Clough Manhood Series Lesson 40

Wealth-Part II: Worship

1 Timothy 6:9-10. We are in the midst of a series, both of which will conclude the manhood series; one on money and one on love. In 1 Timothy 6:9-10 we have one of the central passages on money and wealth, a very convicting passage, and a passage that is loaded with warning; warning particularly those of us who live in a wealthy society, with at least regards to the rest of the world. “But they that constant wish to be rich fall into a temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. [10] For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, which, while some have coved after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”

There’s not any other place in the New Testament where such a drastic announcement is made with regards to sin as in the area of material wealth. This is one of the strongest passages, one of the most all encompassing comprehensive passages. Why? We said last time the real reason is that wealth is a means of glorifying, or at least bringing out into the world around us, our volition, our volition with respect to God, who and what He is, and those who constantly wish to be wealthy don’t really have as their goal the massive accumulation of physical wealth. What they really want and all those who desire to be wealthy really want is power; power to control. That’s the goal of those who would be rich; autonomous power that they can get a grab on the steering wheel of life and can control their circumstances. Wealth brings power and power feeds the lusts to be autonomous. Those who wish to be wealthy believe that God is impotent, that God’s sovereignty does not control the steering wheel, only man. And therefore they seek to grab that steering wheel.

The alternative to 1 Timothy 6:9-10 is the alternative we concluded with last time from Abraham. In Genesis 18:18-19 you remember, we found there how God said I can trust Abraham with wealth because I know that Abraham follows My word, and that Abraham follows My words, and that Abraham will teach My word and Bible doctrine to his family, and because of that, I trust him. And therefore we found the opposite to 1 Tim 6:9-10 in a first prime point of wishing to live in the Word of God. The opposite of verses 9-10 is not the wish to be poor. Some have thought that. Some have so twisted verse 9 to mean that one, in order to be spiritual, must take an oath of poverty, and hence the rise of the monastic orders in the Middle Ages. But that’s a wrong interpretation. It’s not talking about wealth, it’s talking about that which is in the heart of man, not that outside of the heart.

All Timothy is getting at or what Paul’s getting at through Timothy is the attitude toward wealth, not wealth itself. And so if one wishes to live in the Word and subdue the earth and be productive, wealth will be a byproduct and it is to be enjoyed; we’ll see how much tonight. Wealth is not to be avoided; it is not bad in itself, but it’s that autonomous lust for power that accumulates around the spheres of wealth and money. And therefore you might exercise yourself as Christians, working with the non-Christians around you, in the business world, some of you men, learn to see the lusts of verses 9-10 in the hearts of your business associates. Not to sit and laugh at them, not to laugh and judge them, but simply to know with whom you are dealing; lust and power hungry men who seek to control the steering wheel of life. Are those your business associates? Watch out. The love of money and the love of wealth is the source of all kinds of evil. Very suspicious people, by the way, and they ought to be handled with great suspicion.

Handling wealth, we said, the key is given positively in Scripture in at least two verses, plainly and explicitly: Phil 4:11 interpreted in the light of verse 19, and Hebrews 13:5-6. Both these passages teach a simple thing; to simple to state, so hard to get: contentment! Contentment with such things as we have; not again, contentment with poverty per se, with indebtedness per se; no, that’s not what’s meant; it’s meant contentedness to get rid of the lust for power; that’s what contentment means. Positively we are to seek the kingdom of God over every area. Matthew 6:33 is a promise, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and” then, “all these things” including money and wealth, “shall be added unto you.” But you must seek first the kingdom of God; that’s the priority.

And since that’s the priority and since those are the basic concepts of wealth in the Bible, tonight we come to the next logical point in our development of the biblical doctrine of wealth and money, and that is worshiping with money. We’ve got the basic concepts, now we come to the act of worship. How is the first and great commandment, “Thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thy heart, with all thy mind, with all thy soul,” expressed with wealth. To do this and see this we must turn back to an Old Testament passage that gives great insight into wealth and its use in worship. And that’s Deuteronomy 14. In this section of the book of Deuteronomy we have Moses, in the sermon before he dies, expounding a complete description of the Mosaic Law, the old covenant.

All of Deuteronomy is a sermon; if you want to remember how long a sermon was, sometime take a stop watch and read slowly the book of Deuteronomy, see how long it takes. It was an actual sermon given once by Moses. Notice the details to which he goes in verse after verse after verse, obviously showing a great deal of concentration. This is always a problem, the span of concentration. For those of you who have been here at Lubbock Bible Church for some time you’ve developed your ability to concentrate. And this is why there’s going to be a concentration differential, particularly in the morning services; there you have people walk in who may not even be believers, but even those who are believers are not used to concentrating for more than five, ten minutes. This is the boob tube limit, and therefore since we’re not used to concentrating longer that five or ten minutes, this limits your intake of the Word of God. So all I can say is be an encouragement to those who have problems in this area; there is no way around it. I can use every chart, every audiovisual aid in the book, I can use films, I can use slides, I can use tapes, we can have a band up in the front, we can do all sorts of things but I cannot increase your span of concentration. That is something you have to develop; it is something that in the past people did not have to develop because they were trained in their childhood a different way. We live in a generation that was never trained to concentrate and so for us it’s a major accomplishment. But all we can say is the book of Deuteronomy gives you an illustration of how well people in that day could concentrate; concentrate in the most minute of details, as Moses taught them.

