God's Plan for Giving, Part 1

Now, the Bible does not institute tithing. There is no statement from God ever regarding tithing at this point in Genesis. No one told Abraham to give a tenth. No one told Jacob to give a tenth. Certainly not God. There is no universal law as such stated in Scripture. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Not long ago, a survey found that even in the best economic times, the top source of stress for Americans never changed. It was always money. How about you?

Can you relate to that sort of stress, and what can you do to overcome it? And how can you make sure it doesn't stop you from supporting the Lord's work? Find out today as John shows you how the Lord wants you to think about money. He's titled our current study, God's Plan for Giving.

And with today's lesson, here's John MacArthur. More than any other single commodity, money is in your hands. You're constantly dealing with money. You pay bills constantly. You write checks. You receive paychecks. You go to the savings. You go to the bank.

You take your wallet out. You put change in this and that. Money is a constant thing. The Christian is faced with many decisions regarding money.

Basically they fall into four categories. Number one, how we feel about money. Number two, how we earn money. Number three, how we spend money. And number four, how we give money. The total stewardship of money can fall into those categories. How we feel about it, how we earn it, how we spend it, and how we give it away. Now first of all, what about the area of how we feel about money? Does the Bible say anything about that? Well you know it does.

And I'm just going to briefly introduce the subject because we want to dwell on the fourth one. But the Bible says a lot about how we feel about money. First of all, it says we are not to love it. In 1 Timothy 6 and verse 10 it says, The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. We are not to love money.

Now that is not an easy thing since it's around us all the time. Another thing the Bible says in regard to how we feel about money is that we are not to trust money. That is we are not to put our confidence in our money. In 1 Timothy 6 17 it says, Charge those that are rich not to trust in their money. To trust in money is idolatry. Even when you derive your sense of security from the money that you say God provides for you, that's still idolatry. In Matthew 6 24 it says you cannot serve two gods. You can't serve the true God and money.

That kind of divided allegiance doesn't make it. That's why when the Bible lays down the qualifications for an elder, it says he cannot be a man who is greedy of money. Because you cannot serve God and money. Not only that, the Bible tells us that we are not to seek to be rich. We are to seek to honor God. If He desires to make us rich, that's His business. We are to seek to work as hard as we can to do the very best we can for His glory. If He desires to make us rich in response to that, that's His business. First Timothy 6 9 says, Those who would be rich fall into many hurtful lusts and their souls ultimately are drowned in destruction and loss. Also, in regarding money, we are not to regard money as our own, it is God's. We are stewards of it. There are other things in that area. Let me go to the second one. What does the Bible say about how we earn money or how we get money?

It says a lot. First of all, we're not to steal it. That's a no-no. We cannot steal money. You say, I would never do that.

Listen to Psalm 37 21. The wicked borrows and pays not back. There are lots of ways to steal.

In fact, in Amos 8 5 and Hosea 12 7, the prophets talk about falsifying the balance owed and then deceiving somebody out of money. No, you're not to steal money. Secondly, we are not to exploit others by usury. In other words, we are not to overcharge desperate people.

If your brother has a need, you give him to meet his need. You don't loan him what he has to have and then charge him exorbitant and high rates of interest. That's usury. Also, we are not to defraud people by not paying them what we owe them. You know what James 5 4 says? It says the money that you should have paid to your labors is crying out against you.

You've defrauded them because you didn't pay them what they deserved for their work. In terms of how we get money, the Bible also says that we're not to gamble for it. And this, of course, I think is an inference in the Scripture from the standpoint that if you trust the sovereignty of God and the providence of God, chance has no part in it.

The word for dice play is used in connection with the ministry of Satan in Ephesians 4 14. Now those are negative things as to how we're not to get money. How are we to get it? Well, we are to get it by receiving gifts and this is a wonderful way.

You don't have to do anything, you just have to be nice or know somebody who is nice. And Paul received money a lot. They gave him gifts constantly and I suppose that I've been the beneficiary of such things.

