Tithe Stewardship & Church Tithing

 I had someone send me a sermon by Darrin Patrick. He is the pastor of a multi-site church in St. Louis and vice-president of a church planting association.
In spite of this, he does not teach tithing as applicable for today’s Christian.

BPNews published an article in response to the CBS News broadcast, To Tithe or not To Tithe? The title of the article is, tithing is biblical. Once again the baptists take their stand for tithing with nothing but assumptions and opinions. Here’s the passage in Matthew 23:23 that Baptist Press uses to make their stand for tithing:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone.

Probably the number one question this time of year, is do i tithe on my taxes? What they mean is, am i suppose to tithe on the money i get back on my tax return? That’s a good question. So, here’s a question back. If you owe taxes this year, does the Church refund you tithe back? Probably not. Your gift that you gave this past year is long gone, and rightfully so. I wouldn’t expect the Church to give you any money back.

BUT . . . why are we so concerned with asking questions about these minute details on giving? Who really has the answer to tithing on taxes? The bible doesn’t have the answers on how you should exactly give within our complicated economic structure. The Bible was clear to Israel on how they should give their tithe, but the bible is not clear on how much the Church should give. It was simple for Israel - give a tenth of all your increase in crops and cattle(Leviticus 27:30). At harvest, they counted their crop and cattle and set aside the tenth one(Leviticus 27:32). They didn’t have pensions, 401k’s, and interest on grain or cattle.

Probably the number one thing that made it easy for Israel to calculate the tithe was the fact that they couldn’t give money, gold, or goods; they could only tithe on the cattle and agricultural increase. Tithing on taxes today, has become complicated at best. I’ve found that when people ask the “experts” on how they should tithe, most of the time the answer they give is a guess. The answers are never solid, and are never based on direct scripture. Most of the “experts” provide answers to these complicated tithing questions based on their opinion or interpretation of principles that they can find in the bible. Some of the answers are not even based on principles. Some of the “experts” give answers on how you should tithe, based on how they think the Old testament tithing system fits into our economic and New Testament structure now.

If you read in Matthew 23, you see that the Pharisees were perfect tithers. They knew every tithe question and scenario down to the smallest detail. Although there was nothing wrong with them doing that, and Jesus never said they were wrong in doing that. As a matter of fact Jesus told his disciples in that passage to obey the pharisees. Of course Jesus highlighted with a strong rebuke the actions of the Pharisees that the disciples shouldn’t follow. The difference between the Pharisees narrowing down every scenario of tithing and the New Testament Church narrowing it down is the difference between the law, and grace.

Most of these answers you receive on giving the tithing on taxes is an educated guess. The tithe cannot be followed directly through the avenues of the law, so most people just give an opinion on how tithing should be obeyed under grace. The sad thing is the “experts” do not inform you that their answers come from opinion. They give you these guesstimates as if the answers they have come from a direct phone line to God’s tax accountant.

So, tithing on taxes? I’d say pray, ask for advice, and consult the Spirit of God to direct you. Because the “experts” can’t give you direct biblical commands, more than likely the answer you get from your tithing on taxes questions will come from the Spirit of God anyways. The law cannot give answers the one who is governed by grace.

It’s not enough that people have to give the first fruit of their tithe, which is a scandal. Now Paula White is saying that a separate first fruit offering should be given. I’ve got a mouthful that i want to say. Here’s the difference between first fruits, tithes, and offerings. Where else could i begin with this mess? This is the typical TBN, Paula White scandal to get more money and fatten these theives. What more could Paula White want? If anyone else wants to fall for this Paula White scandal, be my guest. It’s just tempting me to come up with a good scheme to get everybody, to make me rich.

So what do we do? We ask for the Spirit of God to rise up a Pastor. We ask the Spirit of God to equip Sunday school teachers. We ask the Spirit of God to call more missionaries. We ask the Spirit of God to train our children. We ask the Spirit of God to start a new Church. We ask the Spirit of God to help us with our words. We ask the Spirit of God to lead us when we witness. We ask the Spirit of God to heal, intercede, interpret, and perform miracles. We ask the Spirit of God to guide everything, except our pocket books. So What do we do? we just play that safe and leave that up to tithing.

I’m not the type of person to just spit out a bunch of verses and say, “these verses are so clear about what God says”. I like hearing things myself that just kind of thump you on the head. Like the one statement above, “we’ll just play that safe and leave that up to tithing.” What it does is sum up the folly of the tithing mentality into a sarcastic thought. It’s not going to prove anything but it just shows how the tithing logic is so off. Sometimes i get so sick of trying to prove the role of Spirit-led giving. I can write chapters and chapters about that, but who wants to read all that stuff. There’s plenty of authors and theologians out there that repeat the same points as me.

