Test me in this, says the Lord.
The one place in the Bible where God invites you to test him. The subject is generosity.
The episode in a glance.
- 01Israel was withholding from God; Malachi calls it robbery.
- 02'Bring the full tithe' — bring God your first, not your leftovers.
- 03'Test me in this' — the only invitation in scripture to put God to the test.
- 04The promise: blessing that overflows what you can contain.
Read along.
Malachi is the last book in the Old Testament. The people had returned from exile and quietly started withholding from God — keeping the tithe for themselves.
God calls it what it is: robbery. Then he says something he never says anywhere else: 'Bring the full tithe into the storehouse... and thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.'
'Test me.' The God who told Israel not to test him in the wilderness, here invites them to. Why? Because he knows what he'll do.
Generosity isn't a math problem. It's a trust problem. You can't out-give God. Every culture that's tried has discovered the same thing — the windows of heaven open in ways the calculator can't predict.
Try it this month. Not as a magic trick, but as an act of trust. See what God does with the part of your life you've been clenching.