The Ten Percent Tithe

Tithing is a tricky thing.  If a church pastor preaches a sermon on tithing, he will be accused of being interested only in money.  The pastor’s salary (minister, priest, etc) is probably set in the church budget.  It’s not like if the church has a good day at the offering plate, he’s going out to Golden Corral after the service.  But try to teach on the subject of tithing if you don’t believe me, and see if  words like meddling or greedy aren’t tossed around freely.

The issue I wish to address here is the practice many Christians have of tithing exactly ten percent of each dollar earned.  I mean to respond to questions such as:

• Is tithing an Old Testament command?
• Are Christians required to tithe?
• Does Jesus demand a tithe?
• How much should one tithe, if anything?

The most commonly accepted tithe to make is ten percent, as mentioned earlier.  It is easy to find ten percent tithers in the Old Testament, even before the Law is given at Mount Sinai.  Abraham gave the priest Melchizedek such a tithe, long before there even was a Moses.  Many site Leviticus 27:30, and sometimes verses following, as the basis for a ten percent tithe.  There are offering envelopes with this verse printed on them, that read “a tenth… holy unto the LORD.”  Well, that’s sort of what that verse says.  It says any tithe given will be holy unto the LORD, but does not specify ten percent.  And the ten percent tithe in the Law was only one tithe; there were also taxes collected, free-will offerings, and special collections taken up to do the religious and civil work of the Hebrew kingdom.  Even in the Old Testament, it’s complicated.  It gets even more so in the New.

In the New Testament, we read that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets.  We live under grace, and not old covenant legality.  One could argue the civil law is still in effect, but the religious codes, the food laws, those were specific to the nation of Israel.  So, on that basis alone, one could argue that tithing is not required.  Tithing was a law, we are not under the Law.

But the church now, as before, is required to do certain things, like care for widows and orphans.  The New Testament is clear about supporting your clergy as well; and missionaries.  Without financial support, your local church could not even keep the lights on, much less fulfill the Great Commission.  When it comes to our finances in the New Testament, the “ten percent” rule might actually be holding us back.  Rather than ten percent being required, we find verses like Acts 11:29, where each gave according to his ability.  Some of us are able to give far beyond ten percent.  2 Corinthians 9:6 says we should give willingly, v. 7 even telling us that “God loves a cheerful giver.”

I assure you that if you have been regularly practicing tithing ten percent, your church (and pastor) appreciate it.  Tithing is Old Testament Law; we should be offering or giving to the church.  And even if we give ten percent, we still must honor God with the other 90.  What Jesus requires is much greater than ten percent of what we have; he requires the whole thing, and not just our money.  As Paul reminded the Corinthians, we are no longer our own but have been bought with a price. Our tithes, offerings and gifts (including time and talent) belong to God; and he is worthy to receive them.

The Pagan Roots of Halloween; and Easter and Christmas

Just like the Internet Monk rants here, I was raised in a fundamentalist Baptist home.  We read the King James Bible, went to Sunday School, prayer meeting, revival, and every other time the church door was open.  We didn’t wear shorts at my childhood home, nor go swimming in mixed company.  My dad went to the public school and had me excused from the two weeks of swimming our P.E. class had in August.  Dad was a street preacher, standing on the corner of a downtown city block shouting the Gospel at passing traffic.  (He still does that once a week, but I no longer hand out tracts to pedestrian passersby.) 

But you know what my parents did let us do?  Go trick-or-treating.  I dressed up for school on Halloween all the way through 6th grade.  I remember going to at least one church sponsored haunted house.  Other church members handed out candy.  And I remember well the day that Halloween was taken away from us.  I was about 11 or 12, and don’t remember everything said in the sermon that night, but one point was how that putting a jack-o-lantern on your front porch was a sign that you had sold your daughter to Satan.  The “Halloween is the Devil” sermon was an eye-opening experience for my parents, and marked the death of it’s celebration in our home.

Yes, there are pagan festival roots to the celebration of Halloween.  Most of those roots are either barely or in fact no longer visible in our Americanized children’s version of the day.  Let me ask you this: every struggle with a child’s question about what hiding eggs has to do with Jesus?  How do you deal with “Was Jesus birthday December 25th?”  If you’re tossing Halloween and all things pagan from your house, Easter and Christmas are gonna’ have to go as well.

