Stopping The Tithe.
One of the things I’m most grateful to God for is how accessible the relationship with God is. If you think about our barrier to entry for relationship with God it’s as simple as can be and we see that scripturally in Romans 10:9 “that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”
Our requirement to have a relationship is confession with our mouth and belief in our heart that God raised Jesus and from there we are now in eternal relationship. As I accepted Christ in my life the pressure that was taken off my shoulders was tremendous because of the simplicity and understanding that from that point God has my back.
Even with this simplicity as we are developing our relationship with God there are challenges for us because of our fallen state. For me something that was always a struggle in my heart was tithing. To me at the start of my relationship with God it did not make sense why God would want monetary contribution from me. The first argument I made was well God’s in heaven so how does it apply. From there I “rationalized” to myself well after it was donated. You don’t know what happens to the money and I ended up being convinced that the money “I” brought in had no meaning to God.
Now I’m sure some of you are jumping out of your seats at the lack of spiritual maturity I had but the reality is stopping us from tithing is a tactic of torment. There was a specific portion of scripture that really hammered this home for me. There is a small book in the bible at the very end of the old testament named the book of Malachi. In the book Malachi the start of the 3rd chapter specifically talks about tithing. For some context the prophet through Malachi God was confronting the nation of Israel because the offerings they were giving God was not their best.
Malachi 3:6-12
“I the Lord do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. Ever since the time of your ancestors you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord Almighty.
“But you ask, ‘How are we to return?’
“Will a mere mortal rob God? Yet you rob me.
“But you ask, ‘How are we robbing you?’
“In tithes and offerings. You are under a curse—your whole nation—because you are robbing me. 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 there will not be room enough to store it. I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not drop their fruit before it is ripe,” says the Lord Almighty. “Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land,” says the Lord Almighty.
After reading this passage the revelation God gave me was the severity of me not tithing and offerings. In verse 9 we read God put the whole nation of Israel under a curse. In my head I thought well if God will curse an entire nation why would I expect different for me?
The revelation expanded as the story of Cain and Abel also came to mind. As I thought about Cain killing Abel, the systemic problem was the jealousy from Cain because his offering was not the best he could give. It would make sense that this was either planted by the enemy and his army of evil or just a pure outpouring of sin but in either of those options you have the opposite of God’s nature.
The most beautiful thing about God is that He gives us the opportunity to do what is best and choose a relationship with Him. As you read through Malachi 3: 10-12 you read that God tells the nation of Israel if they provide the full tithing he will bless them. The forgiveness God gives us gives such hope because you can turn back into God’s arms even after falling short of His commands.
Let’s take a second and zoom out and really think about how applicable the tithe is for us now. The first thing to remember is someone has to fund the kingdom of God. Now we know there are 2 natures in this world, God’s holy nature and the enemies’ evil nature. In Matthew 6:24 Jesus is speaking and He says “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”
Understanding this safely leads us to the idea that people that are not saved are not serving our God and in return would be serving the side of evil. Now also It is safe to say that the enemy and the people he has influence over are not going to fund the kingdom of God.
Use this as a thought experiment, as believers in Christ we are a minority in the world. The majority of people are not even going to consider sowing into the kingdom of God. Now as you take our minority of people as believers you even cut this amount of people down further because not all believers are tithing. So a fraction of a fraction of the world is tithing into God. This small fraction of people diligently tithing are the ones that are providing all the monetary resources at this time. God changed my heart to wanting to be a part of that percentage of people.
The second part of the tithing revelation I had was the fact that our financial system is monetarily based on dollars. After reading about Abel’s offering to God of his first born best it hit me that when Abel provided his offering it was a different financial system. For us living in this day and age the reality is the money currency we have is our best. Our whole economic system is based on exchange of money and we also need to bring God in on that exchange. As I thought about this I was able to easily relate myself to Cain and the offering he gave and not Abel’s offering.
The biggest take away from this tactic of torment is the understanding that the enemy and his army will do anything they can to attempt to stop the progression of God’s kingdom. Our financial system is built on exchange of money and it is okay as Christians to say we want to acquire and use money for the kingdom of God as well.
At every single point of deciding on giving our offering or not the enemy and his army will give every reason under the sun not to. Every single reason that you should not is invalid though because we know what God asks of us. Another question to ask yourself as you are evaluating tithing is “why wouldn’t I fund the kingdom of God”. If there is a way that we can specifically benefit the kingdom our first influence should be to do so immediately and that is why tithing is attacked in our rational minds so hard by the powers of evil. The army of evil will do anything they can to attack God’s kingdom.
In our relationship with God faith is a cornerstone and in so many places in our lives we have faith. Our tithing and offering is a place we need to expand our faith to. As you make that offering, you need to have faith that God will influence the people to make the choices He needs in his kingdom to reach as many people as possible. If tithing is somewhere you struggle as I did, just take the first step and change your mindset from “ i need to tithe” to “I get to fund the kingdom of God’ What an amazing opportunity we are offered. With this mindset change you will start to change the lens you view tithing with and conform your heart to Gods.
Chris Lucas