Why Read the Bible: More Insights Into Our Relationship with God

“I the LORD do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. Ever since the time of your ancestors you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the LORD Almighty. “But you ask, ‘How are we to return? Will a mere mortal rob God?’ Yet you rob me. But you ask, ‘How are we robbing you?’ In tithes and offerings. You are under a curse—your whole nation—because you are robbing me. Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not drop their fruit before it is ripe,” says the LORD Almighty. “Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land,” says the LORD Almighty.

–Malachi 3:6-12 (NIV)

We continue to look at what God has to say to us concerning our relationship with him. It would be a mistake to focus on God’s emphasizing the tithe because we miss its deeper message here. As we saw yesterday, God wants us to have proper relationship with him–not one of equals but of Creator interacting with his creatures. That means we must allow God to lead the dance.

Here we see what happens when folks give up on God. Malachi was written to the remnant of Israel who had returned from the Babylonian Exile. They had gotten discouraged because God had apparently not delivered on his promises to redeem his people and make them great once again. Consequently, they began to act accordingly. They began to treat God as a non-entity. Their actions in tithing, among other things, betrayed their lack of hope and faith in God and God called them on it.

God reminds them that he does not change because if he did, his people Israel would be toast. Their track record of obedience to him was not exactly stellar or worthy of his blessing and life-giving and sustaining love. But God did not destroy his people entirely. Judgment came but not utter destruction. Here we see God reminding his people to act like people with hope, not like people without hope. “Test me,” God says, “and you will see I am true to my word.” In other words, the proof is in the pudding and you will never find out till you eat the pudding!

So here we have more instruction regarding our relationship with God. God wants us to live as people with hope because we do have hope. This does not make us immune from bad things happening to us or our loved ones. It means, rather, that we have power–God’s power–to help us cope when things go wrong with us. But we’ll never find out for sure unless we take the plunge and trust God in the midst of our darkest hour. This means we cry out to him for help and ask him to sustain us in ways that he sees fit, not in ways that we see fit (there’s that pesky Creator-creature relationship thingy again).

And to help us remember that we have a God who is true to his word, he asks us to read our Bible, to read about his track record with his people in the OT and NT. We also gather together as brothers and sisters in Christ and remind each other how God has helped us in the midst of our own trials–our small group did this very thing on Wednesday evening–and we trust that the Holy Spirit living in us will use all this to help sustain us and allow us to live with joy and peace and power.

This is the kind of relationship that God wants for us. Is it the kind of relationship you have with God?

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