"Tithing is a Spiritual Adventure"
Dr. Howard Vanderwell
Hillcrest CRC, Hudsonville, MI
February 9, 1997
Text: Malachi 3:8-10, II Corinthians 9:6-11
I took a friend out for breakfast
the other day. Because it was at my invitation I bought and when I was
preparing to pay for the breakfast I also prepared to leave a tip. I knew
the going rate was about 15% but it was rather an odd figure and she had
served us exceptionally well so I rounded it off and in the car on the
way back, I figured it out a little bit and it was about 20% that I left
her. I came back to church and got in to my study and continued working
on this sermon on tithing. Then it hit me. Isn't it strange that everybody
automatically assumes 15% is what you give to a waitress when you eat at
a restaurant and I have to come back to the study and work on a sermon
on tithing where 10% on the minds of many is questionable. That's our subject
for this morning. (Topic: Tithing)
You got a card as you walked in the sanctuary this morning. Before the
service ends I'm going to ask you to make a covenant between yourself and
God in regard to the matter that we're talking about. I begin with the
awareness, with the conviction, that tithing is a needed awareness among
us, something we have to think about more often than we do. I don't know
where you're at and exactly where your thoughts are and how you felt when
we read Malachi 3 and he talked about tithing and
people who robbed God. I sense, in recent days, some somberness
and some skepticism in the part of people in some of these messages. It
would be nice to preach a sermon like this this morning and be able to
assume that everybody fully agrees with the matter of tithing. But all
the evidence points to the opposite. Studies
indicate that the average American gives 1.6% to charitable causes today
and then when they survey Christians they find it's higher among Christians
but not a whole lot. Some studies indicate Christians give about 2%, the
highest ones indicate about 3%. Only one out of three Christians is quick
to say that they practice tithing. (Topic:
Tithing) If all Christians would
tithe, churches today would have billions more in their budgets and would
no longer face those painful decisions of what ministries to cut back on
or never to try in the first place because they don't have the funds for
them.
Now, we'd like to believe that Hillcrest is different and maybe you're
thinking about that right now, but I would suggest to you there are some
statistics that contradict that too. Before I give you some of them, let
me reassure you that I don't know what people give in this congregation.
I have no idea what you give, that's not my business. I don't any access
to any of that information, but analysis
that have been made tell us that 30% of all the members of this congregation
about 18 years old give less than $1,000 a year. The next 20% give between
$1,000 and $2,000 a year, which means 56% of the members of this congregation
above 18 years old give under $2,000 a year. Now if we use the guide you've
been given that 6 ½% of your total income should be given to this
church, and if you're following that it means that more than half of the
members of this congregation make less than $25,000 a year and a third
of them make less than $15,000 a year and when I watch your lifestyle,
that simply isn't true. They tell us the average medium income of Ottawa
County is closer to $45,000 (Topic: Income
and Giving Statistics).
So I don't know what your attitude is this morning as I start the subject.
It probably is a great big mixture here. Some of you, I know, tithe faithfully.
Some of you exceed tithing significantly. Some of you probably wish you
could tithe and feel you can't. Some of you probably have never even considered
it. Some of you probably don't want to hear what I have to say this morning
and some of you are young people who are in the process of learning it
and trying to figure it all out.
Well, let me ask you to turn to Malachi and remember
that tithing began as God's idea. It's not something human being thought
up. It began as God's idea. It's like other structures in society. You
know marriage is here, not because sociologist thought it up, but because
God established it, He gave it to us. The family structure of society is
here not because people decided that's a good way to go, but because God
established it and the week is organized around seven days, six for work
and one for rest because that's God's idea. The tithe is built in society
90% and 10% because it's God's idea. He's the one that thought it up. Now
in this passage we read in Malachi, he is showing these people of Israel
what God expected of them. Malachi, the closing prophet of the Old Testament,
comes to the people of Israel in a very tough time. It was tough militarily,
but it was tough primarily spiritually. They were lax, they were indifferent
before God, they were careless in their worship of God, the priests were
very lackadaisical in carrying out their work and so the book of Malachi,
maybe you sensed that when we read it, is arranged around some confrontational
dialogue. Things like this: return to me and I will return to you, how
are we to return? Will a man rob God, yet you rob me? How did we rob you,
in tithes and offerings. God and the people are arguing in this book. There
are seven of them in these brief chapters of Malachi.
One of them is the one we read about tithing. I want you to notice in
the verses that he writes about tithing, there are four thoughts there.
There is an assumed claim, the claim is that the tithe belongs to God.
That's His. Secondly, there's an indictment. You're robbing me. You, my
people, God says, are robbing me because you're taking my part and using
it for yourself. Thirdly, there's a challenge. Get back to tithing. Bring
the whole tithe into the storehouse, obey me in that. Then there's a promise.
