Sunday 21 March 2010

After He Has Suffered (Isaiah 53.10-12)

One hot day 1947, a young Bedouin shepherd boy was throwing stones into the caves on the shores of the Dead Sea when he heard a very startling noise. Instead of the usual thud and echo of his stone striking a rock, this time it sounded like he had smashed a vase or something. He ran away as fast as he could and hid behind a rock thinking he was going to get into trouble for breaking someone’s china. But no one came out of the cave. He waited a bit longer – nothing moved. So he slowly approached the cave and went in. In the cave he saw dozens of clay jars holding nine hundred very ancient parchments; the Dead Sea scrolls. It was one of the most significant discoveries of antiquity of all time.


2700 years before that Isaiah wrote down some words about a mysterious servant figure. He wrote in graphic detail about his appalling suffering and traumatic death. It is an almost photographic record of Jesus’ passion and crucifixion, 750 years before it happened.

The description of suffering and death that is born on behalf of others, of burial and of resurrection is so thorough that some people have said it must have been fabricated by deceitful Christians after the crucifixion and made to look like it was written before. And, that’s what it looks like, after all the whole passage is written in the past tense.

But the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls has settled the matter. They discovered, a complete copy of Isaiah (including chapter 53) dating back to several hundred years before Jesus was even born.

‘My servant’, says God in 52.13, ‘will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted’. How is this going to happen? Some sort of coronation ceremony perhaps? A great splash of pomp? No. God says that he would be raised up only after he had suffered.

Just picking through the verses we have been looking at over the last few weeks, you can see twelve indisputable things about this suffering servant, all of which were perfectly fulfilled by Jesus’ death and resurrection.

1) In v3, it describes a man who will be turned upon and rejected.

He was despised and rejected by others,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

2) Verse 8 says his trial will be a miscarriage of justice.

By oppression and judgment he was taken away.

It will be a joke trial because he will be innocent in word and deed as v9 makes clear.

He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.

3) 52.14 indicates that the gruesomeness of his beatings will be so savage that people won’t recognise him anymore.

His appearance was so disfigured 
beyond that of any human being 
and his form marred beyond human likeness.

4) Verse 5 predicts that his death will result not from poisoning or hanging or from drowning or burning or suffocation - but from wounds pierced in his flesh.

He was pierced…


5) He will not try and argue his way out of it and he, who died at the same time that Passover lambs were being offered in the temple, will himself be like an uncomplaining lamb going to slaughter. You can read that in v7.

He did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.

6) Nobody will complain or come to his aid – he will be deserted and denied.

We considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. (v4)

Who of his generation protested? (v8)

7) Yet v12 says that he will pray for his executioners while he is dying.

He made intercession for the transgressors.

8) Then no less than ten times between v4 and v12, it says that in dying, he will somehow take the blame for all our sickness, sadness and sinfulness upon himself. For example

Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering… (v4)


He was crushed for our iniquities… (v5)

The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (v6)

9) He really will die. He will breathe his last and his body will become a lifeless corpse. Verse 8.

For he was cut off from the land of the living.

10) Not only that, he will die among thieves and he will then be buried in the tomb of a wealthy man. Verse 9.

He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death

11) All this will be no accident, says v10, but fully in God’s plan.

Yet it was the Lord's will to crush him and cause him to suffer.

12) After suffering, death and burial, he will live again and be exalted as v10-11 make clear.

Though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days…


After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied…
Therefore I will give him a portion among the great…

What an amazing vision.

So Jesus suffered terribly, died, was buried and was raised to life. The Scriptures had said it would happen but who could have guessed that it would describe the life of a carpenter’s son turned preacher 750 years after the prophecy was written?

Crucially, it says that he bore, in his body, your sin and your sickness – and mine. He took the blame on himself. The wages of sin is death – his death, not mine. He paid my penalty. When Isaiah wrote all this down he cannot have had any idea what he was writing about, nor would any of his contemporaries.

