Tithing Teaches Us the Fear of God

 The Bible is very clear that one of the main things that all believers must learn to do is to fear the Lord. We are not to fear people or world conditions or other factors. We are only to fear the Lord, so that we do what He says no matter what. This is something that doesn't automatically take place when we put our trust in Jesus as our Lord and Savior. It is something we have to embrace and learn over time in various ways.

God knew that the Israelites needed to learn to fear Him and not other things, so He did things to teach them. One thing He did was to give them manna to eat. They had to trust Him and only gather the right amount each day or it would spoil. One other thing He did to teach them to fear Him was to require them to give their tithes each year as they harvested their crops. (Deuteronomy 14:23) They were to always give the first ten percent of everything, even though they did not know what would happen to the rest of their crops or what their expenses would be. They just had to learn to trust God that He would provide for them, if they would give faithfully.

Today, we still have the same command from God. (Malachi 3:8-12) I know that is an Old Testament passage, but Jesus affirmed the giving of tithes in the Gospels, too. (Matthew 23:23) It still serves the same purpose today, if we faithfully give our ten percent off the top, not waiting to see if we have enough left at the end of the pay period to give. That way, we learn to obey God and trust God through our giving. The more we learn the fear of the Lord, the more we will trust Him in other ways, too.

Therefore, we need to ask ourselves if we are living based on our fear of running out of money, or are we trusting God to be faithful? We need to be honest with ourselves and with God about caring more about people and things than we care about being obedient to God. If we fail to tithe our income because we have things we want to buy and people we want to please, we are not really fearing God as we should. I pray we will all benefit from growing in our fear of God by trusting Him with our tithes.

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Tomorrow, I intend to read Deuteronomy 15-17.