Malachi Lesson 7: Looking Back Gives 20/20 Vision :: By Sean Gooding

Published on: June 22, 2021 by RR7

Chapter 3: 13-18

“Your words have been harsh against Me,’ says the Lord, ‘Yet you say, ‘what have we spoken against You?’ 14 You have said, ‘It is useless to serve God; what profit is it that we have kept His ordinance, and that we have walked as mourners before the Lord of hosts? 15 So now we call the proud blessed, for those who do wickedness are raised up; they even tempt God and go free.’ 16 Then those who feared the Lord spoke to one another, and the Lord listened and heard them; So, a book of remembrance was written before Him for those who fear the Lord and who meditate on His name.

17 “They shall be Mine,’ says the Lord of hosts, ‘On the day that I make them My jewels. And I will spare them as a man spares his own son who serves him.’ 18 Then you shall again discern between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve Him.”

Thank you for your emails, and we are actively praying as a church for the persons that you have mentioned. I have a prayer request of my own. We have a ministry in Pakistan that has been using our materials and has been reaching out to us for help. We are a small church, and we do what we can. We have sent some materials, and we are in the process of getting some Bibles, or maybe just the John/Romans books in Urdu. Please pray for these folks; they also serve a household of orphans, and we have got pictures here. If you had told me 12 years ago when we began this teaching ministry that we would have people in Pakistan using the material, I would have shrugged my shoulders and laughed it off inside. BUT GOD….

Today we are going to tackle another conversation that God has with the people of Israel. This remnant that had been preserved through the captivity in Babylon is now back in the land, and as in many cultures, there are the believers and the doubters. Today, God is going to take on the doubters head-on, and we will see if we can listen in and glean some knowledge and wisdom for us here in 2021.

What is the point? Verses 13-15

What is the point of serving God? What is the point of obeying these laws and performing these sacrifices? And if you recall the last lesson, what is the point of giving to God financially? There is no benefit to serving the Lord; why? The wicked and evil men are the ones prospering, and we, the ‘righteous’, suffer and are poor. If you were to take a look at Psalm 73, we find that Asaph, one of David’s chief musicians, had the same questions. He writes in Psalm 73: 1-9,

“Truly God is good to Israel, to such as are pure in heart. But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled; my steps had nearly slipped. For I was envious of the boastful, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. 4 For there are no pangs in their death, but their strength is firm. They are not in trouble as other men, nor are they plagued like other men. Therefore pride serves as their necklace; violence covers them like a garment. Their eyes bulge with abundance; they have more than heart could wish. They scoff and speak wickedly concerning oppression; they speak loftily. They set their mouth against the heavens, and their tongue walks through the earth.”

Asaph asked an honest question: What was the point of serving the Lord when the wicked seem to prosper and have everything in this life? They don’t seem to have the same troubles as other men. And if I may make an observation, they seem to live long and healthy. I think of the Queen at 95 still working, in her right mind, and then see my mom, a woman who served the Lord all of her life, and she is stricken with Alzheimer’s and laid up in bed. I think of the many faithful preachers that have suffered from various diseases, many of who never became rich, never even owned a home, and their children lived with hand-me-downs for a long time. It seems that many wicked people live to ripe old ages, they live in relatively good health, and they have a lot of money.

The people in Israel in Malachi’s day had the question that many generations, and I think ours today, are asking. What is the point of serving God when the only people that seem to prosper are the wicked?

It would seem that the way to get God’s favor is to be wicked. Sadly, we have a generation of people raised in churches that only equate God’s favor with money or fame. They cannot imagine any other kind of favor. Nowhere in the New Testament are we promised riches, but we are promised enough. We are promised that when we take stock, we will see that God has given us all we need and often more than we need. We have been fed that the life of leisure is the goal; retire early and play golf to the end. But in the Kingdom of God, we are called to serve Him to our dying breath. We are to give ourselves wholly to Him.

In 2021, we see this same phenomenon that was happening in Malachi’s day. We see the evil men prospering around us, the Gates and Bidens of the world, the Winfreys and Putins of the world. We see the financial prosperity of false preachers and their mega-churches; we see their books everywhere, see their homes, their cars, and their lifestyles.

