year, 20% the next, and even 30% every three years.

The church is not instructed to tithe under grace. Our apostle Paul never mentions tithing. We give by grace today and in our freedom in Christ, not based on the law’s required system of tithing of crops and produce.

Based on this passage in Malachi, believers are, sadly, even threatened and accused of “robbing God” if they do not tithe, and that they could even be “cursed with a curse” and that things won’t go well for them, especially financially. But if they do tithe, God will not only remove the curse but will bless them abundantly!

To threaten God’s people with a passage that is not written to us today to force and guilt and shame people into giving their money is wrong. It is error. It is legalism. It is to put people under law and its bondage, when we are free and have liberty in Christ today.

Malachi is law ground, not grace ground. It’s about Israel, not the Church, the Body of Christ. Israel was under the covenant of the law; we are not under that covenant.

Malachi 3 doesn’t apply to us today. Tithing doesn’t apply to us today.

We do not rob God today by not giving. That was terminology that pertained to Israel’s relationship with God under the Mosaic covenant. Robbing God had to do with Israel withholding the tithe of crops that came from His land.

In accordance with the law of Moses, Malachi told Israel they were “cursed with a curse” (v. 9) because they did not obey God’s command to tithe. Unlike Israel, we are not under a system of conditional blessings and curses based on our obedience to the law.

We are not cursed today if we do not give and we are not blessed physically if we do give in the same manner as under the law. This is to think and live superstitiously, and not by true faith in God’s Word and what God is saying to us today.

We need to live by faith according to the instructions given directly to us, the Body of Christ under grace. This is found in the letters of the Apostle Paul.

These instructions in Malachi were true for another program, another dispensation, another people, another time, another rule of life.

Legal tithing was binding upon Israel under the Mosaic covenant. Believers today are not under the law but under grace. We are dead to the law through the Cross.

Giving today is based on and stems from our liberty and our joyful gratitude for all that God has done for us in Christ by His grace.