Eighth Commandment

Robbing God

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Restitution & Forgiveness

Lesson: Robbing God

Genre: Speech

Track: 87

Dictation Name: RR130AV87

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Our scripture is Malachi 3:8-12, Robbing God. “Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings. Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation. Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the Lord of hosts. And all nations shall call you blessed: for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the Lord of hosts.”

About a year ago, we considered the subject of tithing under a previous commandment. Again, we touch on the subject of tithing, this time under the heading of Thou shalt not steal. The subject of tithing does deserve double treatment. It is one of the more neglected aspects of our faith in these days, or when it does get attention, and tithing is being taught in many circles today, it is given the wrong emphasis. It is treated as though tithing were to the church, and as though the consequences of tithing were a personal matter. On both counts, the present teaching is false. Tithing is more than a matter which concerns the church, or is related to the church, and it is more than a purely personal matter.

Our scripture declares, first of all, that it is theft when a man does not tithe. “Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings.” Then, the scripture declares, “Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation,” so the nation is involved. Then, there is the requirement that they bring the tithe, the consequences will be blessings, agricultural, personal, national. “All nations shall call you blessed, for ye shall be a delightsome land.”

Now, before analyzing the implications of this passage of the statement that tithing is a robbery as far as God is concerned, let us review briefly what scripture teaches on tithing. A year ago, we analyzed in great detail the laws of tithing. Now, to review those laws briefly. The basic civil tax, the only civil tax in Israel in the law of God, was the head or pole tax. Every male citizen 20 years old and older, according to Exodus 30:11-16, paid this head or pole tax. This head or pole tax provided for the basic civil justice of the country. All having the same stake in justice, all paid the same tax.

Second, according to the law, no man was allowed to tax his own future by debt. Debt is a tax. It is a tax on yourself and on your future. Debts, therefore, in terms of scripture, are limited to a six-year life. Deuteronomy 16:1-4 spells this out.

Then third, tithes are required of all men. The passage on this are numerous in the law. They appear also in Proverbs, in Matthew 23:23, Hebrews 7:1-8, and in other passages. The regular tithe is 10% of which the priests received 10%. IN other words, for the directly ecclesiastical, or church, function, only 10% of the tithe, or 1% of one’s income was paid. The rest went to more broadly, social functions under God, or education. Part of it went for music which was, of course, temple music, and in that respect, was for the church. It went for a variety of social functions. There was the poor tithe and the rejoicing tithe on alternate years, another 10%. So that the annual tithe was approximately 15-18% in six years out of seven, according to the way various men have computed the tax.

Now, in view of the general function of the tithe, the fact that the tithe, in part indeed, went for the proclamation of God’s word and the maintenance of the temple or of the church, but much of it went for a variety of other functions, education being very prominent among them, welfare being another, music still another. Why was it robbing God to withhold the tithe? After all, when we analyze the tithe from the perspective of scripture, it is much less religious in the modern sense of the term than the tithe today, because today as tithing is taught, the church says “Pay 10% of your income to the church, this is the Lord’s money and we are the Lord’s agency and therefore, you pay it to us,” and not to anybody else, and in fact, there are some who maintain that it must be paid only to the local church. Many, many pastors preach this, but in terms of scripture, as it clearly appears, only 1% of it directly and immediately went to the priest, or we would say, to the local church. How then is it robbing God when so little of it went directly to the local proclamation of the word and the services. Of course, we would add that the proclamation of the word was also through teaching. So it was much broader than the temple, or the tabernacle, or the church.

The answer is very clear. To withhold the tithe is to rob God because without the tithe, the totalitarian state develops progressively and plays God over society. With the tithe, the rule of God is restored over society by means of his ordained pastors. The tithe creates agencies to minister to the needs of godly society. The tithe does not belong to church or to state. It belongs to God. It is to be given by the people of God to those who will administer it under God.