Sometimes people send a love offering, you know, in response to a ministry that you've had and this is expressing love and this is a legitimate way. In the Old Testament they received money without working on the basis of inheritance, didn't they? The firstborn received the inheritance of all that his father possessed in general. So we can receive gifts in terms of inheritance as well as gifts of love. Another way that we can get money is by making wise investments. And I don't believe that God wants us to run the risk of wildcat investments and high-risk gambling speculations with His funds, but I think that God desires that we make wise investments. In Matthew 25 verse 27, you know, the owner said to the servant, if you'd have been smart, you'd have put this money out and so that when I came back I would have received mine own with interest. So we can earn money by making wise investments.

Interest can be made. But the primary way, and the last one I'll mention, is we earn money by work, good old work. You know, when you get down to the place of people who are chronically out of money, chronically don't have enough, they're chronically indolent, some degree or another.

Now there are other extenuating circumstances in personal individual cases, but basically the real problem with people who don't have anything is they don't work for anything. Work is a wonderful divine principle. And a lot of us like a lot of divine principles, but we're not real excited about that one.

But that is one. Proverbs 28 19, he that tills his land shall have plenty of bread. But he that follows after vain persons shall have poverty enough.

He just floats with the crowd, he's not going to make it but the guy stays home and works, he's going to do all right. I'll give you another interesting one. I like this. Proverbs 14 23, this is really practical.

Listen to this. In all labor there is profit but the talk of the lips tends to poverty. You work, you make money.

You talk, you don't. Now you see, the Bible then has a lot to say about how we get money, about how we feel about money. Thirdly, it has a lot to say about how we spend money. First of all, we are to provide for the needs of our family and the needs of those around us. First Timothy 5 8 says that if a man doesn't provide for his household, he's worse than an infidel. That's pretty serious talk. And John said in 1 John 3 that if you see your brother have a need, you don't meet his need, you're not even a Christian.

How dwelleth the love of God in you? So you are to spend your money for your needs and the needs of your household and the needs of those around you who have needs. Secondly, you're to spend your money to pay your debts immediately. Did you get that?

Immediately. You say, where did you get that out of the Bible? Romans 13, Owe no man anything but love.

A third thing you're to do in spending your money is to save your money. Did you know that there are four wise, wise creatures in the world that God just really exalts? Ants, badgers, locusts and spiders.

You say you're kidding. No, Proverbs 30. There are four things, verse 24 says, which are little on the earth but are exceedingly wise. The ants, first one. The ants don't make a great contribution. They mostly just get in the way but here we find that they are extolled for a very, very interesting virtue. The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their food in the summer. You know, they're not too strong but they're smart enough to know that you better get your food in the summer because you're not going to be able to find it in the winter.

Good for the ants. That's saving. That's stashing it for the time you're going to need it.

2120 of Proverbs. There is treasure to be desired and oil and the dwelling of the wise. In other words, whatever you need, you're going to find in a wise man's treasury.

That's right. But a foolish man spends it up, no preparation for the future. I believe that future planning is very reasonable.

It is not only reasonable, it is biblical. It is wise. Maybe your future planning is in long-term solid investments. Maybe it's in life insurance where you are setting aside a certain amount of money to secure a certain amount in the future which can take care of the needs of your family in a day when they may not have the money to supply the need.

This is wise. All right, so there we have some of the indications of what the Bible says about how we are to spend it, how we are to earn it, and how we are to feel about it. All of this, people, becomes a barometer on your Christian life. How you handle money just like everything else, how you handle your wife, how you handle your husband, how you handle your kids, how you handle the stewardship of every dimension of your life, how you work at your job, how you handle the relationships with other believers.

Everything you do, how you handle your prayer life, how you handle your Bible time, all of this is a monitor or a barometer on your spiritual life, isn't it? Money is no different. The credibility of your Christianity is manifest in the handling of your funds.

And this is a difficult area because it's so constantly a problem that we're being bombarded by the world to spend our money stupidly. And not only that, to add to it, we're being bombarded by Christians to spend it just as stupidly. Let's face it, we're victimized by an awful lot of slick campaigning on the part of Christian organizations, aren't we?

