Sermon Tone Analysis

Tithing

Learn to revere the Lord

!!! /28 May 2006 am/

!!! Announcements

!!! Bible presented

!!!

Call to worship

How priceless is your unfailing love!

Both high and low among men find refuge in the shadow of your wings.

For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light.

(Psalm 36:7, 9)

!!! Blessing

Grace to you from God our Father, and Jesus Christ our Lord, through the Holy Spirit.

!!! Prayer of Confession of sin

Return, faithless Israel, declares the Lord, I will frown on you no longer, for I am merciful,’ declares the Lord, I will not be angry forever.

Only acknowledge your guilt— you have rebelled against the Lord your God, you have scattered your favors to foreign gods under every spreading tree, and have not obeyed me, declares the Lord.

(Jeremiah 3:12-13)

!!! Hymn no 381               /“Nothing is mine but what I received”/

!!! Prayer of Adoration, Thanksgiving and Lord’s Prayer

!!! Doxology Hymn No 113:        /“How excellent in all the earth”/        

!!! Prayer for others

!!! Scripture Reading                     /2 Corinthians 9:6-15/

!!! Hymn No 365:                            /“We give You but your own”/

!!! Scripture Reading                     /Deuteronomy 14:22-29/

!!! Sermon

My dear brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ,

Those of you who also attend our evening services will know that I am reading from Deuteronomy at the moment.

We have now come to the subject of tithing to the Lord.

Before we proceed with this paragraph from the Word of God, let’s just repeat something we looked at last Lord’s Day night.

I want to repeat something of what we heard then:

“Those whom God calls to Himself from all eternity in Jesus Christ are members of this church.

The New Testament is a continuation of the church of the Old Testament.

Old Israel now became New Israel and both have the covenantal father Abraham and become children of God through Jesus Christ.

This means that what Deuteronomy says about Israel is now applicable to the church today, /but then as understood through the salvation of and fulfilment in Jesus Christ/.”

!!!!!! Tithing in the New Testament

Christ has come to fulfil the Ceremonial Law:  There is no slaughtering of lambs and bulls when we come to worship God corporately on his Day.

We don’t have an altar, a temple or a curtain separating us from God anymore.

There is no more shedding of blood anymore, and we don’t have priests making intercession for us anymore.

Our sacrificial lamb is the Lamb of God, our priest is the Lord Jesus Christ, the temple of God is now his church in general, but also his corporate body of believers; in them He lives through his Holy Spirit.

Tithing as it was applicable upon Israel is not applicable upon us in the same way, because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

But that does not mean that tithing as principle to serve the Lord with our material income does not apply to us anymore.

Nowhere in Scripture does the Lord Jesus Christ teach such a thing.

Fact is, we do not have animals, or corn or firstfruits from our crops to serve the God with anymore.

In Jesus Christ we do not give our sons and firstborn as a tithe to the Lord, and in the narrow sense of the word, we do not have the elaborate system of Levites and priests who have to be supported by the tithes.

; But the principle remains, and that principle we take as premise this morning:  we need to serve God with a tenth of our income.

Anything short of that comes down to rob God of what belongs to Him.

We deduce this principle from verse like the following in the Bible:

A tithe of everything from the land, whether grain from the soil or fruit from the trees, belongs to the Lord; it is holy to the Lord.

The entire tithe of the herd and flock—every tenth animal that passes under the shepherd’s rod—will be holy to the Lord.

He must not pick out the good from the bad or make any substitution.

These are the commands the Lord gave Moses on Mount Sinai for the Israelites.

(Leviticus 27:30-34)

Psalm 24:1 says “/The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it, for He founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters/.”

Therefore, verse 22 of the paragraph we read together from the book of Deuteronomy says “/Be sure to set aside a tenth of all that your fields produce each year./”

The literal reading of this verse says “/Tithe your tithe/.”

The form of the verb is the intensified form, which accounts for the translation “/Make sure you tithe your tithe!/”

The implication for the New Testament is clear.

Not calves, bulls or rams anymore.

Not necessarily bushels of grain; or sheaves of corn or wheat; or firstfruits or the like.

But the principle that remains is:  what we have and what we enjoy is the Lord’s.

He enables us to work and to make a living.

; The world belongs to Him and we belong to Him.

The Christian today, irrespective of its culture, occupation, or geography has to adhere to this principle.

This means that even those who do not live and labour in an agricultural environment like Israel still serve the Lord with a tenth of their income as the Lord would bless them.

However, some might still bring their tithe in the form of grain or animals.

Some of it which will then be sold or distributed by the responsible officers of the church for money, and some will be given to the needy in the form of food.

Richard Wurmbrand who wrote the book /Tortured for Christ/ said that when in prison they tithed!

“When we were given one slice of bread a week and dirty soup every day, we decided we would faithfully “tithe” even that.

Every tenth week we took the slice of bread and gave it to the weaker brethren as our “tithe” to the Master.”

Usually, this distribution of goods and money is undertaken by the deacons of the church.

In our denomination this distribution is not fully adhere to, but some of it is done by the Committee of Management.

We will see how this is done.

!!!!!! ; Dimensions of tithing

Tithing had two dimensions:  ; serving God and acknowledging his providence.

The other is to provide for needs of the widow, the fatherless and the aliens.

Acknowledging God, tithing was never meant to be an onerous weight, that one /must/ as if was a burden to give a tithe of what one earns.

Rather, the tithe was a liberating act of joyful worship.

The Bile teaches in Deut 12:12

And there rejoice before the Lord your God, you, your sons and daughters, your menservants and maidservants, and the Levites from your towns, who have no allotment or inheritance of their own.

(Deuteronomy 12:12)

; We have heard from the Word of God how He impresses on his people the importance of joyful worship.

2Cor 9:7 also declares

Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

(2 Corinthians 9:7)

All that one has is God’s; we are just stewards of what belongs to God.

To surrender to God’s use a small proportion of what one holds in trust by his grace is a grateful act of submission and dependence.

; Secondly, tithing has a manward, or community thrust; it is part of the inter-relatedness of the people of God.

The Levites who were in the service of God, not in commercial activity, were the direct beneficiaries of the tithes.

There was an inter-relatedness between the ministry of the Levites and the daily labour of the non-Levites.

It was as if God wanted them to know that in principle what the Levites were called to do, were actually the task of every Israelite.

However God ordained that the Levites would minister in his presence or behalf of the rest of the nation.

Ministers and other fulltime people in the ministry do not equal the Levites of the Old Testament.

The Levitical priesthood was fulfilled in Christ.

All Christians are now priests, prophets and kings in what is called the “priesthood of believers”.

Everyone can be called by God to some form of ministry; you do not need to be of a certain bloodline to qualify anymore.

You need to be called, however.

; But the principle is the same as in the time of Israel:  those called by God for a specific ministry are actually doing what is the task of the body as a whole; therefore those called by God to be his ministers, those who are recognised by the church as such by being setting them apart for that ministry, can and must look at the body of Christ to support them.

This is God’s will.

Not all of us are fulltime ministers in local congregations, yet in a very specific way what ministers do is the responsibility of all Christians; therefore members of local churches tithe to make it possible for fulltime ministers to carry out their duties.

Not all of us can work on the mission field, but in a certain sense it remains our responsibility.

We now make it possible for some to go by being faithful in our tithing.