Are You Robbing God? - audio
Malachi 3:6-18
Matthew 6:19-34
"Will a man rob God?"
That's the question God Himself asks the people of Israel through the prophet Malachi. We allow God to ask us the same question centuries later as we read it in His Word. We discover that just like the Israelites of Malachi's day, we can have a low view of God which causes us to neglect to worship Him as He deserves.
We can lose sight of the fact that everything belongs to Him, we can forget our own dependence upon Him and we can doubt our accountability to Him. However as Malachi identifies their disobedience in terms of the bringing of tithes and offerings to the Temple, we discover that the expectations God has of believers today are different. The Church does not operate by the same systems as the nation of Israel prior to Christ's arrival.
We explore Jesus' own teaching recorded in Matthew 6 as a guide for making appropriate decisions in how we worship God through giving. We discover that we must allow the Holy Spirit to guide us into making decisions about giving that reflect: 1)our reverence for God; 2)our gratitude for His provision; 3)our trust in Him to meet our needs; and 4)the priority of His eternal kingdom over temporary things.