When you do that, you will see that I throw open the floodgates of Heaven
and pour out so much blessing, you will not have room enough for it. That
all fills in the statement in verse 7, "return to me and I will return
to you". Good reunion established with God comes through obedience in financial
stewardship. Now that's the end of the Old Testament. What he's talking
about is a concept that has been built throughout the whole history of
God's people from the beginning. If you go all the way back to the book
of Genesis, you will discover that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, tithed faithfully.
When God took the people out of Israel and led them through the wilderness
heading for the promised land, he taught them the ten commandments, he
taught them to worship, he taught them the instructions of the whole tabernacle
and its structure and he taught them tithing. There are many passages we
could stop and look at, I just want to read the closing verses of Lev.
27 for you. "A tithe of everything from the land, whether grain from the
soil, fruit from the trees, belongs to the Lord. It is holy to the Lord".
Then He talks about their animals, so a tithe from the fields, a tithe
from the trees, a tithe from the flocks and herds, all of that belongs
to God. Tithe is the word literally for 10% and they lived by that. It's
written throughout Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy and if you study it
carefully you will discover that the tithe went for four things. Let me
spell them out. The tithe went for the priestly ministry to support the
Levites as they led the people of Israel. We call that the general fund.
The tithe went for the poor, the fatherless and the widows to care for
them in their need. We call that benevolence. You had a benevolent offering
this morning. The tithe went for the care and the love for the alien, the
stranger, the Gentile who lived among them and needed to know about Jehovah
God. We call that outreach. And the tithe went to finance their special
feast and festivals, celebrations together about the goodness of God and
we call that worship. So the tithe cared for all of this obedient life
among Israel and God wanted these Israelites to see that that is very fair
and He wants us to see the same thing. It's fair for people of all ages,
if your child just beginning some earning power or if you're in the peak
of your earning power, or if you're on a fixed income, it is eminently
fair to all. It has a structure in it that all of us need for discipline
so that our decisions are not those on which we backtrack too easily.
Related topic: Tithing
Now when you get to the New Testament, you find the New Testament doesn't
have to spell all that out anymore. They all lived with that awareness.
The New Testament instead of talking about tithing, talks about what we
read in II Corinthians 9. "Give to the Lord what
you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly, not under compulsion,
for God loves a cheerful giver". That's the spirit of the New Testament.
You see, it is easy to slip into a kind of legalism and rigidity with the
tithe and Paul is warning the Corinthians, don't do that. In the New Testament,
you have experienced so much more. The fullness of God's grace has been
lavished on you and so the tithe has been laid down as an assumption and
you ask them to move on from there in gratitude and joy.
Bob Russell tells the story of when they were beginning a family. He
said, we had our first baby and we called in Patty, the neighbor girl to
do some babysitting and he said to her, "Patty, what do you charge"? She
said, "50¢ an hour". That was a long time ago I tell you. He discovered
that Patty was the best babysitter anybody could have. She not only cared
for the child according to instructions, but cleaned up the house, folded
the laundry, washed the dishes and everything was well in order. When their
second child came along some five years later, they said to Patty, "we
have two children, now what do you charge". She said, "Mr. Russell, you
just give me anything you want". And she continued to work just as faithfully.
Bob Russell said, "now, do you suppose that I'm going to say if she's been
better than ever, served better than ever, we have more work than ever
for her. Good, she didn't require a fee, so I'm just going to cut it down
to 35¢. I'm going to give her double, triple and quadruple because
she's been so good to us". That's the spirit of II Corinthians 9:6 and
following.
Related topic: Gratitude
So I want you to think this morning or tithing as a spiritual adventure.
An adventure involves a process, it involves a journey, something you're
never done thinking about, planning for, enjoying and working on. Sometime
ago your stewardship committee put an insert in the bulletin with a little
story from four college friends where they talked about a spiritual adventure.
These four fellows were involved in a bible study group in high school
and then they went to college together and kept that same bible study group
together. They held one another accountable for things and while they were
in college they got into a discussion about tithing and one of the members
of the group said, "I just am convicted before God that I need to tithe
and I have not up to this point. I'm going to start today with the 3% that
I'm doing and I'm going to add 1% every year until I raise it to the full
tithe". By the time he graduated from college, he had raised it to 5% and
a few years later when he was teaching, he raised it to 10%. A number of
years later they lost contact with each other and when they got back together
again and they were all home for the holidays and back in town and they
said, let's all get together again and the conversation turned to their
bible study group in high school and college and they started pressing
this one fellow. He was pretty redisent about it all and they said, "now
tell us, you vowed to keep adding 1% a year until you got up to a full
tithe and then we lost track of you. How are you doing?" He didn't say
to much. He said, "yea, a few years after college I got up to 10%" and
they pushed him a little more. "What are you doing? Did you stick with
it?" He quietly explained to them that by that time he was up to 27% on
a teacher's salary. That's what he meant by a spiritual adventure.
