Repentance Begins Here

Malachi 3:6-12 ESV

6 “For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed. 7 From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. But you say, ‘How shall we return?’ 8 Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say, ‘How have we robbed you?’ In your tithes and contributions. 9 You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you. 10 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. 11 I will 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. 12 Then all nations will call you blessed, for you will be a land of delight, says the Lord of hosts.

Something that I frequently do in our modern age is shop online. It’s easy, it’s convenient, you don’t have to leave your home, and it is delivered right to your doorstep. But something that I have discovered about shopping online is that whenever you order a larger item, you receive it disassembled, which means that you have to assemble it yourself. Sometimes that can be annoying, but it’s usually not too big of a deal because whenever we go to put your product together, there is always an instruction manual that comes with it that tells you how to put it together.

But even though that is the case, sometimes we may feel as if we don’t need to fiddle around with that instruction manual, because, you know, we know what we’re doing anyway. So, we toss the manual aside and start working on the assembly of the product with no instruction.

Well, I have seen many times when people do that and at first, everything seems fine after assembly, but in no time at all, it starts to malfunction and eventually, it breaks.

And so, what is the issue here? Well, we can’t say that the problem is that the instructions were unclear or that they were outdated, because we didn’t even use the instructions to begin with. The problem is that we didn’t pay any attention to the instructions, while assuming that the product would operate fine without following them.

Well, this was the situation that was taking place in Malachi’s day. The people had become routinely religious, and their religion was proving more and more to be worthless. What I mean is that these people knew the Word of God. They knew the scriptures. And because they knew the scriptures, they also knew that the “worship” which they offered the Lord was far from pleasing and sufficient.

But, you know, they were so used to doing things the way that they were doing them that they didn’t see any need to change. Remember, they would say, “Where is the God of justice?” “Why isn’t God blessing us?” “Why do we seem to be more of a mockery to the world rather than a blessed people?”.

In other words, they knew what to do, but they weren’t doing it, yet they were surprised when they were getting the results that they were getting.

And so, in the midst of this complaining, God tells His people, “Some things just never change, do they?”. At the beginning of verse seven in our reading, God tells the people:

Malachi 3:7a ESV

7a From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them.

So, the people complain that God isn’t blessing them, but God says, “Bless you? Why should I bless you?”. In fact, God says, that the history of His people has been one of constant defection and unfaithfulness, despite the consistent goodness of God.

So, essentially, God says, “You complain that I am not blessing you, but you have not been faithful to Me. Why should I bless those who continually dishonor Me? If anything, you should be cut off!”

In fact, as we jump back and look at verse six, God essentially tells the people that the only reason why He hasn’t already consumed the people in judgment is because of His goodness and His mercy. God says:

Malachi 3:6 ESV

6 “For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.

The Lord says, “I change not!”. You could almost say that God is stubbornly good and stubbornly merciful, but, of course, stubborn in a good way.

And so, these people call out for justice. They call out for God to judge His enemies and then to bless them, but what they fail to realize is that God’s justice carried out means that He is no longer merciful to them, what they fail to realize is that God’s justice carried out will mean their own destruction!

The only thing that keeps that from coming to pass is the love, mercy, and longsuffering of God. “I the Lord do not change; therefore, because of that, you are not consumed.” It’s not as if God doesn’t consume them in judgment because they are so devoutly religious, no, He doesn’t consume them because He is mercifully unchanging towards them.

And so, in them complaining, “where is the God of justice?”, it’s almost as if they are saying, “Please stop being merciful and come and destroy us!” Clearly, they don’t know what they’re asking for!

And so, as the Lord has already said earlier in this chapter, He is in fact coming, but as He tells the people at the middle section of verse seven in our reading, instead of foolishly begging Him to come while they are at odds with Him, He tells them that they need to repent and turn back to Him.

Remember, at the beginning of verse seven, God told the people that “from the days of your fathers, you have turned aside from Me”, “you’ve always rebelled against Me”, so here, He says to the people, “break with your rebellious past and make a suitable response to Me. Repent and turn to Me”.

What does this reveal? It reveals that although the covenant relationship between the Lord and Israel should have been destroyed long before, still, the entire history of Israel’s sin and its consequences can be forgiven and replaced by fresh intimacy with God and His blessings. But also, at the same time, this call for the people to return implies that God will not continue forever with this people who persist in their rebellion and defection.

We then return to the opening word of our reading, “for”. The people have not yet been destroyed “for”, because God does not change and has been merciful and longsuffering. But as our reading from last week told us, and what God is also saying here is that judgment will eventually come “for”, because God does not change and His justice and judgment, which is an essential part of Him, must come to pass.