Now in Deuteronomy 14-15 we can summarize the overall content as this: what people were to avoid for their benefit. It’s negative, Moses is telling them look, people, if you really want to benefit and enjoy life in the kingdom, then avoid these things. And so in the lead-in into our section tonight, in Deuteronomy 14:1-2, he says one of the things you ought to avoid is undue grief for the dead; avoid undue grief for the dead. You are to forever mourn the dead; those who have trusted in Christ are in a far better place… far better place than you are. This is what always ought to be remembered. You have to cork this grief; we don’t deny the existence of emotion. We’re simply saying, though, that loved ones who have trusted in Christ are to be face to face with the Lord; how much better that is than where we are. That being the case, no undue grief for the dead.

Deuteronomy 14:3-21 is a second category of things to avoid in order to enjoy life and these are the unclean food; these are the dietary laws, the kosher food list of the Old Testament. This is to take care of their body and to take care of their lifestyle. They weren’t to be around animals that were scavengers, they weren’t to eat scavengers. Scavengers are a picture of the garbage men of God who clear up the debris and the crud in the universe, and they’re there as a mirror of those which clean up sin and God does not want His clean people to eat dirty garbage. And so therefore there were dietary laws in the Bible, teaching them to avoid all these kinds of unclean animals, unclean fish and so forth.

Then we come to the section on wealth , in Deuteronomy 14: 22-29 and the use of wealth in worship. And since in this section we are dealing with the use of wealth, since we’re dealing with things to avoid, one of the things to avoid is a bad attitude about tithing, or paying their tax. The word “tithe” is basically their tax in the Old Testament. They were to enjoy their tax paying to God. Now this is the fundamental point of placing the kingdom of God before wealth, and it’s precisely, therefore, at the point of giving wealth and giving money that one’s volition is tested because you can theorize all you want to but when you make the concrete act of giving wealth, whether it be in the form of tithes, whether it be in the from of services, whether it be in the form of money, when you go to the concrete point of giving then volition is expressed. And all the theory and all the words go besides the point; then we have the real thing.

And so Moses deals with this in a number of verses. Deuteronomy 14:22 is the beginning of this section and this section goes on to the end of the chapter. We want to watch here for attitudes; remember this whole section deals with mental attitude, what ought one’s attitude to be in worshiping by means of giving? “Thou shalt truly tithe all the increase of thy seed, that leaves the field year by year.” A tithe is the tenth. You will notice that the field is not taxed; it is the production on the field that is taxed. There are no such thing as property taxes in the Bible; property taxes are the heathen’s way of raising money. Property taxes are made necessary by inefficient government and by a certain other thing which will become evident in this passage. Property taxes are unfair taxes; property taxes tax the hypothetical wealth of a parcel of land irrespective of the productivity of that land and therefore property taxes are inherently beside the point. And the Bible it is the production of the land, never the land, that is taxed. So the tithe is a ten percent national tax. It is a tax that is paid to God. It said you will tithe all the production that leaves the field each year.

[23] “And thou shalt eat before the LORD thy God, in the place where He shall choose to place His name there, the tithe of thy grain, of thy wine, of thine oil, and the firstlings of thy herds and all the flock, that you mayest learn to respect the LORD thy God always. [24] And if the way be too long for you, so that you are not able to carry it, or if the place be too far from thee, which the LORD thy God shall choose to set His name there, when the LORD thy God has blessed thee, [25] Then shalt thou turn it into money, and bind up the money in thine hand, and shalt go unto the place which the LORD thy God shall choose. [26] And thou shalt bestow that money for whatsoever thy soul desires: for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatsoever thy soul desires; and thou shalt there before the LORD thy God, and thou shalt rejoice, thou, and thine household. [27] And the Levite that is within thy gates, thou shalt not forsake him; for he has no part nor inheritance with thee.”

Now let’s look at this a little carefully, it has a number of shocking assertions. The first thing, verse 23, you notice the tithe was to include all production, whether it is the agricultural production of the field or whether it’s the ranch and its flock and the stock in effect, that the rancher has in his heard. Notice, “the firstlings of thy flock,” again, it is not a tax on the quantity of wealth the rancher has in his flock, it is a tax on the production of the man’s flock, not the flock, just as the tax in the Bible agriculturally is a tax on the production of the land but not on the land. The means of production are never taxed in the Bible, only the products of production are taxed in the Bible. It’s totally different than our tax structure today. You say, why, this is an unrealistic figure for taxing; we know that we pay 20-30% or more in all the various taxes that go on and the wealthy pay even more, until they are wealthy enough to hire tax lawyers to get them out of it.

