Why We Tithe

Let me recap the last few weeks. I know we took a break last week because of the revival, but this week, we’re back in business and have a lot to cover. If you didn’t know where this series originated from, let me try to fill you in on that. I basically took four subjects I get a lot of questions about and decided that I would answer them. These four subjects have been points of contention—mostly these have been reasons people have given me about why they don’t want to come to church. But more importantly, I’ve been trying to do a little soul searching and have been trying to determine whether we have some of these sacred cows—that is, traditions or superstitions we carry without really having a purpose to them or knowing what the heck we’re actually doing. So for the last few weeks, if you’ve been reading QT and listening to the podcast, you’d have noticed that little by little, I’ve been not only getting at sacred cows that we have as religious people, but I’ve just been trying to systematically and subtly rip apart some paradigms people who grew up Christian have in their world views that can be potentially hazardous. If you didn’t catch that or if you want to catch that, then you’ll have to start reading from February 21. Trust me, you’ll have to question not just big issues that we cover here at church the last four Sundays, but the little things in life that we don’t question but simply do without knowing why. Okay, back to my recap and I’ll keep it short, since I’ve done a shameless plugin to increase my readership by three or four. Four weeks ago we talked about the Bible and how that relates to scientific truth. I basically said, unlike what pastors says about the Bible, it doesn’t have all the answers to life’s questions. For example, the Bible can’t tell you who to marry. The Bible can’t tell you which job to take or what major you should choose or where to live or even how to finance a home or a car. The Bible can tell you what characteristics you’re looking for in the person you marry. It can tell you how to reflect within yourself and with God about how to feel comfortable with decisions. But the sole purpose of the Bible is to show you how God is and who He is and what we are to him. And I said, it’s because of this reason that we can’t argue diachronically to pit the Bible against Science. It just doesn’t work. Then three weeks ago, we talked about the problem of self-righteousness—that is, ungodly persecuting people for messing up, knowing fully well that you’re a mess up. I said, when we get self-righteous, we don’t see the sins that we commit and some how put various points on sins so some sins weigh more than others on a subject justice scale. The Bible tells us otherwise, it says that the wages for any and all sin is death, it doesn’t matter if it is a white lie or a full blown conspiracy theory to kill pastor Jonathan by trapping him into a no left turn situation in jersey where by the only way you can go is right to go left and then hitting an eighteen wheeler and flying off into the ditch in some marshland. Yeah, that’s what selfrighteousness does to somebody. It’s a relative moralism that justifies killing for something that doesn’t make real sense. Last week, if you didn’t catch the QT, there was a discussion on how the religious world needed to treat the secular world. The reason we had to have this conversation is because religious people pretend in some type of secrecy that they are holier than thou art and abstain from the secular world in the presence of other religious people. In fact, they’ll come out and straight out reject it and in the closet they’ll be more secular than the secular person and it’s a stupid thing to live that way. However, I mentioned very slightly that the other danger is to fully embrace all the BS of society and “not judge” it. The bottomline is because this church is named redemption, we need to be constantly moving influx in constant motion to redeem the secular, to take the good and use it for worship towards God and parse it from the BS. This week, it’s going to be a little more dry because people keep asking me questions on the offering and while they understand the concept they don’t really understand. So today’s sacred cows breaks out into two very different arenas of your financial life which is really guarded by the faith you have about God in your life. You’re getting a two for one deal. Not only am I going to blow up the sacred cow of where our tithes go, I’m also going to teach you the key to making good financial decisions in your life. Trust me, it’s a great formula with almost no rules. Where does the idea of tithing come from? Let’s read Deuteronomy 14. 