It is easy to come to the conclusion as a conservative Baptist preacher that has to work a secular job, whose wife works a lot to keep the bills paid, and who at times had to sweat about money and still does sometimes, that serving the Lord and preaching/teaching the truth is not worth it. I can live better as a false teacher; I don’t have to compromise much, just a little, and the book offers may come, and we can live better. I can see how the folks in Malachi’s day and how Asaph came to ask this question.

If the proud prosper, what is the point of humility? Verse 15, Psalm 73:6

If God resists the proud, how are they doing so well? Once again, we in the Lord’s churches have been conditioned to equate riches with God’s blessings. But riches wrongfully acquired are an abomination to the Lord; just read about any chapter in the book of Proverbs. Just because someone is rich does not mean that they are blessed by God. The Devil can bless you as well; if he knows that the money will keep you from God, he will make sure that you get all you want and more. There are many people who are legitimately rich; no evil was done and no deceit; that is just life.

We see there in Malachi’s day, in Asaph’s day, and now today that those riches lead to prideful living and attitudes. The idea that because they are rich, they have something to offer the rest of society that we need. They have some piece of wisdom that if we would just listen, we would prosper as they. This is the same argument that false Bible teachers offer – all of you could be rich as well; just get my book, my teachings, and voila, riches will fall into your lap. Many rich people have a hard time with Jesus because He was poor; not just poor, very poor. Jesus made this assessment about the rich in Matthew 19: 16-23,

“Now behold, one came and said to Him, ‘Good Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?’ So He said to him, ‘Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.’ He said to Him, ‘Which ones?’ Jesus said, ‘You shall not murder,’ ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ ‘You shall not steal,’ ‘You shall not bear false witness,’ ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’

The young man said to Him, ‘All these things I have kept from my youth. What do I still lack?’ Jesus said to him, ‘If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.’ But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. Then Jesus said to His disciples, ‘Assuredly, I say to you that it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.'”

Money was this young man’s god. He has kept the commandments, or at least he was sure he had kept commandments 5-10, but he did not keep the first commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20: 1-3). While we see prideful people prospering here in this life, we are to read the scriptures and trust that God hates the proud, He resists them, and their end will be destruction. All of these prideful ‘all knowing’ persons that we see on TV will one day all bow their knee to the Jesus they despised, and they will be humble and silent in His presence.

Look back and see, verses 16-18

The ones who feared the Lord, the ones who had respect and loving regard for the Lord, spoke up and gave testimony to God’s faithfulness and that we should hold on and see that while these prating fools prosper but for a while, the Lord will truly and eternally prosper those that love Him and that He loves.

These folks wrote a book of remembrance to help them and the following generations see how good God is and was. Do you have a book of remembrance? A journal that helps you to see the past so that you can clearly see the future. I was reading not too long ago about the teaching of some modern preachers that encourage people to always look ahead and forget the past. But here in Malachi, we are encouraged to look at the past so that we can make good decisions and have discernment about the here and now and the future.

Let me offer a journal of remembrance of our own from my wife and me.

Twelve years ago, when we met, we were both living in the basement with our respective parents. We had lots of stuff, but the value of which past sentiment was nothing. She had 2 kids, and we got married and moved into our own place. Paying rent was hard and expensive here in Southern Ontario; we had to pull the kids out of the Christian school as the monthly fee was more than our rent. We struggled, pastoring and working; she worked 2 jobs trying to make ends meet.

Soon we had kid number 3; that year was a hard year. Marny had a high-risk pregnancy and was off work for 16 months. We still had to pay rent and the bills, but God did a thing. The company I was working for was bought by a bigger, better company, and things began to change slowly, but change they did. We found that we could take a vacation; we did at a lovely place in Florida provided by the Lord through Marny’s side of the family. We had a blast; I saw old friends, and we loved it.

A few years later, I was moved to a different division in this company. Again, I was worried, but not even 2 years at the new location, the Lord opened a door for us to buy a newer van, then a home, and now here we are. Along the way, our older daughter was married, I now help pastor a second church, and God took this ministry from 9 people to where we are reaching people on just about every continent on the planet. Hindsight helps you to have 20/20 vision. God is good all the time. He is faithful all the time, and when we take a look at what He has done, it helps us to have the right perspective in the now. Just this week, God provided my wife with free summer clothes.

