Will a Man Rob God?

You're not "robbing God" if you don't give 10% of your income to a church. It's absolutely wonderful to give, give, give to your heart's content, so please never think that I'm saying "don't give." The "will a man rob God?" passage (Malachi 3:8) was not spoken to the New Covenant church. It was spoken to the nation of Israel (Malachi 3:9) because they (not the New Covenant church, which was not even in existence) had been commanded to supply tithes of food for the tribe of Levi (the Levites), but they had been neglecting this.

The Levites were a tribe that was set apart for certain functions, under the law, within the nation of Israel. The tithes were meant to feed the Levites. See Numbers 18:21-24. Verse 24 says that God has given Israel's tithes to the Levites as an inheritance. So when Israel did not do this, they were "robbing God." This has nothing to do with giving 10% of your income to a church - which has not been commanded by God.

The word "storehouse" is mentioned roughly 15 times in the Old Testament. They were places that stored - you guessed it - FOOD! Items such as grain, wine and oil were stored there, and there were also stalls for livestock in these storehouses. In the context of Malachi 3, the storehouses were places where the children of Israel were to bring their tithes of these things (grain, wine, oil, livestock, etc) so that the Levites could eat.

None of this has anything to do with today's church. You have to go "extra-biblical" (completely outside the Bible) in order to turn the OT tithes into "income" and the OT storehouses into the modern church. It's absolutely ridiculous! But again, I say, give to your heart's content. You will be of great benefit to others when you give. But also get yourself freed from tithing, and simply give freely.

For more on this, check out my blog series Freed from Tithing, Free to Give.

Tithing

The second post from yesterday that really spoke to me was a post from Forgetting the Former Things called "Learning to Give Out in the Wild." Aida talks about the big difference between Old Covenant tithing and New Covenant cheerful giving.

She writes:

In these New Testament days, we have the life of God in us. That was not true before the coming of Christ. The law, which includes instructions about tithing, was put into effect to bring us to Christ. Now that we're in him, our relationship to the law is ended. That includes the law of the tithe. We're no longer required to tithe and we're not robbing God if we don't.

I know some toes are being stepped on in a major way right now with all this, but the church has been bound up in religion for too long to not talk about it! It never ceases to amaze me how the New Testament church continues to manipulate and twist Old Covenant scriptures in order to come up with New Covenant versions of Old Covenant laws. It's absolutely ridiculous at best, and on the worst end of the scale it puts Christians in undue bondage. In the most commonly used Old Testament passage that the church wrongly uses to get Christians to "pay a tithe" to a local church, God, through the prophet Malachi, was in actuality rebuking the Jewish people for not keeping the tithing laws (note: plural) that He had given them. These laws were given for certain times and for certain purposes that have absolutely nothing to do with the Christian church!

As I said in the comments of Aida's post, I'm planning on confronting this issue head-on here on my blog, hopefully soon! In the meantime, check out her excellent post.