22 “You must set aside a tithe of your crops—one-tenth of all the crops you harvest each year. 23 Bring this tithe to the designated place of worship—the place the Lord your God chooses for his name to be honored—and eat it there in his presence. This applies to your tithes of grain, new wine, olive oil, and the firstborn males of your flocks and herds. Doing this will teach you always to fear the Lord your God. Here’s the first blank: A tithe is 10% of what you make. You’re giving back to God 10% of what He gave you. Since we’re not sustenance farmers, we’re going to apply the concept. Since in the time of farming, it was up to God to give rain to make the crops grow that can be sold or eaten, they saw a direct correlation between God and their job performance/earnings. So let me say this as bluntly as possible, you probably get paid way more than you deserve at your job and it’s not because you work hard, it’s because God has had favor on you and that favor has come through to various people and it has been pouring onto you. I know some of you probably get paid way too little, but even then, God provides. So we give back to God what was already His that we get to use. I want you to underline this in your notes, “Doing this will teach you always to fear the LORD your God.” “Fear” means to revere, not to be scared, but to revere, to be grateful, to be grounded in knowing where you’re coming from and who you are. Second blank, “Tithing keeps you grounded in relationship with God.” Let’s move on. 24 “Now when the Lord your God blesses you with a good harvest, the place of worship he chooses for his name to be honored might be too far for you to bring the tithe. 25 If so, you may sell the tithe portion of your crops and herds, put the money in a pouch, and go to the place the Lord your God has chosen. 26 When you arrive, you may use the money to buy any kind of food you want—cattle, sheep, goats, wine, or other alcoholic drink. Then feast there in the presence of the Lord your God and celebrate with your household. 27 And do not neglect the Levites in your town, for they will receive no allotment of land among you. Here’s the next blank, we’re learning a lot about tithing today: tithing goes to the church you belong to. Back then, people belonged to a community church, they didn’t travel 80 miles in one direction to come to church on any given Sunday. They went to the church within walking distance of their house and that’s the community they belonged to. I know this is where a lot of you get suspicious; but rest assured, we have no interest in harassing you to give us your money. Now let’s go to verse 26 where this is interesting, “feast there in the presence of the Lord your God and celebrate with your household.” What does this mean? It means we need to worship God with the excesses of our life. You see, it doesn’t say hoard the extra blessings, it says feast with God and share it. Verse 27 gets a little more interesting because it basically says make sure you invite the priests to your parties. I’m not telling you to invite me to your parties, this is not a guilt trip, I probably couldn’t fit you in anyways, but basically, don’t leave them out. I want to apply this more broadly—if somebody is investing in your life, invest back into their lives with the extra that you have—parents, friends, family, your neighbors. A lot of you went to the nursing home yesterday, yeah, invest in their lives because they live right there where you live. Here’s what Jesus says in Luke 11:42, “What sorrow awaits you Pharisees! For you are careful to tithe even the tiniest income from your herb gardens, but you ignore justice and the love of God. You should tithe, yes, but do not neglect the more important things.” Let’s keep going. 28 “At the end of every third year, bring the entire tithe of that year’s harvest and store it in the nearest town. 29 Give it to the Levites, who will receive no allotment of land among you, as well as to the foreigners living among you, the orphans, and the widows in your towns, so they can eat and be satisfied. Then the Lord your God will bless you in all your work. – Deuteronomy 14:22-29 Verse 29—this is where our church starts to make a difference in the world—help people with what you have. The Christian cow of “God blesses those who work hard or God blesses those who are sinless” is a bold faced lie. Sometimes people are impoverished and abandoned and that’s a fact of life, so we are called to give to them what God has given to us. But we don’t like to because we feel they don’t deserve it, because we think we worked so hard for it, like it was ours to begin with. What we earn isn’t ours because we owe a debt that can never be repaid. In fact the only reason we got paid on Friday was because we were alive to receive a paycheck, our lives can be cut away and that’s that. I have a chart here describing our church financial expenses. This is all public information so don’t think we’re stealing your tithes because you do understand that tithing isn’t going to get burned up by God in some type of archaic sacrifice, although it would be cool to see it. Just like we give 10% of our earnings to God via church; the church gives 10% of all tithes to support other works of God in other churches and ministries, whether it be missionaries abroad or non-profits locally. Redemption, because our budget is so small, like nonexistent, 40% of our budget goes to missions (non profits and missionaries) and 60% goes back into what I call “education” but that just means foods, office supplies, craft materials, etc. Here’s our philosophy on why we give so much to missions and support nonprofits and ministries, because “… for you have been my partners in spreading the Good News about Christ from the time you first heard it until now. And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.”