Recognition of practical penitence.
"Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse" All must include those which ought to have been brought and had not. It was the paying up of old debts which would show the practical and sincere character of the penitence. Sin brings its own punishment. God will treat us relatively to our treatment of him. He recompensed this restored nation of Israel according to their doings. He blighted their fields and blemished their flocks, so that the]and groaned beneath the curse. The only way to remove the evil was for the people to turn from the evil of their way. The sign of such return would be an earnest effort to fulfil their religious obligations. Of such fulfilment the offering of tithes might be a represntative instance.
I. THE MORAL HELPLESSNESS OF SENTIMENTAL PENITENCE. Remorse is the caricature of penitence on the one side, and sentimentality on the other. And sentimentality may be the more subtle evil. A man may be distressed about the consequences of sin, who has no estimate of the evil of the sin. A man may be carried away by a surrounding excitement of penitence without having any real humiliation of heart. This may be illustrated from the excitement produced by Savonarola's preaching at Florence, and by the bad sides of modern revivals and missions. Convictions which reach no further than a man's sentiments are not merely helpless to influence conduct, but they are morally mischievous, because they delude, persuading the man that he is right, when his motive and heart are untouched. Some men who persist in living in sin nevertheless have seasons of gushing penitence; but it is only surface feeling, they have no root in themselves. The test of repentance is found in this question—What does it make the man do?
II. THE MORAL VALUE OF PRACTICAL PENITENCE. The Apostle Paul calls it "godly sorrow," and reminds of its practical working. "Ye sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea, what zeal, yea, what revenge!" If a man steals from another, all his protestations of sorrow are without moral value unless he restores what he has stolen. God looks for moral value in everything relating to his people; and finds it only when they bring in the tithes which they had been withholding. Restoring, dealing resolutely with cherished sins, "cutting off right hands, and plucking out right eyes," are the revelation of sincerity, depth, and moral value, in all professions of penitence. It is only when God can approve of and accept the penitence thus revealed that he can respond by opening the windows of heaven to pour out blessing.—R.T.
Doubt of profit in serving God.
"It is vain to serve God.'" The Prophet Zephaniah is more severe. "It shall come to pass at that time, that I will search Jerusalem with candles, and punish the men that are settled on their lees: that say in their heart, The Lord will not do good, neither will he do evil" (Zephaniah 1:12). "The prophet condescends to identify himself with those whom he reproves. 'We call the proud happy; yea, we say, they that work wickedness are set up. Therefore it is vain to serve God.' But he suddenly quits the seat of the scorners. He retires aside from the crowd, who proudly rely on their own popular verdicts, vaunting their own intelligence, and setting at naught the decrees of God; and, standing aloft from them, he joins the smaller company of the faithful few who wait and fear the Lord, and think upon his Name."
I. THE SIN OF SERVING GOD FOR THE SAKE OF PROFIT. This is seen in the case of Ananias and of Simon Magus. It is illustrated by Bunyan, in his character of Pliable, the man who was going on pilgrimage for the sake of what he could get. God asks for the service of love. Such service as alone can please him is the service rendered under the impulse of love. It is not possible to serve God acceptably in the spirit of the hireling. It is equally true that God cannot be rightly served under the expectation of pay or reward in the next life.
II. THE SIN OF DOUBTING WHETHER GOD REWARDS SERVICE. It is the sin of unbelief. "He who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is the Rewarder of them that diligently seek him." But it really is a deeper and a more subtle sin than that; it is the sin of self-centredness. Only the man who thinks overmuch about himself questions whether his work will be fittingly recognized. This is a constant secret sin, even of good people. They never master it until they can learn of Christ to work for love, and let rewards come or not as they may. A man never conceives of Divine indifference, or hardness, or unreasonableness, until he gets into a bad frame of mind himself, and then he makes God the shadow of his own badness. It was thus with the persons whom Malachi reproves. Only because they wanted to serve themselves did they think it was vain to serve God. The man who loves God and wants to serve him is sure never to think that.
III. THE SIN OF THINKING THOSE ARE REWARDED WHO SERVE OTHERS AND NOT GOD. (Verse 15.) The proud, who serve themselves. Good people, like the poet Asaph, are often tempted to think that the wicked have the best of it in this life. To think so is to "offend against the generation of the upright," and to dishonour God,—R.T.
The list of the loyal ones.
"A book of remembrance was written before him .... They shall be mine … in that day when I make up my jewels." Reference is to those persons who "by their pious discourse confirmed each other in goodness, and armed themselves against the impressions which wicked and doubting suggestions might make upon their minds." "God took special notice of what these pious persons did and said: it was as safely laid up in his memory as if it had been catered into a register, in order to be produced at the day of judgment, to their praise and honour." It is possible that the reference of these verses may be to "the growth of something like a brotherhood or order, not claiming or professing the inspiration of the older schools of the prophets, not entering, as they had done, on any vigorous effort at correcting the corruptions that were eating into the nation's life, but bearing a silent witness by lives of holiness and devotion, associated by the bonds of prayer and mutual love, handing down from generation to generation the tradition of higher truths and better hopes." Illustration may be taken from the Chasidim, or Brothers of Mercy, in the time of Judas Maccabaeus, or the Essenes of the New Testament period.
I. GOD'S LOYAL ONES ARE THEY WHO KEEP HIS HONOUR IN IMPERILLED TIMES. Compare the seven thousand in Elijah's day who had not bowed the knee to Baal.
1. The loyal ones may have no public spheres. But the truest work for God is done in the private spheres of home and social intercourse.
2. The loyal ones may have no voice with which to testify. But the mightiest of all arguments is a godly life; the strongest of all persuasions is the winsomeness of a sanctified character. Our witness may have to be rendered in our simply standing aloof, and that may be the very holiest reproach. It may be ours thus simply, but persistently, to keep the honor of God's
II. GOD'S PRESERVING HAND IS EVER UPON HIS LOYAL AND FAITHFUL ONES. He is even represented as keeping a list of them before him, so that by no possibility shall the interests of any one of them he forgotten. And his personal concern is intimated by his speaking of them as his "jewels." The term suggests:
1. Their value in his sight.
2. Their variety; they are of different colours and qualities and tints.
3. Their safety. They are all there in that day. Jesus said of his disciples, "None of them is lost."—R.T.
HOMILIES BY D. THOMAS