Well, how do the people respond to this? They respond at the end of verse seven by saying, “How shall we return?” This could also be translated “In what way have we turned from You?” as if they are saying, “That’s not fair! You tell us to turn back to You, like we’ve been doing something wrong. But we haven’t done anything wrong! We haven’t gone away from You, You’ve gone away from us!” Talk about impiety and self-righteousness!

Well, God responds to this impious question with a question of His own when He asks in verse eight “Will man rob God?”. Now, this seems like an impossibility; rob God?! No way! You can’t rob God! But God tells the people that they actually have been doing what seems impossible as He tells them, “Yet you are robbing Me!”

Well, how do the people respond to this? “No, we haven’t! We haven’t robbed You! How have we robbed You?! Is that even possible?!”

But God says “Yes, you have been robbing Me! You’ve been robbing Me in your tithes and contributions”.

I like what Eric Ortlund says about this in the ESV Expository Commentary, when he says, “Failure in tithing actualizes the impossibility—keeping something from God that is legitimately his. Human presumption of total ownership in a world in which God owns everything (Ps. 50:10–11) is deeply resistant to real worship and devotion. Little wonder God calls his people to return!”[1]

So, the people, in holding back the tithe, in holding back what is God’s and what He commands them to give Him were in fact robbing God. And what is the basic pattern all throughout the scriptures? Especially in the Old Testament? “Do this and you will be blessed, don’t do this and you will be cursed”. It’s pretty simple, really. God was not acting unpredictably. He was doing exactly what He had promised in the covenant—blessing obedience and disciplining disobedience.

But they haven’t been doing what God told them to do. They haven’t been obedient to Him and God says that one of the many ways that they haven’t been obedient to Him is by not giving Him what is His, they haven’t been giving Him His tithe.

And so, again, the pattern “Do this and you will be blessed, don’t do this and you will be cursed”. Well, they haven’t been doing what they are commanded to do, so, God tells them, “You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing Me, the whole nation of you!”.

They had been complaining about how bad things had gotten in the land and they said, “O God, when are You going to come and do something about it?!” and God says, “The reason why things are so bad is because you have turned from Me! You’re robbing Me! You’re doing the very thing that almost seems impossible to be done!” It’s quite obvious, they have been disobedient and so, they are cursed.

And so, God says here in verse ten, “Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in My house”, “bring Me what is already Mine to begin with, bring Me what was never yours to begin with, and what has always been Mine and watch what will happen”.

Think of it, everything that we have is actually God’s. Everything! And God says, “Give Me a fraction, one tenth of everything that I give you, give this to Me in heartful worship and I will respond by blessing you so abundantly that the thought of being cursed will be but a distant memory”.

He says, “You are My people, now for once in your long history, act like you are My people and I will remove the curse and cause you to prosper”. He says in verse twelve, “Do this and then all the nations will call you blessed, for you will be a land of delight”. In other words, God says, “Act like you are My people and then the unbelieving world will see the sincerity of your devotion to God and be drawn to it.”

As we have been saying, the people of Israel kept saying, “The reason why things are the way that they are is because of everyone else! God needs to come and administer justice! He needs to come and take care of all of these ungodly sinners once and for all so we can finally be blessed!”… but their problem wasn’t the unbelieving world; their problem was that they were the people of God and they were acting like the unbelieving world.

I really enjoyed studying this text, preparing and writing this sermon. And I think that the reason why is because it is a text that really, personally challenges people like you and I.

You see, what this passage exposes is how easy it is to assume that the problem is always “out there”. We look at the world and we say, “This is what’s wrong—people are corrupt, society is broken, morals are becoming non-existent, and everything is decaying!” and much of that is true.

But our text today turns the question “Where is the God of justice?” back on us. The scriptures tell us that judgment begins with the house of God. The Lord does not begin by condemning the nations; He begins by confronting His own people.

You see, the danger is not simply that the world is unfaithful, the danger is that God’s people can grow comfortable calling themselves faithful while quietly resisting His rule.

So, the question that this text leaves us with is not, “What is wrong with them?” but rather, “what has drifted in us? What does the unchanging God call me to return from?”.

And you know, the good news is this: the God Who exposes our rebellion is the same God Who says, “Return to Me”. The curse that covenant breakers deserved was ultimately borne by Christ on the cross. He does not abandon His blood-bought people to their drifting, but rather, He calls them home—on the basis of His own unchanging faithfulness.

So, as we leave here this morning, let us not do so pointing outward in judgment, but pointing inward in repentance. And you know, I think that if we can consistently do that, the world will take notice, and they will want what we have.

Amen?

[1]Eric Ortlund, “Malachi,”in Daniel–Malachi, ed. Iain M. Duguid, James M. Hamilton Jr., and Jay Sklar, vol. VII, ESV Expository Commentary (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018), 757.