The Spiritual Disciplines of Christian Stewardship Series Lecture # 1: "The Tithe That Binds"

(I "stole" this catchy title from Dr. Randy Weiss. Thanks Doc.)

Please note: I have herein attempted to do a short series on the subject of Christian Stewardship, which will take into account the concept of tithing and it's applicability to Christians today. I have lectured on this topic and this CT (#54) and the next two (#55 and #56) are written forms of my three lectures. Thus, they are not written in a strong academic style.

Introduction

Before I can discuss the Spiritual Discipline of Stewardship with you, there is a foundational truth that you must first understand. I am sure that a few of you will already know this stuff. For some, this will be new, and it may even be hard for you to accept. So, this week, I will attempt only to set the stage for next week when we shall discuss the Spiritual Discipline of Stewardship. However, I guarantee that most of you will find this information very interesting. Some of you who are reading this are going to see the first passage of Scripture and you are going to think to yourselves, "Oh, no, not another sermon on tithing!" Well, yes, sort of. However, I promise you, you are going to want to read this one! So, here is my "money back guarantee"- if you don't find this letter interesting, I'll return the money that you paid for it.

Malachi 3:8-9 says "Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me. But you ask, 'How do we rob you?' In tithes and offerings. You are under a curse-the whole nation of you-because you are robbing me." Now, consider the following "reasoning."

If you are not tithing, then you are robbing God. That's what Malachi says. If you are robbing God, then you are not his friend. If you are not His friend, then you are His enemy. If you are His enemy, then you are not going to heaven. Conclusion: By extrapolation, then, we can conclude that if you are not tithing, you are not going to heaven.

I heard a pastor say these very words. He told his people that if they were not tithing, they would not go to heaven. Then the pastor went on to preach from this next text in Malachi: "Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this," says the LORD Almighty, "and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it."

In brief, according to this pastor's argument, God is teaching us that, "The storehouse is the church," and when God says "my house," He is also talking about the church. So, God wants you to bring your tithes and give them to the particular church you attend so that there will be enough money in order to carry out the work of God. And, if you will do this, if you will tithe, God says, "Test me in this, says the LORD Almighty, and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it."

Another pastor told me and a few other ministers at a minister's meeting,

I think that we ought to do what the Mormons do in their church. They make their people tithe, and they actually bill them. If their people don't tithe, then they are not allowed in the church. We should do that. We should meet people at the door of the church, and if they are not tithers, we should turn them away.

Of course, I just chuckled because I knew he had to be kidding . . . right? What Christian minister in his right mind would make such a wild statement? Then he looked at me with a sternness and said, "I'm not kidding. If I could get away with it, I would do it."
These two pastors do not represent the Bible's teaching on tithing. In fact, I would say that these two pastors are far more interested in representing themselves.

First, let me point out that the New Testament never teaches tithing. That's an interesting thing. Let me ask something. Does something that God said in the Old Testament have to be repeated in the New Testament before it is incumbent upon us New Testament Christians? No, of course not. However, what if something applies only to the Old Testament people and not to New Testament Christians? If that is the case, then are we New Testament Christians required to do that thing? No, we're not required to do that thing.

Examples: The Old Testament forbids the eating of shellfish and pork
Leviticus 11:7-8 "And the pig . . . is unclean for you. You must not eat their meat . . . they are unclean for you."
Leviticus 11:9-11 "Of all the creatures living in the water of the seas and the streams, you may eat any that have fins and scales [that's a typical fish, like trout and salmon]. But all creatures in the seas or streams that do not have fins and scales . . . [like shrimp, crab, and lobster] you are to detest. And since you are to detest them, you must not eat their meat . . ."

However, in the New Testament we have this passage: Mark 7:14-19:

Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, 'Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. Nothing outside a man can make him unclean by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him unclean.' After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable. 'Are you so dull?' he asked. 'Don't you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him unclean? For it doesn't go into his heart but into his stomach, and then out of his body.' (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods 'clean.')

Did you catch this part of the text? "In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean." Well, now, we have to ask, "Why would God give a law in the Old Testament and then undo that law in the New Testament?"

Not All Laws are Created Equal

Two things must be seen here: (1) When God speaks something that is an absolute moral or spiritual law, He never reverses His word on that issue. For instance, "Thou shall not kill" is as binding today as it was when God wrote it as part of the Ten Commandments. Another law of God is, "Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins." These are absolute moral and spiritual laws. These primary laws are absolute and binding upon all people at all times. (2) However, God spoke some "laws" that were not absolute moral or spiritual laws. Quite often these laws had to do with health issues or welfare issues. These secondary laws were not absolute and binding upon all people at all times.

These secondary laws were given to help people live healthy and happy lives. Let me explain. We all know that pork is a meat that must be cooked longer and hotter than some other kinds of meat so that all of the "bugs" are cooked out of it. If pork is not cooked properly, people can get sick from eating it. When God forbade the eating of pork in the Old Testament, He was not setting down an absolute moral or spiritual law. If He had been, then Jesus could never have "declared all foods ritualistically clean," because then He would have been going against His own absolute moral or spiritual law. Thus, in the Old Testament, God gave many so-called "laws" that if followed by His people in that day and age , it would lead to a healthier and better lifestyle. An interesting note: A medical doctor once told me that Leviticus reads like an "ancient medical journal." Example: Leviticus 13:40-44:

When a man has lost his hair and is bald, he is clean. . . But if he has a reddish-white sore on his bald head or forehead . . . The priest is to examine him, and if the swollen sore on his head or forehead is reddish-white like an infectious skin disease, the man is diseased and is unclean. The priest shall pronounce him unclean because of the sore on his head.

