Sermon Tone Analysis

Hopefully you have noticed by now that my preferred style of preaching is to take the text verse-by-verse, and explain crucial points along the way.

This style of preaching is known as expository preaching.

The key idea of expository preaching is to let the Bible be the very center of the sermon, and to let the point of the Scripture be the key point of the message.

For the preacher, though, this style of preaching has both a pro and a con.

The pro of expository preaching is that it allows me to go through a book of the Bible and preach on some of my favorite topics.

The con, however, is that it forces me to preach on topics that sometimes, I would just assume avoid.

This morning’s topic is one of those topics that would be much easier for me to just avoid, but the fact is that Malachi chapter three talks about it, and it would be sinful for me as the pastor to neglect a part of God’s word just because it is a little uncomfortable to talk about.

You probably noticed from Bro. Morris’s scripture reading what this topic is.

This morning, in part three of our series “God’s Message Through Malachi,” we’re going to take an in-depth look at the “T” word.

That’s right.

This morning the topic of my sermon is tithing.

But before you pick up your rotten tomatoes, let’s read God’s word together.

Our Scripture reference this morning is Malachi 3:1-12.

“Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: And the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple, Even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: Behold, he shall come, saith the LORD of hosts.

But who may abide the day of His coming?

And who shall stand when He appeareth?

For he is like a refiner’s fire, and like fullers’ soap: And He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: And He shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, That they may offer unto the LORD an offering in righteousness.

Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto the LORD, As in the days of old, and as in former years.

And I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the LORD of hosts.

For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.

Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them.

Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the LORD of hosts.

But ye said, “Wherein shall we return?”

Will a man rob God?

Yet ye have robbed me.

But ye say, “Wherein have we robbed thee?”

In tithes and offerings.

Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, Even this whole nation.

Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, That there may be meat in mine house, And prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.

And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the LORD of hosts.

And all nations shall call you blessed: for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the LORD of hosts.”

Let us pray.

This morning the title of my sermons is, “Five Reasons Why Every Christian Should Give Back to God.” Essentially, in verses one through five Malachi is telling the Israelites of a coming day when their lives are going to be pure before the LORD.

And then, in verses six through twelve, Malachi is telling the Israelites one specific thing that is going to be different about them after God has gotten ahold of their life.

So now let’s look at reason number one for giving back to God.

Reason #1: We Give Back to God Because Christ Has Refined Us

Let’s read verses one and two of our text again together.

“Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: And the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple, Even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: Behold, he shall come, saith the LORD of hosts.

But who may abide the day of His coming?

And who shall stand when He appeareth?

For he is like a refiner’s fire, and like fullers’ soap.”

Do you realize what these two little verses are saying?

In these two verses, Malachi is telling the children of Israel that one day, their Messiah is going to come and personally refine them.

We’ve got a lot to talk about in these two verses, so let’s get started.

Before we talk about if and when this prophecy has been fulfilled, we need to talk about a few phrases.

What is a “refiner’s fire” and a “fuller’s soap?”

A refiner was a person whose job was to take the rocks from the quarry and put through the furnace in the hopes of regaining some of the valuable material inside the rock.

So if a miner found a rock that he suspected had some gold within it, the refiner would burn it over the fire and melt off all of the excess until finally the gold shone through.

A fuller is the Old Testament version of the man that runs the local dry-cleaner.

His duty was to clean the clothes of the people who had enough money to pay someone to do their laundry for them.

Clearly he didn’t have a washer and dryer to do the job for him, so he would most likely go down to the river to wash the clothes.

This most likely would have been a fairly painful experience for the clothes themselves, since the fuller would be constantly wringing them out, or perhaps rubbing them up against rocks to get out that difficult stain.

So how is the Messiah going to be a refiner and a fuller to the children of Israel?

Verse five describes how He is going to refine the nation as a whole.

Verse five reads, “And I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the LORD of hosts.”

So God is telling the people that one day in the future, He is going to come and sift out all the evil doers who refuse to repent.

So in the case of the refiner, these unrepentant sinners are like the excess rock that falls off of the gold deposit in the fire.

In the case of the fuller, these sinners are like the stains that are removed from the clothing.

But I don’t believe that God only meant that He would judge the nation as a whole.

I believe that He was also saying that He would refine each individual, and He would cleanse each individual who would let Him.

God’s desire was to take this rag-tag bunch of Israelites and turn them into something precious and clean.

Now that we’ve talked about what the prophecy means, let’s look at its fulfillment.

It’s fairly common in the Old Testament for a prophecy to have two separate fulfillments.

Occasionally, a prophecy will even have three fulfillments.

I believe that Malachi’s prophecy here actually has three distinct fulfillments in Scripture.

It has a short-range fulfillment, a medium-range fulfillment, and a long-range fulfillment.

So Malachi promised that a messenger would precede the Lord’s coming, and that the Lord would enter into His temple and purify the people.

The short-range fulfillment of this prophecy is that Malachi himself is the messenger mentioned, and that God would use His message to change the hearts of some of the people.

Remember that Malachi’s name actually means “my messenger.”

So whenever verse one says “Behold, I will send my messenger,” The Hebrew is literally saying, “Behold, I will send Malachi.”

So this prophecy was somewhat fulfilled by Malachi himself, because He did preach a message of purification, and in a way, God did come into His temple and purify some of the people.

But praise God, this is not where this prophecy stops!

The second way this prophecy was fulfilled was 400 years later, when John the Baptist came and prepared the way for Jesus.

Jesus physically entered the temple and threw out the money changers.

So Jesus literally purified the temple.

But for the last 2,000 years, Jesus has also been purifying every man, woman, and child who will let Him.

But even beyond that, there is a long-term fulfillment of this prophecy that we have yet to see.

One day in the future, Jesus Christ is going to physically return to planet Earth and purify this world and everyone in it.

In verse five it talked about God judging all of those different kinds of sin.

One day in the future, Christ is going to come and be just like that refiner.

He is going to put in the rock, and every person who has not been forgiven of their sins is going to fall into the lake of fire, and those that have trusted in Christ are going to remain like purified gold.

But for the sake of our topic this morning, we are going to focus primarily on fulfillment number two.

The first reason that we give back to God is because He has refined us and cleansed us.

We in the church are just like that rock in the hands of the refiner.

When we accepted Christ, we agreed to submit ourselves to His leading, and to do whatever He told us.

That commitment started within us a process of purifying and cleansing that we are still undergoing today.

As we progress in our Christian lives, the Holy Spirit is continually teaching us new lessons, and continually shedding off all of the parts of our lives that we are better off without.

And just like the fuller has to wring out the clothes and rub them up against rocks, sometimes the process of Christ changing our lives is a little bit painful.

And one of those painful lessons that God’s word teaches us is that we must learn to give back to God.

And one part of that giving back is in the area of our financial resources.

So reason number one as to why we give back to God is because He is refining us, and part of that process is learning to give back to God.

Let’s move on to reason number two.

Reason #2: We Give Back to God Because He Has Been So Good to Us

Let’s read verse six now together.

“For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.”

What is God talking about when He says that He does not change?

If you were here two Sunday nights ago, hopefully you remember that one of the qualities of God is that He does not change.

He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

And one of the ways that He does not change is that He always keeps His word, no matter what.

More than fifteen-hundred years before God made this statement in Malachi chapter three, He made a promise to Abraham that his descendants would be a great nation, and that all of the families of the earth would be blessed by them.