Trusting God Through Tithing and Provision

26. If you had to throw away things that you owned, things that you had, or stop doing things that you were doing, what would be the last thing you'd want to get rid of? The Bible? Hmm? Pictures of John? No. Why do you think they would say things like that? Why would they make that choice? Well, I've got a lot of things I could get done without. Mm-hmm. Why would someone say, I don't want the last thing I'd get rid of is my Bible? Why would someone say that? Mm-hmm. Why would someone say the last thing they'd want to get rid of is pictures? Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. So whenever you look at the Bible and you see God dealing with people, sometimes the things that we don't want to do, that we want to resist the most, shows us what's valuable to us. And in this passage, the Lord is giving them the land of promise. He said to them in verses 1 through 11 of chapter 26, first He said, when you come into the land, the first harvest you get, you bring the first fruits to Me. You bring the first crop that comes in. You bring it to the priest. You give it to him. And then he says words about it. And then you take it and maybe repeat the same words he says. Stand before the Lord. Tell him you remember when your forefathers were without a land or a home and how God's guided them for all this and how He's provided for them. And now He's kept His part of the covenant. I will guide you to a place where you'll have a land to make a living with. I will provide for you. So those parts of the covenant that God made with the people has now come to pass. And so He brings the first fruit offering as a way of recognizing the supreme authority of God. God has given me this land. God has provided the crop. And He is the ruler of my life. And He has instructed me to do this. So I do it. I stand openly and publicly and say to everyone, God has kept His promise to me. God has provided this crop for me. And He instructed me to give Him the first fruits from my crop. And because He's the Lord, the ruler of my life, I have done exactly what He's asked me to do. Now, the second part of this chapter, or the next part of this chapter, verses 12 through 15, is another setting in which an offering is to be given. If you look back in chapter 14 of the book of Deuteronomy, you'll see that God had already addressed both of these issues with the people of Israel when they were coming into the land of promise. And a lot of people are resistant to talking about money and tithing. And I think it's because they hold on to that and it's the hardest thing for them to give up. It's like the pictures. It's like the Bible. I would do all the other things God wants me to do, but giving up this money is so difficult for me because I claim it. I own it. Why is it that God asks us to do this? I want you to understand that it's not because God wants our money or even needs it. He can make gold out of anything. He can make money out of anything. What He's doing with this is saying, and this is universal everywhere you go, money is very important to all the people in the world. I want you to give me the first of all that you get before you do anything else. Trust me. I want you to give me 10% of what you have as a way of saying you've asked me for this and I trust you. You promised to give me what I needed and you've done that. And to show my trust in you, I'm going to take some of it and give it back to you even though I might need it. I just trust you that if you ask for this, it's the right thing. It is not the giving of money that's important to God. It's the recognition of His covenant promise. It's the recognition of His supreme authority. Everything in this world is mine and I want you to recognize that. Our relationship can't be right until you recognize that I am the provider of everything that you have. When you see that, then you're beginning to understand the relationship that you and I have. Chapter 14, verse 22. Be sure to set aside a tenth of all your fields produced each year. Eat the tithe of your grain, new wine and oil, the firstborn of your herds and flocks in the presence of the Lord your God at the place He will choose as a dwelling for His name, so that you may learn to revere the Lord your God always. But if that place is too distant from you and you've been blessed by the Lord your God and cannot carry your tithe because the place where the Lord will choose to put His name is so far away, then exchange your tithe for silver. Take the silver with you. Go to the place the Lord your God will choose. Use the silver to buy whatever you like, cattle, sheep, wine or other fermented drink, and anything you wish. Then you and your households shall eat there in the presence of the Lord your God and rejoice. Do not neglect the Levite living in your towns, for they have no allotment or inheritance of their own. Notice that the tithe is primarily for them to go to the place where the Lord resides, a symbol of His residing there, and eat in His presence. Have a meal with God. Sit down and have a meal with God. He's ordered this. That's their tithe. They're to take some for the Levite who doesn't have any land and make provision for them. God's requirement in the beginning was simply to say, I want you to celebrate with me. And I instruct you to take 10% of what you have, give some of it to the Levite, and the rest of it you take, and you eat a meal in my presence. To recognize everything you have came from me. That's the purpose of this. Then in verse 28 he says, In the end of every