Faith & Finance Fridays
Reflect • Commit • Equip • Apply

Malachai 3:8-10
Would Anyone Rob God?

Reflect: Returning the First Fruits to God

“Would anyone rob God? Yet you are robbing Me! But you say, ‘How have we robbed You?’ In tithes and offerings.You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing Me, the entire nation of you!Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house, and put Me to the test now in this,” says the Lord of armies, “if I do not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows.” – Malachai 3:8-10

This is a big passage. Robbing God?? Who would dare? Maybe the more important question is why would someone rob God?

Some Christians happily tithe their 10% every month, others do it maybe out of habit or just because it’s “what you’re supposed to do.” Yet, why do we tithe? Why is it 10%? To really understand both that why and this passage, we need to look outside Malachai. The practice of tithing comes up multiple times across the Bible, in both the Old and the New Testaments. Our answers lie there.

“Now all the tithe of the land, of the seed of the land or of the fruit of the tree, is the Lord’s; it is holy to the Lord. For every tenth part of herd or flock, whatever passes under the rod, the tenth one shall be holy to the Lord.” – Leviticus 27:30,32

Several books in the Old Testament lay out the laws God gave to Israel with Leviticus focusing heavily on laws governing Israel's holiness, sacrifices, purity, and life as God's covenant people—including information on how to tithe and why.

As we see in Leviticus, everything is God’s. The pact He makes with us, set out here and across the Old Testament, is that He freely gives to us and, in return, we offer a tithe of the first fruits. Everything we have comes from Him. By tithing, we’re merely returning 10% of the blessings He’s given us. If we withhold, that’s how we rob Him. That’s what Malachai is talking about.

It’s easy to read this passage and hear an angry tone in our head, assuming it is a vengeful God speaking. Why wouldn’t we assume that? He curses the priests for robbing Him. We too would be angry were we robbed. Yet, what if this is not the voice of anger, but of disappointment and hurt?

With an open hand and heart, He gives us every single blessing. Why would we want to deliberately hurt God by robbing Him?

Reflection Question:

Not tithing isn’t the only way we can rob God. This week let’s probe our lives to discover what seemingly little and inconsequential ways we might be hurting God through robbery.

Next Week:

Next week we’ll dive further into Malachai 3:8-10 and examine if it’s not more important to commit ourselves to how we tithe rather than how much.