SPEAKER_01: This morning we're going to be in the book of Malachi, and as we've been studying the book for a few weeks, this week and then next week, we'll finish it up on Palm Sunday before we get to Easter Sunday together.
SPEAKER_01: This morning we're going to be in Malachi chapter 3, verses 6 down to the end of the chapter is our text.
SPEAKER_01: So why don't we just jump in by reading from the Word of God together?
SPEAKER_01: Will you look down at your Bibles and follow with me as I read from God's Word, Malachi chapter 3, beginning in verse 6?
SPEAKER_01: For I the Lord do not change.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.
SPEAKER_01: From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them.
SPEAKER_01: Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts.
SPEAKER_01: But you say, How shall we return?
SPEAKER_01: Will man rob God?
SPEAKER_01: Yet you are robbing me.
SPEAKER_01: But you say, How have we robbed you?
SPEAKER_01: In your tithes and contributions.
SPEAKER_01: You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you.
SPEAKER_01: Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house, and thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you, and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.
SPEAKER_01: I will rebuke the devourer for you, so that he will not destroy the fruits of your soil, and your vine in the field shall not fail to bear, says the Lord of hosts, then all nations will call you blessed, for you will be a land of delight, says the Lord of hosts.
SPEAKER_01: Your words have been hard against me, says the Lord, but you say, How have we spoken against you?
SPEAKER_01: You have said, It is vain to serve God.
SPEAKER_01: What's the prophet in keeping his charge or in walking as in mourning before the Lord of hosts?
SPEAKER_01: Now we call the arrogant blessed.
SPEAKER_01: Evildoers not only prosper, but they are putting God to the test and escape.
SPEAKER_01: Then those who feared the Lord spoke with one another, and the Lord paid attention and heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before him, and those who feared the Lord and esteemed his name.
SPEAKER_01: They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, in the day when I make up my treasured possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him.
SPEAKER_01: Then once more you will see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and the one who does not serve him.
SPEAKER_01: This is the word of God.
SPEAKER_01: Life is filled with many tests.
SPEAKER_01: Start school as a young kid, you have test after test, and you finally graduate and move on with life, and you enter employment, and there's test after test.
SPEAKER_01: And it's been said often, and well said, that life is really just nothing more or less than a series of tests.
SPEAKER_01: Even when it comes to more personal matters like relationships.
SPEAKER_01: Think of what the Bible describes as our closest relationship, the covenant relationship of marriage.
SPEAKER_01: At least in most Western societies, marriage begins with one big test: dating.
SPEAKER_01: Isn't that all dating is?
SPEAKER_01: It's just one long, prolonged audition.
SPEAKER_01: It's a test to see, are you the one?
SPEAKER_01: And if you pass the test, maybe you can enter into marriage.
SPEAKER_01: Well, I think what all of these tests have in common is that kind of human nature, we don't really like being tested.
SPEAKER_01: So I find it striking that in the passage that we just read, our text for this morning, the heart of it is an invitation from God to allow his people to test him.
SPEAKER_01: He says in verse 10, test me in this.
SPEAKER_01: Now we remember that the book of Malachi is a prophecy from the Lord to his people at a period of time in which they had come back from their Babylonian exile.
SPEAKER_01: They had rebuilt the temple, building the city walls, and they're expecting that God is going to fulfill all his promises to reconstitute Israel as the center of a global kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: He's going to establish them in the land, he's going to come dwell among them in their presence, and he's going to usher forth a perfect kingdom of righteousness in which all the nations of the earth worship the God of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: That's what they're expecting, and it hasn't happened.
SPEAKER_01: And so after a few generations of not experiencing the fulfillment of God's promises, the people had become disillusioned and disenchanted with this God.
SPEAKER_01: And so God raised up the prophet Malachi to reaffirm his promises.
SPEAKER_01: We saw last week that the Lord reaffirmed his promises that he is going to establish his kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: So reorient your mind, not around your present circumstances, as disappointing and difficult as they really may be, but reorient your heart towards eternity and the certainty that God is going to establish his kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: In this passage that we're studying this morning, he moves forward and says, I don't just want you to orient your heart towards eternity, I also want you to consider your relationship with me now, in the present.
SPEAKER_01: And what God reveals in this passage is that he has requirements for us if we want to be in a covenant relationship with God now and in the future.
SPEAKER_01: And what he offers us in this text is an invitation to test him, to see if we give ourselves unreservedly to God, if he will not unreservedly give himself back to us.
SPEAKER_01: So I want to walk through this text, and it'll unfold in three stages as we study it this morning.
SPEAKER_01: And the first is a declaration that God gives us, and we find that in chapter 3, verses 6 and 7.
SPEAKER_01: So look down at your Bibles at verse 6, where we read, I the Lord do not change.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.
SPEAKER_01: From the days of your fathers, you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them.
