Tithing And Obedience
Every week, during our Lord’s Day services, we preach short messages on the law of God. We are posting those here to be a blessing to God’s people outside of Sunday morning service.
11 then it shall come about that the place in which the Lord your God will choose for His name to dwell, there you shall bring all that I command you: your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and the contribution of your hand, and all your choice votive offerings which you will vow to the Lord. - Deuteronomy. 12:11
As the awful stench of hellish Canaanite sin wafted its way up to the heavens from the land, God was preparing His people on the edge of those borders and teaching them how to live for Him once they occupied it. Of course, they would need good weapons to fight the giants like Og, king of Bashan. They would need armor to withstand the urban warfare in all the various cities. And when they finished taking over and putting to death all those whom God commanded, they would need tools to farm and sew, seeds to plant, wells dug to retrieve water, and all sorts of other things that were essential for them to live.
Yet, one of the more peculiar things God mentions to them, as being absolutely essential to their life and survival in the land, is tithing. In case we forget where the word "tithe" comes from, it comes from the offering Abraham made to Melchizedek, who was a priest of the LORD, King of Salem, and a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus Christ. After routing four particularly nasty Canaanite kings, Abraham took the spoils of the victory. He acknowledged that a tenth part of it belonged to God. Then, believing He was standing in the presence of God, he handed the gift over to Melchizedek, who received the offering and blessed him. In doing this, Abraham acknowledges that His victory over the pagans was not due to his military prowess, intelligence in strategy, or the sizable force he mustered… He was announcing that his victory was entirely due to the grace of God, which is why God deserved the spoils.
Here in Deuteronomy 12, God is reminding His people of the same thing. Like Abraham, they were about to go in and route the Canaanites. And before the swords were drawn, God took a moment to remind them to behave like Abraham and remember the tithe. He told them, when you go in and fight the pagans, do not forget that 10% of what you recover belongs to Me. And not just during the fighting but as a perpetual statute for that generation and their children forever.
This ongoing commitment to giving 10% to the LORD was a gift to God, acknowledging that man cannot prosper on his own and that Yahweh alone protects us, sustains us, and keeps us. This 10% was an act of obedience from the people to their covenant Suzerain. It was a humble acknowledgment that everything they owned was because Almighty God provided it and graciously allowed them to steward the other 90%. A point we would do well to remember.
Now, as far as where the contributions were applied, they went to the upkeep of the temple, to fund the ministers who served there (such as the Levites and the Zadokian High Priest), and to make sure that the knowledge of Yahweh would extend throughout all the world (Isaiah 11:9). To say that differently, as the people of Israel conquered one godless nation, God was collecting resources to reach all the godless nations.
With that, the tithe was a monetary value representing everything the people in the land produced. That means if you were to add up all of the produce, the new livestock, the metal coins procured, and everything else, 1/10th of that yearly income would go directly to God. For example, if they made 100,000 dollars a year, they would set aside 10,000 to the Lord. No questions asked.
The reason was simple. The Lord Himself commanded that way of living. This was not for His benefit but for their own! When we tithe, we acknowledge that God is sovereign over every facet of reality. There are no hidden parts we get to squirrel away for a rainy day. When we tithe, we take our life into our own hands and commit to trusting God no matter what. We acknowledge that under the administration of God, He can sustain us better with 90% than we could on our own with 100%.
This is why God tells the miserly people in the book of Malachi to test Him when it comes to their money. Suppose we were to translate His Words into a modern context. In that case, God might say, "Get out your checkbooks, sell a few of your stock options, go online and sign up for online giving, and test Me to see if I AM faithful."
This, of course, is a bitter irony in the book of Malachi since God accused them of being covenant thieves. He tells them that they have robbed Him. Not because they gave nothing but because they gave less than 10%. He chides them, not because they have forgotten the discipline of giving, but because they gave stingily. They white-knuckled their hordes while they threw a twenty in the plate, thinking they had somehow impressed God with their generosity.
God challenges this group of people by telling them to test Him! He knew that they were nervous. He knew they wanted to hold onto as many resources as possible because things were tight in their world. But God says, test my character! Test my commands to see what happens! Won't I open up the storehouses of heaven to bless you? In this, God reveals the point of giving is our heart. Will we trust Him, or will we rob Him?