And so, how then does this level of taxation, how does that correspond today. The trick was that everybody, no matter how much wealth they had, or how much wealth they produced, paid 10%. Yes, it wasn’t an escalating tax; what it was was a flat rate tax, but everybody paid it with no exceptions. Some have computed from time to time what it would be like in the United States if instead of all the income tax we just bulldozed the whole big package of complicated tax laws down the drain and passed one law that said every person in the United States will pay X percent of his tax. What do you think the X would be to raise the same amount of money that is now being raised through this big massive edifice? And somebody once computed and it comes out 3-4%. Now most people would be quite happy to pay only 3-4% of their real earned wealth. And that’s all it would take if everyone paid their tax. No exclusion clauses, no exemptions, nothing, just a flat rate on everything we produce. Everyone, including the millionaires, no tax loopholes, see, that’s where we lose all the money. And think of how simple it would be to collect; we wouldn’t have to have all the courts with all the complicated tax questions, all the lawyers involved in it, all the bureaucrats involved with the complicated records; it’s be very simple to administer. And it would produce the same amount of wealth with a tremendous increase in freedom. It’d be tremendous.

Mention it to some of your friends running for public office; it is a creative platform to take. Wouldn’t that be a striking issue in the next election; I propose to do away with all tax laws and substitute a flat rate for everyone. Hear the hollers and screams from the tax lawyers, oh, we can’t have that, why you need us. Of course you do when you have such a screwed up set of legislation. And so we’ve had the tax lawyers wanting…oh, we’d have 800 reasons why we couldn’t have a flat rate. And so the legal profession would become involved, and the politicians would become involved, and it’d be interesting who you could smoke out with a kind of proposal like that. You’d find very quickly who it is that’s benefiting from our current confusion in the tax picture.

Now in Deuteronomy 14:23, it says that “And you will eat before the LORD thy God,” now that’s interesting. What’s going on here in the book of Deuteronomy, and we explained it when we went through the book of Deuteronomy verse by verse a number of years ago is that the people from all over the land would come to Jerusalem and when they got there they would bring their tithes to the temple. They’d come from the north, they’d come from the south, all over Israel to Jerusalem. And there they would bring their 10%. Obviously they would physically bring it, as it says in verse 23, you know this because in verse 24 it says if it’s too long a journey and you’re a wealthy rancher you’re not going to drive your cattle all the way through the cities on the highlands down to Jerusalem. Besides, there’s no facilities down there to house it anyway. So therefore you convert it to money, to cash, gold and silver. And that’s what verse 24 is about. And when they go there they would have a feast. Most of the money and most of the tithes is not used in this feast.

Now some people, who ought to know better, who are not every careful exegetes, have said there are second and third tithes in the Bible. I don’t find any evidence of that whatsoever. This is not a second tithe; all that’s happening here is that they are bringing their 10% down to Jerusalem and when they get there they’re going to have a part and they have a right to spend some of their tax money before God in a big blast. Notice, that’s what it’s saying. Verse 26, let’s not pretend we don’t understand what verse 26 is talking about. Let’s read it carefully. “And thou shalt bestow that money for whatsoever thy soul lusts after,” whatever you want, “oxen, or for sheep, or for wine,” or grape juice. All these people that see grape juice in the Bible, well there’s no way around that one, that is talking about beer in the ancient world. So obviously these people had a good relaxed time. And all the fundies stayed out on the coast some place. But the strong drink flowed at these Yahweh parties at the temple. Now don’t misapply this but I’m just telling you what the text says in verse 26. It doesn’t mean everyone got soused, but it does mean that they had an interesting time socially. And they were to have a time when they could relax and you notice what it says in verse 16, and be happy, you and your household. They participated in their own tax. Isn’t this interesting; part of their tax went to their own joy, in a party before God. You see, it was a joy to pay their tax to God because God shared the tax with the people who brought it to Him.

See, God is a merciful God, we get all this boogie-man image of God from the Old Testament, idiots who are New Testament people who never read the Old Testament, always like the picture of the God of the Old Testament as some sort of fogy who delighted in the displeasure of people. What is this? Just look at this passage; God wants His people to be happy and unlike Caesar, He allows His people who come to bring tribute to Him to enjoy a portion of that very tribute they bring to Him. Immediately God turns part of it back to His own people; you could say it’s a tax rebate He’s giving them in verse 26, and said go, have a good time and enjoy yourself. Do you see the difference in attitude between God and Caesar? Between God and the state? That’s the God we worship, the God who willingly gives a tax rebate at the point of tax paying. And it says each before the Lord thy God rejoice, you and your whole family; the direction is given to the man of the house who is the one, by the way, that was held responsible for bringing the tax to Jerusalem, and at the end, verse 27, “ the Levite that is within thy gates,” also he is to be included; these are the country clergymen.

Now we want to summarize so far what does this tax go to really; yes, maybe a fraction, some fraction of this was deleted in this party that they had at tax paying time at the end of the year but beyond that, most of the 10% was there; we’ll put nine point dot, dot, dot, percent was left. Where did this wealth go? It went to finance the following things. It went to finance, first of all, the Levitical institution, the Levites. The Levites were a tribe of professional priests. The Levites had no means of earning their own wealth; they were fulltime, if you want to use that expression, fulltime workers for Jehovah in the nation. Here are the functions, phrased in their modern… their modern context that the Levites did for their society. They taught the Word of God. They were teachers of the Word of God.

