Robbing God - Malachi 3:6–12
I’m sure when everyone woke up this morning they were thinking, "I really hope the pastor talks about money today. It's been far too long since someone challenged my giving habits." In fact, if I had announced ahead of time that today's sermon was on Malachi 3 and tithing, I'm sure attendance would have doubled.Who doesn’t love to hear a sermon determined to meddle with their bank account?
And yet, as one of my seminary professors would say, “money isn’t everything but it's a part of God’s world.” Everyone needs money. Businesses need money. Churches need money. And I’ll go out on a limb and say that you need money too. We all need money and all of us could probably use a little more. We need it to put food on the table, keep a roof over your head and gas in your car. It’s necessary for living–it is a part of God’s world, and yet, we all know that it shouldn’t be something that captures our hearts. As we all know and have heard many times, the love of money is the root of all kinds of evils.
But none of that prevents us from panicking when our personal finances seem tight. I’ve even heard pastors’ preach sermons on tithing when budgets are coming up short.
In a passage, where the Lord specifically says that people of Israel are “robbing him of his tithe,” the subject of tithing is unavoidable. And yet, what is crystal clear from this passage is that money isn’t the real issue. The Lord points to their lack of tithing as a symptom of a much greater disease–worshiplessness. I’m not even sure if that’s a word, but hopefully you get my point. And we see a few things in this passage: First, we see the Lord confront worshiplessness (vv. 6-7), second, we see that worshipless hearts are always withholding from God (vv. 8-9), but neither of those things ever stop the Lord from graciously calling His people back (vv. 10-12).
The Lord Confronts a Worshipless People (vv. 6–7)
So we’ll start by examining how and why the Lord confronted a worshipless people.
It’s important to remember everything that’s happening at this point in redemptive history. Some Jewish exiles had returned to Judah and Jerusalem and had rebuilt the temple and the walls around Jerusalem. And you would expect that to be a joyous time among the Jewish people, but it wasn’t. They were abusing one another. They were chasing pagan women. They were offering blemished sacrifices.
And all that meant their temple worship at this time was apathetic. The people were going through the motions while their hearts were far from the Lord. Whenever the subject of dead worship comes up, we have to ask ourselves an important question: is dead worship the Lord’s fault or is it our fault?
That’s an incredibly important question isn’t it? Because as the Lord points out in verse 6, He doesn’t change. The Lord speaks and says, “For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.”
The Lord doesn’t change, which He emphasizes because if worship is a problem, it’s certainly not because of anything that He’s done. He’s never changed! He’s immutable. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
And that shouldn’t be something that we hold against Him. That should be something that we celebrate. Can you imagine if the Lord’s behavior changed based on what was going on? The Lord might smite us all down if He just wakes up on the wrong side of the bed! Interestingly enough, this is what Islam teaches about Allah. One minute Allah may be gracious the next minute he might be wrathful and angry. There’s no telling.
But it’s worth asking, why would the Lord confront their worshiplessness by reminding them of His immutability? Why wouldn’t He simply leave them to their own devices?
Because that would require Him to go back on His word. He cannot break or violate, or void, His covenant promises. That’s wonderful good news! You and I can have confidence in His promises because He cannot lie. He does not change. He cannot promise to do something and then fail to do it.
Which in many ways, is difficult for us to wrap our minds around. Recently, at our house I had been promising to play a game with our kids, and there were a few nights in a row where I couldn’t do it. So by the third night, I knew if I didn’t get home and follow through on what I had promised, I’d be seriously letting a few kids down.
And you know, that’s a mild story of almost letting my own children down. There are certainly worse moments in my life where I’ve let people down and I bet there are some very regrettable moments in your life too.
When God reminds His people of His immutability, He is really reminding them of His grace. “For I the LORD do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.” Israel's continued existence was not grounded in their obedience, but in God's unwavering commitment to His covenant promises. Their hope rested not in their ability to remain faithful to Him, but in His determination to remain faithful to them. Had God dealt with them according to their sins alone, they would have been consumed long ago. But because He is unchanging in His character, steadfast in His mercy, and faithful to His promises, He continued to preserve them as His people.
And that same truth is good news for us today. Our salvation does not ultimately rest upon the strength of our obedience or the consistency of our faithfulness. It rests upon the finished work of Christ and the unchanging promises of God. The God who remained faithful to His covenant with Israel is the same God who promises that all who repent and trust in Christ will be saved. Our confidence is not in ourselves, but in the faithfulness of the One who never changes.
Which is why the Lord so graciously says in verse 7: “Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts.” Despite everything, God hadn’t given up on His people.
