“Teachers to Suit Their Passions”

Sunday, January 12, 2025

“Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say, ‘How have we robbed you?’ In your tithes and contributions. You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you. Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need. I will rebuke the devourer for you, so that it will not destroy the fruits of your soil, and your vine in the field shall not fail to bear, says the Lord of hosts. Then all nations will call you blessed, for you will be a land of delight, says the Lord of hosts.”

(Malachi 3.8-12)

These verses are often used to encourage generous giving to the church. This is a valid application of the Old Testament principle at work, but there’s another layer to it, which can be discovered through an examination of the context. Malachi prophesied roughly a century after the exiled Jews returned from captivity and rebuilt the temple and the city of Jerusalem. This seemed like the beginning of fulfillment for most of God’s grand promises, and yet the Jews struggled economically and barely held a tenth of the territory God had pledged to them. This was confusing and frustrating, but they plodded along, trying to eke out a living and to observe the rituals passed down by their fathers and codified in the Law of Moses. One of these was the tithe—a tenth portion of their crops. The law said,

Every tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land or of the fruit of the trees, is the Lord’s; it is holy to the Lord.

 (Leviticus 27.30)

But God’s people were skimping on this offering in Malachi’s time. Their reasoning is explained by God’s promise to “open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need” (Mal 3.10)—they couldn’t spare it! Why? An answer is found earlier in the book.

You cover the Lord’s altar with tears, with weeping and groaning because he no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand. But you say, “Why does he not?” Because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant.

(Malachi 2.13-14)

How did the Jews know that God wasn’t accepting their offerings? Well, he had been withholding “favor” from them, in much the same way they’d been withholding what they promised to their wives. This sort of thing is also why they asked God even earlier in the book, “How have you loved us?” (1.1). They’d entered a cycle, complaining that God wasn’t blessing them, which was because they weren’t obeying him; and to justify their disobedience, they pointed to God’s failure to bless them. The answer was simple—start obeying, in faith that God would do what he said, providing for their needs.

But we haven’t reached the next layer. Who benefited from the tithes?

“To the Levites I have given every tithe in Israel for an inheritance, in return for their service that they do, their service in the tent of meeting…”

(Numbers 19.21)

The tithe wasn’t to be sent up in smoke, it was to help provide for the Levites—the priestly tribe. But in this very book, God took the priests to task for offering unacceptable sacrifices (Mal 1.6-8), and for showing partiality in teaching God’s law to the people (2.1-9)—that is, twisting the teaching to suit the audience, if the audience showed the teacher generosity. Considering that these priests had been lowering God’s standards for sacrifice, and lying to the people about God’s commandments, why in the world would God turn around and tell the people that they needed a pay raise?

Well, it wasn’t really a raise; rather, it was the law! The priests and their families had to eat, too. And now, we begin to peer beneath these two angry judgments from God. If the people weren’t paying the priests adequately to take care of their material needs, the priests would be tempted to bend and break some rules—just the minor ones, obviously—in order to alleviate their own poverty. Of course, this doesn’t come close to excusing their behavior, but it does implicate the ones who pushed them toward the sin, as Jesus said.

“Woe to the world for temptations to sin! For it is necessary that temptations come, but woe to the one by whom the temptation comes!”

(Matthew 18.7)

The priests were not a collection of independently wealthy, childless, fat cats too lazy to earn a living; they had plenty of work to do, and families who depended on them for daily sustenance! If the rest of the nation didn’t value their role enough to follow God’s law and take good care of them, then in the first place it shows a seriously warped and selfish mindset, hateful toward spiritual things; and in the second place, it put the people tasked with teaching God’s will to the masses in a position where they knew saying something to offend their audience would take food from their own children’s mouths.

That still does not excuse the priests who allowed such earthly pressures to supersede their heavenly duty—they, too, needed to obey in faith that God would provide for them. But the priests’ guilt is shared by those who put them in that difficult position in the first place. There are modern parallels. How highly do you value the work of teaching God’s word to his people? If you don’t value it, what do you tempt those teachers to do?

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions…

(2 Timothy 4.3)

Jeremy Nettles

Share