Malachi 3:6-12: Robbing God

OUTLINE

Turning
Tithing
Testing

INTRODUCTION

‘The bible leaves no question about it. God’s people are supposed to be rich…. God’s people are to be rich—financially wealthy and prosperous in every possible way, with plenty of money.’1 That is a quote from Kenneth Copeland. The prosperity gospel is a modern error that abuses many parts of the Bible, the portion before us is one of the most abused portions of the Bible by the prosperity gospel. The teaching on God’s character and grace and our responsibility to repent and to honor Him is overshadowed by a greed that seeks to control God through a mechanistic and formulaic abuse of these verses. We come to the 5th of 6 disputes in Malachi. God turns from the clergy to the laity, from the sins of the priests to the sins of the worshippers. There are various sins that are committed by Israel that they have been rebuked for. These sins have provoked God’s discipline of them and caused the deprivations they are suffering. V5 had listed several sins that they deserve judgement for, but v6-12 focuses on their worship and in particular their practice of tithing.

Today as we look at God addressing this matter we will be looking at them under three heading, turning, tithing and testing.