Please take a seat and while you're doing that take out your Bibles.
If you don't have a Bible there will be one on a seat nearby.
Open that up at Malachi 3 verses 6-12.
Malachi 3 verses 6-12.
I the LORD do not change, so you the descendants of Jacob are not destroyed.
Ever since the time of your ancestors you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them.
Return to me and I will return to you, says the LORD Almighty.
But you ask, how are we to return?
Will a mere mortal rob God, yet you rob me?
But you ask, how are we robbing you?
In tithes and offerings.
You are under a curse, your whole nation, because you are robbing me.
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 there will not be room enough to store it.
I will prevent pests from devouring your crop, and the vines in your fields will not drop their fruit before it is ripe, says the LORD Almighty.
Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land, says the LORD Almighty.
Well, good morning everyone. It's nice to be with you again.
When Michael called me, phoned me up, texted me, I can't actually remember what it was, he contacted me and he said that he was looking for someone to preach here on the 14th.
And I looked at our church's schedule and I said, I happen to be free then.
And so, with great joy, I said, yes, I'd love to come. And it's good to be with you this morning.
Now, I want to ask you, if you don't mind me telling you something before I get into the passage.
In other words, I'm asking for a little bit of time. And the reason why I wanted to do this is because, Erica, in your prayer,
you were talking about how conversion is God's work, and it's true.
And recently in our church, I saw God do that, where we did absolutely nothing and saw God work in someone's life.
I just wanted to encourage you with this story before I start.
Just about two months ago, I was speaking at a young adults event in our church, and afterwards, this young man, a uni student, came up to me
and asked me a question about some of the things I'd been saying. Just chatting.
And then I said to him, I don't know you and what's your story? And he said, well, he's a uni student and he had pretty much been an atheist.
And then part of it, I think the Atheist Society at Curtin Uni, and then there was going to be a debate between the atheists and the Christian Society.
And he was going to be in that debate representing the atheist side.
And he said it was advertised. And then he got a threatening communication.
I don't know if it was a letter or what kind of communication exactly, but he was threatened not to do it by a group of Muslims.
I don't know if it was a formal group or what, but he was told not to do it.
I said to him, that's very strange. Why would they not want you to give the Christians a bit of a go?
And he said he's not sure, but he wonders if it's because they do have reverence for Jesus as a prophet.
Anyway, the organizers on both sides decided to delay the postpone the debate.
And he said he had extra time to prepare for his position as an atheist.
But in that extra time, as he looked at things more deeply, he was convicted that Jesus is indeed the king of the universe and the God to whom he must bow.
And now he is a Christian. He's a believer.
We've been praying that we would see people reached with the gospel and we did nothing.
It's God's work. So I just wanted to tell that story. I've been so encouraged by it.
And the thing that delights me is to see another human being, a person made in the image of God, worshiping God as we were made to do.
We were made to bring glory to his name.
So that's a little bit of extra that I wanted to tell you.
I just thought about it as you prayed that prayer. Praise our God.
Well, let's have a think about this passage.
I want to start by telling you about my mother's 70th birthday.
She's now 77. If you don't know me and you don't know where my accent comes from, it comes from South Africa.
I've been here for nearly 15 years. Seven years ago, we were back there for her 70th.
And there were lots of people at one of the functions because there were a few functions.
And at the main function, she received a lot of gifts. And I remember when we were eventually at home, she was opening her gifts.
And one of them was a book. And inside the book was a note.
People often write when they give a book, they write an inscription.
And I think it makes the book even more special because when you look at the book later and as the years go by, you see that inscription.
And so you treasure the person who gave it to you. You treasure that moment of celebrating together with your friends and your family.
But the trouble with this inscription was it wasn't addressed to my mother.
It was addressed to the person who gave the book to my mother.
And so it was a real gift.
Now, how would you feel on a special birthday like that and a friend has given you a gift, but it actually wasn't really meant for you.
And you feel like a bit of an afterthought.
