If you like to read your Bible and research a little bit about the locations that the text mentions, this is a really, really cool tool: biblemap.org.
Author Archives: Randy Peterman
Tithing – An Old, Temporary Law? You Betcha!
It is true that I think that 10% is an awfully small amount of money to do the Lord’s work. On the scale from 0% to 100% you’ll find me racing with a passion to the 100% side of the scale. You see I don’t think that ten percent is enough because of a desire to see people give more to God’s work, but instead I view that all of what the Lord has in your life is His. My friend and brother in Christ, Tony, once called me and told me that, “Someone ran into God’s car.” I chuckled because it was a great way for him to express his understanding that the car, which has monetary value, is God’s. The house that he and his bride are raising their three children in is God’s. Even the three children are God’s. There is no question on his mind that all things are God’s.
This brings us to the question of whether the tithe should be grasped as a New Testament concept. I’ll grant other Christians hold to a reformed view of theology which says that the church is the Old Testament’s Israel brought into a new covenant and therefore the things which aren’t done away with in the New Covenant are still valid for New Testament saints. I disagree with this view as a dispensationalist and I don’t want that to be confused so I’m going to just state it plainly: None of the Old Testament Law is for the New Testament believer. Lets take a look at why the tithe is also not acceptable in the eyes of the New Testament authors.
Pre-New Testament Passages and Thoughts to Consider
Adam never paid a tithe. Not one bit of what Adam had went to a tithe. Adam’s relationship with God was personal and there were no priests to go between he and the Lord. The sacrifices portrayed in the early chapters of Genesis show a relationship with God that clarify a respect for God’s ownership of all things that man worked for (as a result of the fall). By the time of the flood and God’s provision of Noah God still owned everything and even though it was Noah and the other seven on the boat as well as many, many animals they were all God’s. God had brought them all to the boat and when they got off of the boat it was at God’s direction. Noah sacrificed animals to God in recognition of God’s protection and provision for all that God owned. No tithe there. Surely Abraham must have tithed. Nope. There was no tithe in Abraham’s time, just sacrifices of praise and obedience. In fact Abraham had no written Law to observe, he merely had his conscience! There was no tenth offering, he knew God had provided all that he owned.
When the tithe was finally instituted it was for the nation of Israel it was given as a percentage to support the Levites and for the fatherless & the widow. Go ahead and read Deuteronomy 14:22-29. There you will see that the tithe was:
- Ten percent of their yearly gain
- For the nation of Israel (and not surrounding nations) which was initially a theocracy
- It was a gift of agricultural things and livestock. Other material possessions were not involved.
- It is not the same as first fruits (see: Exodus 23:19, Leviticus 19:23-25)
- The tithe was to be administered by the people and not the priests.
I think that its clear by now that the often cited tithe is not what we often call an offering or tithe by New Testament practices. With that in mind, lets look at what the New Testament shows us.
New Testament Giving Principles
The book of Acts starts out the church age with an amazing display of generosity between believers in acts 2:42-47 being the slightly greater context. Specifically verse 45 says that they began selling things to provide for one another’s needs. That’s not a ten percent offering. Its a whatever percent provision of grace. The recognition that all things were God’s things helped the believers get past any sense of possession that we often face as New Testament saints. From that point forward you’ll find other instances of giving as needed including Romans 12:13 further encouraging the believer to give as other saints have need and to be hospitable (hospitality will need to be a post of its own).
Philippians 4:18-19 covers the use of sacrifice in a New Testament metaphor, but it is merely a reference to the gifts of the New Testament saints being sent to the apostle Paul. It is not encouraging a literal sacrifice of animals or grains as previously used in Old Testament times. Instead verse 19 goes on to outline the fact that God has used the Philippian saints to provide for Paul’s needs. If we look for the application from this passage we see that
- God has given Paul a need
- God has the abundance and ability to fulfill that need
- God has blessed the Philippians with their resources
- God has given the Philippians a desire to give to Paul’s ministry
- God is glorified by the Philippians’ generocity
- God is glorified by Paul for His work through the Philippians
None of those things involves a set ten percent or a monetary percentage, but instead comes from the heart of an abiding believer. One who is resting in his or her relationship with Christ in the heavenlies (Col. 3:1-3). Because the saint is aware of the need the saint seeks out a way to fulfill it. This leads me to believe that the church is to focus more on getting to know one another than they are to focus on financial things!
