Obedience brings blessing, disobedience brings curse. It’s either blessing or curse, there isn’t much in between. And I want to point out to you that in most cases it’s one or the other. The result: instead of a blessing was a curse. And, in specific terms, Israel had been robbing God by withholding their tithes and their contributions. So, not to give God His due out of our finances is to rob Him. But you say, `How shall we return?’ Will a man rob God? Yet you are robbing Me! But you say, ‘How have we robbed Thee?’ In tithes and contributions.” (NAS) Return to Me, and I will return to you,’ says the Lord of hosts. We’re going to read now Malachi 3:7-12: “‘From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from My statutes, and have not kept them. In the verses that we’re going to read now, He points out one particular way in which they failed to meet His conditions.
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Now, in the book of Malachi God sort of sums up 1,200 years of the history of Israel and, unfortunately, on the whole it’s rather discouraging as a summary because he points out that, for the most part, they’ve failed to meet His conditions and therefore to enjoy the blessings of the provision that He wanted to make available to them. He also warned them that if they did not keep His conditions and His commandments, then they would suffer the opposite they would suffer loss and harm and defeat and poverty. Approximately 1,200 years earlier, God through Moses had brought His people into the promised land and given them a way of life and promised them that if they would keep that way of life and obey His commandments, they would be blessed and would prosper as no other nation ever had known blessing and prosperity. Malachi is the last prophet of the Old Testament.
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We need to understand briefly the background of the book of Malachi. The first passage of Scripture that we’ll look at today is in Malachi 3:7-12. Today I’m going to look at some other promises of blessing and prosperity which have one particular scriptural condition attached to them. Yesterday we looked at the absolutely general and all-inclusive promise of prosperity given to us in Psalm 1:1-3. It’s good to be with you again today as we continue to explore together the limitless inheritance which God has provided for us in the promises of His Word.