three years, bring all the tithes of that year's produce and store it in your towns, so that the Levite, who has no allotment or inheritance of their own, and the alien, and the fatherless, and the widows who live in your town may come and eat and be satisfied, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. Now, the third year, every third year, they are to go and give the tithe, the 10% that they have not for themselves this time. But every third year they're to take this money and give it to the people who would not normally have money. Widows who had no way to make money, the fatherless that they would have, the aliens who have no land in the community, and the Levites who were given no land. Now, chapter 26, he's picking up on that promise. Now, in chapter 14 he said, When you get there, this is what you should do. Now he's talking about, now that you're there, here's what you're supposed to do. Beginning with verse 12. And when you finish setting aside a tenth of all your produce in the third year, the year of the tithe, you shall give it to the Levite, the alien, the father, and the widow, so that they may eat in your town and be satisfied. Then say to the Lord your God, I have removed from my house the sacred portion and given it to the Levite, the alien, the fatherless, and the widow, according to all you commanded me. Notice that the focus is on obedience to the command of God. I've taken what you've given me, and this year I don't eat it myself. I've taken what you've given me, and I've given it to the people who do not have a way to produce food for themselves. God has made a promise to the Levites. He's made a promise to the fatherless, and He's made a promise to the widows, that He would take care of them. And this is His way of fulfilling that promise. What God is trying to teach His people is, I've made a covenant with you. I've said to you that I would be your God. I'd guide you to the place where you'd have land to produce food for yourself. I've promised you that I would provide your needs. I've promised you I would protect you. I've promised that I would help you with the choices you have to make, and I would make you a great nation. I want you, every time you have a crop, to recognize that I am keeping my promise to you. So, the tithe was a recognition of the authority of God and the ownership of all that a person has. That's the key ingredient. The tithe was a way of saying, I am going to give to you what is the most important thing in all the world to people, food. You can't live without it. So they were to take their food, before the winter set in and they couldn't grow a crop, to take their food and give it away to God, either in a big meal with the Levites or to the people in the community, as he said, every third year, and depend on God to take care of them for the whole year. Now, you know, they couldn't do like we do, and can and freeze and buy at the grocery store. They had to raise everything that they did. You know, it's only been recently that people provided, that they didn't provide for themselves. My mother used to tell about growing up at their house, and they raised all their food. They raised chickens and they raised pigs and they raised cows, and they butchered all of those, and they raised the vegetables that they ate at their home. They canned them, there's no freezing. And in that time, they had to make do with what they had. There wasn't any other way to do that. You raised everything you had. Well, it's true in the biblical times. They had to raise everything they had, and giving away their food was an act of trust in God. What God is trying to acknowledge in all the Old Testament and in the New Testament, He's trying to get us to understand that trusting Him, relying on Him, is a way of saying, I believe that who you are and what you do can be trusted. It's an act of faith. And the difficulty most of us have with giving money to God is because it's so important to us. A lot of people are willing to say, well, I'm willing to go to church, I'm willing to belong to church, I'm willing to be saved, but this tithing stuff, I'm not going to do that. Why? Why would you give your life to God and not your money? See, God is addressing this issue so frequently in Scripture because it is one of the most important things in the world to us. And it's like saying, I want to make sure you've got this most important thing in your life really under my control. That's what He's trying to get at. When you come to the New Testament, there's not a single mention in all the New Testament of tithing. Not a single one. It's not because it wasn't important. Remember, all the people in the New Testament, their Bible was the Old Testament. So their Bible had it like 29 different times in the Old Testament that God talks about this. And it was their Bible, and they were looking at that, and they were living by it. Jesus said, not one bit of this will pass away. I'm going to fulfill every bit of it. The people like to say, well, it's not mentioned in the New Testament, so it's not a New Testament thing. But it's not tithing that's the issue here. It's the recognition of the supreme authority of God over everything in your life. And that's what God needs to have before he can really say that we're his children and his people. And the issue becomes important to us. And the way the New Testament talks about this is a little different than the Old Testament. Jesus said in chapter 6 of Matthew, verse 33, Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and everything you need will be provided