SPEAKER_01: So you see the contrast here between the people of Israel and the God of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: The people of Israel have turned aside from God's statutes.
SPEAKER_01: And the book of Malachi has been replete with these indictments.
SPEAKER_01: The book began by God charging the people with doubting his love.
SPEAKER_01: Then he charged them with not honoring and revering him, and in fact polluting his temple, despising him by corrupting temple worship.
SPEAKER_01: And then in chapter 2, verses 10 and following, he charged them with unfaithfulness towards one another.
SPEAKER_01: They've been breaking relationships, they've been divorcing one another, they've been committing injustice and oppression in the land.
SPEAKER_01: By the time you get to chapter 2, verse 17, God says, I've been wearied with you, questioning my character, doubting my promises, being unfaithful to me and one another.
SPEAKER_01: And yet in this text, God affirms that because I do not change, you have not been consumed.
SPEAKER_01: That is, because God does not change, in his resolute desire to bless his covenant people, the people of Israel, have not been treated as their actions deserve.
SPEAKER_01: That's the contrast here.
SPEAKER_01: God declares, I do not change.
SPEAKER_01: And of course, in context here, his unchanging nature is in reference to his promises.
SPEAKER_01: He made a covenant with Abraham and the descendants of Abraham that he would constitute them a nation in their land and through them bring a blessing to all the nations.
SPEAKER_01: He'd established them as a kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: They would be the heart of a global kingdom in which all the peoples of the earth worship the God of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: And God says, I am going to fulfill my promises, and because I am loyal to my word, you haven't been consumed.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, because God doesn't change, you can trust him.
SPEAKER_01: So you see, the nature of what God is doing in this text is this.
SPEAKER_01: And he's going to say, I have commands for you, I have expectations for you, I have requirements of the way you need to respond to me.
SPEAKER_01: But our obedience to God and our response to God have to be grounded in a response to the character of God.
SPEAKER_01: And so God begins with this declaration of who he is.
SPEAKER_01: He is an unchanging, faithful God.
SPEAKER_01: And based on that reality, you can respond to him appropriately.
SPEAKER_01: You know, we could go everywhere in the Bible, couldn't we, to see that God fleshes out this reality that he is an unchanging God?
SPEAKER_01: One of the texts where God asserts this is a Psalm 102 that says, Of old you, O God, laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands.
SPEAKER_01: They will perish, but you will remain.
SPEAKER_01: They all wear out like a garment.
SPEAKER_01: You'll change them like a robe, and they will pass away, but you are the same, and your years have no end.
SPEAKER_01: This is the God of the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't change.
SPEAKER_01: God is pure self-existent reality, dependent on no one, from eternity to eternity, self-existent in and of himself.
SPEAKER_01: Effulgent in his glory, a fountain of life, who himself gives life to everything that has it.
SPEAKER_01: And he never changes.
SPEAKER_01: His perfections are pristine.
SPEAKER_01: There's no room for improvement with this God.
SPEAKER_01: And he can't decrease, he can't be corrupted, so if he can't increase, decrease, move left or right, then we can say that what God is, God always is, always will be.
SPEAKER_01: The God of the Bible never changes.
SPEAKER_01: And I think it is helpful for us as we think about this declaration that God gives us about his unchanging nature, just to contrast it with everything else that exists.
SPEAKER_01: There is God who never changes, and there's everything else that is in constant flux.
SPEAKER_01: You know this from your own experience.
SPEAKER_01: Everything in life changes.
SPEAKER_01: But I think not just from our own spirit experience, but when we look in the scriptures, we see that the nature of humanity is that we change.
SPEAKER_01: I think one good illustration of this is in the life of King David.
SPEAKER_01: Before he was king, in 1 Samuel chapter 21, when he was on the run from Saul, who was the king of Israel at that time, he decided it would be a good idea to flee to Gath, which, if you don't remember, was the city of Goliath, who David slew.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know why David thought that was a good idea, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.
SPEAKER_01: And so off he skedaddled to hide in Gath, and naturally it became known to the king of Gath that David, hey, the guy who chopped Goliath's head off, he's here.
SPEAKER_01: And the king of Gath said, I don't think I like that.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna deal with this guy.
SPEAKER_01: And David realized that was a bad idea to come here.
SPEAKER_01: And the text says he changed his behavior.
SPEAKER_01: And he began to let his drool run down his chin, and he was scratching the walls.
SPEAKER_01: He feigned insanity.
SPEAKER_01: Basically, it looked like Los Angeles.
SPEAKER_01: Because he recognized bad idea, better change course.
SPEAKER_01: You know God never does that.
SPEAKER_01: What God decrees, he declares decrees from eternity past to eternity future.
SPEAKER_01: Isaiah 46 says, He declares the end from the beginning, from ancient times to things not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand and I will accomplish all my purpose.