Related topics: Commitment,
Tithing
You and I are in that kind of a journey too. I don't know where you're
at in your journey, but the life of faith and discipleship involves a journey
of constantly keeping ourselves open, evaluating our generosity and making
new commitments about it and at the end of the service this morning, that's
the purpose of that card that you received on your way in. You see the
journey involves our constant evaluation and renewed commitments. You have
a right to know, though I will not give you the details and I'll explain
it more to you next Sunday morning what I preach to you about this morning,
I practice personally very faithfully and I'll tell you about it next Sunday.
But this journey involves God's trust test and that's what He talked to
the people about through Malachi. He spells it out very specifically. "I'll
let you test me in this". That's one of those rare invitations from God
in the Bible, test me in this. Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse.
Stop robbing me. Bring in the tithe, test me and see if I don't open the
flood gates of Heaven more than ever for you. You see I told you last week,
God gives us promises and then He challenges us to trust Him. He said to
the widow at Zaraphath, "the flour isn't going to run out and the oil isn't
going to disappear. God ahead and make Elijah a loaf of bread". And she
did. Here He says to the Israelites. "Just test me and see if you don't
discover the flood gates or the windows of Heaven are going to open up
for you". Next Sunday we'll listen to Solomon, who says in Proverbs
3, "honor the Lord with your wealth and the firstfruit of your crops and
then your barns will be filled to overflowing, your vats will brim over
with new wine". That's a promise. Jesus said in the sermon the mount,
"seek first the Kingdom of God and all these other things will be added
unto you as well". It's here in the passage we read from II Corinthians
9 as well. "Be generous, sow generously, give voluntarily, not reluctantly".
Give cheerfully and God is able to make all grace abound to you so that
in all thing, at all times, having all you need, you will abound in every
good work. Again, he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food
will also supply and increase your store of seed and enlarge your harvest
of righteousness. You will be made rich in every way so that you can be
generous on every occasion". Then He throws the gantlet down to us and
says, alright, do I lie or don't I? Can you trust me or can't you? Will
you trust me or won't you? The journey of each of us involves that trust
test. The real part of that card you've got in your hands this morning
is that it's not only a card to fill out, it's a trust test before God.
Do you believe Him or don't you?
With that in mind, may I add three more principles this morning that
brings our list of stewardship principles to 14. Next week we'll add a
few more and then you will receive them all printed out.
Number One: tithing is returning to God what rightly
belongs to Him. We must be careful about our terminology. I don't feel
that when I give a tithe it is a gift. It is not a gift! It's simply returning
to God what is already His and has been claimed by Him in somewhat the
same way that when I return the Sabbath to God, I'm not giving God a gift,
I'm simply acknowledging what belongs to Him and may not be used for my
own personal purposes. You see that's what's behind this very aching word
in Malachi 3, "you are robbing me". You can't rob someone of something
that they don't own! Robbing is when you take something that belongs to
someone else and you use it yourself and Malachi can say that these people
by failing to tithe are robbing God because the tithe is God's. It's not
theirs. It may pass through our hands, but it's not ours and so when we
tithe, we are returning to God what rightly belongs to Him. I think we
can legitimately say and the Seventh Day Adventists have taught us to say
this better than anybody else, you present or return a tithe. Anything
beyond a tithe is a gift. Voluntary, cheerful, freewill. The tithe is returning
to God what rightly belongs to Him.
Secondly, tithing is our joyful response to God's generosity. That's
why I wanted you when our worship service opened this morning to try and
get yourself in the mood, in the spirit of thinking about God's gifts to
you and that's why we sang some of the songs we did. We are blessed people,
God has lavished His love on us, overwhelmingly. It is very easy when we
deal about the subject of tithing suddenly to become very legalistic and
even pharisaical and use it as a rigid guideline that it kills the spirit
and loses the joy of it. God is concerned about the tithe but He's also
concerned about the spirit in which it is given and that's why Paul is
so very careful to spell out these words to do it, not reluctantly, not
under compulsion, but to do it cheerfully and voluntarily. The tithe is
not a tax that is levied, not a duty that is imposed. It is a claim by
God with the encouragement that we use it and beyond it in joyful response
to His goodness to us. There's an old story from a pastor in Indiana. It
says a man came to him one day at the very beginning of his career and
he said, "let's wrestle together with the subject of tithing and they studied
and prayed about it and the man said, "I will commit to you pastor that
I will all my lifelong give God 1/10th of everything He enables me to earn".
