Hebrews Lesson 81 March
8, 2007
NKJ Hebrews
We are in Hebrews 7. Last time I pointed out that as we begin this
section, the shift is to the high priesthood of Jesus Christ. The high priesthood of Christ is based analogously
on the high priesthood of Melchizedek. The argument in this section on the part
of the writer of Hebrews involves a group of Jewish believers who come out of
Judaism. Many of them it seems came out
of a background of the Levitical priesthood, a background of serving in the
temple. They are questioning the superiority
of Christ and the superiority of Christianity over the ritual of Judaism. The main section that begins here in chapter 7
extends down through chapter 10 is the focal point of the whole epistle. This is where the largest doctrinal section
is found - in chapters 7, 8, 9 up through
Now the question that would
come into their minds is the question - how can Christ be a priest when He is
not of the tribe of Levi and not a descendent of Aaron? Under the Mosaic Law, the high priest had to
be to trace his genealogy all the way back to Aaron. The priest who served in
the temple had to be of the tribe of Levi and had to be able to prove their
genealogical link back to Levi. There
were those who returned from captivity who came back from
So what the writer of Hebrews
is doing is answering the question ahead of time. One of the things that marks a good teacher is
that a good teacher understands his audience. A good teacher understands the kinds of
questions that people may ask. He figures out what they are going to be ahead
of time and tries to answer them. There
are a lot of times when I as a pastor understand that there are people who come
to this congregation who come from all manner of different backgrounds. We have new people who come to be a part of
this body of believers. They come from
many different backgrounds. Some come
from Bible church backgrounds. Some come
from Methodist backgrounds. Some come
from who knows what background. They
bring a load of questions with them.
I remember one time when I
was teaching through the spiritual life when I was at one church. There was a
lady in the church who had grown up in a family that was seriously committed by
multiple generations. By that I mean
that their great grandparents where the original charismatics in this
country. So she had grown up in the entire
environment of heavy charismatic teaching.
Almost everything that I said as I was teaching through this even though
she had been under my ministry and under another doctrinal pastor’s ministry for
5 or 6 years before that. The first time
it was really coming together in her thinking.
There was a contrast between what she was hearing me teach and what she
had always heard and always been taught coming out of that charismatic
background. So I had to pay attention to
that and in my teaching I had to make a point of contrasting what I was
teaching with what charismatics taught.
Now that didn’t apply to most
of the congregation.
But you can’t over here on
this side of the congregation and say, “This doesn’t really interest me.”
You don’t know. There may be
5 people over here who are really wrestling with certain things. As part of our congregation here, I don’t
spend a lot of time interacting with what Roman Catholic theology says. But, 90% of the people up in the congregation
at
A good teacher anticipates
the kind of questions that people either will ask or ought to ask. So that is what is going on here. He is anticipating the question - why should
Jesus have a priesthood and a high priesthood that is superior to or even
legitimate. He is not a Levite and He is
not a descendent of Aaron. So the writer
argues that Christ’s priesthood is based on the order of Melchizedek.
NKJ Hebrews 7:1 For this Melchizedek, king of Salem,
priest of the Most High God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of
the kings and blessed him,
The first three verses
explain that connection. We learned that
he was the king of
NKJ Hebrews 7:2 to whom also Abraham gave a tenth
part of all, first being translated "king of righteousness," and then
also king of
To Melchizedek, Abraham
apportioned a tenth of everything. The
old English word for that (a tenth) is tithe.
It is from this use of the word a tenth in the Bible that we get this
idea of tithing. There are so many
churches today that practice tithing and talk about tithing. You get a lot of confusion over the whole
issue of Christian giving, the whole ministry of giving and what tithing is all
about. So the thing that happens there in
that one event is that Abraham gave a tenth part of everything (not just what
he had taken) but all the spoils from the defeat of the four kings and he gave
a tenth of it to Melchizedek. That is the point of a tithe. A tithe when you look at the Old Testament
was that an individual was paying tribute to someone in authority over them in
recognizing their superior position. We
have historical examples under the reign of Hamurabi in
The other night in Genesis in
our study of Joseph, we talked about how Joseph at the end of 7 years of famine
took the land, allowed the people to sell land to the government. The government bought it with grain so that
the people were able to survive. Then it
leased the land back out to the people as tenant farmers and they gave 20% of
their produce back to the government.