One scenario that I read about just today discussed tithing in the context of debt. Since the debt is a prior obligation it should be noted that the believer should first pay the debt and with whatever is left over seek the Lord’s direction for the money to be given. Debt should be avoided in the life of the believer so that this problem goes away (while this is something I know I am currently attempting to get out of debt. I have walked in the flesh, too, and understand the need to abide in my stewardship of God’s money. Lesson learned). Giving during debt isn’t a required Law, but instead we should see that we have relationships within the body where we can see needs, both financial and physical, and give to those needs rather than believers being put into debt due to lack of resources. In this particular case I would recommend the believer give only what the Lord has provided in excess beyond the needs of paying creditors. Right now I am currently giving less than I would like, but instead of feeling guilt I rejoice that the Lord has given what He has and I look forward to the day when I can give even more to various needs in the body of Christ.
Conclusion
In conclusion the Tithe is an outdated Law that has been done away with and instead the New Testament saint is to focus on relationship and fellowship and looking for ways that the Lord may use them to provide for the needs of others. There is nothing in the New Testament that calls us to support a ten percent giving command, but likewise nothing says not to do it. Giving falls under Christian liberty (See Romans 14 and 15) where we are to give what our conscience feels is right. If that is fifteen, ten or one percent for you, then give what the Lord has put on your heart.
Whatever percentage you give, let it be with a heart of gratitude and thanks! May you give graciously because God graciously gave His mercy and love to you. Don’t tithe out of compliance with the Law, but instead walk in His grace and give as He provides.
For You Have Not Come to a Mountain…
Hebrews 12:18-24 is a powerful passage describing the contrast of the Old Testament Law with the New Testament position that the saint has. The author of Hebrews writes with great brilliance as He points out the opposite nature of the Israelite at Mount Sinai and their relationship to the Almighty God and the saint’s relationship with the Almighty God in the New Testament. One involves trembling, a sense of conviction and separation and the other a comfort and certainty.
Tonight at Bible study we looked at this passage and I was so impressed by the visual descriptions. The graphical theology in this text is not unheard of in Hebrews, the author uses descriptive language to instill rich images in the mind of the reader, but this particular passage shows the weight of the Law in contrast to the waiting on the Lord. When you read this passage meditate on God’s unfathomable presentation of who He is in both places yet how God’s work through Christ changes who we are in the heavenly place. This is awesome. We are sanctified by the blood that allows us to be present with the judge of all humanity.
The Eternal Nature of God
While the topic of this post is probably worthy of a book (which I probably would have to devote huge amounts of time to) I wanted to touch on the idea of God’s eternal nature. Often I hear, and just moments ago I heard it again, that our lives are like the lifespan of a gnat compared to the timeline of God. Does God exist only inside of the time-space continuum? Does God have to sit and wait? Instead I believe God looks over all of time and space at once (and as Norm Geisler says in his Encyclopedia of Christian Apologets, He knows every alternative futures as well).
God is eternal in history and future (to force a time vocabulary onto a non-time based God) as recorded in Psalm 90:1-3. If He has no beginning and has no end why would you take the powerful nature of God
and try to describe it in finite terms? Considering the discussion of time my 9th grade history teacher drew a long line across two very wide dry-erase boards and then took a piece of paper and scratched a minuscule slice out of the black ink on the baord and said, “That is the length of your life.” He then proceeded to tell us that the line didn’t start and stop on the board, but instead he explained that it went from end to end infinitely. Why would a secular teacher (who did not like Christianity) explain infinity better than a pastor in a sermon [I was listening to Joshua Harris in this MP3 message]?
Describing the beginning and end of God in a sermon illustration was not his point, his point was to describe the finite nature of our lives. However, it rings in my ears when I hear people describe our lives in comparison to God. The importance, as J. Harris explained later, is that we recognize the eternal nature of God and our residence in Him! In God you have eternal life, and that life is not bound by the time space continuum. You attempt to use the word eternal because it is a finite way to describe that which is infinite. Infinity itself is still a concept we try to grasp as humans because we want to think of infinity as being still within the constraints of knowledge. Is the pursuit of the infinite outside of God silly? Certainly, but if God was before the world and will certainly be after the world we should be resting in His eternal hands – trusting that we are not like gnats, nor are we like any other creating thing because our identity is within Him, the uncreated one.
Hermeneutics and Knowing Where You Need to Study
I was chatting with my Uncle Eric earlier today and had asked him where he got his deep insights into God’s word and he wrote some tidbits of wisdom into the IM window and I just had to share:
“Part of it is that I just read an awful lot. I also try to place myself in the place and culture and circumstance of a passage and let that tell me what areas I am just ignorant of and where I need to do more research. Until my knowledge of a situation can actually animate the characters and speak the words, I know I haven’t got the right information on the background. All too often we let our modern American preconceptions animate the characters and their motives.”