SPEAKER_01: I have spoken and I will bring it to pass.
SPEAKER_01: I have purposed and I will do it.
SPEAKER_01: You can trust the word of an unchanging God.
SPEAKER_01: You can anchor your life in the unflinching reality that God is what he is and he always will be.
SPEAKER_01: From a few years ago in 2017, when Hurricane Harvey hit the coast of Texas.
SPEAKER_01: There were a lot of reports that came out of the destruction.
SPEAKER_01: It was it was significant.
SPEAKER_01: But in particular when this hurricane happened, there was uh a photo that went around the internet that's stuck in my mind.
SPEAKER_01: It was a photo of what is a fairly famous tree called the Big Tree in south of Texas.
SPEAKER_01: It is a thousand-year-old oak tree.
SPEAKER_01: And the Texas Park Association released a photo after the damage to let us all know that the big tree was still going strong.
SPEAKER_01: And then in this picture, the big tree was standing tall and proud with the destruction of all of his younger brother trees strewn on the ground all around him.
SPEAKER_01: And in quintessential Texas fashion, they had a caption with the photo that says, You don't get old by being weak.
SPEAKER_01: God is the God of age to age.
SPEAKER_01: God is not a God of change, he's not a god of flux, he's not a fickle God, God is an unchanging God.
SPEAKER_01: Everything else in the universe that has any sense of solidity gets its solidity because it has roots like this tree.
SPEAKER_01: And ultimately, if that real if that thing is going to last, it's because they have roots in God.
SPEAKER_01: But God doesn't need roots, he just is.
SPEAKER_01: So you can put your roots in him.
SPEAKER_01: You can ground your life in the unchanging reality that God is who he is.
SPEAKER_01: That's where God begins this text with this declaration of his unchanging nature, and that's the groundwork on which he's going to move forward and invite us to respond to him.
SPEAKER_01: And the way he invites us to respond is found in the next verse, in the second half of verse 7.
SPEAKER_01: Look down in your Bibles in verse 7.
SPEAKER_01: God says, Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts.
SPEAKER_01: Here's his invitation is to turn from your sin and flee to him.
SPEAKER_01: Part of God's unchanging decree is that he has decreed from eternity past to eternity future, he will receive repentant sinners.
SPEAKER_01: God says, All who come to me I will in no wise cast out.
SPEAKER_01: He will receive the repentant.
SPEAKER_01: But look at the way the people respond at the very end of verse 7.
SPEAKER_01: They say, How shall we return?
SPEAKER_01: And I think the way to understand their response is they're saying to God, Okay, you want us to come back to you, but how exactly are we supposed to do that?
SPEAKER_01: Because we never left.
SPEAKER_01: We're right here.
SPEAKER_01: I think in their mind, they felt like we are the people who have rebuilt the temple and we're keeping the temple service going.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, maybe our offerings aren't all according to your perfect liking, but at least we're making the offerings.
SPEAKER_01: We're trying to keep Sabbath.
SPEAKER_01: We're trying to be faithful here.
SPEAKER_01: So how are we supposed to repent?
SPEAKER_01: Where are we supposed to go to?
SPEAKER_01: We never left you.
SPEAKER_01: I don't think that's all that different from a new covenant attitude in the church that naturally tends to rise up in our hearts in which we think, yeah, maybe there's ways in which I could be more faithful to the Lord, maybe I could be more generous, maybe I could be more evangelistic, maybe my affection for the Lord could be hotter, maybe my seriousness with the besetting sins in my life could be more strident.
SPEAKER_01: But I mean, I'm at church, here I am, I'm here, aren't I?
SPEAKER_01: And yet the Lord speaks to that kind of person and says, Return to me.
SPEAKER_01: We have to recognize this reality that it doesn't matter physically where our feet are, what matters is our life.
SPEAKER_01: And God is saying there's a gap between us.
SPEAKER_01: Your sins have made a separation between you and me, and I want you to return.
SPEAKER_01: And look how he gets very specific about the way in which to return in verse 8 and following.
SPEAKER_01: Look down in your Bibles at verse 8.
SPEAKER_01: God says, Will a man rob God?
SPEAKER_01: Yet you are robbing me.
SPEAKER_01: But you say, How have we robbed you?
SPEAKER_01: In your tithes and contributions.
SPEAKER_01: You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you.
SPEAKER_01: Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house.
SPEAKER_01: That's God's requirement.
SPEAKER_01: His requirement is not, well, we're here, aren't we?
SPEAKER_01: His requirement is verse 10.
SPEAKER_01: His invitation in verse 10 is bring all of it, the full tithe, bring all of yourself.
SPEAKER_01: That's what I require from you.
SPEAKER_01: I'm the unchanging, absolutely, infinitely glorious God of the universe.
SPEAKER_01: I want all of you.
