Testing Our Generosity
Are we actually willing to pay the price for the justice we claim to want?
The study notes for this passage are still being written. The passage itself is below — read it now, and the notes will be here when you return.
Malachi 3:1-12
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1“Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me! The Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to his temple. Behold, the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, is coming!” says the LORD of Armies.
2“But who can endure the day of his coming? And who will stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire, and like launderers’ soap;
3and he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi, and refine them as gold and silver; and they shall offer to the LORD offerings in righteousness.
4Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasant to the LORD as in the days of old and as in ancient years.
5I will come near to you to judgment. I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against the perjurers, and against those who oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and who deprive the foreigner of justice, and don’t fear me,” says the LORD of Armies.
6“For I, the LORD, don’t change; therefore you, sons of Jacob, are not consumed.
7From the days of your fathers you have turned away from my ordinances and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the LORD of Armies. “But you say, ‘How shall we return?’
8Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me! But you say, ‘How have we robbed you?’ In tithes and offerings.
9You are cursed with the curse; for you rob me, even this whole nation.
10Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house, and test me now in this,” says the LORD of Armies, “if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there will not be enough room for.
11I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast its fruit before its time in the field,” says the LORD of Armies.
12“All nations shall call you blessed, for you will be a delightful land,” says the LORD of Armies.