(Philippians 1:5-6) We don’t have a pastoral staff budget and we don’t pay for the building or maintenance, so we have a unique opportunity to do some real good in world right now. So I know a lot of people argue with me that the church takes peoples money and doesn’t do any good with it, for us, I can’t speak really for anybody but us, we invest your money, because it’s really God’s money, and we strive to reach people who don’t know Christ and bring them to an authentic relationship with Him.” In fact, that’s how we operate at this church—we will spend the money to get an opportunity to reach somebody who we can invite into relationship with God. Your money is not going to waste. That is not us. Whoever accuses us of being lavish and extravagant, you make sure you tell people, we do good and if you ask, I can even show you on the map and give you exact accountings of what happened when and how many people received Jesus. But there is a benefit to tithing besides doing the work of God in mysterious ways. Malachi 3. 6 “For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed. 7 From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. But you say, ‘How shall we return?’ 8 Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say, ‘How have we robbed you?’ In your tithes and contributions. 9 You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you. 10 Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. 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. 11 I will rebuke the devourer for you, so that it will not destroy the fruits of your soil, and your vine in the field shall not fail to bear, says the Lord of hosts. 12 Then all nations will call you blessed, for you will be a land of delight, says the Lord of hosts. – Malachi 3:6-12 Here’s another blank: When we tithe, we actively invite God into our lives. If we feel far from God, try to give God what’s His and see how he adds and speaks into your life. That was just verse 7. The reason we feel far from God sometimes, not all the time because sometimes we are just far from God so that we can understand who we are without Him or to provide a learning moment, is because we try to rob God of what’s really His. Verse 9 says as much. The prophet Malachi says, test God’s faithfulness to you by bringing generously to Him and see what happens. Last blank: when you have more need, you need to bring what you have to God and see no more need. This all boils down to one thing because I know the excuses because I used them all the time. God, I get taxed too much, I have no more money. God, this church is wasting my money on children’s craft materials. God, I want to have fun too. So I have constructed a godly financial plan to help you with tithing so that you don’t feel the need to give God excuses to why He’s so far away and for you to remove yourself from receiving what God wants to give you. I call it the “Give, Save, Spend” plan. You have to do it in that order, “Give, Save, and then Spend.” When you plan your financial life this way, then you never run out of money and God continues to add to you because you’re being a good steward! At minimum, when you get your paycheck, every week or every other week or every month, you give that money away to God first. Just take 10% away and act like it’s not even there. Then you take another 10% and put it away in a savings account. If that’s hard to do it right away, cold turkey, do it increasing amounts to help you get to 10%. Then you can spend the rest of it on whatever you want, no questions asked. But you have to stick with this. That’s a good scenario. If you need more specific line items, you can go onto the church website and find a very cool Excel spreadsheet where you can see how your money is being spent every month and help you isolate what you can get back under control. Ideally, you want to give away 15% of your money, save 15% of your money and spend 70% however you want. And as you get more established and richer, you want to increase the giving to 20% or 30% or go Bill Gates style and give it all away. Here’s what I wanted you to see today. When we know where our money goes and when we can give up our dependency on money, we can be open to bigger things, godlier things. We open ourselves up to more opportunities for God to add value into our lives and do something greater that just isn’t possible without a grounding in our relationship with Him and without Him blessing us for our obedience. In the Book of Hebrews, the author says, we may be giving tithes to a mortal man or an organization (the church), but it is through that order and line that Jesus permanently intercedes for us, a high priest who is blameless that was sacrificed for our weakness and iniquities. It is with that thought, that we give generously back to God for sending perfection to make us perfect so we can inherit much more than what we can ever imagine giving. Let’s pray.