SPEAKER_01: Now, as soon as we're in the Old Testament and we're looking at a text that's talking about tithes, we need to discuss tithes just for a moment so we're on the same page and know what the text is actually speaking about.
SPEAKER_01: Tithes are part of the Mosaic covenant, the law that God gave through Moses to the people of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: They're part of the stipulations of the Mosaic covenant, in which God allotted the land to eleven of the twelve tribes, but not to the Levites.
SPEAKER_01: The Levites got no apportionment.
SPEAKER_01: And so the Levites were dedicated to temple service.
SPEAKER_01: They were supposed to focus their time and their energy on temple service.
SPEAKER_01: So what are they going to eat?
SPEAKER_01: That's where the tithe comes in.
SPEAKER_01: The other eleven tribes were required to give a tenth of their income, essentially, their produce and their livestock, to the Levites, so they could subsist on the tithe and be devoted to temple service and not farming.
SPEAKER_01: And then in addition to the tithe, you'll notice in verse 8, there's supposed to be a contribution.
SPEAKER_01: The contribution was of the tithe that came from the tribes to the Levites.
SPEAKER_01: The Levites then took a tenth of the tithe and gave it as a contribution directly to the Lord that even they didn't eat of.
SPEAKER_01: And God says that contribution is supposed to be the best of the best, given straight to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: You see this in Numbers chapter 18.
SPEAKER_01: Out of this is Moses, out of all the gifts that to you, the Levites, you shall present every contribution due to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: From each its best part is to be dedicated.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore you shall say to them, to the Levites, when you have offered from it the best of it, then the rest shall be counted to the Levites.
SPEAKER_01: So this is the requirement that the Lord has.
SPEAKER_01: Now, if we're talking about tithes, we do have to just say one word about the New Covenant believers' relationship to tithes.
SPEAKER_01: The new covenant doesn't give a stipulation to tithe 10% of your income.
SPEAKER_01: The Mosaic Covenant is fulfilled in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: If you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you relate to God not through the Mosaic Covenant but through the New Covenant.
SPEAKER_01: And God doesn't lay a strict 10% requirement upon your income.
SPEAKER_01: But he does require generosity in your giving to the work of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: 1 Corinthians 16, verse 2 speaks of a weekly offering at the gathering of the saints on the Lord's Day.
SPEAKER_01: And the basic attitude of the New Testament when it comes to giving and generosity is 2 Corinthians 9, verse 7, where Paul says, each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.
SPEAKER_01: This is our requirement to the Lord in the New Covenant.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, just look back up at the language that God uses in the text.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 8 Will a man rob God?
SPEAKER_01: Yet you are robbing me.
SPEAKER_01: You recognize that fundamentally all that you are and all that you have belongs to God.
SPEAKER_01: Your money ultimately belongs to Him.
SPEAKER_01: You're just an investment manager.
SPEAKER_01: It's not your money.
SPEAKER_01: Your possessions, your time, your intellect, your abilities, your family, everything that you have belongs to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And what does God want?
SPEAKER_01: Well, verse 10 says He wants all of it.
SPEAKER_01: The full tithe.
SPEAKER_01: Everything that you have belongs to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Your time, your goals, your family, your intellect, your words, everything is to be done to the glory of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: So you ought to ask yourself, Am I bringing the full tithe to the Lord?
SPEAKER_01: Is my entire life at the Lord's disposal?
SPEAKER_01: Am I genuinely open to full, devoted commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ?
SPEAKER_01: And the Lord wants to then up the ante a little bit with this question that He's putting to us to us, with this invitation that He's offering.
SPEAKER_01: Look at the rest of verse 10.
SPEAKER_01: Bring the full tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house, and thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts.
SPEAKER_01: If I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.
SPEAKER_01: That's a wild verse, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: But one of the questions that we ought to ask about this text is I'm pretty sure in the Bible it says, don't test the Lord, right?
SPEAKER_01: I'm pretty sure I've read that.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, I've read it a lot.
SPEAKER_01: It begins in Exodus chapter 17, when God redeems the people of Israel out of Egypt, and they come into the desert, and they start to get thirsty, and they complain and say, God, did you bring us out here just to kill us of thirst?
SPEAKER_01: And God says they were putting him to the test.
SPEAKER_01: And so Deuteronomy 6 summarizes that account by saying, You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.
SPEAKER_01: As you tested him at Messiah.
SPEAKER_01: And that verse will be familiar to you if you've read the New Testament, because in Matthew chapter 4, when Jesus is tempted by the devil in the wilderness, he quotes this verse to the devil and says, You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.
SPEAKER_01: So apparently, God doesn't want to be tested.
SPEAKER_01: Don't test the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: But this verse, God explicitly says, test me.
SPEAKER_01: So what's the deal?
SPEAKER_01: And I think it becomes pretty clear when you look at the text closely, look at the language God uses.