No joke, we were given a bag of designer clothing for her to try on, and she fits most of them, plus our housemate was able to get some free new clothes, our daughter has some clothes here waiting for her, and even my 8-year-old got a few pieces out of it. We are blessed. God is good. Most of these clothes still had the tag on them. When we appreciate what God has done in the past, we can clearly see what He is doing right now, and we can rejoice that His promises are true, real, and secure.

God, we see in verse 17, is merciful to those that fear Him, that hold Him in high regard and thank Him for His faithfulness. Look back, take an account of all that God has done, rejoice, call out His name in gratitude and bask in His goodness; there is nothing like being cared for by the Highest.

One last thing. Asaph had a sobering moment when he considered the future of these rich, prideful fools. Psalm 73: 16-20,

“When I thought how to understand this, it was too painful for me—Until I went into the sanctuary of God; Then I understood their end. Surely You set them in slippery places; You cast them down to destruction. Oh, how they are brought to desolation, as in a moment! They are utterly consumed with terrors. As a dream when one awakes, so, Lord, when You awake, you shall despise their image.”

These folks will all die, and without Jesus, their riches mean nothing in the next life. The things that made them rich here are the building materials of the new Jerusalem. Gold for the paving of the streets and jewels for the gates. The riches of the rich mean nothing in the next life, and they will all get there. The Queen will die, the Gates and Winfreys will die, and their riches will mean nothing when they meet Jesus. If you have Jesus, you are already richer than the Gates, Winfreys, and the monarchies combined. You have eternal life with Him, and them eternal life in Hell. Their riches may help them in the 80-100 years here in this life, but your riches in Jesus are eternal.

If you have enough for this life, rejoice; write down how good God has been to you, look at it, repeat it, thank God line by line for His goodness, His faithfulness, and that He is the God we can trust.

Look back and see God is good; hindsight is 20/20.

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding

Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church

How To Connect with Us

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Online: https://www.mississaugamissionarybaptistchurch.com/ (under construction)

Email: missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca

Malachi Lesson 6: You Can’t Rob God :: By Sean Gooding

Published on: June 15, 2021 by RR7

Chapter 3:8-12

“Will a man rob God? Yet you have robbed Me! But you say, ‘In what way have we robbed You?’ In tithes and offerings. ⁹ You are cursed with a curse, for you have robbed Me, even this whole nation. ¹⁰Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in My house, and try Me now in this,’ says the Lord of hosts, ‘If I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you such blessing that there will not be room enough to receive it. ¹¹ And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, so that he will not destroy the fruit of your ground, nor shall the vine fail to bear fruit for you in the field,’ says the Lord of hosts; ¹² ‘And all nations will call you blessed, for you will be a delightful land,’ says the Lord of hosts.”

Many people, even God’s people, don’t understand the intimacy of God’s interest in and with our lives. From the very beginning, God has been seeking intimate and close relations with the people He created. God is interested in every aspect of your life, including your finances. This may be shocking to some of us, but money is the one thing that we are so secretive about. We don’t talk about how much each other makes, we don’t ask what one’s hourly wages are, and many spend an inordinate amount of money appearing not to be poor.

I work in the Car Sales business in my secular job, and I encounter people who are what we call car-poor. They have bought way more car than they need, and they find themselves not able to afford the payments, the insurance, and the gas. In southern Ontario where I live, more and more people are becoming house-poor. The housing prices in the Toronto and surrounding areas are simply out of reach for most people, even with both mom and dad working.

We are going to talk today about money and the relationship it has with us and God. How we treat money says a lot about our relationship with the Lord. Jesus spoke about money often: the rich man and Lazarus; the rich farmer with the bigger barns who died and lost his soul; money (mammon) should not be our God. Money is there to serve us and the Kingdom of God. You are a child of God, not the other way around. Even Jesus needed money for His earthly ministry. In Luke 8: 1-3, we find these verses,

“Now it came to pass, afterward, that He went through every city and village, preaching and bringing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with Him, and certain women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities—Mary called Magdalene, out of whom had come seven demons, and Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others who provided for Him from their substance.”