I pointed out from one
example that I knew about anecdotally that that is a standard example for
tenant farmers even today – to give 20% to the landlord and landowner. They keep the other 80% of that.
Morgan came up after class
and said that is pretty much the royalty fee to landowners where you have an oil
well on the property. That is an oil
lease. They get 20%. These kinds of
numbers – 20%, 10%- had a tremendous history because they were round numbers
and easy to figure. The giving of a
tithe from Abraham to Melchizedek was part of his recognition of the superior
place, superior position of Melchizedek. That is the point that the writer of
Hebrews is bringing out in this section.
Now in the second part of
verse 2 it goes on to read…
Melchizedek means king of
righteousness. Melchi
is a derivative of melek which is the Hebrew
word for king. The “i” there puts it in
a genitive of relationship. Zedek is the root for righteous. That makes the king of righteousness. He is also the king of
He goes on in verse 3 to explain…
NKJ Hebrews 7:3 without father, without mother,
without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made
like the Son of God, remains a priest continually.
This means that there is no
record of his family. It doesn’t mean
that he didn’t have any father. It is
not saying that. It does not say that he
didn’t have a mother. There are people
that come along and say that this must have been the pre-incarnate Christ
because he didn’t have any parents. No, he
was a human being. He had to be fully
human to function as a priest. If he was
the pre-incarnate Christ without being true humanity then he could not function
as a priest. You can’t have the pre-incarnate Christ functioning as a priest
because He isn’t incarnate yet. That is a real simple argument. There are always people who want to fight and
die on that particular hill and they haven’t thought it through very well.
Genealogy is important if you
are going to prove your Levitical and Aaronic connections.
The Bible doesn’t reveal when
he was born. The Bible doesn’t tell when
he died for the purpose of setting him up to be an analogy, a type for the
future ministry of Christ.
But he resembles the Son of
God. Now that very statement that I
pointed out last time means that the prototype for the Melchizedekean
priesthood is the Son of God, not the other way around. It is Melchizedek who resembles the Son of
God, not ultimately the Son of God who resembles Melchizedek.
Then we come to verse 4.
NKJ Hebrews 7:4 Now consider how great this man was,
to whom even the patriarch Abraham gave a tenth of the spoils.
Now we are back to the word
tithe. The word tithe is used several times in these verses. From verse 4 down through verse 10 the word
tithe is used several times – 5 or 6 times as you go through that particular
section. That tells us that this tithe
is part of the focus of the writer.
So we need to stop and take a
little time in our study of Hebrews to show what this is all about. There are many, many churches in
We don’t start with
dispensationalism and say, “That doesn’t fit our system.”
No, the system comes from the
Scriptures. Because the Scriptures draw
these distinctions between the Old Testament and the New Testament between the
law related to
To come along and say, “We
are going to take things out of this body of law that applies only to the
nation
We all know that there are
people who seem to be headed that way. That
is another story. You can’t take the
laws of one national entity and apply them to another national entity even if
their constitutions are extremely similarly.
You can’t take the laws of
So we have tithing in the
Mosaic Law. Wait a minute! The concept
of tithing antedates or precedes the Mosaic Law. You have two references to tithing in
Genesis. The first is given here in Genesis
14.
In
Genesis 28:20 we read:
NKJ Genesis 28:20 Then Jacob made a vow, saying,
"If God will be with me, and keep me in this way that I am going, and give
me bread to eat and clothing to put on,
This
is at
NKJ Genesis 28:21 "so that I come back to my
father's house in peace, then the LORD shall be my God.
NKJ Genesis 28:22 "And this stone which I have set as a pillar shall be
God's house, and of all that You give me I will surely give a tenth to
You."
Now
this is at the ancient Canaanite city XXX. This was
They
went, “Hummm.”
Nobody
had an answer. There is no structure
there. So we don’t know how or to whom
he gave it. How did he do this? What is the mechanic? We don’t know.