SPEAKER_01: Now I have to confess, I'm so disappointed in the ESV at this point.
SPEAKER_01: Every other English Bible, I think, gets captures the sense of the Hebrew perfectly.
SPEAKER_01: The English Bible, uh, ESV says in verse 10, and thereby put me to the test.
SPEAKER_01: Now, I like to think that I speak English pretty good, but I don't know what thereby means.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what that means.
SPEAKER_01: Every other English Bible, if you're reading the NIV or whatever, will say, Test me in this.
SPEAKER_01: The idea is that God is restricting the kind of test that He'll permit Himself to be subjected to.
SPEAKER_01: There's a specific kind of test that He not only is open to, but He wants you to put Him to.
SPEAKER_01: What is that test that He wants you to put Him to?
SPEAKER_01: Well, look at what will result from it in verses 11 and following.
SPEAKER_01: God says, I'll rebuke the devourer for you, so that it will not destroy the fruits of your soil, and your vine in the field shall not fail to bear, says the Lord of hosts, and all the nations will call you blessed, for you'll be a land of delight, says the Lord of hosts.
SPEAKER_01: And if you've read the Old Covenant, if you've read Deuteronomy and other texts in the Old Testament, that will sound familiar.
SPEAKER_01: That's covenantal language, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: God's saying, I'm going to bless your land, I'm going to bless your supply, all the nations are going to call you blessed.
SPEAKER_01: That's exactly what this is.
SPEAKER_01: This is covenant language.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, God is saying, I promised in the old covenant through Moses that if you obeyed me, Israel, these blessings would fall upon you.
SPEAKER_01: Test and see if I won't keep my word.
SPEAKER_01: I'll just show you one particular passage in Deuteronomy chapter 28.
SPEAKER_01: That's the text where the people of Israel and Deuteronomy are instructed when you cross the Jordan into the land, you are to announce all the blessings and the curses of the covenant.
SPEAKER_01: If you obey God, all of these curses will run upon you.
SPEAKER_01: They'll overtake you, the language says.
SPEAKER_01: They'll chase you down and find you.
SPEAKER_01: But if you disobey and break the covenant, all these curses will hunt you down.
SPEAKER_01: And I just want to show you two verses that will sound a lot like Malachi in this covenant section of Deuteronomy.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord will open to you his good treasury, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season, and to bless all the work of your hands, and you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow, and the Lord will make you the head and not the tail, and you shall only go up and not down if you obey the commands of the Lord your God.
SPEAKER_01: You see the echoes from Deuteronomy to Malachi?
SPEAKER_01: This is reaffirming the covenant promises that God gave to his people on Mount Sinai.
SPEAKER_01: God is saying, I made a promise.
SPEAKER_01: Just test and see if I will do exactly what I said.
SPEAKER_01: And now you can see so clearly the connection between God beginning with this declaration that he doesn't change, and then this invitation to test and see.
SPEAKER_01: Test and see if I will do exactly what I said, see if I'll change.
SPEAKER_01: I promised I would do this.
SPEAKER_01: Now come and see if I will.
SPEAKER_01: That's the invitation that God is giving to us.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, what God is inviting us to do is to test and see if he will be absolutely, unswervingly loyal to his covenant, to his promises to us.
SPEAKER_01: See if God will keep his word to you.
SPEAKER_01: That's what God is inviting you to do.
SPEAKER_01: So then the big question becomes Well, in the old covenant, under the stipulations through Moses, this was the relationship between the Israel and God.
SPEAKER_01: But we are new covenant believers.
SPEAKER_01: What is the word that we can test God on?
SPEAKER_01: Well, I think it's pretty clear in the language.
SPEAKER_01: Looked at verse 10 again.
SPEAKER_01: Bring the full tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house, and thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.
SPEAKER_01: It's an overwhelming blessing that supersedes anything that you could hope or think or imagine.
SPEAKER_01: And in fact, I want to make one final critique of the ESV at this point.
SPEAKER_01: In verse 10, this word that is rendered pour out really would be better rendered to empty out.
SPEAKER_01: There's a number of more common words that would be used for pouring.
SPEAKER_01: This word is used for emptying something.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, what God is saying is even more radical.
SPEAKER_01: He's saying, I'm going to open up the heavens, I'm going to shake them and empty them out.
SPEAKER_01: And everything that heaven could possibly offer you, I will not restrain even a drop.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to empty them out upon you.
SPEAKER_01: Now, if you are a new covenant believer, is that out exactly what God has done for you?
SPEAKER_01: He has opened the heavens, and he gave himself when he gave Christ.
SPEAKER_01: What is heaven if not the glory of God?
SPEAKER_01: And in Christ, the fullness of the glory of God in bodily form is given for you.
SPEAKER_01: God has emptied the heavens.
