Balance Your Budget and Pay Your Tithe
Larry Thorson
Malachi 3:6-12
6 "I the LORD do
not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. 7 Ever since
the time of your ancestors you have turned away from my decrees and have not
kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you," says the LORD
Almighty.
"But you ask, 'How are we to return?'
8
"Will a mere mortal rob God? Yet you rob me.
"But you ask, 'How are we robbing
you?'
"In tithes and offerings. 9 You are
under a curse—your whole nation—because you are robbing me. 10 Bring the whole
tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in
this," says the LORD Almighty, "and see if I will not throw open the
floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room
enough to store it. 11 I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the
vines in your fields will not drop their fruit before it is ripe," says
the LORD Almighty. 12 "Then all the nations will call you blessed, for
yours will be a delightful land," says the LORD Almighty.
Today’s New
International Version Copyright © 2001, 2005 by International Bible Society
Today
we’re going to talk about money. The
title of my talk is “Balance Your Budget and Pay Your Tithe.” It should be the other way around: “Pay Your
Tithe and Balance Your Budget.” If you
wait to pay your tithe until you balance your budget it may never happen.
Just to bring everyone up to speed, a
tithe is ten percent of whatever money you receive. Tithing or giving ten percent of your income
to God’s work is a discipline as are sit-ups, push-ups and other forms of
exercise. Discipline is good for
us. You and I both know that if we don’t
discipline our lives, especially our bodies that we’ll suffer later on with all
sorts of health problems. It’s the same
with financial discipline.
Recently I prepared a little discipline
worksheet for my life. I listed all the
“shoulds” that nag at me like I “should pray more” or “I should do push-ups” or
I “should read more books” and things like that. To the left of each discipline I put the
words “Yes” or “No” and each day I discipline myself to circle a “Yes” or a
“No” on the sheet for that day. It makes
me face my reality and question why I did other things instead of those
disciplines. I’m trying to discipline my
life to be a better disciple of Jesus Christ in the midst of a busy
schedule. I think its helping because
how I spend my time determines what kind of a disciple I become.
The spending of money is also a
discipline. It’s especially important because how we spend our money determines
the kind of disciple we become. The
passage we’re going to look at is the famous “tithing passage” often quoted by
pastors during the fall. Its background
is real simple. God’s disciples at that
time, the Jewish people, had dropped their disciplines and gotten sloppy. It’s like what happens to our diets from
Thanksgiving Day until New Year’s Eve. We
get sloppy and then make New Year’s resolutions about how we’re going to eat
less and exercise more.
So God’s disciples, the Jewish people,
by and large had dropped their disciplines of tithing, keeping the Sabbath holy
and of marrying only people with the same belief in God as them. This is a constant theme throughout the whole
Old Testament. God’s people rebel and
drop their disciplines, disaster then falls on the people, God sends a prophet
to preach against their sin. Eventually they
fall to their knees in repentance, reestablish their disciplines, God diverts
the disaster and everything becomes fine.
Then the people drop their disciplines and start the cycle all over
again. Does that sound like your
life? That’s where our passage today
comes in. God’s people have dropped
their disciplines.
In verse 6 we read “I the
LORD do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.” When their world fell apart, it wasn’t God who changed. God wasn’t the one who dropped the
disciplines. God rescues us from the
damaged caused by dropping the disciplines.
How we spend our money both individually and corporately as a church is
one of the areas of discipline.
7 Ever since the time of your ancestors you
have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I
will return to you," says the LORD Almighty.
This is that pattern that I talked about of
God’s disciples turning away from God’s decrees. “Return to me, and I will return to you," says the LORD Almighty. But
you ask, 'How are we to return?'” I want you to see how God answers this question of
how they were to return to him. He
doesn’t say “by going back to church more.”
He doesn’t say “by being kinder to your neighbors.” He doesn’t say “by working on the
temple.” In verses 8-12 we read "Will
a mere mortal rob God? Yet you rob me.
"But you ask, 'How are we robbing you? "In tithes and
offerings. . 9 You are under a curse—your whole nation—because you are robbing
me. 10 Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my
house. Test me in this," says the LORD Almighty, "and see if I will
not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that
there will not be room enough to store it. 11 I will prevent pests from
devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not drop their fruit
before it is ripe," says the LORD Almighty. 12 "Then all the nations
will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land," says the LORD
Almighty.
If
you want to be God’s disciple you have to ask God’s Son Jesus Christ to come
into your life and be your savior and master.
A practical early result of that action needs to be reflected in your
spending patterns. You have to balance
your budget and spend no more than your current income.
But that hasn’t been the American
way. Let me digress a bit to talk about
the American national debt. The national
debt first incurred during the American Revolutionary War and grew to 75
million dollars by 1791. It was paid off
by 1835. By 1860 the debt had once again
returned to 65 million dollars but passed 1 billion dollars three years later
and reached 2.7 billion dollars following the end of the Civil War. WWI caused the debt to rise to 22 billion
dollars,
I came here from a church that was a
million dollars in debt and wasn’t tithing its offerings until two years after
I got there. With the urging of the
senior pastor, the elders decided to tithe the church’s offerings and we not
only met our annual budget but started to reduce the debt. Today that debt in that church is almost
gone.
Your elders in this church take very
seriously a balanced budget and paying a tithe of whatever comes in the plates
on Sunday morning. A significant amount
of our church tithe goes to help those in the community surrounding this
facility which is in a zip code with one of the lowest per capita incomes in
the country. Our Home Away From Home and
Upward Sports programs are part of our mission into the community. We need to add our daily lunch for the
homeless program which is now averaging 45 lunches a day. We don’t need to send money to help the poor
in South LA or Chicago or New Orleans because we’ve got people with serious
needs right here.
So your elders believe that to be a Scripturally
faithful, growing, multi-generational church, we have to be a tithing church, a
church that gives 10% of its income to ministry outside of itself. This year when we include our tutoring and
sports programs, we’re giving 12% of our offerings to missions. God blesses a tithing church. Verse ten says “Test me in this, says
the Lord Almighty.” "and see if I will not throw open the
floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room
enough to store it.
When
you’re a blessed church you become a growing church because the participants
become so excited about God’s blessings there that even their friends want to
join them. I think that’s what’s
happening here. This year we have more
people joining our church than anytime in the past ten years despite a
significant drop in the population of our area due to the economic
downturn. Our pledges remained high even
during the traditionally low summer months and while many churches are running
deep in debt including several I heard of recently that are at least $250,000
behind spending for the year we are meeting our expenses. “Test me in this, says the Lord Almighty.” "and
see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much
blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.”
I
know that some of you are having a hard time just making the basic payments of
life such as food, electricity and rent.
I know that it’s hard, but try not to get too discouraged. Keep praying and get other people to pray for
you. Try to set aside a little amount of
money, maybe it’s not a ten percent tithe of your income but it’s better than
nothing. As a step of faith put it in
the offering plate and see what happens.
My wife and I believe in tithing. We raised both of our children to believe in
tithing. If they got nothing else from
us they got the tithing thing down. Our
daughter is 24 and a college graduate.
She works hard on her feet 45-50 hours a week as a dance instructor but even
with that she has a difficult time making ends meet. Last year her expenses were exceeding her
income and she had to cut back. Cutting
back meant losing her apartment in
While I was back in
Balance your budget and pay your
tithe. In God’s own words: "I
the LORD do not change.” Remember, whatever was
true 3,000 years ago with God, will be true for you today. Balance your budget and pay your tithe.