The only thing that is in the land at that time is the Canaanites… Now I could speculate and say that
Melchizedek must have had an heir. Just
as Melchizedek was the priest-king of
There
is no legal mandate saying, “Jacob, if you want to be blessed spiritually you
need to give 10% to God.”
There
is no legal mandate anywhere. There is
no mandate in Scripture anywhere. Out of
the blue they just do it as an act of gratitude and worship to God. It is purely a voluntary event that is a
gracious response to God’s blessing in their lives. They are not discovering
the law of tithing so that they can tap into God’s miracle spiritual ATM machine
in the sky which is kind of how the health and wealth guys do it. If you give 10% God will bless you and He
will return it 100-fold. You will get
wealthy.
I remember some years ago I
talked to an extremely discouraged individual who had given 6 figures to the
church almost every dime he had because the pastor told him that God would give
him a 100-fold return. There are hundreds
of people who get duped by that. They
are not discovering some law of tithing that is going to tap into God’s ATM machine. They are responding in gratitude to God. They
are not expecting anything in return. It
is simply an act of devotion to someone who is their superior. It was a cultural thing to do and they knew
that God was their superior.
The only giving amount that
is specifically prescribed by God pertains to the famine in
Then we come to the Mosaic
Law.
NKJ Leviticus 27:30 'And all the tithe of the land, whether of the seed
of the land or of the fruit of the tree, is the LORD's. It is holy to the LORD.
So
10% of your cows belong to the Lord - 10% of your sheep, 10% of your fruit, 10% of your grain, 10% of
your money. Ten percent of everything
belongs to the Lord and was holy to the Lord.
That means it was set apart to the Lord. That is what the word holy
means – to be set apart to the Lord.
Now there were three
different tithes in
I often want to ask people.
“Which tithe is this that you are talking about?”
The first tithe under the
Mosaic Law supported the bureaucracy of the theocracy. The priests and the Levites were the
administrators of the theocracy.
Theocracy is a word that
means God rules. God was the head of the
government. You might say God was the
executive branch. God ruled. It was the priests and the Levites who
carried out the administration of the kingdom and their center of focus was
around the tabernacle initially and then later the temple. So the first tithe was designed to support
the bureaucracy of the theocracy, the sons of Levi. Numbers 18:21-30. It was to the sons of Levi
for an inheritance in return for their service which they performed the service
of the tent of meeting.
This sets a precedent
historically that those who serve the Lord in a full time capacity have a right
to be supported by God’s people financially.
That principle of course was carried over and in the pastorals. Paul talks to Timothy about the fact that the
elder who teaches well and rules well is worthy of double honor. He talks about the fact that you shouldn’t
muzzle. He uses the analogy of not
muzzling the ox. In other words pastors
and Christian workers should be well paid so that finances don’t become a
distraction for them. I can’t tell you
how many pastors have to work or they don’t make enough. I commend people in this congregation. We are setting a precedent the way that we
are handling the pastor’s conferences. We
are supplying the financial resources for many of these men to come to
subsidize their airfare for students in many cases. We subsidize their hotel rooms so they can
come and stay without being a burden to them.
Some of these men don’t get paid enough and their churches don’t have
enough resources to fly them here and put them up in a hotel and to take care
of them for the time that they are here.
We are doing a tremendous job in subsidizing many of these men so that
they are able to come and so that finances are not an issue. During the conference for those who are
pastors, for those who are students, for those who are missionaries or full
time Christian workers we provide lunch on Monday (just about everybody on
Monday). On Tuesday we provide lunch for
all the out-of-towners. We are taking
them over to Goode Company for some
So the first tithe was 10%
that went to support the sons of Levi because of their work in the tabernacle
and later in the temple.
A second tithe (I find this
interesting) was for a national celebration of the grace and generosity of
God. It is described in Deuteronomy 14:
22-24. There were tithes and offerings
and sacrifices and free will offerings that are mentioned in Deuteronomy 14.
This second 10% was used to support this national feast.
I like to have fun with
this. God in the Old Testament was very
physical, very graphic, and very literal in the way He handled things. In the process of revelation as you go from
the very beginning to the New Testament God teaches doctrine in very concrete
terms and illustrations and examples.