“What’s that about Isaiah? Someone gets stabbed because of our sins?” “I don’t know, I just heard it from God and had to write it down.”

Now, with hindsight, you can see that Isaiah was painting the finest word portrait of Jesus that has ever been painted. It’s perfect. All the shades and tones are in the right place.

It describes a man who was led to a courtyard where they pressed a crown of Judean thorns (as hard as barbed wire) onto his head. He was molested and pushed around by a battalion of men, who called him names, thumped him, spat in his face and pulled out his beard in lumps. Then, he was ordered to carry the crossbeam of his cross until he couldn't lift it any further. At the crucifixion site, he was stripped a second time, stretched out on his cross and 12 inch nails were driven into his forearms. His knees were twisted round and another long nail was driven between his tibia and Achilles tendon. Then they lifted high his cross with ropes and let it drop into a hole.

Hanging there, sunburnt, thirsty, exposed, stared at, laughed at; he was left for six hours in indescribable suffering as his life ebbed away.

Still feeling the stinging sores from his beating, getting weaker as his blood pumped out of his gaping wounds, facing the pain of having been deserted by his friends, rejected by the world. It was an emotional anguish; stripped and left to die slowly in front of his mother. It was a spiritual anguish; severed from the affection of his Father, as he carried the full weight of the guilt of our sin.

For as he hung there, he took the blame and suffered the terrible retribution for every unjust hanging, every ugly riot, every spiteful attack, all the mean things you and I ever said and did, all the shameful things, the darkest evil, he bore the weight of wars and massacres, he plumbed the horrors of Auschwitz and Rwanda and Srebrenica. He felt the lonely pain of every raped girl, every shunned parent, every abandoned spouse, every bullied child, the full range of human selfishness, pain and hatred and guilt and fallenness and he took it all upon himself.

No one took his life from him. He laid it down. Such is his love for you, for you, for you.

I’m going to pass round a replica crown of thorns and some household nails. The Judean thorns that made his crown are much harder and the spikes are much longer. The roman nails that fixed him to the cross were longer and thicker. Hold them in your hands and pass them around - and thank him that he took this for you.

And then watch some images of his passion and praise him that he did this for you. Amen.

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 21st March 2010

Sunday 14 March 2010

Spiritual Fitness: Joy (Philippians 4.1-13)

Introduction

Getting into good spiritual shape is quite a demanding. We’ve already talked about prayer, fasting and tithing. And we’re going to look at sacrifice next week. That’s a tough programme. Makes an army assault course look like a walk in the park! Praying, fasting, giving and living sacrificially are things that people do. They are faith exercises, if you like. They are actions that people take. They’re to do with behaviour. But today’s theme (joy) is different isn’t it? I may feel joyful – or I perhaps I may not – but in any case not many would say that joy is something you do. The Oxford English Dictionary defines joy as “A feeling of great pleasure and happiness.” So either I experience pleasurable emotions or I do not. Either I happen to feel full of joy or I just don’t. But I can’t force myself to overflow with heavenly happiness; that would be completely artificial and contrived wouldn’t it?

Nehemiah 8.10 says that the joy of the Lord is our strength. And that joy does not depend on how the weather looks, or what’s on the lunch menu or the ups and downs of life. My joy is in the Lord.

What I mean to say is this: joy is a choice. It’s a life preference. That’s why God says in Psalm 37.4 “Delight yourself in the Lord.” It’s not a suggestion. It’s not advice. It’s an order to be glad in him that God gives to the whole of creation. “Delight yourself in the Lord.”


How can you choose to be joyful without being false? I want you to imagine that you are a small child, just 6 weeks old. You fall ill and your sight weakens. The doctors treating you make terrible elementary mistakes and their lack of care and attention actually make the situation worse. Their making a pig’s ear of some fairly routine treatment, results in you losing your sight irreversibly. This is what happened to a young American girl called Fanny Crosby. She began to understand that other children could see and people broke the news to her that, as she grew up, she would never see the colours of creation or the beauty of the natural world. But she decided to keep a treasure of contentment in her heart. When she was 8 years old she wrote these lines:

Oh what a happy soul I am, although I cannot see;
I am resolved that in this world contented I will be.
How many blessings I enjoy, that other people don't;
To weep and sigh because I'm blind, I cannot, and I won't.