Well, Malachi, as you will know, this prophet Malachi, this book, you've been in the series in this church for a while.
He opens his book with massive evidence that Israel, the people of God, actually had no respect for him.
And you can see it with the priests, the religious leaders back in chapter one.
So if your Bible's open, flick back to chapter one in verse six, you can see the religious leaders of the nation have no respect for the God they're supposed to worship.
And so in verse six, God says, A son honors his father and a slave his master.
If I am a father, where is the honor due me? If I am a master, where is the respect due me?
Says the Lord Almighty. It is you priests who show contempt for my name.
Now, look at verse eight and look and see how they do that. Look at how bad their attitude is towards the Lord.
He says, When you offer blind animals for sacrifice, is that not wrong?
When you sacrifice lame or diseased animals, is that not wrong?
Try offering them to your governor. Would he be pleased with you?
Would he accept you? Says the Lord Almighty. And the obvious answer is no.
Everyone knows the governor would be offended. And in the series so far in Malachi,
you would have seen that Israel are a people at this point in the history and their story, they're a people of utter faithlessness.
You've seen now they bring rubbish sacrifices to God. You would have seen that they are marrying unbelievers.
You see them divorcing their wives for any and every reason.
And then in the verse just before where we are now, chapter three and verse six is where we are now.
But in three verse five, we see that they are a people who practice sorcery, who lie, who cheat the worker out of their rightful wages.
And so what we have is a wicked people.
Now, what does God do in the face of such wickedness?
Well, he says in chapter three, verse five, that they will go on trial.
Verse five is about a trial. And in that verse, we see they will be found guilty because of the one who is the witness at the trial.
So have a look at verse five as we come into our passage for this morning.
Verse five, God says, So I will I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers,
against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless and deprive the foreigners among you of justice.
But do not fear me, says the Lord Almighty.
You know, you I'm sure you know this, that human trials, human court cases often get things wrong, often do not come to the right conclusion.
You get a witness who's a liar. You get a jury that is weak.
But here, when the witness is God himself, there is no doubt the verdicts will be one of guilty.
And that will be the absolute truth. Absolutely, undoubtedly guilty.
When the great day of judgment comes, that great day that we must all face, that day will not be a trial like the ones that we have here on Earth.
You know, the ones where the court will hear different stories, different points of view, different angles,
where there is cross examination, which is part of a whole involved process, trying to get to the truth.
And eventually it's all weighed up and the jury decides the day of the Lord, that final day is not going to be a trial like that.
Because the one who is truth, the one who is truth itself will speak and he will say what we have done.
And that will be that. That will conclude the matter.
And so this verse five in chapter three is a scary moment because the verdict is guilty without a shadow of a doubt.
And the one who is wronged is the living God.
And so what a moment of great, great trouble for those who are in the dock.
This verse is a summary in many ways of all humans because, you know, the list of what Israel have done doesn't matter as much as how the verse ends.
So all this about sorcery and perjury and all that sort of thing, the exact sins of the people isn't the main issue.
The issue is what all of this behavior means.
What does it, what does all this mean? What is all this saying?
Well, God says they do all these terrible things and then he says, but do not fear me.
That's the problem. They do not fear the Lord Almighty.
And so what will God do?
Well, as we come to verse six, we find what we would not as ordinary human beings, what we would not naturally expect to find.
Verse six, God says, I, the Lord, do not change.
So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.
They are not destroyed. They do not get what they deserve.
But this five is a trial and they are shown to be most guilty.
And if God is just, how can he simply overlook this?
Well, the answer, as we read through Malachi and many other parts of the Bible, is that God delays.
He's a God of immense grace. He's a God of immense patience.
He holds back on judgment as he calls people to rather repent and to be saved.
And so what we find out about this God is that he's a God of mercy.
The fact that he even goes to tell the people of their dire state at the trial that's to come, that this is where they are at with him.
That is grace in action. That is mercy.