SPEAKER_01: He's given everything that there was.
SPEAKER_01: He restrained nothing when he gave himself, and his incarnation to live a life on your behalf, in his crucifixion to die a death on your behalf, in his ascension and his interceding for you to secure your eternal salvation.
SPEAKER_01: God has emptied the heavens and has given you more than enough.
SPEAKER_01: And now he's inviting you.
SPEAKER_01: Test me and see if I won't fulfill my promise that I'll finish the good work I started in you, that all of myself will be given to you.
SPEAKER_01: One of the ways you could think about this is if you need kind of a diagram here.
SPEAKER_01: Old Testament, covenant obedience resulted in spiritual and physical blessings in the now.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: The rain is going to open up, your crops are going to be growing.
SPEAKER_01: The new covenant offers spiritual and physical blessings.
SPEAKER_01: The only thing that's different is the timing.
SPEAKER_01: You get the spiritual blessings of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, of knowing Christ face to face, of having a foretaste of glory.
SPEAKER_01: And you have all of the physical things God could possibly offer you forever stored up for you in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: Not quite yet.
SPEAKER_01: So this text should not be understood as it is so commonly twisted to mean in modern American Christianity that if you just give God a little bit more on the offering plate, your bills will be paid.
SPEAKER_01: That is not the covenant that God has made with you.
SPEAKER_01: But God has made a promise concerning your physical blessings right now.
SPEAKER_01: You're going to inherit the entire earth.
SPEAKER_01: You're going to judge the nations, you're going to judge the angels, you're going to sit at God's right hand on his own throne.
SPEAKER_01: That's what he's promised to you.
SPEAKER_01: New heavens and new earth.
SPEAKER_01: But in the now, there is a word for you.
SPEAKER_01: You know, in the New Covenant, the scripture says that the only reason that you are on this planet, if you have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ, sealed by his spirit, you no longer belong to this world.
SPEAKER_01: You're a citizen of heaven.
SPEAKER_01: This is a strange world, and you are on a pilgrimage to get home.
SPEAKER_01: The only reason you are here is because God has work for you to do while you're here, to glorify God and to make disciples of all the nations.
SPEAKER_01: You're here on a temporary journey to achieve something for the home team.
SPEAKER_01: And as long as you are here, God will give you everything that you need to achieve your mission, and then he'll take you home.
SPEAKER_01: This is why George Whitfield, the 18th-century evangelist, used to say, Until God is done with me, I'm invincible on this world.
SPEAKER_01: Because Hebrews chapter 13, verse 5 says, Keep your life free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because he has promised, I will never leave you or forsake you.
SPEAKER_01: And he grounds that then in verse 8, in this reality, that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
SPEAKER_01: You have an unchanging God who has sworn a covenant to keep your soul safe, to provide for your needs now, and to usher you into untold, unimaginable glory forever in his presence, will you put him to the test and let him prove that it's true?
SPEAKER_01: That's what God's inviting us to do.
SPEAKER_01: You know, I think you could even bring this down to kind of everyday mundane levels.
SPEAKER_01: And just ask yourself the question: in the way that I conduct my life, in the way that I make decisions about my time and my money and how I use my intellect and the goals that I set for myself, am I intending to glorify God and put him to the test and let him show his faithfulness to me?
SPEAKER_01: Or am I primarily trying to look out for myself?
SPEAKER_01: Do I think I am a better keeper than the Lord?
SPEAKER_01: Do I believe that if I act in faith and do what I believe is right, I have convictions of what I've seen in the scriptures of the way that God wants me to think and to speak and to act?
SPEAKER_01: I have convictions that this is what God wants me to do.
SPEAKER_01: Do you have the follow-up conviction that God's going to take care of you if you do that?
SPEAKER_01: Will you put the Lord to the test in your life?
SPEAKER_01: Will you bring him the full tithe?
SPEAKER_01: Will you bring him all that you have?
SPEAKER_01: Because that's what the Lord requires of you.
SPEAKER_01: And isn't this a sweet deal?
SPEAKER_01: He says, Bring all of yourself, and I'll give you all of myself.
SPEAKER_01: Who wins in that deal?
SPEAKER_01: Well, the Lord has invited us to come and give all of ourself to him, but I want us to not just stop there because the Lord doesn't stop there.
SPEAKER_01: He wants us to take this extraordinarily seriously because in the following text, he says, There is coming a day when there's going to be a termination.
SPEAKER_01: A determination between those who fear the Lord and take him at his word and those who will their words prevail against him.
SPEAKER_01: Look at that in the following text in verse 13.
SPEAKER_01: In verse 13, the Lord says, Your words have been hard against me, says the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Your words have been hard against me.
SPEAKER_01: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_01: Now there's an expression in English, we have an idiom where we say, Oh, those are hard words.