I love the times in life when you say something and it sounds so profound. It’s like, where did that come from? then you feel happy about yourself and you start repeating it over and over in your head so you don’t forget it. I guess that’s kind of what i’m doing now. Are there times when you say something or hear something so profound that no one else seems to be on board with? Hopefully i won’t get any comments like that. If you do want something that is a little more definitive about the tithing argument you can read my tithing rebuttal with supporting verses. That has some of that boring stuff i talked about earlier.

There are many people that ask about the definition of the tithe compared other types of gifts. The tithe definition in its broadest sense means a tenth of one’s increase - Deuteronomy 14:22. That is the broadest definition of tithe that is accepted by most of the population. There are even more defined meanings of tithing out there. For instance some would say that the definition of the tithe by nature, goes to your local church, and is taken off of your gross income. This is because the tithe was delivered to the local storehouse in the Old Testament - Malachi 3:10, and in Proverbs 3:9 we are to honor the Lord with the first fruits of our increase.

Scholars and theologians constantly debate about the tithe definition. Mainly because the tithe’s function was prescribed in detail in the old testament, defined for the nation of Israel, and was not done so for the Church in the NT. There seems to be many holes and many opportunities for personal interpretation of how we should prescribe the tithe into the New Testament Church.

The definition of the tithe was very simple and plainly laid out for Israel. They were to gather their harvest and count the tithe out from what they’ve gathered. For instance, if you had 100 apples, you must count them out from one-to-ten, and the tenth one you set aside for the Lord - Leviticus 27:32. As is stated in the previous verse, it did not matter if that tenth one was bruised or under-sized, you still set it aside. Also, you set the tenth one aside, not the first one aside.

There were other rules under the tithe definition. First, the tithe generally went to the Levites, and in turn the levites gave a tenth of their tenth to the priestly line for the work of the temple. Next, there were generally three different “types” of the tithe. first, was the poor tithe - Deuteronomy 26:12. Second, was the feast tithe - Deuteronomy 14:22-23. Third, was the Levitical tithe - Numbers 18:24. Practically, the tithe included the poor and the Levites all the time, but those are generally how the tithe is categorized. The feast tithe was the most unique and was consumed by the whole nation of Israel as a feast celebration.

Most people argue that the total amount of tithes given by Israel equaled over 23%. I don’t follow that logic, just for the simple fact that when the bible says 10% of all your increase, generally it means just 10%. Maybe that’s too simple minded? I don’t know? Also genealogy and numbering records have shown that a 10% gift from the whole nation of Israel was plenty enough to take care of the small tribe of Levi.

Now that we got an abridged version of the tithe definition for Israel, what about the definition for the Church? Truthfully, you are asking the wrong person. I feel the definition of the tithe for the church is far more complicated than the IRS tax code. Like i said above, the definition of tithing for the New Testament Church has many holes and opportunities for personal interpretation. I’m of the persuasion that it doesn’t belong in the Spirit-led Church. I know. . . I know what you’re saying, how can the Church operate without the tithe? Well, first of all, the Church is not the nation of Israel so it has no need to operate under Israel’s strict code of laws. The Church operates under the capacity of the Holy Spirit in tune with the principles of God’s word. Yes, God’s word said don’t eat unclean meat, circumcise your sons, tithe of your increase . . . and so forth, but i said the Holy Spirit is in tune with the PRINCIPLES of God’s word.

Ha, Ha, what is the definition of a principle you ask? Well, let’s make that for another post. I know this was a quick synopsis of the definition of tithing, but without writing a few chapters and without a few hours, this seems the best i could do. If anyone has any thoughts or ideas that i missed that describes the tithe definition, we need to hear them. Please share them below.

Why did i even click on the advertisement that said, “Tithing Generates Wealth”!!? I knew what was coming. When will it all end? Here is a thumbnail to the right that you can click on to see the full screenshot of the website i came across.

Where do I start and what do i say to this crazy website. Where do you get the idea that tithes and offerings made Abraham wealthy? Another thing it says: “Five simple steps you must take to accumulate massive wealth”. Everyone wants microwave Christianity. Everyone wants microwave wealth. They just want to press a few buttons and presto, out comes a T.V. Dinner. As a matter of fact i was close to naming this post, “microwave Christianity”.