But the fact that there is a trial makes it very clear that if we do not respond to his grace, then the time will come when judgment falls.
But let's think about this God who does not change. Why is he so patient with such people?
They deserve judgment for this contempt. And the rest of the Bible says that's the condition for the whole human race as well.
We deserve judgment for our contempt towards the one who made us.
Well, in verse six, we see that the answer, as I've already been touching on, is that this God does not change.
Verse six, I, the Lord, do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.
What is it about God that is consistent? What is he talking about when he says he does not change?
And it's this. God is consistent in his character. He is patient.
These wicked people can know because of how he has been in the past that he is a patient God, that he does not wish the death of a sinner,
that he seeks their redemption, that he gives opportunity to repent.
He's a God who calls sinners to repent and be restored, to return to him and to rather be blessed than to be cursed.
That is his character. That is how he has always been. That is what he means when he says, I do not change.
And there are two ways in which we see amazing evidence, clear evidence of his gracious character.
We see it in verses six and seven. He says, first of all, so you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.
He brings up Jacob. He calls them descendants of Jacob. And so I ask the question as I come to this part,
why does he specify here that they are children of Jacob? Typically, he would talk about them as being children of Abraham.
Why doesn't he talk about that? Why doesn't he talk about them being children of Isaac?
And I think the answer is that they are being shown, God is underscoring, that they are children of unfaithfulness.
Because when you think about Jacob, he's not a great man in the Bible story.
He is shown in the Old Testament particularly to be quite a liar, to be quite a cheat.
In fact, I wonder if you know this, but the name Jacob means underminer. The name Jacob means grabber.
And when you read his story, you find that he's a proud and arrogant man.
The Old Testament pulls no punches when it paints its picture about Jacob.
But the big surprise with him is God's patience with him, the way God patiently deals with him,
the way God is immensely gracious towards this man.
And I think that's the big idea of the text this morning of where we are and in Malachi,
that this God is so patient and so kind that he desires that people would repent so that he can lift the curse,
this curse that hangs over sinners. God wants to lift that. He wants to bless people.
His grace toward proud, arrogant sinners like me and like you is present all over the Bible.
And it is present so much in Jacob's story.
If you know the Old Testament and you know Jacob's story, you will remember the story of Jacob wrestling with God when God appeared to him as an angel.
Was Jacob able to defeat God in that wrestling match?
And the answer is, of course not, because this is Almighty God, the creator of the universe.
But it's an interesting story because they wrestled all night.
And when you read the story, you wonder, has God met his match in Jacob? It goes on this wrestling.
It seems like God can't overpower Jacob. You wonder, is God limited?
And the answer is no, not at all.
And we know that this isn't the case because when God was ready,
he simply touched the joints of Jacob's hip and he put it out of joints, just like that one touch.
What we see in that wrestling is this God of grace, this God of restraint. He's patient.
He's gracious. And it was after all this that Jacob came to understand
that he had seen God face to face in that sense, in this form that God appeared in.
And Jacob was humbled. God had displayed grace. This is the character of our God.
He doesn't change. He is consistently a God of grace.
And you can also see his gracious character in verse seven,
where God through Malachi talks about the time of your ancestors.
It's amazing that God has continued with these people,
despite them having a legacy of unfaithfulness that goes way back through the time of their history,
all the way through their ancestors. And so verse seven says,
ever since the time of your ancestors, you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them.
And so we see a God who is slow in letting judgment fall.
That is his character. He doesn't change.
How do we know that this slowness of God isn't weakness?
How do we know it doesn't mean that him talking about trial and guilt and judgment,
that those things are not an idle threat?
It's because the very next line in verse seven tells us what God is after.
He says, return to me and I will return to you.
But the implication in that is if you don't return people, if you don't, then I will not return to you.
And then the trial and the guilty verdict and the judgment, that will happen.
You see, this God does not change. This God is consistent, wants people to repent so that they are not judged.
But now we have to ask the question, what does it mean to repent?