for you. That was in a chapter where he said, don't pay any attention to the flowers. As beautiful as they are, God's going to take care of you even more. Don't worry about the sparrows. They're going to have enough food to eat. If God takes care of the sparrows, he'll take care of you. So here's my word to you. You put me first in your life above everything else, and I will provide everything financially you need. What Jesus was doing was bringing to the New Testament the internalization of the Old Testament practice of tithing. You do what I tell you, and then you will find that everything you need will be provided. You hear me talk a lot more in this church about you sitting down before God and saying, what should I give to this offering? We don't set goals. We're not trying to raise money for our mission offerings or any offering we take. What we're trying to do is to ask you to put first in your life the King. And you go to the King and you say, what do you want me to give you? And the King tells you what to give. And you give it, and he'll take care of you. That's the New Testament practice. Now I'll tell you a secret about that. When you start doing that, he'll ask you to give more than to tithe. Not that he's backing off of it, but in my experience and practice when I do this, it ends up tithing, giving to the church and the mission offerings is a lot more than a tithe. But I can say this, he always takes care of me. What God is trying to do is to help us understand that if you trust me, I will take care of you. And our own desire to take care of ourselves causes us to find ourselves without the provision of God. Because this whole issue of money is about is God really trustworthy? And can I depend on doing what he tells me to do and not find myself bankrupt, hungry, starving to death? This is a big act of faith. What God talks about here in this story, he uses the tithe in a different way the second time. It's for the community to have to store food for three years. Every three years they get this food from them. Now, he says, when you do this, you say to the Lord your God, I have removed from my house the sacred portion. What is it? It's the tithe. I've taken all that you've asked me to give and I have it here with me. I haven't hid some under the floor. I haven't hid it in the attic so that I could fudge a little bit. I've given everything from my house and given it to the Levite, the Iliad, the fatherless, and the widow. According to your command. So you're to publicly declare when you give the gift, this is what I've done. Now let me tell you, whenever you ask God what you should give to the kingdom of God or the church or whatever the offering is, you just say to God, okay, this is what you put in my mind to give and I'm giving exactly what you asked me to give. I mean if it's nothing. When the offering place is passed, you say, God asked you what you told me to give and I got the impression from you that this wasn't an offering I was to give to. When you say that to God, and that's what he's really said to you, that's all you do. Trust him. If it's nothing, give nothing. If he tells you something, give something. But when the offering place is passed, you say to God, I'm obeying you. Whatever it is. Now I'm not trying to be awkward about this. I really believe that there are circumstances and times when an offering may be taken and God may say, I don't want you to give. You should give God the freedom to do whatever he wants to do. I'm not concerned about the church being taken care of because he does, he takes care of it. If everybody's doing what they should, he takes care of it. It's a matter of trusting God. Money is merely one of those instances that God knows is so important to so many people that he knows that this is often the last thing they give up on. So he goes for the last things most times. If you tell God, I'm willing to do everything but this, I'll tell you he'll go for that this every single time. Because he wants to know that there's no barrier between you and him. And that's what he's talking about. So you stand in and give God the assurance that you've not fudged on what he told you to do. He's written it here. Bring this third year tithe and make sure you give it to me. Second, he said, I've not turned aside from your commands, nor have I forgotten any of them. The second declaration is to say, I'm not trying to twist this in any fashion. As far as I know, I'm doing exactly what you've asked me to do. The next thing he says is, I've not eaten any of the sacred portion while I was in mourning. We don't understand exactly what it was that would cause a person in mourning to eat some of the sacred food. Maybe it was a ritual that the people around them went through and at times of mourning you take the holy or sacred food and you eat it and somehow or other it gives you a benefit. But whatever it is, he said, I haven't participated in that to fudge in some way, nor have I removed any of it while I was unclean. There are ways in the Old Testament where a person stands before God clean or unclean. I never touched any of this holy portion. And when he calls this portion holy or sacred, when he calls it sacred or holy, he means it was the portion set aside for God. God set it aside. I want you to give me the one-tenth. So that becomes set apart only for God's use. Now he's saying, I haven't taken advantage of you and used the portion that was yours, nor have I taken the portion that you gave to me and handled it while I was alienated from you. Being unclean means that you've done