God does not hate money. God does not require us all to live as monks, completely destitute of money and things. That is not the case. There were many wealthy men and women in the New Testament church as you read through the book of Acts. But our relationship to money is what is important. That relationship is best shown by who we pay first and how we pay.

We are going to discuss the controversial doctrine of tithing here; some will be upset, and that is okay. But it is in the Bible, it is pre-law, and it is still in effect today as the main demonstration of a proper relationship to money. I never heard of anyone disagreeing with tithing until I came to North America. Even among what I call conservative Bible teachers, there is division on this. A while ago, I read that the average attendee of a service gives about $20.

So, if you walk into a church on Sunday morning, they will receive on average $20 in the offering for each person there. Now, I pastor a church that is small, and we do way better than that. Our people more than tithe on many occasions. But one can see that there are many people in the local church that made more than $200 that previous week. We are in a financial struggle in North America; many churches are simply not getting what they should in money coming in to do the work. But we digress. Let us start at the beginning.

The First Tithe, Genesis 14: 18-20

The very first time that we see the act of tithing is in this chapter. Abraham, called Abram at the time, wages a war to rescue Lot, his nephew. The Lord blesses him with a victory, and when he returns, he is met by a man named Melchizedek. He is the King of Salem (later to be called Jerusalem), and he is called the High Priest of the Most-High God. In Hebrews 7, a more accurate description of this Melchizedek is made; he is indeed the King of Salem, also the King of Peace, and he is King of Righteousness. He has neither father nor mother and neither beginning nor end. And, as great as Abraham was as the father of the Jews, he paid a tithe to this man. This was none other than Jesus, a Christophany, in the Old Testament.

Abraham was rich, to begin with. He had many servants and a lot of livestock. He had enough servants to mount a formidable attack against kingdoms and win. Yes, the Lord was with him, but he had the resources to wage war from the number of servants in his household. He was a wealthy man. When he returned from the victory, before he did anything else, he paid a tithe to the King of Salem. He paid God, in the form of Jesus, a tithe. By the way, Jesus is still the King of Salem and the High Priest of the Most-High God; the book of Hebrews lays that out for us.

Tithing, then, was not a part of the Old Testament covenant; it was established by Abraham as part of honoring God when He gives you more. The OT law did not exist for hundreds of years later, and so this principle has not been put aside because we are under a new covenant. In our time, in the New Testament era that we live in, the only authorized agency of the Lord is the New Testament church. When we come together, we should tithe to the Lord through her. Revelation 1-3 clearly establishes that the Lord is the Head of every true NT church; as such, you are paying to Him as Abraham did.

The First Fruits, Leviticus 23:10

Hundreds of years later, the Jews crossed the Wilderness, leaving Egypt and traveling to the Promised Land, and God gave them the Law. In the Law, there is a statement about the ‘first fruits.’ In Leviticus 23:10, we see that the Jews are commanded to bring a sheaf of the first fruit of their crops to the Lord as a thank you to the Lord for prospering them with their crops. They were required to bring the first fruit of the sheaves to the city of Jerusalem and eat them before the Lord. They were not to be sold or consumed in any other way.

In 1 Corinthians 15:20, Jesus is called the ‘First Fruits’ of the resurrection. He resurrected, and immediately the dead began to resurrect as well. If you read Matthew 27:53, you will see that the effects of Jesus’ resurrection were immediate.

“and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many.”

The feast of First Fruits was a celebration of the resurrection before anyone knew there was going to be a resurrection. But the principle that the Lord gets the first fruits of your increase was established. Yes, this is a part of the Law, but it is also a picture of the life of Jesus at His first coming. The Passover was His sacrificial death, the feast of Unleavened Bread pictures Jesus taking away the sins of the world, and then the feast of Firsts Fruits pictures His resurrection. The next feast was Pentecost, some 50 days later. The idea that we should give to God first when we are prospered is established in Abraham and then in the book of Leviticus. In the OT era, the Levites collected the tithe and the first fruits, and they tithed from that as well. In Deuteronomy 14:28, there is even a tithe for the poor.

If more of our people honestly tithed to the local churches and the churches managed this money well, we could help a lot of poor people, and maybe God would get the glory and not the government for helping the poor. We will not get rid of the poor; Jesus told us that. But it is the responsibility of the Lord’s people to help the poor. We have abdicated this responsibility to the government, and we are paying for it.

