5:1-4
The scroll here is probably two scrolls side by side, writing on two sides of a scroll hadn’t really caught on at this point. The scroll is said to have curse on it that is going out throughout the land. Now a curse is God’s judgement on man’s sin, and two sins in particular are singled out: theft and perjury, or swearing falsely. Why are these two in particular singled out? Well, we need o remember that the historical context of the prophecy is the rebuilding of the temple. A lot of the finance came from the people giving to the rebuilding work. Two particular offences were people not giving at all, and this could be viewed as a form of theft, as we see in Malachi (see Mal 3:8,9). Then there were those who claimed to be giving to the temple, but in fact were not giving at all, or were giving far less than they claimed to be giving. They were swearing falsely, and in the incident in Acts concerning Ananias and Sapphira we know how seriously God took that (Acts 5:1-11). The judgement would be extremely severe, remaining on the house of the guilty until the house was completely destroyed. So how can we apply this to our day? Well we need to take commitment to God’s work very seriously. First, we need to be committed to doing God’s work. Building the kingdom should be our first priority. Then, when we say we will do something we should do it. This vision should demonstrate to us how seriously God takes these matters.
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