And that invitation reveals the heart of God. He would have been perfectly just to abandon them to the consequences of their rebellion, yet instead He calls them back to Himself. Notice that His first word is not judgment but mercy, not rejection but reconciliation. The Lord is pursuing a wayward people who have repeatedly wandered from Him.
How does the Lord confront their worshipless hearts? Not first with condemnation, but with grace. Their hope does not rest in the strength of their repentance, but in the steadfast character of their God. Because He does not change, His promises remain secure. Because He remains faithful, there is still mercy for those who have wandered. And because His covenant love endures, sinners can find grace when they return to Him.
So how did God's people respond to such astonishing grace? Surely a God who remains faithful despite our unfaithfulness should stir our hearts to repentance, gratitude, and renewed devotion. Yet that was not what was happening in Israel.
Instead, their hearts remained cold. God's grace had become familiar to them. It was presumed upon rather than treasured. They continued going through the motions of worship, but worship had become little more than a routine. Their sacrifices were offered, their ceremonies observed, and their religious duties performed, but there was no genuine delight in the Lord. The very grace that should have drawn them back to God had failed to move their hearts at all.
Isn’t this exactly what happens in so many churches? They presume upon the riches and mercy of God. They don’t treasure God’s graciousness, they willfully jump headfirst into sin expecting God to forgive them later. Here’s the fundamental problem: when sin seems small and insignificant, the gospel seems small and insignificant. This is a lie perpetrated by Satan himself to put people on the pathway to Hell.
He wants you to think of worship as an obligation and not a privilege. He wants your prayer life to remain dead and mechanical. He wants you to never read the Scriptures. He wants you to believe that your sin is small and insignificant. He wants you to believe that the gospel has no power.
This is precisely the sort of thing that the Lord is confronting here in Malachi 3!
Worshipless Hearts Always Withhold from God (vv. 8–9)
Here’s the thing about cold, dead, worshipless hearts—they always withhold from God.
Look at how the people of Israel broadly respond to the Lord’s call to return. The people ask at the end of verse 7: “How shall we return?”
The Bible commentator Matthew Henry says that they’re not asking that question in good faith. It’s insincere. It’s what some of you might call a smartaleck response. The Lord has just called the people to return to Him in repentance, and their question essentially asks, “what do we need to repent of?”
Just that question reveals a high level of arrogance doesn’t it? Nevermind the fact that rather than sacrificing their best, they had been offering blemished sacrifices, they were divorcing their wives and chasing pagan women, they were abusing one another, and still they had the audacity to ask, “how shall we return?”
But the Lord gives them something else to consider: they’ve been robbing him. Look at what is said in verse 8: “Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say, ‘How have we robbed you?’ In your tithes and contributions.”
The Lord accuses them of robbing him of their tithe. Tithe literally means “tenth,” and the tithe was supposed to not only provide for the priests and Levites, but to support the worship of God. And so what was going on among the returned exiles was they were withholding the tithe that was meant for the Lord. They were either only giving a small portion of it or simply refusing to give it altogether.
And on the surface it may sound like God is money-hungry. He’s got to build St. Peter’s Basilica, and that’s going to require everyone to chip in! Everyone needs to be tithing!
But this passage forces you and I to reflect on what exactly does it mean to tithe? Because for most of us, when we hear that word, we just think it means giving our money. And to a certain extent that is right. I do believe that this is something Christians are commanded to do. I believe that Christians should be tithing, and if you’re not it should be something that you aspire to. Of course, when you say that people want to know is that net income, gross income, after taxes, before taxes?
Once we’ve gone down that road we’re beginning to miss the point.
Tithing is a tangible demonstration that you value God more than your money. That’s why I think it’s important to give everyone the opportunity to put a check, cash, or a bitcoin in the offering plate—it’s an act of worship.
At some point you and I have to ask ourselves, who do we worship? Do we worship the Lord? Or do we worship the number in our bank account?
I’m not saying that you need to drain your bank account and stick in the offering plate. That’s fiscally irresponsible and reckless. Don’t do that. Rather, what I am saying is every one of us should consistently be giving something.
That includes teenagers and young adults too. If you’re working consistently you should be tithing. The reality is, the longer you wait the harder it becomes. I know this, because I feel like this is something that I waited too long to do in my own life.
Does your tithe support the mission of the church? Of course. Paul talks about that.
But there’s a personal spiritual benefit. And there is a real benefit to your soul when you regularly remind yourself that your money has less value to you than Jesus Christ. Every week, you train your heart to treasure Christ over the things of this world. When you tithe, money begins to lose its power over you.
