God opens with a sentence about himself before he says a word about Israel's sin: I the LORD do not change. Everything hangs on the word that comes next, therefore. Because he has not changed, the children of Jacob still exist to be addressed. Their survival through generations of turning aside is the consequence of a God who has not shifted his footing.
What follows is a courtroom. God brings a charge, the people answer with a question, and each time God's answer is concrete. 7"Return to me, and I will return to you." They ask how, as though the door were hidden. He says 8"Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me." They ask how. He names 8"tithes and contributions," actual grain and coin withheld from an actual storehouse, and calls it theft against the one who has never failed to keep his word.
Then the courtroom becomes an invitation: 10"Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test." It is rare for God to invite testing, and here he does, with the confidence of someone who knows what the assay will show. The promise follows: he will rebuke the devourer so that the fruits of the soil are not destroyed (verse 11), and all nations will call them blessed (verse 12).
Withholding from God rarely announces itself as robbery. It comes dressed as prudence, a reasonable hedge against an uncertain month, the sensible thing a responsible person does with what is theirs to manage. Few would call it robbing God. Most would call it planning ahead. The prophet asks whether something has been kept back that was never anyone's to keep, in language flattering enough to stop the noticing.
What unsettles most is the therefore. Because God does not change, Jacob's children are not consumed, and because he does not change, any quiet accounting of what can safely be withheld is not hidden from him. The unchanging character that kept a wandering people alive through generations of drifting is the character standing over every ledger kept in secret.
The tight grip is usually on a sum that has been decided to be unspareable, a margin built between what God asks and what we are willing to release. White knuckles show what is believed about who is holding the future.
Return to me, and I will return to you. The turning is one motion, his approach and ours together. The God who does not change is the God whose steadfast love took the form of a Son who gave up everything so that people with nothing to bring could be received. Paul tells one church that God loves a cheerful giver (2 Corinthians 9:7), and he tells another that God gave his own Son before asking anyone for anything (Romans 8:32). The invitation to test him was always about whether his people believe the hands reaching for them can be trusted.
Prayer
Father, thank you that you do not change, and that the faithfulness that kept your people through every generation of drifting is the faithfulness holding us this morning. Forgive the places where we have called withholding from you prudence. Show us what we are gripping too tightly to release, and give us the courage to open our hands. Thank you that you gave everything in Christ before you asked anything of us. In Jesus' name, amen.