SPEAKER_01: But there doesn't seem to be such an idiom in Hebrew text, at least not with the verb that is used in this passage.
SPEAKER_01: Rather, what the this passage is saying is there's one other passage in the Old Testament where this exact turn of phrase is used.
SPEAKER_01: It's when King David, who's now king, is speaking to his general Joab.
SPEAKER_01: And Joab wants David to do something.
SPEAKER_01: He has some counsel.
SPEAKER_01: David do this.
SPEAKER_01: And David says, no, we're going to do this other thing.
SPEAKER_01: And David's words were strong against Joab.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, David's words prevailed.
SPEAKER_01: David got his way.
SPEAKER_01: That's what God is saying.
SPEAKER_01: He's saying, what's been happening in your life is that I've been giving you my word, but you've been having it your own way.
SPEAKER_01: Your words are prevailing against mine.
SPEAKER_01: You are having it your own way in your life.
SPEAKER_01: You think you know better.
SPEAKER_01: You think you have a better plan for what to do with your money and your family and your ambitions.
SPEAKER_01: You have a better plan for your life than God does.
SPEAKER_01: And you say, Well, how have we done that?
SPEAKER_01: Well, then God answers the question in verse 14.
SPEAKER_01: You have said it is vain to serve God.
SPEAKER_01: What's the profit of keeping his charge or walking as in mourning before the Lord of hosts?
SPEAKER_01: We call those who are arrogant, blessed.
SPEAKER_01: Evildoers, prosper.
SPEAKER_01: They put God to the test and they escape.
SPEAKER_01: They look at the world and they say, I would be better off running my own life.
SPEAKER_01: I can do this better than God.
SPEAKER_01: It would be uncomfortable, it would be painful, it would be intolerable to let the word of the Lord prevail in my life.
SPEAKER_01: And do you see this is the key distinction in this determination that God is going to make between the righteous and the unrighteous, between those who are in a covenant with God and those who are outside of a covenant with God, is what you do with his word.
SPEAKER_01: When the word of God comes into your life and it comes into conflict with your own natural desires, with what you think is right and proper and best, with what you think will bring you most satisfaction and reward in life.
SPEAKER_01: When the word of God and your own heart comes into conflict, who wins?
SPEAKER_01: That's the fundamental question in your life.
SPEAKER_01: Christian people are people who fundamentally, the default of their life is that when God's word comes into conflict with my heart, God wins, not me.
SPEAKER_01: That's the difference.
SPEAKER_01: God's word has become bigger inside of me than my own desires.
SPEAKER_01: And when God's word comes into my life, he wins.
SPEAKER_01: That's what we see in the next section if you look down at verse 16.
SPEAKER_01: Those who feared the Lord spoke with one another.
SPEAKER_01: That is, there's two ways to respond to God.
SPEAKER_01: There's the response of, uh, that just doesn't seem right, or there's the response of those who fear the Lord, who are compelled by him, who find him magnificent and glorious and tremendous and to be loved and honored and adored.
SPEAKER_01: And they spoke to one another and they said, The Lord's right.
SPEAKER_01: We've been wrong.
SPEAKER_01: The problem's not with him, the problem's with us.
SPEAKER_01: I'm the problem.
SPEAKER_01: Let's put him to the test.
SPEAKER_01: Let's bring the full tithe.
SPEAKER_01: Let's put our whole lives at his disposal.
SPEAKER_01: Let's let him prove himself.
SPEAKER_01: Let's put the Lord to the test.
SPEAKER_01: And look at the way the Lord responds to that attitude.
SPEAKER_01: And the rest of verse 16, look at your text, it says, The Lord paid attention and heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared the Lord and esteemed his name.
SPEAKER_01: They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, in the day when I make up my treasured possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord draws near, he hears them, and he even writes a book of their names.
SPEAKER_01: And just one word on the book that's written here in verse 16, 17.
SPEAKER_01: There's one interpretation that has said that this is probably a covenant renewal document.
SPEAKER_01: That is, the people of Israel, the God fearers, wrote a book in which they said, we'll rededicate ourselves to keeping the covenant with God.
SPEAKER_01: We see something like that happening in the book of Ezra and Nehemiah, and that's possible interpretation, but I think there's a better way of understanding this book.
SPEAKER_01: Because look who's doing all the action here.
SPEAKER_01: Notice what happens right before the book is written.
SPEAKER_01: In verse 16, the Lord's paying attention, the Lord is hearing them, then there's this book that's written.
SPEAKER_01: Then in verse 17, the Lord is speaking and saying, They will be mine.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord's doing all the action.
SPEAKER_01: I think the best way to understand this is that this is the Lord's book in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: There's a book written down in the presence of the heavenly host before the Lord, a book of remembrance.
SPEAKER_01: Now, what is a book of remembrance?
SPEAKER_01: That phrase is used one other time in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_01: It's in the book of Esther.
