Giving and tithing. How (and if) does this fit into the Christian life? This week we begin a brand new series in which we'll look at this. When it comes to living in God's grace, questions come up such as, "Is tithing for Christians?" and "What does grace-giving look like?" We'll start out by looking at what the Old Testament says about tithing. Who tithed? What was the purpose of the tithes? Does any of it fit into New Covenant living?
Specifically this week we'll look at a common "go-to passage" that is brought up when the church today talks about tithing - Malachi 3. What does this passage say, and who was it directed at? Does this passage have anything to do with Christian living and giving? Also, we'll look briefly at Abraham's one-time tithe to Melchizedek, which we'll also cover in greater detail later.
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I'm Looking forward to your posts on giving and tithing.
ReplyDelete- jared
Thanks Jared. We're looking forward to breaking down some of the commonly held beliefs, and hopefully shedding some light on true grace-giving.
ReplyDeleteI listened to the podcast a bit ago. I've heard all the same things as well.. "You give, and watch God bless you", you "pay" 10% and anything above that is an 'offering'. In the old church I was in, it was so big, and no one really kept up with who paid what. The bookkeeper did, in order to send out the income tax statement thing, but nobody hunted you down to make sure you were paying.
ReplyDeleteI used to wonder, when I found out the difference between 'tithes' and 'offerings', if it was just a tomato/tomahto thing. Our preacher didn't really seem to care WHAT you called it, as long as you put your proverbial dollar in the bucket each week...
Amazing Grace,
ReplyDeleteIn my experience, I've heard the words tithing and giving used interchangeably, but I truly think there is a huge difference. Tithing was one part of a much larger system (the Old Covenant) and it had specific purposes. It was mandated to 11 Jewish tribes to provide for the 12th tribe, the Levites.
Giving, to me, is not to be mandated, but rather is simply a matter of giving cheerfully from the heart. We'll get more into this later on in this series.
Hi Joel,
ReplyDeleteI can't wait to hear more on this! I do know that there IS a difference between tithing and Giving... but like you, I've heard it used interchangeably. It's been my experience, that when the "tithers" breathed a sigh of relief when they found out I was still putting money in the bucket, but calling it an 'offering' instead of a 'tithe'. They didn't seem to care WHAT I called it, as long as I put the "dollar in the hat" so to speak. When I would say "I don't tithe", they took that to mean, "I don't put any money in the plate when it gets passed around". There's definitely a difference between tithe/offerings. It just seems that until the understanding of the Gospel is revealed, the folks don't care what we call it, as long as we put the dollar in. Make sense?
Yep that makes lots of sense!
ReplyDelete