What it means to repent is to stop living life your own way, but rather to come back to what you were designed to be,
a human being who worships the living God, who lives for him.
And in that you will be truly fulfilled. In that is true joy.
Repentance is talking about a 180 degree turn, you're going that way, your own way.
And yet the way of God is in that direction.
That's what repentance is, to stop living life your way, according to your systems,
which are effectively to say to God, I will not live for you.
I will not follow you, even though you are my creator.
And so God is calling on them to repent, to return.
And they ask, how are we to return?
And that is a moment to pause and take a breath, because doing this, considering repentance,
what it means to repent, I think is probably the most important question you will ever ask in your life,
that you will ever consider. We all have big questions to look through in life,
questions about big decisions like who are we going to marry one day if we are looking at marriage?
How are we going to invest our money? What kind of career path are we going to take?
What are we going to do about selling the family home as a time to move into a retirement village?
All these kinds of things, these big questions of life, but this surely is the biggest one,
because the answer to this question determines whether you will or will not face the swift judgment of God.
Now, before we delve into this, I want to ask you, have you returned to God?
Have you returned to the Lord?
What is it that shows that you or I have indeed repented and returned to the Lord?
When I was a teenager, I didn't grow up in a Christian home, but I became a Christian as a teenager.
The thing that everyone spoke about in those days was, have you given your heart to Jesus?
I would ask this question, no, they would ask this question, how do you know you are going to go to heaven?
People would be asked this question, how do you know that you are right with God
and you are going to go to heaven and live in his new world?
And people would respond, oh, well, I gave my heart to Jesus last year at the youth rally,
or I gave my heart to Jesus last year at the Easter service at church.
And the concern there is that repentance isn't just a prayer that is prayed at the end of an event.
Repentance means stop living your life your way for yourself and to turn to Jesus, indeed,
receive the salvation that he offers you because of what he's done on the cross
and continue to live your life under his rule.
You've stopped and you've said, I need you, Jesus, I've been sinning against you, living life my way, I turn, I repent,
I receive your salvation, you're my savior and I now live with you as my Lord.
And so the question is, have you turned?
It's more than just, yes, I have, because I prayed a prayer and that's all.
I have turned, you can see it by how I'm now living.
He is savior and Lord, King, ruler over me.
And so the people here in Malachi ask that key question.
They ask, how are we to return?
And the answer comes with God showing them an area of their lives,
a key area in their day to day life where it turns out that things are very, very wrong.
And if they do return to him, if they are indeed repenting,
then there needs to be a changed life.
And in this particular area that God points out, you see, it turns out that they are robbing God.
Let me read to you from the end of verse seven and verse eight and nine.
But you ask, how are we to return?
In other words, how are we to repent?
God says, will a mere mortal rob God, yet you rob me?
But you ask, how are we robbing you?
In tithes and offerings, you're under a curse, your whole nation, because you are robbing me.
So for the people of God here in Malachi, there is a problem at the level of the wallet.
This is one area which particularly displays where a person is at with God.
And it isn't something as necessarily ugly as things like adultery,
which has already come up in Malachi as a problem with the people.
It isn't something so blatantly ungodly as what comes up in chapter three, verse five, as sorcery.
But one thing that speaks volumes about where God is at in the heart of a person is what they do with their money.
You can learn a lot about people from history when you go to primary sources.
In other words, you read their letters and you see their artworks.
You see what others said about them in their writings at the time.
A biographer was researching a figure in history, and he said,
when I saw, looking at the man's check stubs, in the old days you would write a check out,
and then you'd have a, we tore the check off, there would be a stub section where for yourself you could record what that check was for,
how much and who it was given to, what it was for.
This biographer said, when I saw how he spent his money, I knew the man.
You see what matters to people with how they spend their money.
What is key to their lives?
Is it that they gamble away or is it all spent on pleasure or all on investments or perhaps they're very generous and they give lots to charity?
You get a picture as to where people are at.
And so God cuts to the chase with his people to show the one key area where they had disdain toward him.