You have the visual training aids of the tabernacle. You have the bronze laver. You have the tent of meeting. You have the table of showbread. You have the candlestick. You have the altar of incense. Inside you have the Ark of the Covenant. All of these things are designed to visually
teach very abstract doctrine. So God
sets up with these concrete images and you have historical events that are used
to teach specific things. So we come to
this particular event and its purpose was to give the nation a barometer to
evaluate their spirituality. Let’s say they go through a period of 10 or 20
years and they are tremendously obedient.
They follow the Sabbath, the sabbatical year law. They are very obedient. The people are responsive to doctrine. They are very positive. God is going to bless them materially because
that is what He promised them in the contract of the Mosaic Law.
“If you will obey Me I will
bless you abundantly. You will be
extremely fruitful. There will be rain,
not too much and not too little. It will
be the right amount. Your crops will be
abundant. There will be an overabundance
of food and resources. Everything will
be taken care of.”
So 20 years goes by and you
come to your annual feast. You take 10%
of the gross national product. You have
got all kinds of money. You can go out
and you can get the finest caviar and you can buy the finest prime beef for
steaks and roasts. You can get the
highest quality vegetables – not like the stuff you can get at the grocery
store.
I remember when I was a kid
our next door neighbor was a fruit wholesaler.
His name was also Fruit. I
thought that was fun. He would bring us
these avocadoes that were like small melons.
They were enormous. You couldn’t
buy them at the grocery store. They were
restaurant quality produce. That was when
I first learned that there was a quality of produce that is much better than
what you get in the grocery store. So
they could buy the highest quality of produce and the highest quality of meat. If they had beer, they had microbrews. They didn’t have Budweiser and Schlitz. They were getting good micro brewed beer. And
they had beer. That is what a strong
drink offering was in the Old Testament.
They didn’t know how to distill beverages so they weren’t bringing
single malt Scotch. They had good
beer. That is the Hebrew word for a
strong drink offering.
I often used to kid a friend
of mine who enjoyed wine.
He said, “When Jesus catered
to the plebian tastes of the people at the wedding of Cana He gave them
wine. But when God wanted something to drink
in the Old Testament He wanted a beer.
Strong drink offering! So they would bring the finest micro brewed
beer and the finest of everything. They
would have a tremendous party. Let’s imagine
that 20 years goes by and we have a time of spiritual regression – a time of
spiritual apostasy. They worked through
the sabbatical year. They never take the
Sabbath Day off. God begins to
discipline them. The rain begins to
disappear. They go through a time of
drought and a time of famine.
The next thing you know, twenty years later they
are going to have their feast and they think, “Remember when we were kids –
back in the good old days? We used to
have these great parties and now we are stuck here with Buckhorn beer and Lone
star and all we can afford is
Do you know what
“That is all we can
afford. We can’t have very much. All we can do is go to Luby’s and get some
carry out from there, but that is the best that we can do. I wonder what happened.”
See this is a very visual,
very material barometer of spirituality.
All of a sudden, maybe we aren’t doing what the Lord wants us to
do. That is what it was designed to
show. So every year there was a second
tithe of 10% for a national celebration sort of like the 4th of July
with fireworks and everything else. It
was a celebration of the grace and generosity of God. So that means 20% now for you national income
tax. It was mandatory taxation.
Then each third year there
was another 10% was to be given for use in supporting the Levite, the alien,
the orphan and the widow. That is those
who were destitute, those who couldn’t take care of themselves, those who were
older, those who couldn’t work, and those who didn’t have any parents. It was a social safety net. There was a level of welfare in a sense to
provide for those who were less fortunate.
So, there was 10% every third year.
That meant that you have 23 1/3 % taxation. That was mandatory. So when you talk about tithing, which 10% are
you talking about? If you are going to
do one, you have to do all three. That
is the basis from the Old Testament.
But you see the Mosaic Law
also recognized freewill or grace giving.
You had mandatory giving and you had freewill voluntary grace
giving. Remember before the Mosaic Law there
were two tithes that were voluntary grace-based gifts. Just because they were 10% doesn’t mean that
they were establishing a hard and fast precedent. Now you also have within the Mosaic Law freewill
and grace giving. So you are going to
give 23 1/3 to the government in order to take care of all of these other
things and to the temple as part of your ordinary taxation. But now you are expected to give above that a
freewill or grace offering to express your personal gratitude toward God and
thanks that all has He had done. This could take you up to 30 – 35- 40-50 %of
you income. Some of it was under
mandatory principles and some under freewill or grace giving.
