God makes three promises to a people who have nothing to offer him. The first is abundance: windows of heaven opened and blessing poured out until there is no more need. The second is protection: “I will rebuke the devourer.” In an agrarian world your...
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,...
On the surface the charge makes no sense. God is sovereign. He is all knowing and all powerful and holds the universe together. “The earth is the LORD’s and the fullness thereof” (Psalm 24:1). How could a farmer in a small province of the Persian...
The most dangerous sins in a Christian’s life are almost never the dramatic ones. They are the ones that arrived so slowly that no alarm ever sounded. Engineers watched the O rings on the space shuttle boosters erode launch after launch, and because the shuttle...
Malachi opens this section with a statement about God before it says one word about us, and the order matters. God does not begin by cataloging the sins of the remnant. He begins by naming his own nature. “For I the LORD do not change.” Theologians call...
