Should A Christian Tithe 10% Of Their Income To God?
Is Tithing Really Required Today?

A group of scientists decided that mankind had advanced far enough that they no longer needed God. So, they went to find Him. They said, 'Look Lord, We've conquered space, we can cure any disease, we can talk instantly around the world, we can even clone human beings, basically, we don't need you anymore.' God listened patiently.  Finally, He spoke.  'Tell you what,' He said. 'We'll settle this with a man-making contest. Each of us will make a man, and the first one to finish wins.'  'Sure,' said the scientist, who headed off to consult with his colleagues.  'Wait a minute,' called God.  'We're going to do this the real way, the way I did it in the beginning.'  'No problem,' responds the man, bending down to grab a handful of clay. 'No, no, no,' says God. 'You get your own dirt. This is all mine!'

Look at the ground under your feet.  Do you see a mechanic's wrench, a carpenter's hammer, a doctor's stethoscope, a teacher's chalkboard, a chef's stove, and a farmer's plow?  What you see is everything anyone can use on any job.  It’s dirt, iron, copper, lithium and carbon. It’s clay, sand, nickel, chromium, and magnesium. It’s every element that exists that we use on any job in the world to earn an income.  Do you know who owns all of this? God!  God owns it all!  Where did He get the right to claim 10 percent of everything produced by "OUR" hard work?  It’s Simple.  God owns everything we use to earn our income! Without His raw materials we can produce nothing! The Bible says that all of the earth and everything in it or grows on it belongs to Him.

Deuteronomy 10:14. “Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the highest heavens, the earth and all that is in it”

Psalm 24”1.  “The earth is the Lord’s, and all it contains.”

Psalm 89:11.  “The heavens are Yours, the earth also is Yours; The world and all it contains, You have founded them.”

Lev 27:30 “A tithe of everything from the land, whether grain from the soil or fruit from the trees, belongs to the LORD.”

It doesn't matter if you are a Jew, a Gentile, a Christian, a Muslim, or an Atheist.  No matter who you are, "A tithe of everything.... belongs to the LORD!" PERIOD! I could stop right here.  This is all we need to see.  It's a simple statement from the Bible that a 10th of everything belongs to Him, NOT US!   Since He owns it all He has a claim to it all, but God is very generous. He gives us the largest portion of what we get from the earth, 90%, and only asks that we give Him His little 10%.  He says the Tithe belongs to Him. It is never ours. We are not giving Him our money but HIS.

We tend to think our own efforts produce what we earn. We earn our own paycheck. Right?  God warns us about this false belief we have.

Deut. 8:12-18. “lest when you have eaten and are full, and have built beautiful houses and dwell in them; ….. when your heart is lifted up, and you forget the LORD your God, …..then you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gained me this wealth.’ …… you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth.

People don’t remember!  We are told not to say,  “My power and the might of my hand have gained me this wealth.”

Instead, our Heavenly Father tells us to “remember HIM for it is He who gives you power to get wealth.

The tithe is simply the way God expects us to acknowledge that He owns everything and gives us everything we need.   All He asks is His 10% of whatever he allows us to produce from His raw material. 

When preparing a study here on this site about the 10 Commandments I asked Christians about the 1st Commandment. I wanted to know what Christians considered “false god’s” in modern times, that God said we should never put before Him. The number one answer for what we put before Him is “money” that we use to buy “things”.  Have we ever considered the possibility that when we refuse to give our Creator what’s His we are breaking the 1st Commandment by treating the Tithe as a false god?  Money is a false god for most people. We worship the almighty dollar!  Giving our Father what He says is His is extremely difficult for many believers.  It is a true test of our faith!

Tithe is just an old English word that mean a tenth. Most churches teach we only should give what we feel is right, that tithing was part of the law that was hung on the cross.  Really?  Is this what the Bible says? Churches don’t teach giving our “increase”, His tithe, which is 10% of our gross income that He claims is His. Let’s see what the Bible really says about tithing. Let's start all the way back in the beginning in the book of Genesis, long before Moses, long before there was any Jewish Law about giving the Eternal a 10th of everything that belongs to Him!  It's not 10% of everything a Jew earns!  It's 10% of everything EVERYONE earns!

Gen 14: 19-20 “and God blessed Abram, saying, “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth. And praise be to God Most High, who delivered your enemies into your hand.” Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything.”
Gen 28: 20-22 “Then Jacob made a vow, saying, “If You will be with me, and will watch over me on this journey I am taking, and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear, so that I return safely to my father’s household, then the LORD will be my God and this stone that I have set up as a pillar will be God’s house, and of all that you give me I will give you a tenth.”

Isn't that interesting? Both of these great men recognized that it is the Creator of the earth and everything in it, who provides for all their needs, and they understood the importance of tithing long before there was a law commanding it.  No Mosaic law existed about tithing at this time, (that many Christians claim was hung on the cross.) There were no 613 Jewish laws yet, so there were NONE about tithing in Abraham and Jacobs day. What many Christians claim was “done away with” when Jesus died on the cross did not exist as a law of tithing in Abraham or Jacobs time, but Abraham and Jacob both knew the importance of giving their Creator His tithe to be blessed by Him. It would appear that God Himself had taught them this eternal tithing principle that predates the LAW.  How else could they know?   Law or no law, tithing is something our Father expects from everyone, not just the Jews, and has been since the beginning, long before the Jews even existed!

In Matthew 23, Jesus said this…."For you are careful to tithe even the tiniest part of your income, but you ignore the important things of the law - justice, mercy, and faith. You should tithe, yes, but you should not leave undone the more important things.