And it makes sense that if they repeat in the area, if they repent in the area of giving,
then all the rest of their ungodliness should come right.
Because a person who is giving well, it's such a secret area, is surely to be concerned then about all the other areas in their lives.
But the problem with these people is that they're robbing God.
If God calls no giving or poor giving, robbing, then we as these people need to give serious consideration to our giving.
It is a serious matter.
You know, our giving financially is not an optional extra.
The Bible tells us that it's an expectation.
We must do it. It's part of our worship.
Everything that we have, Scripture tells us, everything comes from God.
And he requires that we are generous with what he's given us.
And so to not be generous with what he's given us, we see in Scripture it's called robbing.
It's like if you don't pay your bills, then you're effectively robbing the person to whom that money is due.
If you don't pay your rent, then you are robbing your landlord.
And so God is saying to the people here in Malachi, they're not bringing in the tithe.
Now, the Christian comes up when you hear the word tithe, which means 10 percent,
the question comes up, how much do we as Christian people need to give?
Ten percent was certainly an Old Testament number.
But the New Testament calls on God's people to be generous, to be sacrificial.
I don't think we are being told that we must give 10 percent,
but I think it's a good guide for us as we consider how we worship God financially.
But I do think the New Testament is telling us to be generous.
I remember the treasurer of the first church I was in stood up one one AGM
and said to the church, thank you for your generosity.
You have given a lot.
And when he finished being the treasurer and the new treasurer came in, he privately said to me, I will never say that.
I will never say to the church, you have been generous.
Even if it's a lot of money that's coming, I'll still not say they've been generous because I don't know.
I can't say to the people they've been generous.
I don't know how much money they actually have.
The church may end up receiving a lot of money for ministry and be able to pay all its bills.
But he said, unless I know their bank accounts and know that it actually was sacrificial, I can't say that with certainty.
I can thank the people for giving and leave it there.
The New Testament calls on us to be generous, to be sacrificial.
And so if we are not, then robbing God means that ministry doesn't go forward.
Imagine having the financial power if every single church that loves God could not all do,
loves his word and loves the gospel going to the last in this world.
If every church had financial power to see a huge difference made for the kingdom of God,
and yet the people withhold that and so the church doesn't have that power, that's robbing.
Research shows that Perth needs a few hundred more good churches,
just so that the people across our entire city have come across,
or at least have an awareness of the gospel, what the gospel actually means.
When you think about the kinds of churches we are associated with,
I think of the Perth Gospel Partnership, you may not know what that is, but WPC
and other churches that love scripture and love God are part of that group.
We in that collective are a long, long way off from being able to plant the number of churches
that are needed in Perth just so that everyone in Perth has heard of the gospel.
And so the question needs to be asked, is money the reason why?
Is it that the ministry workers we've got and the pastors we've got are unable to put time to training
and planting because other workers are needed on team for them to be able to do that?
They can't do it because the money is not there.
Now, in the United States, research shows that most churches are not,
the people in the churches are not giving even 10%.
Giving seems to be very, very weak.
Now, having said all that, I do not want anyone here to be feeling like this is a call from me to you,
to be giving more money.
Many of you may actually be giving sacrificially.
Many of you may not be able to give 10%.
The question is, are we considering how we are worshipping God on the financial side?
And for some of us, generosity may be 5% and maybe less.
I don't know.
I do not want you to hear any legalism coming from the pulpit, a sort of a thou shalt.
But I am putting to you that in worshipping God,
there is an aspect to it that is at the level of the wallet.
And everyone is told in Scripture, in the New Testament,
to consider in their own hearts where they are at with this.
I've heard of churches where the leadership want to know your bank account
and they want to know how much you're bringing in
and then they will declare to you how much you should be giving.
That is so unbiblical.
This is a matter for the privacy of your own heart between you and God.
Well, God says that if they repent by bringing the whole tithe into the storehouse,
He will bless them by reversing the curse on their agricultural production.