Two, they served as counselors; they took the place of the modern psychiatrist and psychologist; the priest was the one who dealt with confession of sin and teaching people to recover from this. They were the ones that supervised worship in song and sacrifice. They were the ones who made intercession for the people, who taught them to pray. Whether in the country or in the city, the Levites were the teachers and the spiritual fathers of the nation. And so therefore, the majority of tax went to this. By the Mosaic Law there was never a tax for the military; the reason being that every man was to buy his own weapons and to use them in time of war. The tax, what tax there was under the original theocracy went completely to finance the spiritual core of the nation that would then conduct these various services. In addition, to Bible teaching, counseling, worship, intercession and so on, the Levites also gave to the poor and helped the poor. They were actively involved in social welfare. So those are the ways in which the tax, or where the tax structure went in that time.

Now in the last few verses of this chapter a particular thing happened every third year. Deuteronomy 14:28, “At the end of three years thou shalt bring forth all the tithe of thine increase the same year, and lay it up inside your local cities [within thy gates]. [29] And the Levite (because he has no part nor inheritance with thee), and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, who are within thy gates, shall come, and shall eat and be satisfied; that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hand, which thou doest.” So every third year the 10% tax would go to local welfare. So here’s the way it looked on a seven year cycle. The seventh year no production. Why? It’s a Sabbath year, so no tax then. In the third year and the fifth year of the cycle you would have the tax funds devoted to local welfare; so basically you had, if you divided it up here, 3.3% of the wealth per year went into welfare that was administered locally.

Who administered the welfare locally? “Thy gates,” verse 29. Who were the gates? Well, that’s a metaphor for the men who sat in the gates. Who sat in the gates? The elders of the town, equivalent today to the city council. And so 3.3% and notice the welfare is dispensed at a local level of government. It isn’t dispensed from Jerusalem at the central level of government. In analogy today it would be the cities that would be doing the welfare, not the state, and not the federal level; that’s the biblical way of doing it. Now why? Because verse 29 tells you why, where is the stranger, the fatherless and the widow? They’re in the cities; there’s nothing called the state. There’s only people in the cities, or counties; by definition that’s where they are. Show me a person who’s in the state of Texas who isn’t in a county. A person has already been geographically defined so therefore the welfare is administered at the local level.

This, by the way, for those of you interested in politics is a point of wisdom; the more local the level of welfare administration the more efficient and biblical it will always be. The higher the level, and today we find a gravitation upward from the local to the state and now the federal government is getting into everything. We find it taken away from the local people and therefore very insensitive to the local people. So the biblical picture is locally administered welfare, 3.3%. Now imagine what our percentage today, throwing money out to this person, that person, and giving money to everybody who wants to steal televisions sets in Harlem every time the electricity goes off, and so forth. See, it wasn’t that way in Israel; in Israel they had a godly designed welfare system.

So we find, then, in Deuteronomy 14 that God is worshiped; and how is God worshiped? He is worshiped by giving to those things that honor Him, and what are the things that honor Him in the society? Bible teaching. But not just Bible teaching, but worship functions, including song and music. But not just worship, also décor, collectively [can’t understand word] for the objects where the wealth that belongs to God ought to be transferred.

Now the Bible has a very strong condemnation to people who do not pay their tax to God. Let’s turn to the last book of the Old Testament, the book of Malachi 3:8, the violation of one of the great commandments, “Thou shalt not steal.” It’s possible to steal from God. In verse 8 theft is mentioned. “Will a man steal from God? Yet ye have robbed Me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed You?” Answer: “In tithes and offerings. [9] You are cursed with a curse; for you have robbed Me, this whole nation. [10] Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse,” for the taxes, “that there may be food in My house, and prove [test] me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.” What God is saying and what He’s getting at in verse 10 is that paying tax in ancient Israel here, on these items, was a confession of what? It was a faith transaction that God would provide. It’s that simple.

You see, this is why the love of money is so dangerous, because it’s the final seal on the system of sanctification and salvation by works; it’s the ultimate engrafting in un-faith because when we release control over the check or the tithe or the hours or this particular product or that thing, when we release control and it actually goes out of our hands we’ve lost control by definition of it and now we have to trust God to use it, and so we’ve forced ourselves into a position where we have to trust God.

Now that’s he’s getting at in verse 10. God says I know why you’re thinking; you’re thinking that if you pay Me tax I won’t provide for you. Funny though, all men pay their tax to Caesar and basically don’t question too much that Caesar will provide for them. How many people who voted for the New Deal ever doubted that social security would fail, or would provide their means and not fail? So we find that people are far more prone to trust Caesar to take care of them than they are to trust that God will take care of them, and that’s Malachi’s point.