She died in 1915 having written over 8,000 hymns of praise and worship many of which are still sung today. She never allowed herself to grow bitter or resentful. She said one day, “In heaven, where I shall be healed, oh what joy, the first face I shall see will be my Saviour’s.” You see, for the world joy comes and goes with the ups and downs of life. But for anyone who is in Christ joy is something you do - joy is a choice.

This is the theme of our first reading from Philippians. Several times in this short letter Paul erupts with joy as he says, for example, “In all my prayers for all of you I always pray with joy... Because of this I rejoice… Yes, and I will continue to rejoice… I will continue for your progress and joy in the faith… You are my joy and my crown… I rejoice greatly in the Lord…”

No one reading that would be surprised if they were told that the man who wrote these words did so having just won the lottery, reclining by an empty pool, in a luxury hotel, with a glass of champagne, dictating them to a gorgeous secretary.

But no. Having been arrested for a crime he never committed, he finds himself far from home, attached by a chain to a duty officer, remanded in custody, locked up behind bars and awaiting a court hearing.

He says this; “Even if I am being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service coming from your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you.” In other words, even though I’m banged up here inside in a total miscarriage of justice – oh my, I am just overflowing with joy and this happiness, this contentment, is in God. Joy is a choice.

Why is it that we have to fight for joy? Why do we find that sometimes our soul is downcast and heavy? It’s because the Christian life is a fight. There are pressures all around that sap dry our joy in Christ - I call them joy smashers - and there are 6 examples of them in this passage of Scripture, Philippians 4.

1) Drifting from God (v1)

Here’s the first; drifting away from God. Look at v1. “Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, dear friends!”

A few years ago I read a book about the behaviour of a pride of lions. They are ruthlessly efficient hunting machines. Lionesses (because not surprisingly it’s the females who do all the work while the males lie around doing nothing!) they spend hours on end patiently tracking a herd of antelopes or wildebeest in the hope of singling out a young one, a sick one or a distracted one that gets separated from the others.

The Bible picks this up and tells us that the enemy of our souls, Satan, operates in exactly the same way. 1 Peter 5.8: “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”

Now, if you’re young in faith, or if you’re faith is weakened because you have neglected to feed and nourish yourself on the spiritual food that is the word of God, or if you have allowed yourself to become isolated from fellowship and biblical teaching, it won’t take long before Satan has you in his sights. He hates you, he wants to drain your joy in the Lord and destroy you. It says he’s prowling around looking for someone to devour.

Why does drifting away from God lead to less joy? Because fullness of joy is found - where? In the presence of the Lord. Psalm 16.11 says, “You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.” So the more time you spend resting and renewing in the presence of God, before him in the intimacy of heartfelt praise – the more your joy will renew its strength. That’s a spiritual law. Drawing close to God in worship is part of our essential survival kit as disciples of Christ.

2) Resentment (v2-3)

Second joy smasher: resentment. Verse 2: “I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord…” Here are two women in the church at Philippi who, by all appearances, have crossed each other off their Christmas card lists. I wonder what they were upset about? What might have been the nature of their little dispute? Was it the colour of the flowers or the choice of worship songs or something more substantial? Nobody knows, it doesn’t say. But let me ask you this; do you honestly think these two women were in top form, smiling broadly and generally full of joy all the time that their conflict was simmering away unresolved? Of course not. I picture these two with their arms folded defensively, frowning unhappily and touchy about the smallest thing. Tensions and misunderstandings between brothers and sisters are such a drain on joy.