SPEAKER_01: You remember in Esther, she has a cousin called Mordecai, who's an interesting homie.
SPEAKER_01: He does something pretty spectacular.
SPEAKER_01: He saves the king's life.
SPEAKER_01: He saves the Persian king's life.
SPEAKER_01: He uncovers a plot to assassinate the king, and then nothing happens.
SPEAKER_01: And the narrative moves along.
SPEAKER_01: And then one night, Ezra, excuse me, Esther chapter 6, the king can't sleep.
SPEAKER_01: And so he calls for the book of remembrance to be brought out and read to him.
SPEAKER_01: And his book of remembrance is things that have happened in the kingdom, the names of the people who did them, and their actions.
SPEAKER_01: And he decides, that'll put me to sleep.
SPEAKER_01: So as that's being read to him, before the king finally dozes off, the story comes up of what Mordecai did to uncover the plot of assassination against the king, and how the plot was foiled and the king's life was saved, and the king jolts up out of bed and says, What was done for Mordecai?
SPEAKER_01: And the answer is nothing.
SPEAKER_01: And the story continues, and the king rewards Mordecai.
SPEAKER_01: But do you understand that the idea of the book of remembrance is a book where names are written of those who are loyal to the king and their deeds so that they can be rewarded.
SPEAKER_01: That's what the Lord is doing.
SPEAKER_01: If you are the person who hears the word of the Lord and it comes into conflict with your desires, and you let the word of God win, and you bow and you say, The Lord wins.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord is Lord.
SPEAKER_01: I will trust him.
SPEAKER_01: God writes your name in the book, he writes all of your deeds down, and he will reward every single one of them.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe not evidently in this life, but surely in the life to come, and you can test him on that.
SPEAKER_01: Then the final little lesson that he gives is this man sparing his own son, which I think sounds very much like a story we know from the New Testament, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_01: Of a man who took his father's inheritance and squandered it, and then he remembered, my father is a merciful, compassionate, and just man.
SPEAKER_01: I'll return to him and I'll test him and see if he really is who he says he is.
SPEAKER_01: And so he turns around and he returns to his father, and what does the father do?
SPEAKER_01: You see, I think you can put these two images together.
SPEAKER_01: Here's what the Lord is offering those who would be willing to test him, to take him at his word, to allow his word to become bigger in your life than your own desires, and to believe it.
SPEAKER_01: He says there's going to be a book written.
SPEAKER_01: He says he's going to be like a father who has compassion on his son.
SPEAKER_01: When you return to him, you're going to be like Mordecai.
SPEAKER_01: Do you remember what happened to Mordecai when he was finally rewarded?
SPEAKER_01: Yes, there was a delay between action and reward, but the reward was certain and it did come.
SPEAKER_01: The king said, Put my robe on him, put him on one of my steeds, parade him through the city and triumph before him.
SPEAKER_01: Thus it will be done to whom the king chooses to honor.
SPEAKER_01: How much infinitely more.
SPEAKER_01: If even a pagan king like a Persian ruler can so honor a loyal subject, how much more your God in heaven, who's not just your God, but he's your father.
SPEAKER_01: Will he not treat you like the father in the prodigal son parable?
SPEAKER_01: Who, when the son returns home, the father says, Bring quickly the best robe, put it on him, put a ring on his hand, put shoes on his feet, bring the fatted calf and kill it.
SPEAKER_01: Let us eat and celebrate this.
SPEAKER_01: My son was dead.
SPEAKER_01: He's alive again.
SPEAKER_01: He was lost and is found, and they began to celebrate.
SPEAKER_01: What God is asking from you is that you would test and see that he will do what he said.
SPEAKER_01: Bring the full tithe to this unchanging covenant God, who has promised that he will empty out the heavens and rain blessings upon you more than you could imagine.
SPEAKER_01: Test him.
SPEAKER_01: See if he won't prove his word, that he'll bring you into fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore.
SPEAKER_01: Test the Lord and see that he is good.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, we do pray that you would give us hearts that are humble before you and that we would allow your word to become bigger in us than our own desires.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, we confess that we are prone to wander, that we are prone to of the world and the things in the world.
SPEAKER_01: We ask that this morning your spirit would minister to us in such a way that we would have a clearer view of eternity, a clearer view of our Savior, a clearer view of you, our Father.
SPEAKER_01: We recognize how worthy you are, how trustworthy you are.
SPEAKER_01: You will give us pure faith to cast all our hopes on you.
SPEAKER_01: We pray that you give us humility to bow before your word and to let your word do its sanctifying and cleansing work in our hearts and our lives.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now, for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_00: If you're in the Washington, DC area, I would love to see you at Emanuel Bible Church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.
SPEAKER_00: For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington DC location, go to TMS.edu.
SPEAKER_00: I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with Jesus.