So we have one way in which God was worshiped in the Old Testament and that’s by means of paying taxes. But that’s not the only place. God was worshiped in other ways. The reason we mention the tax first is the awful price that appears to be paid by any nation that won’t pay its taxes in a godly way. Turn to 1 Samuel 8, the warning given to Israel. The warning was that if you don’t trust God to provide and you don’t pay Him His tax then you will pay a tax, this time not to God but to a bloated expanded state. 1 Samuel 8 is the key political document of the Old Testament. It is the great polemic against centralized government, and it says of the state, epitomized by the state’s king; in 1 Samuel 8:15 what does it say? He will take your tithes, of your seed, and of your vineyards, and he’s not going to give it to the poor and to Bible teachers, he’s going to give it to his bureaucracy. Does this sound familiar? [“He will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants.”] Does this sound familiar? Could Samuel have possibly prophesied of things to come?

1 Samuel 8:17, “He,” the state, “will take your tithe of your sheep; and you will be his slaves.” Isn’t that a prophecy of what’s happened in the modern world? If people have failed collectively, people have collectively and socially failed to trust God to provide, what has happened to the power of the state? Hasn’t the power of the state increased? And now who takes the taxes; and now who takes not a tenth but three times a tenth, three tithes every year. And does he give it really to Bible teaching, to wisdom and to application in society. No, he gives it to his own bureaucracy and it feeds on itself. That isn’t hard to see; Samuel is very wise. So we find that as the terrible price a nation pays when collectively its people do not give to God’s purposes, then God extracts the same tax but He extracts it in a satanic way to the state; those who do not give are compelled to give; the state, like God, loves a cheerful giver.

Now let’s come to the second place, the second thing in which money and wealth was used in the worship of God, and that is in free will offerings. Turn to Exodus 25. Over and above the normal tax rate from time to time there would be needs, and from time to time the people would be called upon to give free will offerings. Don’t worry there’s not going to be a second offering tonight so just relax. I deliberately had the offering first so none of you would feel any pressure. Exodus 25:1-2, the project of the tabernacle. It required a great deal of wealth, the tabernacle did, and so look what happened. Some of the most amazing text in all of God’s Word on giving and an attitude toward wealth. “And the LORD spoke unto Moses, saying, [2] Speak unto the children of Israel, that they bring me an offering: of every man that gives it willingly with his heart you shall take My offering.” This isn’t the tax, this is over and above the tax. It is a free will offering. And you’ll notice God said let it be with the proper mental attitude or I don’t want it. If its one big hairy struggle to give Me, just keep it. That’s what God says.

In Exodus 35 we see how successful these people were. Just look at Exodus 35:21 and following. “And the came,” the people that brought the free will offerings, “everyone whose heart stirred him up, and everyone whom his spirit made willing, and they brought the LORD’s offering to the work of the tabernacle of the congregation, and for all its service, and for the holy garments. [22] And they came, both men and women, as many as were willing-hearted,” you see the emphasis again and again in the mental attitude? There’s not a reluctance, it’s a joy. “…were willing-hearted, and they brought bracelets, and earrings, and rings, and necklaces, all jewels of gold: and every man that offered, offered an offering of gold unto the LORD. [23] And every man, with whom there was found blue, and purpose, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats’ hair, and red skins of rams…. [24] “Every one that did offer an offering of silver and brass brought the LORD’s offering,” and so on, it just goes and lists offering upon offering upon offering. Verse 29, “The children of Israel brought a willing offering unto the LORD, every man and woman, whose hear made them willing to bring for all manner of work, which the LORD had commanded….” And he speaks of now the giving of talent to the various men involved in the craft.

Now the next chapter, Exodus 36:5-7, “And they spoke unto Moses, saying,” look at this, just absolutely amazing here, “they spoke unto Moses, saying, The people bring much more than enough for the service of the work, which the LORD commanded to make. [6] So Moses had to give a commandment, and caused it to be proclaimed throughout the camp, saying, Let neither man nor woman make any more work for the offering of the sanctuary. So the people were restrained from bringing. [7] For the stuff they had sufficient for all the work to make it, and too much.” You see, the people in that day had a great faith, that they could, so to speak, extend their wealth. Some commentators have called this by interesting names; never heard of this expression before, “holy waste,” “sacred waste,” wasting one’s wealth on God. There’s a sort of reckless abandon in this passage of Exodus 35 and 36; people could stand back and say why waste, what a waste, all this and this silver going. Is it? As the same commentator says, who wears an iron wedding ring? Do we need gold and silver and pretty wedding rings? No, we don’t need them but we think they’re nice, they’re majestic. Why, then, do we give God an iron wedding ring and steel.

You see it in the philosophy of fundamentalism again and again; the functionalism that prevailed at point after point, always get the cheapest thing, and it’s God’s work but let’s do it the cheap way, never let there be any holy waste. But in the Old Testament we find there was a sacred waste, because by definition you can’t waste money on God. You see the same thing came in the debate between Judas Iscariot and the woman who took all of that valuable ointment and poured it on Christ. And what was Judas Iscariot’s objection to the woman? Not that she was immoral, but Judas Iscariot’s argument was that the woman was wasting wealth on God; one can be extravagant in every other area of life but you dare not be extravagant with God. And so the argument of functionalism comes straight from the mouth of Judas Iscariot.