NKJ Proverbs 3:9 Honor the LORD with your
possessions, And with the firstfruits of all your increase;
NKJ Proverbs
This has to be understood within
the context of the Mosaic Law and God’s promise of blessing related to their
giving.
NKJ Proverbs 11:24 There is one who scatters,
yet increases more; And there is one who withholds more than is right,
But it leads to poverty.
This is a person who gives, a
person who is grace oriented, a person who doesn’t hold on in a miserly fashion
to every dime that comes in. He shares
it to help others.
He avoids his
responsibility. He is too tight to do
what is right.
In other words, he may keep
the money but there is no happiness in his life.
Moses raised money for the
building of the tabernacle and to provide all of the gold and all of the jewels
and all of the silver and everything that was used in the construction of the
tabernacle through a freewill offering. Exodus
25:1-2 in comparison with 35:5, 21.
NKJ Exodus 35:5 'Take from among you an offering to
the LORD. Whoever is of a willing heart, let him bring it as an offering
to the LORD: gold, silver, and bronze;
The emphasis here is on
personal volition. It is up the
individual to make a decision to understand what the issues are to make a
decision that they are going to give at whatever level they choose. It is comparable to the New Testament
principle.
NKJ 2 Corinthians 9:7 So let each one give as he
purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful
giver.
It is an individual decision
and not a mandatory contribution. Then
there are other passage such as
Leviticus 22:28, 23:38, 27:30, 31, Numbers 15:3, Deut 12:6, Ezra 1:4, 3:5. These passages all emphasize freewill on
grace giving.
So you had required giving
which is analogous to national taxation.
The state has a right to tax the citizens. Jesus supported this. When He was asked about the drachma tax He
took the thing and said…
NKJ Matthew
Jesus authenticated the
validity of a national entity to tax its people for the support of the
government. So that is required
giving. Freewill giving was to be a
matter of independent individual choice and decision. The amount is left up to the worshipper.
Now we come in the Old
Testament to a particular passage that is frequently quoted by preachers when
they want to manipulate people into giving more. This is in Malachi 3. Now there has to be a little background
understanding or isagogics on Malachi.
Malachi is probably the last
book written in the Old Testament. Malachi
is a prophet. He is coming to the people
who are in apostasy and challenging them with their spiritual apostasy because
they are failing to obey God in completing the building of the temple and
fulfilling the rebuilding of
NKJ Malachi 3:7 Yet from the days of your fathers
You have gone away from My ordinances And have not kept them. Return to
Me, and I will return to you," Says the LORD of hosts. "But you said,
'In what way shall we return?'
NKJ Malachi 3:8 "Will a man rob God? Yet you
have robbed Me! But you say, 'In what way have we robbed You?' In tithes and
offerings.
God responds, “In your tithes
and contributions.”
There are your two categories
– mandatory tithing and contributions of freewill offerings.
“You are robbing God by not
applying the law and giving.”
NKJ Malachi 3:9 You are cursed with a curse, For
you have robbed Me, Even this whole nation.
NKJ Malachi 3:10 Bring all the tithes into the
storehouse, That there may be food in My house, And try Me now in this,"
Says the LORD of hosts, "If I will not open for you the windows of heaven
And pour out for you such blessing That there will not be room
enough to receive it.
What does God mean “to put
Him to the test”?
That is exactly what the next
verse says.
You can’t understand that
verse if you don’t understand the Levitical laws and mandates. In Leviticus and Deuteronomy God said that if
they obeyed the law He would bless them and prosper them materially and
physically with the abundance of produce.
It was an agricultural society.
God uses this extremely concrete, graphic way to demonstrate how He will
bless them if they are obedient.
God is saying, “Why don’t you
test it? You know what the law says to
do. Test me and I will pour out blessing
from the windows of heaven. They are going
to open. But, where do you understand
that?”
