Lord of the Law

What is Tithing?*

Dr. Larry Thorson
November 11, 2007

Scripture: Hebrews 7:1-6

1 This Melchizedek was king of Salem and priest of God Most High. He met Abraham returning from the defeat of the kings and blessed him, 2 and Abraham gave him a tenth of everything. First, the name Melchizedek means "king of righteousness"; then also, "king of Salem" means "king of peace." 3 Without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life, resembling the Son of God, he remains a priest forever.

4 Just think how great he was: Even the patriarch Abraham gave him a tenth of the plunder! 5 Now the law requires the descendants of Levi who become priests to collect a tenth from the people—that is, from their kindred—even though their kindred are descended from Abraham. 6 This man, however, did not trace his descent from Levi, yet he collected a tenth from Abraham and blessed him who had the promises.

Back in the dark ages of the 1950’s and early 60’s when I was a child, children who attended Sunday School often would receive offering envelopes. On many brands of these little envelopes, you could find half a dozen printed expectations listing things like “Brought Bible to Church,” “Staying for Worship,” and “Tithing Today.” Each of these expectations had a percentage attached to them, and at the bottom of the envelope was a blank where you could add up your total spirituality percentile for the week. This means you couldn’t get a 100% on being a young Christian without tithing.

Fortunately we no longer attempt to measure the spirituality of anyone, young or old. But the designers of those old envelopes were not completely wrong in trying to teach us at an early age that giving is an ingredient to the Christian life. If you were to do your own back-of-the-envelope calculations of what Christians do, I would hope that giving would be on that list.

But what is tithing? A tithe is an offering of ten percent of one’s income. This idea came from the Old Testament, where it was mandated or required that everyone had to give a tithe offering to the temple. Since this was the law, though, it really stretches the definition of “offering.”

There has always been a lot of debate among Christians as to whether we’re also obliged to give a tithe to the church. As soon as this debate begins, it’s not long before someone asks if this is ten percent of gross or net income after taxes. Usually someone responds by saying that it depends on whether you want gross or net blessings from God, and the debate always digresses from there.

Whenever we find ourselves asking, “Exactly how much do I have to give God?” we have already missed the point of giving. Tithing did not begin with the law. It began centuries before with an act of thanksgiving. Let me tell you a brief story about it from the Old Testament.

A man named Abraham and his nephew Lot realized that the land could no longer sustain their growing flocks. So they decided to go separate ways. Lot chose to settle in the city of Sodom, which proved to be an unfortunate choice for many reasons.

According to the fourteenth chapter of Genesis, one day the kings of four other cities marched on Sodom, defeated it, and carried away all of its riches, as well as Lot and his family. When Abraham heard of this, he went charging after the four kings and their armies with only 318 men. Somehow he defeated them and recovered Lot and all the loot from Sodom. As he was returning to Sodom, the grateful king came out to meet him. He wanted Abraham to keep the riches he had recovered.

Suddenly a stranger broke into the story. He’s a man we’ve never heard of before named Melchizedek. He appears out of nowhere, but is introduced as the priest and king of Salem.

You’ve probably never heard of Salem. We’re not talking about Salem, Massachusetts where the witch trials took place in 1692. This Salem was the Canaanite name of the city that eventually became know as Jerusalem. We are also told that he was a priest of the “God Most High.” This was not necessarily the God of the Old Testament we know but the head of all gods worshiped by the Canaanites before the Jews got to this place.

Melchizedek gave bread and wine to Abraham, and then in Genesis 14:19-20 we read: “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, maker of heaven and earth. And blessed be God Most High who has delivered your enemies into your hand.” Then Abraham responded to Melchizedek as if he was his priest by giving him a tithe, ten percent, of everything he had won in battle. The other ninety percent he chose to give back to the king of Sodom.