So we find, then, holy waste is a second way of wealth used to worship God. Free will offerings. Notice it goes both ways in the Bible. Turn back to Exodus 32:8. Notice when an idol was built; oh, men still wasted their wealth on that. “They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them,” this is God’s description of what happened with Aaron while Moses was up on Sinai, “they have made them a molten calf, and they have worshiped it, and have sacrificed thereunto,” with what? Their gold jewelry. Where did Aaron get the gold? From the jewelry. It was given, it was wasted on this idol. That was real waste; the waste later on described in the book of Exodus is not waste.

All right, that’s the second way in which God is worshiped in wealth. He was worshiped through a national system of taxation; he was worshiped through free will offerings, just because people liked to give. That’s all, no greater reason, people just responded and gave.

The third way in which wealth was used in worship is found in Deuteronomy 23:19, a little more subtle and complicated way. This was wealth directed toward the poor. In verse 19, “Thou shalt not lend upon usury [interest] to thy brother; usury of money, usury of food, usury of anything that is lent upon usury.” Now usury used to be a common name; today many don’t even know what usury is. It’s interest on a loan. And in the Bible loans made to the poor brother, who is in dower extremity in life, had to be made at zero percent interest. And obviously that’s a sacrifice. That’s tying up capital assets that could have been used for commercial purposes elsewhere at interest.

Usury laws in the Bible are laws that apply not to business loans, not to commercial loans, Jesus commends interest on commercial loans in Matthew 25, so we know that it’s not commercial loans that’s meant here. What is meant is loans to the poor person to get him over his crisis and you might sacrifice the total amount of the loan because if it was the fifth year in the sixth year all loans were canceled; you lost the whole principle as well as not getting an interest out of it. It’s a very risky business, loaning money at zero percent interest to the extremely poor, and in most cases we would have to say they defaulted payment. And in most cases zero percent interest loans were money losers in an immediate sense, not only because there was no interest but also because the principle was not often collected.

But to show how serious God was about usury and the anti usury laws of the Bible, let’s pick up the prophet Jeremiah in Jeremiah 15:10 We picked Jeremiah because it’s some distance in the Old Testament away from Deuteronomy and it shows you how long the anti usury legislation was followed by the godly people. The last part of verse 10, Jeremiah pleads his innocence, and one of the pleas of his innocence is that he has obeyed the anti usury legislation of God. “…I have neither lent on usury, nor men have lent to me on usury, yet every one of them does curse me.” Notice both ways, it was as much of a sin to lend on usury as it was to accept usury. That’s interesting. Even if you were a poor person you would sin in the eyes of God if you indebted yourself beyond your ability to pay, because you had placed yourself in economic slavery; you had sinned against God’s will for your life. So it’s a very interesting point about loaning money.

Now a warning. Anti usury laws prevailed in western civilization on up into the Middle Ages. It used to be thought that these anti usury laws applied to commercial loans; historically, then, this is why the Jews became the great bankers of Europe. Every once in a while in conservative circles you’ll find some little track against the Jews, blaming all the world’s problems on the big rich Jewish bankers. But the same tracts never bother to study why there are so many rich Jewish banking families, like the Rothschild’s and others in international finance. Historically it goes back to the Middle Ages when who drove the Jews into usury? The Roman Catholic Church, because the Roman Catholic Church interpreted these passages to mean there was to be no usury on any kind of loans, and they almost bankrupted Europe because nobody could finance anything without usury.

How did Christopher Columbus discover America? Because Jews loaned him the money to pay for the boat. American wouldn’t even be discovered if the foolish application of the anti usury legislation had been followed seriously in Europe. It was the Jews, then, who became the great bankers because they alone, of all of the population, could engage in usury. And the Jew and usury became two words of cursing in late Middle Ages and into the Reformation period. So watch it; our answer to that is anti usury legislation applies only to charitable loans, not commercial loans. That was a wrong application. They were right to try to apply the Word of God to all society; they were wrong in their interpretation of the Word of God.

Now let’s come to down to the New Testament and its use of giving. There are principles of giving offered by the New Testament. Let’s list some of these principles of giving. They can be listed under many different kinds of headings; we will give approximately a dozen or so principles that are found in the New Testament. None of these principles involve a tithe, the reason being that we don’t live in the kingdom of God and therefore don’t have godly tax laws. So therefore the taxes in our Gentile heathen land are never looked upon as a gift to God, this side of the collapse of Israel. Thus, no mention is made of tithes in the New Testament.

All right, some principles. The first principle you will find, and you can read these for yourself, I will refer to various verses and I will list the principles. I’ll leave it to you to look at the context and study this over yourself. 2 Corinthians 8-9 is one of the New Testament central areas on giving. The first principle you can find in that section is that giving stems from a mental attitude toward God’s grace. It ought never to be due to human approbation, to human pressure. You’ll find this in 1 Corinthians 8:3, 4, 9, 10; you will find it in chapter 9:7. Giving ought to be a result of the individual’s own choice without pressure, coercion, or influence.