The principle is found in the
Mosaic Law. God is not talking to the
Assyrians here. He is not talking to the
Romans. He is not talking to the
Greeks. He is not talking to the Egyptians. He can only say this to the Jews because only
the Jews have a contract with God which stipulates that “If you obey Me, I will
pour out blessings on you.”
So you can’t take this out of
context and apply it to the Greeks or the Romans or the Babylonians or the
Egyptians or Americans in a Baptist church in the South or in a Methodist
church in the North or the Episcopal or Anglican church in England because they
are not Jews living in the land under the Mosaic Law. It is a total fragmentation of Scripture to try
to interpret it that way.
When we come to the word
storehouse, the word storehouse is the Hebrew word that refers to the
temple. That was in the ancient world the
local bank. They didn’t have a Comerica
or Wells Fargo or Wachovia or whatever. You
didn’t have that in the ancient world. You
had the temple. That often served as a
place of banking because the priest served as the guards. So the temple was the treasury. When people brought their money to the house
of the Lord, they were not building a church.
There is no application there.
They are taking it to the temple because that is where the tithes were
to be taken in terms of the Mosaic Law. You can’t interpret this any other way. If you don’t understand Leviticus and
Deuteronomy you can’t properly interpret this.
That is what we have today. People
take this completely out of context.
So the national bank for
storing tithes was the house of God which is referred to by the term the house
or in this case the storehouse. God had
chastised them already because they had failed to bring their tithes to the
storehouse.
In the Church Age we are no
longer under the Mosaic Law. Romans
16. Christ is the end of the law. The Old Covenant (which we will see in Hebrews
8) has been superceded or replaced by the New Covenant. Hebrews 8:13f. When
he said a new covenant, he made the first obsolete. It doesn’t mean he made the first in
reference to sacrifices obsolete because Christ has now died on the cross. It doesn’t say that he made the first
obsolete in reference to the ritual in the temple because Christ has come and
replaced that. It is the whole law. It is all or nothing.
If you go down to your
mortgage company or to another mortgage company or a bank and you redo your
mortgage, are they going to take pages 1 and 2 and keep those in affect, and
just modify 3 and 4? Is that how it
works? No, they write a whole new
contract. You replace the old one with a
new one. Since you bought that house 20
or 30 years ago, the laws have probably changed. You are going to have to get a whole new
contract. You can’t just replace two
paragraphs. That is what is happening
here.
You can’t go back into the
Old Testament and say, “Well, part of the Mosaic Law continues and part of it
doesn’t.”
It is an all or nothing proposition. So let’s look at some key principles.
First of all, giving even und
the Mosaic Law was not a part of the spiritual life or the means of spiritual
growth. That is how that should be
understood. Even under the Mosaic Law it
was not part of, or a means to spiritual growth. It was a result of spiritual growth. I don’t give to grow. I grow and I realize what God has done for me
and express my gratitude to Him.. It is
the outworking of genuine grace orientation and gratitude in the soul for
everything that God has provided. Giving
isn’t a means to grow. It is the result
of growth.
Second, grace does not mean
you don’t have an obligation or responsibility to give. I understand this. People who come out of a legalistic, tithing-based
church go to the other extreme when they go to a grace oriented church.
“They never talk about
money. Isn’t that great? I don’t have to give anything. I go to this church. They have a box in the back and if I come in
the side door I never have to deal with the fact. I can keep all of my money now. Isn’t that great?”
Grace doesn’t mean that you
don’t have an obligation. Grace doesn’t
mean it is free either. Salvation is
free to you, but it cost God something. There
is no free lunch. It is always
amazing. Most of you are
conservatives. You believe that there is
no such thing as a free lunch. How many
Christians are conservatives? There is
no such thing as a free lunch. Let’s get
rid of welfare. Let’s emphasize personal
responsibility. Then they go to church
and think it is a free lunch. There is
no such thing. Grace isn’t free. It is free to you. There is obligation. There is no mandatory payment. You don’t have to come in and pay $10, $20,
$100, $500 in order to get the Word. It
is free. But that doesn’t mean that
there is no obligation or responsibility as God has prospered you to
participate in the financial responsibilities of local church and missions and
various ministries so that you can have a sense of personal blessing and
promise. You are involved in that ministry.
