Friends, we serve a generous God who wants nothing more than to bless His people. At times, however, we hinder the Lord from lavishing us with essential and non-essential blessings. How do we do this? Disobedience is the common factor. When we disobey God we ‘rob’ ourselves of heavenly grace-endowments He has in store for us, just waiting to be appropriated.

Did you know the Lord has a ‘heavenly vault’ that is full of everything you need to enable you to live above life’s circumstances… everything! To access this vault you need the combination and your compliance with a certain condition. Combination + condition = help yourself to a wide-open vault! It’s that easy! 

The combination of heaven’s vault is Malachi 3. The context? The people of Israel were ‘robbing’ God by not bringing to the Temple 1/10 of all their produce and livestock which they possessed (Leviticus 27:30, 32) – thereby denying the Levites, priests, foreigners, orphans and widows of essentials for their livelihood (Deuteronomy 14:27-29). The nation had reneged on a covenant they had agreed-to earlier with God. This covenant was God’s initiative – promising the Nation of Israel, a life of either ‘obedient-blessing’ or ‘disobedient- cursing’.

God confronted His people head-on with this charge: “…you have scorned My decrees and failed to obey them… You have cheated [robbed] Me… You are under a curse” (vv 7-9a). (Wow, I’d be sidestepping that bullet if I were them!)

The condition, as stated by God, was for His people to repent from their stingy-hold of what was rightfully His and obey Him by “Bring all the tithes into the storehouse,” as He had commanded (v 10a). (OT Temple = NT Church today.)

 God promised His people…“If you do this I will open the windows of heaven for you.  I will pour out a blessing so great you won’t have enough room to take it in! Try it! Put me to the test! (v 10b).  Have you/are putting God to this test?You may be thinking, ‘I no longer live under the OT law that obligates me to give tithes and offerings to God’.  Yes, you’re right.  However, the issue here is not about giving to God fading trinkets of this world. 

What needs to be grasped here is a universal, timeless principle of you and me living with a NT attitude of desiring to honour God through a heart of willing obedience to Him – offering to God our best, first! The opening-wide of heaven’s vault is conditional! Jesus says, “The amount you give will determine the amount you get back” (Luke 6:38).  

Best wishes Bill

If you have a few moments, enjoy “Vaults of Heaven” from the Lloyd Webber musical “Whistle Down The Wind” sung by Michael Ball.