The changing of seasons and phases of the moon have always had significance in pagan belief and practice.  Each spring as the world reawakened, pagan worshipers observed a feast for Beltane.  Springtime is all about fertility, and new life, and… you don’t want me to go into it here.  That’s what the eggs are about.  In simplest terms, the early Christians were well aware that a big party was going on that they were not allowed to participate in.  So rather than worship Beltane, they decided to have their own celebration – scheduled to coincide with the Beltane rituals – and make it about Jesus.  That’s why our celebration of Easter is all mixed up between sermons of resurrection and the coloring and hiding of eggs.  “We” took a pagan holiday and Christianized it; we stole Easter from pagans.

The same with Christmas.  Why is it on December 25th?  The dates for Easter and Christmas were set long ago, well before the Protestant Reformation by the Catholic Church.  That ought to be enough to send fundamentalists over the edge, who don’t believe Christians existed prior to Protestantism and that the Bible was written in 1611.  The first day of winter, just like spring, was a significant marker on the pagan calendar.  I’m going to close with a passage of scripture from Jeremiah 10.  My dad quoted this each year when we asked about a Christmas tree.  Like the holiday itself, we Christianized the tree.

Thus says the Lord:

“Learn not the way of the nations,*
nor be dismayed at the signs of the heavens
because the nations are dismayed at them,
for the customs of the peoples are vanity. 
A tree from the forest is cut down
and worked with an axe by the hands of a craftsman.
They decorate it with silver and gold;
they fasten it with hammer and nails
so that it cannot move.  -Jer 10:2-4

*KJV says “way of the heathen”

Building on the Rock

As Jesus finishes the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7) he offers some practical advice concerning his teachings.  He says that anyone who hears his words and does them is like a wise man that built his house on a rock.  Do we all know what happens next?  The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew, but the house did not move.  To not heed the word of Jesus is to be the foolish man who build his house on the sand; great was the fall of it. 

The warning is very clear.  As Jesus comes to the end of his message, he implores his listeners to put the teachings into practice.  He advocates using these specific teachings (including the Model Prayer and Golden Rule) as a foundation on which to build.  If you start with an iffy foundation, it doesn’t matter how well built the rest of your project is.  Just look at the Leaning Tower of Pisa.  So it is with constructing our spiritual building.  In John MacArthur’s commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, he says that the Beatitudes are a future promise to the one who lives righteously.  The rest of the passage is about just how to do that.  So then, Jesus makes a promise, gives instruction on how to obtain it, and reminds us at the end that we had better have been listening.  His closing remarks are another way of saying to be doers of the word, not hearers only.

Notice the parallels that Peter makes in 1 Peter 2.  He includes two quotes from Isaiah and one from the Psalms, all of them about God laying a foundation in Zion and choosing a precious stone that the builders rejected.  Peter makes it clear that Jesus is the precious stone of God’s choosing, a sure foundation, and that the Jewish leaders rejected him as they were destined to do.  But for those of us who believe, we are putting up spiritual buildings on the same precious and sure foundation.  We are building the Kingdom, and Jesus is the cornerstone on which it all rests. 

Follow me here.  In Matthew 7, Jesus is advising his followers to heed his message for their own sake.  To receive the promise of the Beatitudes, to ensure a personal place in the kingdom on the day of judgement, we must hear and practice his teachings.  Peter, in the age of grace and writing to the Church, is talking about building the kingdom.  Jesus, during his earthly ministry, is speaking to the individual.  Peter is talking about how each individual is building the body of Christ and doing the work of the coming Kingdom.  

Today we continue to labor toward that kingdom made up of every tribe, every tongue and every nation.  That’s the “Israel of God” that Paul mentions in Galatians 6, not a political nation but God’s spiritual promise to Abraham.  That sounds like a whole other post.

The Discovery of the Short Post

I was warned when I started blogging about writing posts that were too long.  Shorter posts stand a better chance of being read.  Well, I’ve recently been trying to get our youth involved in some online discussion on their Facebook page.  I tossed out what I hope will be conversation starters, and realize that I don’t have to say everything I know in order for a post to be good.  Here’s an example, titled Jesus Read the Bible and Prayed:

 

There are sometimes tough choices to make when deciding how a Christian should act or what one should do in certain circumstances. What’s easy to understand is that we should be imitating the things that Christ did.