something God says I don't want you to do when you come in my presence. I haven't taken the food that you've given to me and done something that would make me disqualified from touching it, nor have I offered any of it to the dead. You know, all around the world still there are people where they do ancestor worship. All around the world people have places where they take food out and set it on the graves of their dead ancestors. And this was a way of worshipping another, worshipping ancestors instead of God. I have not deviated, nor have I fouled up, nor have I offered any of the portion that was yours in any way other than what you've done. I have done everything you commanded me. Notice now through this that the focus is not on the tithing that he has. The focus is on obedience. That's the real key to this. When people are resistant to tithing, they're resistant to obeying God. They may fool themselves and sound willing to obey God in every other way except this one, but the reality is that sooner or later they're going to come to another place where God will challenge them because He's trying to make sure that they understand they're not completely faithful in trusting Him. Look down from heaven. The last thing He has to do as He gives this gift is look down from heaven, your holy dwelling place, and bless your people Israel and the land you've given us. So the prayer that you do when you give your offering on Sunday morning is you say to God, I'm giving you exactly what you've asked me to give. I haven't subtracted any. I haven't gotten it in an evil or wicked way, and I haven't done anything with it that would show that you are not my Lord. And then you say when you've finished giving your offering, Lord, look down on your people and bless us. Bless your people, the church, or Israel, and the land you've given us, the job that I have. As you promised on oath to our forefathers, as you promised Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, all the people of Israel, you'd take care of them, I ask you to fulfill that promise for me. You gave an oath then that you'd lead us to the land flowing with milk and honey. Now that agricultural term is not very valuable to us, but you promised God you would provide not only the necessities, bread and water, but you'd provide necessities and pleasures, milk and honey. It's hard for us to think of those as very big rewards, but when all you had is water and bread, milk and honey is a big deal. It's like saying, God, you've not only given me the necessities, but you've blessed me with abundance and luxuries, and I give thanks to you for that. What the Bible is talking about is helping us understand, putting in perspective, how we worship God with our money, our gifts. We worship God with our gifts the same way we do with everything else, by saying, you are important to me, and I give you everything you've asked for. When people talk about worship, they talk about a church service, where you sing and the preaching is done. The Bible talks about worship, we look at it in Romans chapter 12, verses 1 and 2, where Paul is talking about presenting your bodies as a living sacrifice, which is worship. What that means by that, in this instance, when you give yourself as a living sacrifice and God says, okay, here's what I want you to give me out of the offering for the missions, or whatever it is, and you say, okay God, that's going to be a little tight for me, but I'm going to make the decision to do what you've asked me to do, you are a living sacrifice. You are sacrificing by your actions and your life. And in Romans chapter 12, Paul calls this your reasonable or rational worship. In your mind, you have said, you are the boss, and I prove it by doing what you tell me. All your worship to God takes place by the decisions you make every day. I want to cuss this person out, but am I choosing to say no? I want to get mad, but am I choosing to get mad or to forgive? All of those are acts of worship because they're saying to God, you are in charge of my life, my choices, and my behavior. From the Old Testament all the way through the New, the thing is very simple. The most important thing to God is you should have no other gods before me, the Old Testament first commandment. In the New Testament you're to seek as the first and most important thing in your life God's rule over your life. That's what the kingdom of God is. There is no redemption or salvation apart from those. And so God's perennially looking to say, what can I ask of you that will allow you to show me that I am more important to you than anything in the world? And for many, many of us it's the money. Would you bow your heads for a moment? Okay. Of all the things God asks you to do, what is it the hardest thing you have to give him? Is it time, prayer and reading the Bible, being in church, taking a job in church? Is it the money? Is it your own nature and character, the choices you make? What is it? What God says to his people is, I am your Lord. Now you prove it to me. So Father, we ask you would be patient with us. Many times we think we're trusting you with everything in our lives, but we measure ourselves against the other people around us instead of what you ask of us. But there are ways in which you're not the most important thing in our lives, the most powerful force in our lives, the most dependable, trustworthy force in our lives. Expose that to us. And give us faith in you that we might live in such a way that would allow you to do for us all you want to do for us. In the name of Christ, I ask this. Amen.