Daily Devotional

Most of us hear the word tithe and immediately think ten percent, and then we think about money, and then we stop thinking. But the word that unlocks this passage is not tithe, it is first. God did not ask for any ten percent. He asked for the first ten percent, brought in before anyone knew what the rest of the season would yield. That single detail turns an accounting practice into an act of faith. Giving from a completed harvest is arithmetic. Giving from the front of a harvest you have not yet seen is trust.

And that is precisely why they would not do it. Not greed, exactly. Self protection. They did not know how the year would turn out, so they held back a cushion. Anyone who has looked at a savings account and a bill in the same week understands the instinct. John Benton makes the point that we cannot rob God without hurting ourselves as people. The remnant thought they were building a margin of safety. What they were actually building was a life in which God was never given the chance to prove himself.

Then comes the most startling phrase in the passage: “put me to the test.” Everywhere else Scripture forbids testing God. Here he invites it, because he is not daring them to gamble, he is inviting them to obey and then watch. Do not read this as a formula for personal prosperity. Read it as an invitation to discover the character of the God you have been guarding yourself against. Spurgeon observed that success in the Lord’s service runs not in proportion to ability or even to zeal, but invariably according to the measure of faith. Faith always requires stepping past the line where your control ends. Which is why the opposite of faith is not doubt. It is control. Doubt still has to reckon with God. Control never has to.