Trying to loosen up our Christian bucks. But your money is a qualifier of your Christianity in a sense, you know, that's what John meant when he said in 1 John, when you see your brother have need and you don't extend to him what he needs, how dwells the love of God in you? In other words, your Christianity becomes manifest on the very level of whether you give the money to the guy who needs it. And, you know, you have to think of the money that you have as a stewardship. You know, if your employer came to you and said, hey, here's a hundred bucks of my money, I want you to spend it carefully and wisely purchasing some things we need, come back and give the account.

Boy, I'm telling you, you'd take care of that hundred bucks. You have a hundred dollars in your pocket that's your own and you don't feel because it's your own that you have any obligation to anybody, but whose really is it? It's God's. And if you should give an account to your employer, how much of an account should you give to God for how you spend a hundred dollars? You must answer to God. All right, let's go to the fourth area. We don't want to talk too much about that.

It gets kind of painful. The major issue of Scripture...I mean, I'm even squirming, huh? The major issue of Scripture is concerned with how you give your money.

Now this dominates Scripture. It's too important a subject for us to bypass. How we give our money is extremely important.

And it isn't easy to keep a clear perspective because we really are being bombarded. There are constant appeals. If you've been a Christian any length of time and have gotten on any of the Christian quote-unquote mailing lists, you know what comes wanting your Christian money.

Well if it's that way of your house, you can imagine what it's like at mine. There is no end to the proliferation of people who want money. We're bombarded by these techniques, giving gimmicks, church stewardship drives, budget drives, all kinds of things. And we've all come from organizations in the past where we were victimized by this. And I guess Christian giving in the eyes of some people seems to be exploitation.

In the eyes of other people, it seems to be totally neglected. There's a stream of literature telling you how. You can take courses in certain schools on how to raise your church budget. I can go take a course in that. I have a book that I read this week on how to develop a tithing church, how to get slick things going like loyalty week and knock on every door week.

And everything in the book, how to have a pledge system, how to have a canvas, how to have this, how to have that, how to do this, how to stimulate people, how to motivate people, how to make them feel guilty because they don't do what they ought to do and then trade on the guilt that they feel. And then if you really get desperate, you can hire out of town experts who will come in and raise the money for you for a piece of the action. I mean, it's not totally a ministry. There's one organization that exists in America just to publish materials that you can post around your church to stimulate people to give money. I'm not against stimulating people to give money.

I'm just against doing it in unbiblical ways. There are so many slick ad men putting together these things. There are so many hucksters on TV and radio hounding the Christians for money that you really kind of find yourself trapped and you don't know what to do with it. You know, let's face it, it comes from so many directions. We are being absolutely bombarded by the fact that if we don't sock it away, if we don't have this whole huge six months' worth of income stashed somewhere, we'll never make it.

Well what happened to God? I mean, I believe in saving but, you know, you can become paranoid about this. And you know, here we are trapped between the balance of trusting God and investing with God and keeping what we need to supply our family for the present and the future.

It all boils down, friends, to the responsiveness that we have to the ministry of the Holy Spirit in our lives as He leads and guides. Now many people come along and they say that the solution to everything is to just accept the biblical pattern which is ten percent, that the biblical standard of giving is the tithe, or ten percent. And they justify the ten percent by saying if the law required ten percent, certainly grace would require at least ten percent since incidentally the tithe is never mentioned in the New Testament in reference to the church's giving.

Never. In all the passages where the church gives, there is no mention at all any place of tithing. But in order to get tithing in, they say if law required a tenth, certainly grace does.

And I'm not against the principle. But what they're really saying is we know tithing is not New Testament giving. But if we don't push the tithe, we're afraid we won't get enough money to operate.

It really boils down to that kind of motivation. The ten percent sort of keeps the money flowing. Well you know what's wrong with the ten percent? Number one, it isn't biblical and it's giving for the wrong reason. It's giving to fulfill an obligation rather than a response to a loving, willing heart, right?

The second thing that's wrong with it is it hinders what you could do by making you think you're done. Giving is never to be by coercion. It is never to be by fundraising. It is never to be by compulsion. Any gimmick is offensive to God.

Now having said that, let me just say this and then we'll get into it. God's pattern for giving is not tithing in the New Testament. It isn't even tithing in the Old Testament. It never has been tithing. It never will be tithing.