If it so happens today that you have an unresolved conflict with someone I bet my last penny that you aren’t dancing with abandoned delight before the Lord in your heart this morning. I’ve learned this lesson over the years; when God says “Delight yourself in the Lord” we sometimes need to sort out a soured relationship before we can do that with all our heart.

3) Anxieties (v4-7)

On to joy smasher number 3. The worries, anxieties, troubles and concerns of life that fatigue us.

Some of us might be wrestling at this very minute with fears about debt or family worries, or nagging thoughts about health… there could be any number of anxieties in our fellowship this morning connected with work or with matters of the heart… or whatever. Read v4-7 with me.

“Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything…” And then God says how he wants us to live with apprehension: “In every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Here is a simple three-point strategy for battling anxiety. Firstly, expose your needs - Paul says, “present your requests” - to God. That sounds like this: “Lord, I’m fearful about my children’s future, I’m apprehensive about my appointment with the doctor and I am just dreading when the heating bill comes.” You just pour it all out before God item by item.

Secondly, prayer and petition. Sometimes people say that prayer shouldn’t just be a list but if you’ve got a long list of worries, what better thing can you do than list it all before God? And it says in v6 “petitions.” What is a petition if it isn’t a long list of names and addresses? So in prayer and petition you say, “Lord, please increase my faith, will you break through and change these particular situations, by your power and grace may difficulties become opportunities; Father please glorify Jesus in my life.”

Thirdly, don’t forget to say thank you. Verse 6 mentions “thanksgiving” because it’s important. “Thank you Lord because I know you are faithful, you won’t let me down, I can trust you to deliver and thank you in advance for the blessing of answered prayer.”

4) Unwholesome Thinking (v8)

The fourth joy smasher is kind of implicit in what Paul writes here; it’s unwholesome or negative thinking. Verse 8 says, “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things.”

Just think about what the opposite of that verse would sound like. “Whatever is false, whatever is gross, whatever is just wrong, whatever is dirty, whatever is ugly, whatever is despicable - if anything is dire or misguided - spend your day thinking about that.”

That will sap your joy big time. Such unwholesome thoughts stain the mind, that’s obvious, but if they aren’t dealt with it gets worse; they pollute and infect the heart.

And I want to say that it’s not exposure to violent or obscene images or nurturing hatred and revenge that this verse has in mind. You can see easily how those things would poison the soul. But I think it’s much more subtle. It’s things like jealousy and comparisons; “She looks like a car crash in that dress.” “How come that loser has a bigger house than me?”

Unwholesome thinking takes away our joy in the Lord. And that’s why God wants to renew our minds.

5) Abstract Religion

Joy smasher number 5: this may surprise some but abstract religion that is just cerebral and academic turns the soul miserable. Look at v9 with me. “Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me - put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.”

Question: how can I ensure that the God who gives peace will be with me? The answer, according to v9 is: By putting my faith into practice. Loving people, reaching out to the lonely, supporting the people no one else notices, welcoming strangers, opening my home, visiting the sick, forgiving people who have hurt me…

There is a version of the Christian life that is purely intellectual and dry. I don’t mean to say that we should hold theology or Bible study in contempt, on the contrary. No, I am talking about unattractive, dreary and boring churchliness that bears no resemblance to anything Jesus ever said or did, and is completely absent from the Gospels except in the sanctimonious snootiness of the Pharisees. God save us from it! Oh God, give my generation a chance to see a church that talks like Jesus and loves like Jesus!

6) Worldliness (v11-13)

Finally, we arrive at joy smasher number 6 and it’s worldliness. If you really want to look miserable it’s simple; just cling for dear life to everything you own. It’s lethal for your joy in the Lord.

I used to have a grumpy neighbour when I was growing up who would go absolutely mad if any of his kids touched his gleaming car in the driveway. They almost needed his permission to breathe within 20 yards of it! He was the most cheerless man I have ever met.

What does Paul say in v11-13? Why is this man so elated? How is it that he can be jumping for joy as he rots away in jail, accused of a crime for which he is completely blameless? What does he say?