So much so that in verse 10, He says there will be so much blessing
that there will not be room enough to store it.
You see, God is gracious to those who repent and that's the message.
Not only is He going to forgive them, they're not going to have the trial and judgment,
but He's going to bless them full of grace.
But be careful of reading the passage the way that the prosperity gospel reads this passage
because they will say to you, and these churches are very wrong,
they will say to you that there's a formula here
and that if you give more and more and more and give until it hurts you,
you will get back more and more.
You will be materially blessed.
But no, you cannot make that direct link between giving and material blessing
when it comes to the New Testament.
This is God speaking to His special Old Testament people.
The Lord does not promise us material blessing in the New Testament.
He promises us that this kind of blessing, a prosperous life and wellness
and all the good things like that, those are things in the New World.
Those are things that we will see in eternity.
The question that does come out of this text for us today is
do we truly love God?
Do we truly worship God?
This God who in the New Testament calls us when it comes to the financial side of our worship,
calls us to be generous.
And so if we say we love Him, we will see it in many aspects of our lives,
including how we spend our money.
But notice that how we are living in terms of worshiping God
is not only about us and God, but it's also about us and the world around us,
about our reputation before a watching world.
Look at verse 12.
When God says to them that this great blessing will come upon them,
He says in verse 12, then all the nations will call you blessed,
for yours will be a delightful land, says the Lord Almighty.
When you read through the Old Testament, you find that God is concerned
that Israel is a light to the lost nations.
He wants the lost nations to come and turn to Him as a true God
through Israel being a witness, a shining light,
that God is in their midst.
But it doesn't look like that if they do not love God
and everything is just a mess and a curse in the land of Israel.
In the New Testament, it is not a nation that is witnessing to the lost world.
It is the church.
And so we are told these words as the church in 1 Peter chapter 2 and verse 12.
Live such good lives among the pagans.
Live such godly lives among the pagans that though they accuse you of doing wrong,
otherwise they don't like what you're on about.
They think you're wrong in so many things.
Nevertheless, it says, though they accuse you of doing wrong,
they may see your good deeds.
They may see your godliness.
And that will be the result of that.
They may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day He visits us.
And so when that day comes, that final day, they will be God glorifiers.
They will be people because they've seen God in you.
In the church, they will be fellow worshipers.
They will not be under trial.
They will be fellow worshipers.
It is our godly lives that speak to the lost world.
And we are hardly going to care about living outstanding godly lives in this world
if we don't care to worship our God when it comes to how we spend our money.
In that area, which is told in the New Testament, secret area, private area,
if we are not right with God privately in that area,
how are we ever going to be right with Him in an outstanding way in all that is seen?
If we are giving the scraps to God and essentially just living like the rest of the world,
how is the rest of the world ever going to see how great our God is?
For the people of Malachi's time, I find it interesting that repentance starts with them and their giving.
It doesn't seem that God goes for the adultery and the lying and the sorcery.
He goes to the giving first.
You see, it is a people who love God from the heart who will stand out in every other area.
And God has shown an area that betrays a problem with the heart.
Let us not be like that.
We have a merciful and gracious God who wants to bless us and through us reach a lost world.
Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, we bow before you, thanking you for your grace and mercy.
And we pray that you would help each and every one of us to delight in the fact that you do not change.
You've always been a God of mercy and grace.
And you want to bless us.
You want to see us thrive in you and enter the new world.
And we look forward to that day when we will be in eternity with you in the new world,
all because of your mercy and grace and you will not count our wrongs against us.
Help us who have turned to you to love you with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength,
to be a repenting people and to look into the areas where we are not living as we should,
particularly in the areas has come up in the scripture today in the area of how we are with our giving.
May we love you in that area too.
May we be generous.
May we be sacrificial in that area.
And may it all amount to us being a people who stand out in this world, shining the wonder of our God,
because we've been changed, because we are not like the world and we are different.
We pray these things in Jesus name.
Amen.