This is the first time tithing is mentioned in the Bible. Although it later becomes codified into law, originally it had nothing to do with obligations. It began as an act of worship when a grateful Abraham presented a thank offering. He wasn’t told to do it. He wasn’t asked for it by Melchizedek or by God. He chose to do it in response for the blessings he had received.

It’s interesting that he presented the tithe to a Canaanite priest, acknowledging that there is one God Most High. Abraham, however, does name this unknown God Most High by calling him Yahweh, God Most High. Did you catch that? He pulls together the revelation given to him with the revelation given to all.

I find this to be one of the most hopeful and world-embracing passages of the Old Testament. It illustrates God’s ability to bless us from sources that are outside of our religion. It also illustrates that Abraham’s aspirations were never to create a religious subculture, but to honor the

God Most High, creator of heaven and earth whom he knows as Yahweh, which is the name for God cherished by his descendents.

Surely there is some word of hope in this passage for a world that is being torn apart by those who are certain they alone understand God, and for a nation divided between religious conservatives and liberals who would not think of being blessed by each other as Abraham was blessed by Melchizedek. There is one God Most High, creator of heaven and earth, whose blessings keep breaking into the narrative of our lives – sometimes in strange ways. The blessings may just come from those outside of our religious systems.

We don’t hear about this mysterious Melchizedek anymore in the Bible until we get near the end of the New Testament in the book of Hebrews. There the author tries to explain Jesus Christ to his Jewish Christian readers by taking this forgotten story about Melchizedek and shows how he compares to Jesus.

Hebrews 7:1-6

First off, like Melchizedek, Christ was without mother or father, he says. By this, he doesn’t mean he didn’t have parents, but that they were parents without pedigree. Since Jesus wasn’t born of the tribe of Levi he was ineligible for the priesthood. So salvation came outside of the institutional expectations.

Secondly, like Melchizedek, the author of Hebrews states that Jesus has no beginning or end. He is a stranger who breaks into the narrative of our lives. And so, like Abraham, we give to the work of Christ, our great high priest, as a way of contributing to the God Most High, the creator of heaven and earth who has blessed us all, and whom we know and name as the God revealed in Jesus Christ.

I chose this passage to preach upon to make one thing clear: You don’t have to give; you get to give. You are not under the law and you don’t owe the church ten percent, or even one percent. And if you think you are meeting your obligation to God by giving a certain amount, you have missed the point of tithing.

We give like Abraham, not because we have to, but because we are thankful. The reason we are thankful is because we have all been blessed. Many of these blessings have come from Melchizedek, sources that are considered outside of religion. We have health, cherished relationships, and we have received success when the odds were against us, like Abraham. We have freedoms won for us by the blood of the veterans we honored today.

We have money, not as much as we want, and there are many expenses, I know. But we have income, and it is used at our discretion, which is an incredible blessing. By far, the greatest blessing is that we have a great high priest out of the order of King Melchizedek who has broken into

the narrative of our lives to reveal the goodness of God to us.

You and I thought the narrative of our lives was just about our hard work, or how much we have to do, or how much we still have to get. It doesn’t matter if the currency you value is money or relationships or achievements, once you start thinking about needing more, the narrative always

reduces to our familiar little complaints about needing more.

But Christ breaks into this sad narrative to give us a better story about the great faithfulness of God Most High.

Do you see how much God has given to you? The one God of heaven and earth gave you everything, everything that you really cherish, even the things you don’t think of as part of your religion. Best of all, he gave you himself in Jesus Christ who forgives your sins, frees you from crippling guilt, and opens for you a future filled with hope. In other words, he’s already given all that he has – 100%.

Church stewardship campaigns are about nothing more, or less, than deciding how we respond to such sacred love. How do you ever respond to someone dying to love you? It’s ridiculous to ask, “How much is this going to cost me?” It costs nothing - and everything.

*This sermon was adapted from a sermon written and delivered by Dr. Craig Barnes at the Shadyside Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, November 12, 2006. Used with permission.