You are part of God’s means of letting that happen. Grace doesn’t mean it is free - just that
there is no obligation.
We have come to tithing in
the New Testament. Tithing is mentioned
in the gospels only in reference to the legalistic practice of the
Pharisees. That is the only time you
have the word tithe. They were
legalistic. Now when you and I look at
the Pharisees, we look at the Pharisees through the lens of the negative
critique of the New Testament. But if
you were a Jew living in the first century, nobody was better. No one was more moral, righteous, or upright
than the Pharisees.
That is why when Jesus said,
“If you are going to get into the
It wasn’t condemning them for
their legalism in that statement.
He was saying, “You think of
them as the best that human beings can be.
You have got to be a whole lot better to get into heaven.”
They had a reputation for
morality and for being spiritually mature.
But in Luke
The Lord taught in contrast that
giving was to be a private matter, between the believer and God. Once that dollar, once that check for $1,000
or $10,000 leaves your hand, you don’t have any right to talk about it
anymore. You are giving it to the
Lord. How this church uses it, how this
ministry uses it, how that ministry uses it, whatever they do with it, you turn
a blind eye to it and walk away. It is
amazing how many people - especially people who have more money to give - can’t
get passed that.
They will give $10,000 or $50,000
or $100,000 then if that ministry or the church doesn’t do what they think they
ought to do and they say, “Well, you know I gave you that money and I have some
say in it.”
You may look at it and say,
“Well, you are changing your philosophy of ministry. You are not doing the things you used to so I
am not going to give any more.”
That is your responsibility. But the person who gives doesn’t have a
string attached to that money so that they can come in with the money and dictate
policy and procedure. That happens a
lot.
I know of a case recently
where someone who was extremely generous and large giver was challenged on that
particular point and went ballistic. He
didn’t understand it. When you give as
unto the Lord that means that once it leaves your hand, it is gone.
I remember a church that I
attended for many years, had a split back in the 70’s. There was a man that sat in front of me.
I remember my mother asking
him, “Are you leaving?”
He said, “No. I have given so much money to the church I
have got to stay here and make sure it is used right.”
I was about 19. I thought, “Hum. That is not grace giving.”
NKJ Matthew 6:2 "Therefore, when you do a
charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the
synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory from men. Assuredly, I
say to you, they have their reward.
This is why I personally do
not think that it is a good idea to have name plates. This is a good time at the beginning of a
church to talk about this. You go to a
lot of churches and they say you have a plate on the back of a pew. This was given in memorial to so-and-so or
this is Miss Sally Wainright Sunday School room. They have plaques around the church when
people give money.
The first church I ever
pastured in got in a hole financially in the depression. They had the church about half built and they
ran out of money. There was one couple
in the church. Her husband had
died.
She said, “I will come in and
I will pay for the rest of the building of the church. The only requirement is I want you to name
the church after my husband.”
I am just glad the guy’s name
wasn’t something like Adolph or Frank.
The guy’s name was Paul so it sounded biblical. Nobody really knew that. They thought the church was named after the
Apostle Paul. But, it wasn’t. It was named after Paul Naskey
down the street. Just imagine what his
name could have been It could have been Claude Union Church. You never know. So, people do these things. There should be a policy from the beginning
that you don’t do any of that. Giving is
supposed to be between the individual and the Lord. There shouldn’t be any mark or any plaque or
any recognition. The only recognition
that matters is from the Lord. According
to this passage is that if you get your reward from people, that’s it. The Lord is not going to give it to you. I would rather get my recognition to the Lord
rather than people.
NKJ Matthew 6:3 "But when you do a charitable
deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,
NKJ Matthew 6:4 "that your charitable deed may
be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you
openly.
I make it a policy. I have no clue what anybody gives. I don’t ever look at anything. I don’t know what anybody gives to the
ministry. I don’t know what anybody
gives to the church. It is none of my
business. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to ever know. I don’t have a clue. But I know pastors who know exactly, to the
penny, how much (It is on their computer at church.) every person in the church
gives. That is standard operating
procedure in many, many churches
We will stop there and come
back to it next time. We will come back
to the New Testament teaching on tithing.
There is no tithing in the New Testament. It is all grace.