Which is exactly what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6 when He said, “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”
The word mammon comes from an Aramaic term referring to wealth, possessions, or material riches. But Jesus’s point is that your money, your wealth, your possessions, your mammon competes for the allegiance of your heart. It’s why the rich young ruler walked away from Jesus sad when he told him to sell his possessions and give it to the poor. His possessions had possessed Him!
Humanity’s struggle with money is as old as time. But it seems to me that the internet and social media has dumped rocket fuel on most of our natural sinful inclinations towards jealousy, comparison and envy. It’s easy to become obsessed with money when we want our kitchen to look like their kitchen, or we want to retire early like they did, or we want to travel like they do! And of course, all of those things cost money.
The subtle lie is that those things will give us comfort, security, control, or peace, if we just had a little more money! But Jesus’ point is that all those things that our hearts so desperately long for are ultimately found in the Lord.
The Lord Graciously Calls His People Back (vv. 10–12)
Do you believe that the Lord is more valuable than your money? If you lost all your money would you lose your faith too?
As you read further it becomes clear that there were financial issues going on among the people of Israel. Maybe you picked up on it. In verse 10, He says He’ll “rebuke the devourer,” which was probably a name for a crop-destroying pest.
And when you realize that their crops were being destroyed you can better understand their situation. Because when things are scarce or uncertain, it’s so much easier to justify withholding.
The Jewish exiles knew that once they had given something to the Lord they were not going to get it back. But the reality is we do get something back, again, in Matthew 6, Jesus says, “Do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ ... But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.”
Jesus is addressing one of the primary motivators for why we withhold from the Lord—fear. And that was part of the reason the Jewish people were withholding their tithe from the Lord—they were fearful about what might happen.
The antidote to fear is not accumulating more; it is trusting more. The more convinced that God is your portion, provider, and greatest good, the less tightly we will cling to the things of this world and the more readily we will seek first His kingdom.
All of this helps us understand why God tells the people in verse 10 to, “Bring the full tithe…And thereby put me to the test…” then in verse 12, “all nations will call you blessed, for you will be a land of delight, says the Lord of hosts.”
In other words, God is saying, “Stop living as though your future depends upon your own ability to preserve and protect yourself. Stop acting as though your security rests in what you can store away. Return to Me. Trust Me. Remember who I am.”
The Lord is inviting His people to rediscover what they had forgotten—that He is a faithful Father who cares for His children. Their obedience was not meant to enrich God; it was meant to deepen their dependence upon Him. Every tithe they brought was an act of faith, a declaration that their hope rested not in their possessions but in the God who had given them everything in the first place.
And that is what makes this passage so striking. God is not merely demanding external compliance, as if He is primarily concerned with spreadsheets and percentages. He is going after the root problem beneath their disobedience: a heart that no longer rested in His sufficiency. They have begun to live as though God was not enough to sustain them, as though security must be found elsewhere. “Bring the full tithe” is therefore not simply about restoring financial obedience; it is about restoring relational trust. It is God saying, in effect, “Return to Me, and you will discover that I am faithful.”
And the Lord reminds us in Malachi 3 that when our hearts become consumed with money, wealth, and possessions, we rob Him of the glory and worship that He alone deserves.
That is why Malachi's indictment cuts so deeply. God is not merely correcting a financial problem; He is exposing a worship problem. The people were still going through the motions of religion, but their hearts had drifted far from Him. And when the heart drifts, everything else eventually follows. What we cling to financially often reveals what we are clinging to spiritually.
This passage should force each of us to ask ourselves: Where do I find my sense of worth? What gives me security? What am I most afraid of losing? Is my peace rooted in my finances, my career, my comfort, my reputation, my family, or something else altogether? Where is my treasure?
Malachi reminds us that anything other than the Lord makes terrible saviors. Money can disappear. Careers can end. Health can fail. Beauty fades. Relationships change.
Which is why the Lord's invitation is so astonishing. He does not merely expose their sin. He does not simply condemn their worshiplessness. He graciously calls them back to Himself: "Return to me, and I will return to you, says the LORD of hosts."
The same invitation that was extended to those exiles is extended to you this morning: Return to the Lord.
Have you wandered? Return to Him. Have you trusted in other things? Return to Him. Has your heart grown cold? Return to Him. Have you sought satisfaction in the gifts rather than the Giver? Return to Him.
And the good news of the gospel is that we do not return to a reluctant God. We return to a gracious Father who sent His Son to save sinners.
Flee from the treasures of this world and return to Christ. In Him is the forgiveness you need. In Him is the security you long for. In Him is the satisfaction your soul was created to find. For the greatest treasure is not what God gives—it is God Himself. And when Christ becomes your treasure, everything else finally finds its proper place.
Amen. Let’s pray together.