Listen to the prescription for such an "unclean person" Leviticus 13:45-46:

The person with such an infectious disease must wear torn clothes, let his hair be unkempt, cover the lower part of his face and cry out, 'Unclean! Unclean!' As long as he has the infection he remains unclean. He must live alone; he must live outside the camp.

We don't quarantine people today for having sores on their heads, and we certainly don't make them walk around in torn clothes yelling "Unclean! Unclean!" But why don't we do that? After all, it is a "law of God," right? So, are we "breaking" God's laws by not having sore-headed people walk around in torn clothes yelling "Unclean! Unclean!" Obviously not. Let's think through this for just a moment.

Why did God give that "law"? And, why don't we keep that law today? Well, it kept people from catching the man's disease. If you saw a person walking down the street with his hair all messed up, wearing torn clothes and yelling "Unclean! Unclean!" everywhere he went you would stay away from him right? Exactly. It was a great way of keeping people away from the man so that they didn't catch his disease. However, today we just put an antibiotic ointment on it, and the affected area would probably get better.

Why did God say that His people were not to eat pork? Simple: It was because He didn't want them to get sick. If they had had our cooking abilities (i.e., ovens, microwaves, etc.), God might have given them a different law, probably something like,

"Be sure to cook the pork at 425 degrees for 2 hours fro each one inch of thickness until it is thoroughly cooked, thus saith the Lord."

So, the whole point I am making is this: We must be careful to make a distinction between God's absolute "moral and spiritual laws," and His "better, healthy living laws."

God also gave some "welfare" laws to His Old Testament people. God was (and still is) concerned about the poor. So, God instituted a "welfare" law of tithing. Now, there was more to tithing than simply welfare; God also used the tithes and offerings to finance His temple so that people would have a place to gather and worship God. But, for the most part, tithing was for a twofold purpose: to take care of the poor, and to support the temple.

Well, today, we have a governmental welfare system. So, our tithes and offerings rarely go to the poor, and none of our tithes and offerings go to the temple, because there is no temple in Jerusalem anymore. And, the local preacher who says that "today's temple is the church" is wrong, dead wrong. The temple spoken of by Malachi is not today's "church."

Like the "pork law," as well as the "swollen-sore-on-the-head law," the "tithe law" was given at a certain time in history to meet specific needs that were unique to that time and to those people. Remember Malachi's word about the "storehouse"? Malachi 3:10 says "Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house." Guess what? There is no "storehouse" of God today that is specifically used to feed the poor. So why bring your tithes into something that no longer exists?

An Illustration

Let's say that you and I go fishing every Saturday for one year. Every Saturday we go to the same little creek at our special little "fishing hole." Every Saturday we have a great time catching lots of fish. Then, let's say an enemy comes and says, "I don't want them having that much fun! I am going to destroy this creek so that they cannot fish here and enjoy themselves anymore." So, our enemy somehow diverts or otherwise destroys the stream and our fishing hole. Now, there are no more fish. There isn't even water flowing through it anymore. In fact, all that's left of our fishing hole is a smelly, wet muck. Now, would you continue to go each Saturday and fish in our fishing hole? Only if you have brain damage. No, what would be the point? The water is gone. The fish are gone.

Well, guess what? In 70 AD, an enemy of Israel came and destroyed the "fishing hole" of Jerusalem. That's right, in 70 AD, Titus and his Roman army swept into Jerusalem, and destroyed Israel's temple. They destroyed the storehouse. When there is no longer a fishing hole, there will be no more fishing. When there is no more temple/storehouse, there will be no more tithing.

Membership Fees

I have a friend who is a Jewish Rabbi (he is not a Christian-Jewish Rabbi). He is the rabbi of a Jewish synagogue. I called him once and I asked him if his "church" people tithed at his synagogue. He actually laughed out loud over the phone. Have you ever been laughed at? I felt rather foolish. Then, he must have felt sorry for me because he stopped laughing. Then he said, "Rick-tithe? We Jews haven't tithed since the destruction of our temple nearly 2,000 year ago. Why on earth would you think that we tithed. Tithing was for and about the temple. No temple, no tithe." Well, it doesn't get much clearer than that.

So, I asked him, "Then how do you support your synagogue?" He said, "We have membership fees." I said, "You mean like a gym?" "Well, yes, kind of like a gym," he said. Then he said, "But, anyone can attend our services. They don't have to pay a dime to attend our synagogue. However, if they want to be members, they pay membership fees. And, membership has its privileges. If members want me to do funerals, or weddings, or a bar mitzvah, I do it for them for free. If a non-member wants those same services, I charge them."
So, tithing is not an absolute moral or spiritual law. The "law" of tithing was part of a specific time, for a specific people, in a specific place. Well, that specific time is now gone. That specific place (i.e., the temple) is also gone. All that remain are the specific people. They are sort of like the fishermen in my hypothetical story. If I continued to go to the "fishing hole" after it was destroyed, and continued to cast my bait into the now wet, mucky fishing hole where there are no living fish, ya'll might send the "guys in the white coats" to come and drag me away. No fishing hole, no fishing. No temple/storehouse, no tithing.

So then, does this mean that we are not to give money to the work of God? No, of course not. The New Testament does talk about giving our finances to help further the work of God, but, it is vitally important that we do not confuse New Testament stewardship with the Old Testament tithing "law."