Using Malachi?
For years I have heard pastors ask for tithes and offerings citing scriptures from the book of Malachi to guilt the congregation into giving more money.
This is to the pastors of the whole Earth: you are deceiving the sheep with the scriptures in Malachi.
You know very well to whom those scriptures were written, don’t you? If you don’t, you have no business being a pastor.
To those pastors and leaders who say, “We are not under the Law” or “We are under a new covenant” meaning that the Old Testament teachings (Torah) are not for today, the book of Malachi does not apply to you or your congregation, because Malachi is in the Old Testament. Furthermore, you are not telling the congregation that you are preaching to yourself when you preach out of Malachi to get more tithes. This is because the Lord was talking to the priests and not to the congregation in the book of Malachi, and you know it.
Malachi 1:6 A son honors his father and a servant his master. If then I AM Father, where is my honor? And if I AM master, where is my respect? Says the LORD of hosts to you, O priests, who despise My name.
Malachi 2:1 And now, O you priests, this commandment is for you….
The Lord is still speaking to the priests:
Malachi 3:10 Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, so there would be food in My House and test Me now by this, says the LORD of Hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you all and pour out a blessing for all eternity.
The priests took turns ministering at the temple. When they served at the temple, they received a tithe from the congregation’s tithes. The tithes the priests took from the people’s tithes were mostly food so the priests could eat and also sell any products received. However, they were commanded to tithe of those tithes, so they were required to take 10% of the 10% they received as their “salary” and deposit it in the temple’s warehouse.
The warehouse was where the widows and orphans and any needy person came to get food, and the priests were not taking their tithes to the warehouse!!
The warehouse was a warehouse, not a church.
Don’t tell the congregation to “bring all the tithes to the storehouse”, because that is what the priests had to do—to bring their personal tithes there. In other words, pastor, you have to bring 10% of what you receive to the storehouse.
But do you have a storehouse? PROBABLY NOT! Most churches do not have a food pantry funded by your tithes.
The Jewish people were bringing their tithes to the temple until it was destroyed 70 years after the crucifixion, never to be re-built again. And since then, there has been no temple storehouse to support with tithes and offerings.
There is nothing impossible for God, and He could have had another temple built if He wanted to, but He did not want a temple built of masonry. Now we are His temple.
After end of the temple the early messianic groups met in homes and often took collections to help other groups, to help disciples spread the word, or to help needy people, but there was no pressure to give. If you gave, it did not need to be 10% of your income.
Who decided that the followers of Jesus had to tithe and bring offerings when there was no temple? It must have been emperor Constantine when he created the Catholic church 300 years later. He implemented a lot of changes in the worship of God that the Jewish believers would not have approved of, such as instituting images (statues) and decreeing Sunday (Sun Day) as the day of rest instead of Saturday (the Sabbath).
It is a deception to use the scriptures of Malachi to coerce a congregation into giving more “tithes and offerings”. A deception is a lie in disguise.
Worshippers who love God should give as the Holy Spirit leads, just as the early church did.