“I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”

I am not sure if I will ever get to having the attitude that John Wesley had about material things. There’s a story about Wesley’s house catching on fire and burning down. So someone went up to tell him about it and Wesley responded by shrugging his shoulders and saying, “God’s house burned down… one less thing to worry about.”

How many millionaires do you know or see on TV who never seem to be worried about anything? I can’t think of many… One of the secrets of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want, is to delight in the Lord.

Ending

Hebrews 1.9 says about Jesus, “God has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy.” Jesus was anointed with joy. He was heavy armed against all the joy smashers that we have listed this morning. Because he never drifted from his heavenly Father. Because he was never resentful or bitter. Because he was never racked by anxieties and worries. Because he never got into cycles of unwholesome thinking. Because his spirituality was always practical and down to earth, never sterile or sanctimonious. And because he was never attached to any of material thing.

That is how to live in the joy of the Lord – which is our strength and our song.

So let’s pray...

Preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 14th March 2010

Sunday 7 March 2010

Spiritual Fitness: Generosity (Malachi 3.6-12 and Matthew 23.23-24)

Introduction

Spiritual fitness chapter 3; generosity. I’m going to talk about money this morning – aren’t you glad you came? Well, let me start by saying two positive things.

1) Money isn't everything, but at least it keeps you in touch with your children when they leave home. 2) If you think nobody cares you are alive, just miss a couple monthly payments – and you’ll soon find they do!

Sometimes people complain that the church is always banging on about money. “Christians should stick to preaching the gospel” they say. And who can argue with that? Of course we should prioritize proclaiming the good news about Jesus. The only thing is it costs money to do that and, as most of us know, it doesn’t grow on trees. Incidentally, how ironic is it that those people I know who think that money does grow on trees are the ones who have a hard time getting out of the woods?

But anyway, Christians are followers of Jesus - and Jesus had more to say about money than almost any other subject. In all his many references to money, 9 were to do with resourcing ministry, 15 were illustrations of a spiritual principle and 35 were direct challenges to discipleship.

In other words, when Jesus confronted someone about how serious they really were about following him he usually did so by bringing up the subject of money. You’ll be familiar with some of these.

“Go and sell all that you have, and give to the poor, and you shall have wealth in heaven; and come, follow me.”

Or this one: “No one can serve two masters; either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will hold to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” (By the way, that’s why Billy Graham once said, “A cheque book is a theological document; it will tell you who and what you worship.”)

And another challenge from Jesus: “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle that for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Different Ways to Give

I can guess what some of you are probably thinking. Today’s theme is generosity and generosity is not just about money. And of course that is correct. In the dictionary, “Generosity” is defined as “readiness or liberality in giving and freedom from meanness or smallness of mind or character.”

So I can be generous in many different ways.

I can be generous with my thoughts. If someone passes a bit of gossip on to you about Auntie Mabel, you will be generous in thought if you choose to believe the best about her instead of fearing the worst. Has anyone let you down lately or disappointed you? You will be generous in thought if you let it drop instead of harbouring a grudge. Abraham Lincoln was good at this. He once said, “I destroy my enemies by making them my friends.”

I can be generous with my words. Every time you encourage someone (when you say to them “that was really good, you have really blessed me today”) or every time you thank them (“I just want to say thank you for what you do or for what you said”) or every time you pray for them you are being generous with your words.

I can be generous with my time. Possibly the biggest challenge we face as a church, with many who lead busy professional lives, is being generous with our time.

I think it was Stephen Cherry, who heads up training in the diocese, who once talked about an experiment someone did during a training day on the Good Samaritan. When it came to about midday the students were sent out in two separate groups in two different directions for lunch and both groups were told to come back at 1:30pm. Now, for each group there was a staged “accident” with fake blood in which an actor pretended to faint and hit their head. The first “accident” happened in front of the first group shortly after they broke for lunch. And, of course, everyone gathered round to see what was wrong, speak to the young man who had fallen and call for help. The other “accident” for the second group was staged 5 minutes before they were due back. And no one stopped - not primarily because they were hard hearted or uncaring - but because they didn’t want to be late; they didn’t have time.