Second, giving starts with a mental attitude of being in fellowship, 1 Corinthians 8:5; that verse goes so far as to say that it doesn’t matter if you’re poor, you have already, in the eyes of God, given if you are willing to give. That’ show important the attitude is. Keep in mind those passages from the Old Testament which we just read.

Three, the amount of giving is determined by at least two factors in the New Testament. One factor is your personal resources, 2 Corinthians 8:12. Also 1 Corinthians 16:2, give as God has prospered. So the amount is determined by one, your resources; and two, your family responsibilities, 1 Timothy 5:8, “If any man provide not for his own, he is worse than infidel.” And I know members of my own profession who are con artists; I have known people in Christian circles who have been pressured by certain men I know in the clergy, to give money when members of their own family didn’t have enough to put food on the table… well, I gave mine to the Lord! Sure, and now you’ve got food stamps and Uncle Sam is supposed to provide for you, so we’ve got federal financing of churches, indirectly; rip off the poor so then they rip off everybody else with food stamps. That’s a brilliant way of financing Christian operations. If a person cannot provide for their own homes because of poverty and so on, it may be due to very foolish financial policies but whatever the cause, 1 Timothy 5:8 says provide for your own. Otherwise the church or somebody has to pick up the slack somewhere on down the line. There is no such thing as an absolute minimum or maximum in giving in the Bible. Nowhere in the New Testament do we find guidelines in this area, because the tithe isn’t mentioned. The only thing you have to guide yourself by is that in fact, in the Old Testament there was a 10% tithe but it also went to welfare. And the other thing you have to guide yourself on is the one in six ratio that God has of produce six days and one day shut down production. That might indicate something of His interest.

All right, the fourth principle; giving as important, but no more important than any other activity of the Christian; 2 Corinthians 8:7.

The fifth principle, giving is to be consistent, not spastic. Just because somebody gets hot in some religious meeting and throws their money in the plate, oh, I just gave to God, you didn’t give to God, you just felt a lot of emotional pressure; everybody was looking at you, or you wanted to impress the person next to you, or in front of you or in back of you, something. But giving is to be consistent, 2 Corinthians 8:8, 10, 11. Also 1 Corinthians 16:2 says, “on the first day of the week let each one of you lay by him in store,” and the principle there is a consistent regular type giving. That’s discipline; it’s not waiting till the end of the year and you say oh, what a tax break I can get, well, let’s see who I can write a check out, quick, and get the max tax break. That’s not the way the New Testament approaches it. The New Testament says you give week by week by week, short term basis. Why? Because there are short term needs; there are short term plans that you make. You can’t tell what’s going to happen 12 months from now. So the New Testament keeps accounts short.

Giving is an expression of the body of Christ truth, 2 Corinthians 8:4, 13-15; meaning the interdependency of the body of Christ. And giving, incidentally, in the New Testament was also giving to the poor of the local church. When our federal and state welfare systems collapse, I believe that the deacons of local churches are going to have to take up the slack and we’ll have to divert, probably back to what we were doing in this country 200 years ago, when the churches developed their whole inner structure of discipline and welfare, in which they took care of their own poor. We may come to that in this country; when nobody else is going to take care of them, because the government will have shot its wad and so therefore the productive people, the upper class people, spiritually speaking, who operate in the local church, they will care for their own within the confines of the church. That may be something we’ll return to one day.

Another principle; giving like this gives rewards to the giver. Or, the giver receives rewards. Why? Because of two reasons; first the giver gets rewarded because he participated in the ministry of another person. By giving to somebody else you share the credit for that ministry, 2 Corinthians 8:4 and 2 John 1:10-11. Both of those passages teach that when you give to a ministry, for good or for evil, you have participated in that ministry and when God blesses that ministry and he credits that ministry, you are credited with it. His gift results… this is the second reason why the giver receives reward, is because the recipient of the gift praised God. 1 Corinthians 9:11-13. The second reason why the giver receives reward is because the guy that got the gift thanked God for it. 2 Corinthians 9:11-13. Such rewards include two things: we’re not going to say well what kind of rewards; well, I don’t know. Well, the Bible tells us, two kinds of rewards are given to the giver. First, eternal rewards, 2 Corinthians 9:6, eternal rewards which we won’t see until we die and go face to face with the Lord, and two: temporal recompense, 2 Corinthians 9:8-10 and Phil 4:19. That means that God so often times will give it right back to you when you have given. This happened to me many times. You’ll give and all of a sudden you find you get it right back again, and by some other source.

Another principle, principle number nine, there should never be embarrassment at the point of giving. 1 Corinthians 16:2 once again, 2 Corinthians 9:5. There ought never to be pressure exerted at the point of giving. This is one reason why you hear me again and again, week in and week out, when we get to the offering I always try to make the offering a point of dedication, emphasis on mental attitude, using time, talents and resources and not just limited to the material. Clever speakers can dupe an audience; the sheep can easily be fleeced and it is up to the pastor-teacher to see that that doesn’t happen.