There are principles to wealth in the bible, and tithing and offerings is not one of them. Work hard, gain wisdom, save, invest. . . these are all principles in the bible.

I like chasing rabbits, so here goes one kind of off topic. I am sick of hearing the word, “seed”. i wanna puke every time i hear that word in the prosperity message. “sow your seed here”, “sow your seed there”. Makes me want to scream.

So back from the rabbit trail. Probably the next “worse” thing about this website is, (well its all bad at the same degree, so all of it is “worse”) that they have this annoying, never-ending popup that doesn’t want to go away. It says, “STOP RIGHT THERE” and then rambles on about your blessing you are promised. It’s not like the website itself is horrific enough. If that doesn’t give you nightmares, you’ll be dreaming of popups chasing you all night that won’t go away.

I should come up with a list of top 10 most annoying things of prosperity websites. One of them would be the paypal donation button at the bottom. As a matter of fact, i am going to come up with a top 10 list. Has anyone come across any other horrific websites?

Remember that old song that used to be sung, “Give me that old time religion”? I’m kind of curious as to why that person wrote that song. Did that person like old way of things or was ministry much simpler than it had been before. There’s one thing for certain is that its much more complicated now.

I keep myself involved in forums, blogs, groups and debates about the tithing subject. So I come across many questions about tithing here and there. I came across this challenge. Someone asked me to support my reasons for freewill, spirit-led giving. They said that much of the support that they’ve heard came from verses that talked about giving offerings to foreign lands for missions, and that this had nothing to do with support for local ministry. They believed tithing should be in place to support the local ministry. They disagreed with my stance that spirit-led giving to lead the way for church support not tithing.

I’ve been realizing more and more that i have to use the old testament in order to proclaim what is right for the new testament. I have much to learn, but i’m starting to wonder if you can’t support a new testament thought without old testament proof, then you ought to question your thoughts. For instance if i can’t prove from the OT that the tithe is not relevant to the church then i ought to reconsider my thoughts.

There are three areas in the old testament that i use to support freewill, spirit-led offerings for the new testament. One of them digs into the conditional tithing covenant of Jacob, the other deals with the freewill gifts given on the OT day of Pentecost. Finally the one i am going to get into below is the passage in Exodus 35:20-35. I used this passage below to answer how freewill, spirit-led offerings can support local ministry. The passage below is about 15 verses, but you only need to read a couple to see what i’m referrring to:

Exodus 35:20 Then the whole Israelite community withdrew from Moses’ presence, and everyone who was willing and whose heart moved him came and brought an offering to the LORD for the work on the Tent of Meeting, for all its service, and for the sacred garments. All who were willing, men and women alike, came and brought gold jewelry of all kinds: brooches, earrings, rings and ornaments. They all presented their gold as a wave offering to the LORD. Everyone who had blue, purple or scarlet yarn or fine linen, or goat hair, ram skins dyed red or hides of sea cows brought them. Those presenting an offering of silver or bronze brought it as an offering to the LORD, and everyone who had acacia wood for any part of the work brought it. Every skilled woman spun with her hands and brought what she had spun—blue, purple or scarlet yarn or fine linen. And all the women who were willing and had the skill spun the goat hair. The leaders brought onyx stones and other gems to be mounted on the ephod and breastpiece. They also brought spices and olive oil for the light and for the anointing oil and for the fragrant incense. All the Israelite men and women who were willing brought to the LORD freewill offerings for all the work the LORD through Moses had commanded them to do.

Then Moses said to the Israelites, “See, the LORD has chosen Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and he has filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, ability and knowledge in all kinds of crafts- to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood and to engage in all kinds of artistic craftsmanship. And he has given both him and Oholiab son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan, the ability to teach others. He has filled them with skill to do all kinds of work as craftsmen, designers, embroiderers in blue, purple and scarlet yarn and fine linen, and weavers—all of them master craftsmen and designers.

To me, this is a beautiful picture of how God intends his Church to function. Israel was not commanded to tithe until they settled in the promised land, so this passage is prior to the tithe requirement. How many times is willing in there? How many times is freewill mentioned? How many times does it mention that God has filled his people with gifts and skills and abilities? This passage proves that God is capable of equipping his people to finance and support the local ministry of God without incorporating the structure of the law to do it. We act as if the church’s hands will be tied behind our back if we don’t require tithing. Can it get any more plain than this? Can we stop whining about how people need to tithe, when actually we just have people that are not willing to listen to the Spirit of God.

I don’t know about you, but I want this old time religion. The question is are you and i willing? So what about you? Do you think this passage portrays a good example for us to follow today?