There are many other kinds of giving to the Lord in the OT. In Exodus 30: 11-16, we have the Temple Tax; this was still in effect in Jesus’ day, and we can read that in Matthew 17:24-27 and 22:15-22. Each male over 20 years old was required to pay half a shekel weighed in silver or gold. The amount was still the same in Jesus’ day but now paid using drachmas. No matter one’s financial status, rich or poor, if you were 20 years old or older and a man, you paid the Temple Tax.

A fun fact: in Matthew 17: 24-27, Jesus provides money for two, Peter and himself, to pay the Temple Tax. This means, as Jesus followed the Law perfectly, that only he and Peter were 20 years and older. The idea of these old and bearded men as the apostles needs to be questioned. It would appear that Jesus was followed by young men, a lot of them.

The First Mistake, Malachi 3:8

We are the most arrogant people. We tend to forget the hand that feeds us, and this is what was happening here in Jerusalem in the time of Malachi. The people were not tithing, not giving the Temple Tax, and not giving the first fruits, not remembering the call to bring things into the storehouse. They were robbing God. This never goes well. One ends up cheating himself. God does not require us to give as if He is in need. He requires us to give as a part of worship and gratitude.

There are many charlatans on our airwaves that pitch the idea of giving to them as the way for the Lord to bless you. They have all these schemes allegedly from God, that if you will give $77 on the 7th day at the 7th hour, God will bless you 7-fold, or some other allegedly Biblical numerical equation that they got from God to get your money now. Oh my, what hogwash! Actually, that is an insult to hogwash. Do you understand that if they truly believed that, they would send you money, and God would bless them? We have this promise from God that He will provide for us all that we need. He never promises to make us rich. What He promises is to provide what we need each day.

In the book of Acts 4-5, we see that the people in the NT church there in Jerusalem did not consider their possessions to be their own, but there for the service of the Lord. Even in the incident with Ananias and Saphira, we learn that they were free to give all or a portion of the proceeds from the sale of the land; they just could not lie about it and make themselves look to be giving more than they did. Paul tells us that each man should give according to as he has set in his heart (see 2 Corinthians 9:7) and that we are to give cheerfully; the word means hilariously. We are not to bring an offering to the Lord begrudgingly.

The principle of the tithe began with Abraham, and it has not been abolished by any means in the NT era. But we are also to be way more generous than we are in many cases. We should give so as to feed the poor, and we should give so as to maintain the facility if we have one, or the minister, and Paul tells us that ministers should live off the Gospel. They should be paid like the OT Levites were. In this passage today, God lays out two kinds of offering: tithes and offerings. We should seek to do both, not to get rich or to have God make us rich; that is not the motive. Abraham was already rich.

Rather, we tithe and give because He dealt abundantly with us, and whatever we have is already more than we deserve. I don’t know about you, but I can testify that God has provided for me and my family, “pressed down, shaken and over flowing.” It is our privilege to tithe and give offerings. It is the least we can do after all God has done and shown to us. All that we have is from His gracious and generous hand. We want to be gracious and generous as well, and to Him be the glory.

If you are not regularly giving to your local Bible-preaching NT church, then you should begin. Start with the tithe, which is 10% of what God gives you on your paycheck. Yes, I know the government takes taxes up front; you have no control over that. So, deal with what you can; when you get a paycheck, pay God first. Then do what needs to be done with the rest.

Will I get rich? No, I cannot answer that, and the Bible never promises that. But God promises to supply all your needs, and that is as far as anyone can promise.

God blesses those who honor Him with their finances; God blesses those that put Him in their finances. Sometimes, God does not give you more, but what you have after giving to Him goes further. Cars may last longer, clothes may last longer, and on we can go. Give to God and to His work; give to His people and invest in the eternal kingdom. The money you have came from God; He let you have a job, allowed you to be healthy enough to attend the job, and allows the company to be profitable enough to pay you. Put Him first in your finances, and our churches will stop struggling financially, and we can expand the kingdom. No, a man cannot rob God, but he sure cheats himself when he does not put God first in his finances.