I suspect that being generous with our time is the biggest challenge we face. A tithe of my waking hours; that is to say 10% of the all the time available to me when I am not asleep, works out at 11 hours a week. I suppose that most of us would find it more challenging to give 10% of our time than 10% of our income.

So I want to stress that staying spiritually fit by practicing generosity is not just about writing a cheque every month. In fact just writing a cheque every month might actually be the problem.

That is what Jesus was saying in Matthew 23.23. “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, such hypocrites! You give one tenth of your spices - mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law - justice, mercy and faithfulness.” In other words, you have been generous with your money but you have been mean with your thoughts, your words and your time.

There is no doubt about this; these religious leaders were scrupulously open-handed with their money. They made painstakingly sure that they gave away one tenth of all their earnings. They would have been absolutely mortified by the very idea of giving any less (even down to 10% of their herb garden – you can just picture them with a ruler and scissors on the parsley bush).

But the gospels tell us that they made a parade of their generosity. They announced with trumpets the act of putting their envelope in the offering so as to be noticed by others. Jesus says, “when you give… do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.”

I have a friend in Canada who said once that that’s his church treasurer’s favourite Scripture. He says it’s the fastest Bible verse in the West. Your left hand does not know what your right hand is doing. So the right hand puts a whole wad of bank notes into the offering before the left hand has a chance to say, “Oh no, not that much!” I’d just like to make it clear that I don’t think that that interpretation is the right one!

Tithing

Where did the Pharisees get the 10% figure from? They got it from the Law of Moses which mentions it a lot. Leviticus 27, for example, says: “A tithe of everything from the land, whether grain from the soil or fruit from the trees, belongs to the Lord: it is holy to the Lord” (Leviticus 27.30). Deuteronomy 14 explains that the tithe existed for three reasons; firstly to acknowledge the abundance of God’s provision; secondly, to give an income to the Levites in the temple who had no other way of earning a living; and thirdly, to assist the poor who had fallen on hard times.

And Pharisees also knew about our first reading from the Prophecy of Malachi which says, “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house.” Malachi was written about 450 years before Christ, a time when God’s people were rebuilding Jerusalem which had been in ruins for decades. By the time Malachi prophesied there was a city wall with its gates crucial for security; there were new houses and there was a completed temple. The nation was back on its feet again after years of exile in Babylon.

But there was a problem; low rainfall and failing harvests – not just once but two years running, then three, then four... The crop yield was becoming predictably disappointing. Cattle and sheep were becoming thinner and thinner. Why? Why were things not going right?

It was all due to spiritual neglect. Here’s a principle that runs right through the Bible; when God’s people honour him and put him first in all things, he restores, he provides and he blesses at all times. And the reverse is true. When God is silent, when his presence disappears from worship and when he withholds his blessing it is because God’s people have put themselves first and honoured themselves above him.

In Malachi’s day, across the land, worship had become tired and stale. The people were half-hearted and the priests, with no real vision, were just going through the motions. God’s people were drifting into relationships with godless spouses from pagan nations. Men were being unfaithful to their wives. Marriages were falling apart. The most vulnerable people (widows, orphans, immigrants and the poor) were being overlooked and forgotten. The nation was in a sorry state because it was becoming disconnected from God and failed harvests were a direct consequence.

Notice in Malachi 3 that the people are completely unaware that there is any kind of problem.

Verse 7; “Return to me” says God.

So they look at themselves, shrug their shoulders and say, “Return? What do you mean ‘return’? How? It’s news to us that we have actually gone anywhere.”

Verse 8: “You are robbing me.” Says God.

So they look at the dry fields and empty barns and say, “Robbing? Wh…? How does that work that we are stealing from you?

Verse 9: “In tithes and offerings. You are under a curse - your whole nation - because you are robbing me.”