During the first year he was earning about $10 a week. That was a long
time ago, too. So every Sabbath he brought the Lord $1. Then his income
rose to about $100 a week and every Sabbath he brought the Lord $10 and
then he was making $500 a week and he brought the Lord $50. Pretty soon
his business prospered so well that he was making so much a week, he need
to bring $500 to the Lord every Sunday and he got back to the pastor and
he said, "pastor, it was one thing when I had to bring $1 or $10. I can't
keep on giving $500 a week to the Lord. Is there anyway I can get out of
my promise?" The pastor said, "no there is not. A promise is a promise
and a vow is a vow to God. But I'll tell what we could do. Let's get down
on our knees in my study and let's pray that God will reduce you back to
the kind of income where all you have to give is $1 a week. Maybe that
will be easier". Tithing is our joyful response to the goodness and generosity
of God.
Finally, tithing is set by God as a minimum. I haven't told you the
whole story about tithing. We have enough indicators in the Old Testament
to put it together, though we don't have all the details. They never stopped
at a tithe. There were three tithes in the Old Testament. They called them
the first tithe, the second tithe and the third tithe. One of them was
called the poor tithe. The third tithe was to be given every 3rd year and
so when you figure all of that out the average Israelite was giving about
23% a year when he faithfully fulfilled the tithing standard that God had
set.
Now, you and I don't live in the Old Testament. We
live in the New Testament and the difference you see is that in the New
Testament we live in the age of fulfillment. We are not Israelites wandering
around in the wilderness hoping someday God will give us a promised land.
We are people who are living here in prosperity, absolute prosperity compared
to the other 95% of the people in the world and we are people who are living
in the fullness of God's final grace. The fullness of Jesus, He's come,
He's brought the gospel, He's opened up the doors of the church, He died,
He rose again, He poured out His spirit. We have all the promises of eternal
life that's ours. How in the world can any of us do less than some nomads
in the wilderness did? The tithe ought to be the minimum for us, a starting
point. One of you said it in men's bible study this week, it's not the
ceiling, the tithe is the floor.
Verse 3: "tithing is returning is returning to God what rightly belongs
to Him". Tithing is our joyful response to God's generosity and the tithe
is set as a minimum. Let me read you what another individual wrote about
his six surprises when he began tithing. Listen very carefully, will you.
#1 - You will be surprised at how easily the 9/10th covers the bills.
#2 - You will be surprised at how much money there is to give to the
Lord's work
#3 - You will be surprised at the spiritual uplift, the change in your
attitude toward giving.
#4 - You will be surprised that it's easy to tell others about your
experience.
#5 - You will be surprised how much more carefully you spend what is
left, realizing that it too belongs to the Lord.
#6 - You will be surprised you didn't try it long ago.
I don't know where you're at this morning. I want you take out the card
you got on the way in. I know some of you tithe well and well beyond it.
Some of you tithe faithfully, some of you don't and you're really wrestling
with it. Some of you probably don't want to hear this. This is a perforated
card, the left hand side has a blank where you can sign your name on it.
That one you sign, date it and keep. Put it in your Bible, put it you financial
records, or whatever you have put together where you write your checks
out and decide your giving. The right hand stub can be folded, tear it
off and I'm going to ask you to turn it in. Check the same blank on the
left side as you do on the right side. It's a way of holding ourselves
accountable to one another. May I suggest all of you do this, whether you
are a child, adult with peak earning power or on a fixed income. Some of
you will be comfortable checking the first one, I or we have previously
exceeded the tithe in our giving and we will continue with it. If that's
true for you, check it. Secondly, I/we have previously practicing tithing
and will continue to do so. Not exceeded it, but will stick with a tithe.
Maybe the Lord is challenging you through these weeks to increase that
and so you may want to check the third one. I/we have previously practicing
tithing and will increase our tithe by __%. Fourth, I/we have not previously
practiced tithing and we will begin tithing now. Maybe you want to check
the fifth one. I/we have not previously practiced tithing, but will begin.
We'll add 1% more to our giving each month until we arrive at a tithe.
That's part of your moving on the journey Obviously, if you don't want
to think about it or you don't agree with it all, you're not going to be
able to check anything. Before you take time to fill it out, may I lead
you in prayer. "Lord, we know there's a sense in which everything that
we have and everything that we are is yours. All seven days of this week
really belong to you and you have given us six to work and one to worship
and rest. One hundred percent of our income is really all yours, but you've
claimed at least 10% of it to build your Kingdom in this world. Your word
is spoken to us very clearly this morning. We need your spirit to speak
to our hearts and our hands to lead us in this discipleship journey. Give
us wisdom, a spirit of generosity and give us the commitment to follow
through. In the name of Jesus, we pray, AMEN"
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