Matthew 5:17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”

What?  Jesus said we should tithe, that He didn't abolish the LAW about tithing?  Yes, Jesus strongly reinforced His teaching about tithing.  He could have easily told them they no longer needed to tithe now that He was here. Instead, Jesus told them not only to practice justice, mercy and faithfulness, but that they should practice tithing too.  Jesus taught tithing! Tithing which predated the LAW was not abolished at the cross!  That’s a false teaching. Tithing to God pre-existed before the law! Fulfill means to bring something to its fullness, to develop the full potentialities of it. Jesus was telling us He would bring the law to the fullness of its potential, not abolish it.  He magnified the laws about tithing by telling us to give offerings from our heart even above the commanded tithe.

Luke 17:10 tells us. “So likewise, you, when you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do.’ ”

Yes, the Tithe is commanded. It is our duty to give God what is His, but we as Christians are supposed to go beyond what is commanded. It’s not the Tithe that we HAVE to give that's most important.  It's our freely given offerings which we lovingly and thankfully give that are MOST IMPORTANT. Our offerings above the required tithe show how much we REALLY love, respect and appreciate our Creator.  The Bible has much to says about us giving of our own free will.

2 Cor 9:6-7: “Each man should give as he has decided in his heart. He should not give, wishing he could keep it. Or he should not give if he feels he has to give. God loves a man who gives because he wants to give.”
This  is NOT talking about the tithe which is commanded. It’s talking about what we WANT to give as an offering and our attitude in doing so!  We should WANT to be generous with our offerings when we understand ALL that has been given to us! "Each man should give as he has decided in his heart" is not about the amount a person gives, but their "HEART", what they feel, their attitude in wanting to give freely and without reservation. Many people think that since they already tithe what is commanded, they feel they shouldn't HAVE to give even more as an offering on top of it. They have a bad ATTITUDE, secretly "wishing they could keep it".

Proverbs 11:24-25, “There is one who is free in giving, and yet he grows richer. And there is one who keeps what he should give, but he ends up needing more. The man who gives much will have much, and he who helps others will be helped himself.”
We are being taught a timeless principle about our attitude in giving, both to Jesus, and to our fellow man.

Matthew 6:19-21: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
The same principle about the attitude in our heart applies to the tithe as well as it does to our offerings.  When we give the Lord His tithe from our heart, not grudgingly, not wishing we could keep it, we are storing up treasure in Heaven.

Malachi 3: 8-10 asks an important question about these tithes.  “Will a mere mortal rob God? Yet you rob me. “But you ask, ‘How are we robbing you?’ “In tithes and offerings. You are under a curse, your whole nation,  because you are robbing me. 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.”
So besides breaking the 1st Commandment when we keep our false god (the tithe) for ourselves, we are also breaking the 8th Commandment by robbing our Father!

Exodus 20:15, “You shall not steal”.

If we don’t tithe, we are robbing Jesus our Savior. We have put what we believe is OUR money as a false god and broken the 1st commandment. Most people don’t tithe because they say they can't afford to tithe. The truth is they can’t afford to tithe because they DON’T tithe!  I pray to Jesus but He is not financially blessing them BECAUSE they don't tithe!   We are plainly told here to test Him (*see footnote below They don’t! They don’t have the faith to believe what the Bible says. They don’t trust that they will be blessed so they foolishly steal the tithe and keep it for themselves, and then wonder why they can't make ends meet.  Malachi 3:8-10 is also talking about "offerings", what WE freely give from OUR money, offerings from the heart, not God’s money, not His tithe. The Tithe is required but our offerings show how much we love our Creator.

Proverbs 3:5  says this.  “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not rely on your own insight.”

Proverbs 3: 9-10 says, “Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the first fruits of all your crops; then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine.”
First fruits were 10% of the harvest given before anything else. Blessings were promised for giving our Father what was His. If you are not tithing don't wonder why your barn is not filled to overflowing.

Lev 27:30 says.  “And all the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land or of the fruit of the tree, is the LORD’s. It is holy to the LORD.”

Deuteronomy 14:22 says, “You shall truly tithe all the increase of your grain that the field produces year by year.”

Remember WE are not giving OUR money when we tithe. The 10% is NOT OURS! We are only giving back to the Lord what is already HIS and He says it is HOLY.  Do we really want to foolishly keep something that belongs to God and is holy to Him? 

There is an important message in the Bible for us modern Christians who downplay what is said in the Old Testament, thinking it is of no value to New Testament Christians.

Romans 15:4,  “Such things were written in the Scriptures long ago to teach us”

1 Corinthians 10:11 says, “Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction”.

Old Testament teachings were written for the benefit of the New Testament Church. They were written for our instruction.  The Bible is teaching us! Tithing is one of those teachings. 

Tithing is a true test command for Christians!  Tithing is strongly taught against by many churches, (which is really foolish when you consider they would get the money). This makes it hard for a true Christian to read this study on tithing and embrace it as God's will for us today.  So, should a Christian cheerfully give 10% of our gross wages?  The Bible says we should, but even more than that, we need to remember….We Can’t Out Give God! Test Him and see!  (*see footnote below)

This is what the Bible says about tithing!

* Don't be surprised when you first start tithing, if you are tested for a short period of time with financial difficulties. Jesus will try your heart to see if you trust him and are fully committed to giving Him His 10% the rest of your life, and not just looking for an immediate monetary windfall to get you out of difficult financial circumstances. The Almighty is no fool. He wants to see if you are faithful in giving Him His tithe even if He DOESN'T give you any blessings right away.  Be patient.  Don't give up when you are tested in this way. Give your tithes and offerings with a willing cheerful heart, a right attitude, and trust Jesus to eventually do what He says after you have passed the test. If He already knows your heart, He will bless you immediately without any testing period! Praise the Lord if He does!  It means you have a special relationship already and He doesn't need to test you in this area of your life.

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