And what single solution does God prescribe to lift the curse on the nation? It comes in v10. “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house.”

Don’t you feel a bit sorry for these people? At first sight, it looks as if God is being a bit harsh on them. If yours is an agricultural economy and your harvests fail disastrously year after year, your country falls into recession and your reserves dwindle to perilously low levels. I guess the people of Malachi’s day were saying, “Now let’s be sensible, watch the pennies and cut back on non essentials.”

If that were all, then yes, someone might well say that God is being a bit severe. But God promises big things here to those who faithfully give back to him their first fruits, not their last fruits. 1 Corinthians 16.2 in the New Testament says the same thing: “On the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with your income...” Not “See what’s left for the Lord after you’ve covered all your outgoings.”

God likes to turn upside down our accepted wisdom about generosity. Many people tend to think that everything we have is ours and we can decide how much of our stuff we give away – if anything. But the Bible teaches that, if Jesus is Lord, everything we have is his. And under Christ as we give without counting, the more he seems to bless without counting.

So God speaks about opening up the floodgates of the sky and tipping down rain on the land to bring about a harvest so abundant that the people wouldn’t have anywhere to put all the grain. This is the promise of God for a generous people.

But I want to say also that there is no compulsion from God over this. The New Testament angle on this is, “Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” (2 Corinthians 9.7) Under Christ you are free to tithe. The difference is that under Moses you were not free not to tithe.

Does it work? I resolved a long time ago never to preach on something that wasn’t a reality in my own life. In my years as a Christian, there have been times when I have tithed, times when I have given less and times when I have given more. The only time our bank account has ever been overdrawn is during the time when we gave less. The rest of the time God has blessed us abundantly; we have never lacked for anything we needed and our four children are walking with God. Blessings all mine and ten thousand beside.

How does this work? I don’t know. But it does. As the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken Colonel Sanders once said, “There's no reason to be the richest man in the cemetery.” So let me quote from three wealthy businessmen each of which were multi-millionaires and each of which had a gift of generosity and who gave away most of what they accumulated before they died.

Sir John Templeton, the stock investor and chairman of the Templeton Fund: “I have observed 100,000 families over my years of investment counselling. I always saw greater prosperity and happiness among those families who tithed than among those who didn’t.”

John D. Rockefeller, the oil tycoon: “I never would have been able to tithe the first million dollars I ever made if I had not tithed my first salary, which was $1.50 per week.”

Robert Gilmore Letourneau, the engineer and inventor: “I shovel money out, and God shovels it back ... but God has a bigger shovel!”

Test Me

And then God says something truly shocking in v10. “Test me…” Time and time again God says in the Bible, “Don’t test me.” But here God makes an exception. Why here? Because putting God to the test in the area of our money stretches and exercises our faith. Putting him to the test in any other way is saying, in effect, that God has to justify himself to us while we sit around with our arms folded.


Do you want to do an experiment to see if God can be trusted or not? Here it is. Step out in faith. Give him back the first tenth. See if he disappoints you in return.

For any of you who have never done this, let’s be honest - it’s quite daunting. What if it doesn’t work for me? What if this is just for the Old Covenant and now we are free from the Law? Is this irresponsible given my situation? What if God is calling me to give only in other ways? I have asked the same questions.

So our treasurer John Belmont would like to help us put God to the test. Here’s the deal. He will arrange, for anyone who wants to, a three month tithing trial. You tithe and pray during that time that God will bless you in your life and provide for all your needs financially. If, at the end of that time you can conclude that he has blessed you and provided for you (and I think he will) then you’ll have grown in faith and released resources for the kingdom.

And if for any reason you feel he has not blessed you and allowed you to get into trouble financially then John will refund you. There’ll be no questions asked, no judging, no pressure, no assumption of failure, no guilt… you’ll get your money back and that will be the end of it. His details are on the notice sheet.

“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 crops, 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.


Preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 7th March 2010