We know from the New Testament that Jesus was frequently found in the temple and synagogue reading the Hebrew scrolls. He is the Word of God, and he also read the Word of God. Jesus also spent serious time in prayer. Not just reciting the Lord’s Prayer, but we might say Jesus was hardcore in his prayer time. He often got up well before sunrise to pray, and on occasion prayed all night ’till sunrise. In Gethsemane, he prayed until Luke says his sweat was like great drops of blood.

Sometimes we get the mistaken notion that the closer we get to God, the less we need to pray. The opposite seems to be true; you can’t get closer than Jesus.

The Importance of the Resurrection

There was a time I wondered why so much emphasis was placed on the resurrection.  Jesus died on the cross as the all-sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the world.  Even if there had been no resurrection, his sacrificial death would have brought salvation; what could be more important than that? 

The blood of Jesus was a more excellent sacrifice than that of bulls, sheep and birds.  His death on the cross brought an end to the temple sacrifice system.  The entire Gospel pivots around the cross.  It is the universal symbol of Christianity.  But the implications of resurrection are equally powerful, a fact that I can now appreciate as well. 

Jesus’ Example: Love Your Enemies

Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. 

Those are the words of Jesus in Matt 5:44.  The entire sermon on the mount can be read in Matt 5-7, but let’s deal right now with just this one command.  Like everything Jesus taught, he not only gave the instruction but provided us with his example to follow.  Jesus loved his enemies. 

Parable of the Sower (Fling the Gospel)

In Mark chp 4, one of the parables Jesus shares is the Parable of the Sower.  If you didn’t just click the link to Mark 4, it may be that you know this parable well.  I hope you either know this story already, or at least take the time to read it now.  After telling this particular parable, Jesus goes on to explain its meaning.  The seed is the gospel, and what happens illustrates many things that could happen to those who hear the gospel shared.  What I want to foucs on for a moment is exactly what Jesus meant by “went out to sow.”

On the Other Hand

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—  for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law.  Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.

But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many.  And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification.  For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.  -Romans 5: 12-17

In some ways, Jesus is like Adam.  By one man’s transgression, sin entered the world.  And by one man’s righteousness, victory over sin entered the world.  Adam and Jesus are alike in that both are a type of “first man.”  At the same time, they are total opposites if you think about it.  Adam was the first man to sin; Jesus was the first man to live without sin. 

Coming Soon to a Blog Near You

I know I haven’t been blogging much lately.  If you somehow missed it, my wife had a baby about two weeks ago.  My mom was here two weeks, my in-laws are still here, a new school year started; it’s been a hoot.

Look for these posts to come soon:  On the Other Hand.  This is the sermon I preached last Sunday morning.  On the one hand, Jesus was a lot like Adam; and Moses, and David, and John the Baptist.  On the other hand, Jesus was God.

This morning I’m preaching on Abraham being the first man of faith.  Before there was Moses, Aaron, the temple or the Law, Abram was blessed by Melchizedek and gave a 10% tithe.  And then 3,000 years before Jesus was crucified, his faith was counted as righteousness.  Abraham was way ahead of the curve.

Equal Time

This post is very personal and way too long; but  I feel it’s a story that must be told.

You don’t hear about it much anymore, but during the 70’s a concept known as equal time or equal opportunity was hotly debated.  Television stations had to provide an equal amount of broadcasting time for both sides of a political issue.  1959 and 1971 are banner years regarding amendments and exemptions to the Congressional Act if you get really interested.  I just wanted everyone to remember there was such a thing. 

For a number of years, it didn’t look like my wife and I would be having any children.  We were married in 1997; in 2002 she tested positive for the first time on a pregnancy test.  We laughed, we cried, then we called everybody we knew.  We started picking out names, and one person wanted to be the first to give the baby a gift.  Then around 12 weeks or so we made a trip to the emergency room, and found out the she had already miscarried.  The event was traumatic; much worse than never becoming pregnant at all.