WHEREIN HAVE WE ROBBED GOD?
Text: Mal 3:8
Introduction: I don’t think I’ve ever heard a preacher preach a sermon in which he referred to tithing and did not use this passage. I know there are a lot of naysayers who insist tithing is under the law and in the Old Testament and doesn’t apply to the church. If that were true, Paul made a grave mistake by encouraging Christians to lay aside as God had prospered them and commended the Philippian and Thessalonican churches for how they gave to his ministry. Jesus should not have praised the woman who gave two mites—all she had. But God wants to show us that tithing goes beyond the portion of our money. It also goes beyond our time. There are many ways God can be robbed. Let me present some others we need to consider.
I. In our giving—not of money or time, but or ourselves (Rom 12:1)
A. God expects the best.
B. God rejects the half-hearted, insincere, selfish attitudes.
C. God does not want “leftovers.”
II. In our glorifying—God wants our praise!
A. He desires our honor and respect.
B. He disdains self-righteousness and piety.
C. He deserves glorifying over every small blessing, not just the big or dynamic ones.
D. We need to redirect the praise of men over our efforts to the Lord who gives us the abilityto perform them.
III. In our godliness—to be more like Him
A. Old things should progressively pass away and all things should progressively become new (2Co 5:17).
B. We are not to be conformed to this world (Rom 12:2).
C. We are to come out and be separate (2Co 6:17).
D. We are to be peculiar people—not obnoxious, not full of pride, however.
Conclusion: These are three other ways we can be guilty to some degree of robbing God. We can never fully repay God even in these simple ways, so in the most literal way, we rob God in these ways because of human limitation. But we should not use our human limitations to strangle, excuse, or inhibit us so much that our robbing God becomes serious and outright noticeable. Just because our human limitation keeps us from reaching the point of not robbing God even a little doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to avoid robbing Him as much as possible—in these ways as well as the others we may often hear preached from this verse.
(Billheimer)