And I'll try to explain why I can say that this morning and next time. Now let's divide the history of giving into three sections. Before Moses, between Moses and Jesus, and from Jesus to the present. These are three periods of history, three dispensations, if you will, with which we'll deal. And the first and the second and the third, notice this, friends, all teach the same pattern of giving.

There is no difference. Let's look, first of all, at giving before Moses because this is important. The people who teach that we should tithe teach on this basis. Since the tithe was before Moses, since Abraham tithed and Jacob tithed before the Mosaic Law, tithing was before Moses, it was before the Law, it is therefore to be after the Law. It is a universal principle. Therefore, since the tithe was first, the Law came in the middle, the universal continues afterwards, so the tithing is continuous. The problem with that is if you're going to accept anything before the Law as norm for after the Law, the Sabbath was also before the Law, right? So we've got to quit meeting on Sunday. Secondly, the sacrificial system was initiated with the garden and we're going to have to go back to killing animals. And I'm not real sure that's the idea. So if we're going to say that whatever is before the Law is after the Law, we run into an awful lot of problems. Let's not say it.

It's a lot safer. Giving before Moses falls into two categories, as does all giving in all these periods. Two categories, free will giving and required giving. Free will giving and required giving. The Bible does require that you give your money.

You're not buying anything, you're just giving it away. And the Bible does require that. It also...the Bible also speaks of a free gift, free gifts. Now let's look at the book of Genesis and let's find out from the very start about first of all, free will giving. Now this is going to be an Old Testament lesson this morning and I think we're going to see some interesting things. The term tithe does appear in the Old Testament, in the book of Genesis, it does. Now some have thought that because it appears in Genesis, it becomes the standard from the start.

God's universal plan is the tithe. See, the Hebrew word ma-aser which is translated tithe means a tenth part. It's the same as dekete in the Greek, the tenth. That's all it means. It simply means a tenth.

It isn't a religious word, it's a mathematical word. It has only to do with a percentage, it means a tenth. Historically, even outside the Bible, from ancient sources that we have, we know that man has always used ten as the basic number for counting systems and that is obviously because he starts out by going... So he's got ten fingers and ten toes. So ten becomes the symbol of the counting system.

This is universal. The symbol of measurement is ten. Now notice, ten then kind of becomes the number of completion.

We see this sometimes even in Scripture. Ten becomes the number of completion. There is evidence that many pagan deities were honored by the giving of a tenth. And the reason is this, since the ten represented totality or completeness, the giving of a tenth was a symbol of the giving of the whole, do you know what I mean? The giving of a tenth of something, the totality was represented in that tenth. By giving what was a total number, ten, you were simply sort of symbolizing the fact that you were giving your all since ten was the symbol of totality.

So the total number, ten, became then a common number in terms of offerings to deities among the pagans. Now the Bible does not institute tithing in Genesis. There is no statement from God ever regarding tithing at this point. No one told Abraham to give a tenth. No one told Jacob to give a tenth, certainly not God. There is no universal law as such stated in Scripture.

Now let me show you what I mean. In Genesis chapter 4, for example, and you can kind of float through Genesis with me if you want, we're just going to allude to it, but in Genesis chapter 4 you have the first offering. The first offering given to God was from Cain and Abel. And the interesting thing about this is that it was a voluntary offering.

It simply says in verse 3, And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought the fruit of the ground and Abel brought the firstlings of the flock. Now there is no command that they were to do this. God did not tell them specifically to do this, at least it is not so recorded in the Scripture. It seems to me that just in the process of time it came to pass that they did it. It was then voluntary, right?

It was a free choice on their part. They gave fruit of the ground which, of course, as we know was not the thing that had been asked of God. We know that there was no universal law about how much, but there was apparently the revelation of a law about what?

It was to be an animal sacrifice. But we don't know what percentage at all. There is no indication of it.

They were prompted by their own initiative. There was no requirement. There was no amount.