And later in the conversation:
“The thing lacking in our protestant hermeneutic is historical imagination. I don’t mean the wild, guessing kind. I mean the ability to drop ourselves into a situation and imagineer it into reality so that some interpretations are rejected out of hand, and others are cultivated until the real one is coaxed out.”
Good stuff, I thought. In short we need to think about what we do know so that we can begin to dig deeper into what we don’t know.
Hebrews 8:1-3
Hebrews 8:1-3
1 Now the main point in what has been said is this: we have such a high priest, who has taken His seat at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens,
2 a minister in the sanctuary and in the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, not man.
3 For every high priest is appointed to offer both gifts and sacrifices; so it is necessary that this high priest also have something to offer.
This passage was part of the material that was covered in tonight’s Bible study that is taught by Elder Mike Doyle. This passage is in the greater context of Jesus’ Christ being qualified to be a priest due to His purity and perfection. That’s what the ‘such a high priest’ is in reference to. However, the passage is building on the platform of Christ’s high priesthood and emphasizing Christ’s current position on the seat next the God the Father’s throne. What is Christ doing on that throne? He’s ministering to us. Ephesians 1:3 says that we’re given every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places with Christ. Christ’s blessing ministry is ongoing in the life of believers due to the once and for all work on the Cross.
While there is a huge amount that can be gleaned from this passage the point that got me thinking was that Christ is offering to each and every believer every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies. We often focus on earthly wealth or earthly knowledge or earthly blessing. Do you walk in belief of your heavenly blessings right now? Christ is ministring them freely and abundantly. Have I been walking as though I have every spiritual blessing in my walk? No, the answer is that I haven’t been. However, I am now. I’m resting in the fact that I have been given those with my position in Christ.
Theological Reductionism
Reductionism is the concept of taking a biblical doctrine and reducing, summarizing or ‘boiling the doctrine down’ to one finite statement that could very well be an oversimplification. Worse than that reductionism may be ignoring the entire counsel of the Word of God in favor of one passage. One premium example of this would be the polarized views of Calvinism or Armenianism. Both of these views (when taken to their logical extreme) can be examples of reductionism. The scriptures put a great amount of tension on the subject of God’s undeniable sovereignty and man’s undeniable responsibility for sin and other actions. Are these two different ideas mutually exclusive? No. The scriptures present a paradox wherein God is sovereign and man is responsible for his actions. This isn’t inconsistency, its the complication of mankind being created in God’s image and therefore having a will and God’s being God and not having any of His power lessened by man’s ability to desire and will various things.
Reductionism is what fans the flames of fanaticism or doctrinal narrowness in areas where the scripture presents a message that is more broad. Baptism’s relationship to salvation is a good example of people reducing all theology down to a few passages even though other passages in no way require water baptism. Or furthermore the idea that tongues is a heavenly prayer language… their is only one text that could be gone to for proof text and that is not what the context of the passage that I Corinthians 13 is referring to. Reductionism is what allows bad theology to stay bad and what keeps believers blind.
When you study a doctrine make sure that you review what the whole word of God says about that doctrine and in the correct context.
Incredibly Good Teaching Series
The series of First and Second Peter is going on at church. Its only on its second week but the content in the introduction alone is worth checking out. Listen to the MP3’s, or subscribe to the podcast, here.
Extrapolation
One of the common points of division in the body of Christ, from my own experience, has been theological extrapolation. Calvinists don’t get along with Arminians because of the extrapolation from what is written in the Bible. Don’t get me wrong, logic is important, but it isn’t the be-all, end-all of hermeneutics. You see, if you have only some of the facts, content, culture, history, language understanding and you start to form doctrines you can come up with some errant ideas because you have started to fill in the ‘blanks’ [even if they weren’t blank, but you didn’t study] with something else that you have brought about by deduction. When you have some ideas that work for you, it is probably a great idea to pursue discussions with mature believers and seek out wisdom. Homogeny isn’t always the most important thing (truth is!), but others who have studied a topic may be able to point you towards some verses that will help you in your studies and find a fuller understanding of what the scriptures say on a subject. Homogeny can also be dangerous because a whole group has agreed on something but not looked into it. That being said, discussion with other believers is critical.
When you study God’s word there is a term for inserting your own meanings into a text, its called eisegesis (pronounced like ice o’ Jesus, which is probably what Martha was getting when she complained about Mary listening). It is important to know what the scriptures say and to apply consistent hermeneutics for this very reason. If you look at a text and are forcing your own modern context and ideas on the text, you’re not learning from God’s word, you’re changing it. That’s not extrapolation, but its not useful time with the Bible.
Mormonism
I taught on Mormonism this weekend at church. The recording is up on the Holly Hills Bible Church site.