In the New Testament, Jesus tells us where our money is our hearts will be also (Matthew 6:21). He praises the poor woman who gave everything in 2 pennies instead of more considerable sums that represented insignificant percentages of personal wealth. He also reminds us that if we seek His Kingdom first, all our needs will be met, and we will never need to worry about money. Again, these things strike right at the heart.
Furthermore, since there is not a single passage in the New Testament that abrogates tithing, go ahead and find one; we can know with complete confidence that God still calls us to give a tenth of our income to Him, because we are still the kind of people who need our hearts realigned when it comes to money. In heaven, there is no more need for us to give since the bitter root of sin has been severed. But here on earth, while the lusts of the flesh and the pride of life still have a stranglehold over our flesh, Jesus reinforces and in no way abolishes the sin-mortifying, God-glorifying act of giving the tithe.
What does this mean? It means that if you want to be obedient to God in your finances, you are called upon to give Him 10% of your income. Let me say that more strongly when we withhold our finances from God and willingly give less than 10%, we are sinning and robbing God. If it is accurate and correct, then it is a sin to live in opposition to it.
And maybe you will say yes, but aha, God loves a cheerful giver (2 Corinthians 9:7). And you are right. God loves it when you cheerfully give your 10% instead of begrudgingly bartering with Him for a lower price. You, O man, have nothing. You own nothing. You are owed nothing. And yet God has given you charge over 90% of these assets, and are you still haggling with Him for more? If God commands, upholds, and never rescinds it, are we not to follow it? Are we not to live by faith and not by sight? Isn't it a way we demonstrate the love of Christ by obeying His commands (John 14:15)?
Do we believe that God will not do the same thing with us that He did with Israel? Won't He use our giving in the most sanctifying ways to remember our money is not ours and that everything belongs to Him? Isn't that a lesson worth learning? Won't He help us in our giving to be free from the love of money so that we will trust God with our future instead of relying on our resources? Wouldn't that lesson pay dividends in all kinds of ways? Won't God also use our resources to help build Christendom? To pay for more pastors, to start Christian schools, to plant new churches, to start new initiatives, and to take over the world that fell into the hands of the enemy but is being reclaimed by Christ through His Spirit-indewelled Church?
Perhaps you have been in churches that are afraid to talk about money. Or maybe you have been in churches where money was not discussed Biblically. I am glad you are here. Because the manifold testimony of Scripture is that we give a tenth of our spoils to God, and if we want to give beyond that (this is called an offering), we do so generously, without compulsion, and so cheerfully.
Brothers and sisters, as men and women who live in the wealthiest society that has ever been, the Church in America is in the position of being able to do more for the Kingdom than any other generation. Yet, I fear we will go down as one of the stingiest generations in all of church history. The average American lives more lavishly than all the Caesars of Rome and all the Pharaohs of Egypt. Yet the average church in America can barely afford to underpay a single minister. What are we doing?
Our forefathers and foremothers skipped meals to pay for cathedrals where the name of God would be heralded for centuries to come. Our society gets fat on a million luxuries. At the same time, churches meet in schools, living rooms, and office parks because they cannot afford a building.
The generations of old built cathedrals on the backs of peasants, and they will rise up in judgment against this generation. I am not saying everything was right in history. Still, peasants across the first 19 centuries gave more sacrificially, joyfully, and deliberately than this generation. As a result, they accomplished more in their poverty than we could have dreamed of in our riches.
Today, brothers and sisters, let us not be the generation known for white-knuckling our excesses. Let us not be the generation who finances the kingdoms of Disney or Hollywood, Tesla, and larger homes, vacations, and retirements but neglect to give to God and to the advancement of His Gospel. Instead, let us be a people who obey God. Let us look at our income, intentionally apportion 1/10th to the Lord and His local church, and trust Him with the results. Let us be the kind of people who do this work joyfully and regularly to build up Christendom. There are many ways to sin when it comes to giving. Perhaps the most common way in the modern world is through the sin of stinginess since we serve a God who gave us everything (John 3:16).