Finally, the tenth principle in this passage in the New Testament is that all funds ought to be administered honestly and detailed reports made available to the givers, 2 Corinthians 8:19-21. Biblical principle, Paul made available a financial record to all participating churches. And one of the greatest things about Lubbock Bible Church has always been… we have dropped the ball in every area, from the pulpit on down through the various areas, to the P.A. system, to the tapes, to the music, to the organ, to something else, and this and that, but there’s one place we have consistently done very well and that’s in the area of finances. We have consistently had a group of men who have seen to it that this church accounts for every dime and that all reports are certified and publicly displayed and you can give thanks; a lot of churches are not blessed with that kind of responsibility. But it’s one of the great fulfillments of 2 Corinthians 8:19-21.

All right, a few other principles, in conclusion, from the New Testament to guard you in the practical use of wealth in the area of worship. These come from various passage I’ll indicate. Principle eleven, giving is not necessary for the support of believers. God can always provide for them through other ways. Phil 4:10-14; it is not saying that their ministry doesn’t count. What Paul’s saying is my ministry may be hindered but I’m not going to starve to death if you don’t give to me. In other words, what Paul’s saying, I don’t intend ever to beg for money, and when you get a Christian organization that duns you for money and begs you for money and wants you to sign this and wants you to sign that and send you bills because you haven’t paid, you are looking at some sort of mousey outfit, and that ought to tell you there’s a… you smell a rat right there, in the way they’re handling their money. It is not biblical and something is wrong with that organization. Certain very well known organizations do this regularly.

The twelfth principle, giving biblically opens a credit account with God. That’s actually the word used in Philippians 4:15-18, the actual word, you check it out in the Greek; the financial term opening an account with God, Philippians 4:15-18.

The thirteenth principle, such giving is the only method that cannot be explained away by psychology. That’s why God wants us to do it that way. The act of giving is a testimony to the grace of God and you miss the testimony if you foul it up with some human viewpoint giving. I have seen Christian organization after Christian organization go down because they hired some P.R. expert, come get our office in order. Well, you always need somebody to have your office in order, but then the next thing, we need a professional fund raiser. Why? Why do you need a professional fund raiser? Something wrong with your program and it doesn’t commend the blessing of God, so you’ve got to squeeze the lemon a little harder? Always be suspicious of P.R. people in Christian organizations and the fund raising gimmicks and so on. One of the great rip-offs you will see in Christian circles and most of you who have been on mailing lists have gotten this at one time or another, is come, make your will out and give, so you can get involved in this Christian annuity program or Christian stewardship program.

Now that is a violation of the usury laws. Do you know why? Because it’s presented as you are giving to a Christian organization yet on the other hand they’re saying that you’re getting interest on what you’re giving to the organization, and you can’t have it both ways. Either you’re making a charitable loan at zero percent interest or you’re making a commercial loan at some finite amount of interest but don’t come up with this garbage that you’re giving your money to this Christian, big sacrifice and you’re getting 9% off it. That isn’t Christian giving, that’s a violation of the usury laws. Now if you want to give on a 9% basis, fine, make it a commercial loan. Make money on the Christian and admit it. But don’t come up that you’re doing this for the Lord. You’re not doing it for the Lord, you’re doing it for yourself. All right, so that’s the gimmicks and devices, and big organizations do this all the time… all the time.

All right, fourteenth principle, just got two more, I just want to give you plenty of principles so when you get all this stuff in the mail, once you get it from one Christian organization you’re going to get 25, they sell mailing lists, by the way, back and forth. The good ones don’t but we discover all sorts of lesser like do. Principle fourteen; all support of an apostate ministry should be terminated, 2 John 10-11. All support of an apostate ministry ought to be suspended immediately. That historically was why the fundamentalists became independent in the course of 20^th century church history, because the independents were not permitted, when G. Gresham Machen found out people were denying the virgin birth that was sent out by the Presbyterian Church, Machen cited this section and he said I, as a pastor of a Presbyterian Church will not finance missionaries who do not believe in the virgin birth of Christ. And the Presbytery said Machen, you will or you’re going to be defrocked. And Machen said I won’t and Machen got defrocked and kicked out, and that was the beginning of the independent Presbyterian movement. Most of your independent Christian worker in the 20^th century grew because of the application of 2 John 10-11. When individual pastors are ripped off by denominational headquarters that you will give us so much money for Snodgrass out in some liberal mission some place, that’s when a pastor who is worth anything should tell the denominational headquarters to cram it.

The last and fifteenth principle, all giving is limited to willing believers, never unbelievers. Another principle is violated all across the board. 3 John 7. All solicitation ought to be to believers only; unbelievers are never asked for funds. Why? Because the unbeliever is unsaved, he does not have the riches of salvation in the person of Jesus Christ and you are creating a false issue because you are letting the non-Christian think that he is getting points with God because he gave to a Christian organization. And an attempt must be made to keep the issue clear. No funds ought to ever be solicited from the non-Christian at large. If Christians want commercial loans for some Christian projects, fine, but then give the non-Christian interest on the loan he gives you and make it a commercial deal. But don’t try this funny business of accepting money from non-Christians.

All right, those are some principles of the use of wealth in the New Testament; we’ve seen the use of wealth in the Old, you remember the Yahweh party, with the strong drink. That’s the picture of the attitude involved in giving in God’s mind.