Today's Daily Lesson comes from Deuteronomy chapter 26 verses 1 through 10:
When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it, 2you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name.3You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, ‘Today I declare to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our ancestors to give us.’ 4When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the Lordyour God, 5you shall make this response before the Lord your God: ‘A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous.6When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labour on us, 7we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. 8The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; 9and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. 10So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.’
It is established it that a tenth of what the LORD has given to us we are to give back. These "first fruits" are our perpetual reminder that we've come along way, made it through some lean times, and have much to be thankful for. A "tithe" means a tenth and it's the way the LORD's people remember to be grateful. The tithe is God's way of keeping us humble.
Who should tithe? A little history helps us to discern.
The tithe goes all the way back to Abraham, who tithed a tenth of the spoils of battle to the priest Melchizedek. The tithe was then later ordained by God as the Israelites were coming into the Promised Land and preparing to establish the nation. From the beginning, the tithe was an acknowledgment that all good things come from the LORD.
We live now in a culture and, sadly, also even a church that has largely forgotten the tithe. Families, once established, build or buy big houses whose mortgages eat up the tithe. It's another 20 years -- when the student loans are paid off -- before anything of significance can be given. That's all backwards.
I know I'm beginning to sound like a Baptist preacher here; but the tithe has things to teach us. It's how we learn humility and how we keep everything in perspective. The tithe was meant to be a reminder that it all could have gone a different way and we and our families could be back in Egypt -- wherever our Egypt is.
There's an old saying, "The LORD's people don't just keep the tithe; the tithe also keeps the LORD's people."
I think that's still true.
No comments:
Post a Comment