There was no stipulation and there was no frequency and joined upon them completely at their own will. Now later on you have in chapter 8, Noah. The flood subsides, chapter 8, and Noah immediately goes out to make a sacrifice, or to make an offering to God. Verse 20 says, he built an altar and took of every clean beast and every clean fowl and offered burnt offerings on the altar. Now here is an offering to God. Again, it is completely voluntary. Noah determined that in his own heart.

It was spontaneous. You go further in that and you go to Abraham and you find that Abraham in chapter 12 is given the wonderful call of God to be the leader of a nation. In response to that, in verse 7, he builds an altar to the Lord. And in offering to the Lord, there again is no command.

There is no stipulation. There is no requirement, only the free spirit of Abraham in response to the wonderful promise of God as he says thanks to God by way of an offering. In verse 18 of 13 he did it again.

He built another altar to the Lord in Hebron. And so always a volunteer thing, never in response to the command of God. Here we have people free will giving. These people gave to God of their own possessions out of love and thankfulness and it was totally spontaneous.

This is the pattern of free will giving. That's John MacArthur continuing his look at how you can use your money for God's glory. John is pastor of Grace Community Church.

He's a popular conference speaker and also chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. His current study on grace to you is showing you God's plan for giving. Well John, another aspect of how we deal with money concerns the taxes we pay. Now we know the Bible says we need to pay our taxes, but when the government promotes ungodly policies or when our tax dollars are used to support not just laws we don't like but laws that are legitimately anti-God, how should Christians respond?

What effect should that have on our tax paying? Well the Bible is pretty explicit. It just says pay your taxes, render to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's. Obviously, even when our Lord said that he knew that Caesar was not using all that money for the advancement of his kingdom, Caesar's kingdom but not God's kingdom.

So the assumption is that Caesar is Caesar and God is God and the world is the world and the kingdom of God is the kingdom of God and the world is under the power of Satan. So you do have to give money to the government even though you don't like everything the government does with that money. And the reason that we do that is very explicitly stated in Scripture. It is that we might live quiet and peaceable lives, that we might not be rebels and those who overthrow government. We are to be quiet, live quiet, tranquil, godly lives. We are to be model citizens. We are to obey the laws of the land. God has ordained government right and the agents of government are ministers of God.

It says in Romans 13. So God has ordained government to control culture, to control society. We would have anarchy and rebellion and war and mass chaos if we didn't have government and government didn't have the power of the sword.

So that's designed by God. So we cannot ever expect to control everything government does with our resources and we may not like what they do with those resources, but that's a stewardship that is outside our care. Our responsibility is to pay the taxes that the government requests. This is clearly stated, custom to whom custom is due, tax to whom taxes due. That's what the Bible says.

So it's really an interesting thing when you come to pay your taxes if you haven't done it already today. Just know this, you're obeying the Lord in doing this. You are obeying the Lord.

You don't have the right to withhold something because you don't like what the government does. Submit to the powers that be for they are ordained of God. The Lord will honor you for doing that, paying your taxes, keeping government in place because you can't survive without some government power and authority, and let God deal with the people who misuse those resources for evil ends. Believe me, God will take care of that eventually.

Yes, He will, and thank you for that answer, John. Understanding God's design for taxes does make it easier to pay them. And friend, to help you cultivate a biblical mindset on government, science, economics, and more, let me recommend a book from John and the Masters University faculty.

It's called Think Biblically. To purchase a copy, contact us today. Call 800-55-GRACE or go to our website, gty.org.

Think Biblically. The book costs $13.50 and shipping is free. Read an excerpt from the book and place your order at gty.org or call us at 800-55-GRACE. Also let me remind you that this ministry is listener supported. It's because of giving from friends like you that we can have a spiritual impact on so many people.

An example, we recently heard from Barbara who said that she was lost in sin, but God used Grace To You's Bible teaching to save her. Now she listens to Grace To You every day and friend, by partnering with us, you can help bring the gospel to people like Barbara and you help strengthen Christians throughout the world with biblical truth. To donate, visit gty.org or call us at 800-55-GRACE. You can also mail your gift to Grace To You, Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412. Now for John MacArthur and the Grace To You staff, I'm Phil Johnson, with a question for you. Are Christians required to tithe? Find out tomorrow when John continues his series, God's Plan for Giving. Just another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace To You.