Laws of Prosperity: The Old Testament

Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in my house, and thus put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts; see if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing. you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. Malachi 3:10

I understand the dilemma that many decent and sensitive pastors face when they have to speak about money in the church. It seems to be self-serving. Even Paul struggled with the issue of whether or not to accept support from the churches. I have one advantage over other pastors in this regard. I have work of my own. I have waived aside the right of remuneration. Because of this I cannot be accused that I preach of this topic for my own advantage.

Early in my Christian life I found the blessedness of giving. As a working student in Bible school I had to work three hours Tuesday through Saturday and then 7 hours on Mondays. My job was digging foundations, mixing cement. I learned the art of laying stones to make retaining walls.

For all that work we received a Bible school education, room and board and a stipend of two pesos every month, the present equivalent is about P200. That money had to be carefully budgeted. First item in the budget was always the tithe of two pesos. The remaining one peso ninety centavos went by order of priority to toilet soap, toothpaste, pomade, laundry soap, charcoal for ironing, and school supplies. I always carried a pocket notebook to take notes in church. At the back I wrote some of the things I could not afford from my two peso stipend. A mosquito net, a pair of shoes, a Bible. I forgot about them. A year later In looked at my notes again and I was surprised. I had all of them! I scrawled at the bottom of the page. “Lord, you’ve done it; thank you!” I began collecting books for a library while still in Bible school. I began saving to buy Christian books. I had to be careful what I buy; and today books bought back in 1959 are still with me: C S Lewis and James Denney among others.

Because of my experience it never occurred to me that people would object to the giving of tithes. I just assumed that people would give tithes if they were taught.
One of the most common arguments against tithing is that we are no longer under law but under grace. This argument not only exalts the law too much but also cheapens grace. This Sunday let me just speak about the first.

Exalting the law too much
I say it exalts the law too much because it assumes that Old Testament believers were happy go lucky, lazy and adulterous thieves until the law came along. Far from the truth.

Take Abraham for example. He lived perhaps half a millennium before Moses received the law from God in Sinai. There was no temple, no regular worship, no priesthood, no nation. Yet Abraham was already giving tithes in Genesis 14. So why did Abraham gave tithes to Milchezedek?

The answer is simple. Tithing was already a universal religious practice long before God called Abraham and long before Israel became a nation. The instinct to go to a holy presence with an offering is a universal instinct. And the tithe answered the question, how much should a worshiper give to his God?

God could have made us with six fingers to our hand. Then we would count by the dozens. But he made us with ten fingers because with the base of ten we can perform the easiest as well as the most complex mathematical calculations. The tithe is a mathematical figure, it is the tenth. What the tithe did was to rationalize worship. Worship is not all feelings. It involves the mind. The tithe answers the question, how much should I bring to the Lord? The tithe takes away the guesswork. It is precise.

As Filipinos we have difficulty with precision. You ask what time do we hold our 2nd service and you get the answer,”Mga alas dies.” Around 10 o’clock. How good was the message? Medyo. What did the pastor talk about? Kuan. Mga and medyo and kuan are the cities of refuge of the uncertain, the imprecise mind.
That is the reason why many Filipinos have problems with mathematics. And without math there is no science, without science there is no industry. Without industry we simply become hewers of wood and drawers of water for other nations, consumers of their produce.

Tithing puts preciseness in the way we manage our resources. Because we know that money is not ours we budget it carefully. We do not spend money on a whim. But most of all we consider money as a means of worshipping God. This is the kind of thing that develops the habits that lead to progress.

Tithing puts a check on wild, emotional and dangerous forms of spending our resources.

Jephthah
We find this emotionalism in a strange character in the 10th chapter of the book of Judges. Jephthah had a sad childhood. He was the son of a prostitute but he grew up in the family of his father’s wife. Naturally this led to trouble. Furthermore the legal children didn’t want Jephthah to have a part in their inheritance. So they drove him away. Jephthah was a born leader and warrior, so when the Ammonites threatened the tribes of Israel who would come to visit but his own brothers. They begged him to lead the army. Before meeting the Ammonites, Jephthah prayed, “Lord if you make me win this battle, the first to greet me on my return, I will sacrifice as a burnt offering.”

The vow was unnecessary. It was rashly spoken. Jephthah the outcast wanted so much to win this battle. It was meant to send a message to his brothers. He, despised son of a prostitute, is better than them. In coming to seek his aid, the brothers were eating humble pie. But he wanted far more. And whatever it was he wanted the result was tragic. The first to meet him at the door was his own daughter. She requested only two months to bewail her virginity upon the mountains of Gilead.
Emotional giving is costly. It is the kind of giving that demonic pagan worship demands. Walking over live coals. Lying on a bed of nails. Human sacrifice. Temple prostitution. Tithing casts away the demonic from worship. All the nations who practiced these excessive emotional and self-destructive forms of worship eventually vanished. Emotional giving is the kind of giving that cults exploit.

If we don’t want to give our tithes to God then watch out for other gods. People who will not give a tithe to the Lord yet will blow that away in one expensive dinner. Christians who will not give tithe but will keep on buying the latest gadgets. Christians who will not give tithes but are forever decorating and redecorating their homes to keep up with the neighbor. Christians who will not give their tithes but have a secret love affair. These are habits that lead to impoverishment.

As I said it was giving too much credit to the law to say that the practice of tithing came out of the law. The law did not invent tithing. It was already there. Pagans practiced it long before the law was given. What the law did was to regulate the method of tithing, especially where and how the tithe was to be deposited. Provision was made so that there were storehouses manned by priests and Levites throughout the land, a portion of which was sent up to the temple In Jerusalem. Bring all the tithes to the storehouse. That is all the law did. Bring the tithe to the church and offer it to the Lord. That is what the law accomplished.

Conclusion
Let me say it again. Tithing puts mathematical preciseness in the way we manage our resources. You will find orderliness in your life. You will learn to manage your resources. You will avoid the excesses and habits that drain your resources. These are prerequisites to progress whether you are a laborer or a professional or an entrepreneur.
The starting point is to acknowledge God as the source of supply and give him at least what other worshipers have done since the dawn of time. If you haven’t practiced it begin now. If irregular do it regularly. If you give only a fraction try to give the full tithe.
When you tithe you will be surprised what other levels of your life will be affected for the better.