According to Mr. Ewing, who has commented very ably on the tithe, “If we are living in a theocracy with a divine constitution, the tithe would cover everything, but at present, we are living under manmade government, and manmade government collects its own taxes, but the tithe still belongs to God. “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, but unto God the things that are God’s. The extra tax exacted by governments of our day is the penalty we pay for not adopting God’s rule over us nationally. Israel was told of this very thing when she demanded a king, to become like other nations, that he would misappropriate the tithe.”

The tithe therefore, has very radical implications. The failure of the church to teach the true meaning of the tithe is a form of robbing God. When the church teaches that the tithe is only to the church, what it is saying is that only one corner of the world belongs to God, the church, and the rest of the world doesn’t matter, that the whole purpose of the tithe was the government of all society by God. Even the tax that went to the state, the head or pole tax, was ordained by God as the state’s tax for the ministry of justice, so it too was also a part of God’s tax. It is robbing God, if we steal from him his government over the nation, if we turn it over to the state and the state plays God.

Another form of robbing God, we can add, is the failure to provide for gleaning. In Leviticus 19:9-11 and other passages, gleaning is a required form of godly order. Again, failure to observe the Sabbatical years with respect to the land violates Gods purpose of restoration. The earth is to be built up. We are to increase its strength, its productivity instead of laying it waste. The early church observed the tithe, and it saw the tithe as far broader in purpose than the church. Thus, for example, from the early centuries in the apostolic constitutions, we read, concerning the tithe, “Let him use those tithes and first fruits which are given according to the command of God as a man of God, as also let him dispense in a right manner the freewill offerings which are brought in on account of the poor, to the orphans, the widows, the afflicted, and strangers in distress. As having that God for the examiner of his accounts who hath committed the disposition to him, distribute to all those in want, with righteousness, and yourselves use the things which belong to the Lord, but do not abuse them.”

Now this is a very interesting passage. This comes out of an age of persecution. The church was not even a legally established, a legally permitted institution, and yet, in the midst of the Roman Empire when its own members were dying in the arena, being beheaded on the block, here was the church taking care of its poor, and its orphans, its widows, educating its embers, taking care of strangers in distress. This is why the conflict between Christ and Caesar was inescapable. After all, Rome was offering all kinds of social welfare, was it not? Ungodly social welfare. Social welfare to drones, to people who would not work, but here was the church ministering to real need, providing for its members, taking care of strangers who have real problems and were in distress. It was an invisible government in the midst of Rome. This is one reason why not even the Barbarians when they overthrew Rome could dispense with the Christians. Here was an invisible government that was taking care of society through the tithe. Through the tithe.

And as we go through the so-called Dark Ages, which were not Dark Ages, and through the Medieval period into fairly modern times, we find that the tithe took care of what we call the social functions of society, of welfare, of hospitals, of the elderly who had no place, of every kind of social need, including always, first and foremost, education, and one of the interesting things I encountered this week in a book that I read was the fact that, during the high Middle Ages when there was a great deal of complaining about the church and the priests, and the corruption of the clergy, one of the things they never complained about was their failure to take care of the poor, because even at their most corrupt, they still did maintain that basic social function.

Now consider what this meant for the world. It meant that the rule of God prevailed in society. It meant that not the state, but the people of God, through their giving took care of all the basic needs of man. This incidentally, was what foundations were about. Foundations represent a Christian development in the history of the world. Foundations were established by individuals for no other purpose than to minister to such special needs, and so there would be a foundation established to provide education for those who could not have it, who couldn’t afford it. Foundations established to further medical work, to further missions, to take care of any and every kind of need. It was only after 1900 that foundations, beginning with the Carnegie Foundation, took a secular, humanistic function, and aligned themselves with the state to create a humanistic social order.

This is what it means to rob God. “Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings. Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation.” Now we begin to understand, do we not, what it means to rob God. It transfers the control of society from God to the state. It withdraws everything that was once a ministry to human need, and make for them agency of political control. The state, having entered into education, has made it a tool of the control of man. The state, having entered into welfare, has made it a tool for the control of man. The state, having entered into health, has made it a tool for the control of man.

When we dealt with tithing, we concluded at the time, by stating that it was after the United States was formally established and the Constitution adopted, that tithes began as a result of pressures from some people, to be abandoned as a compulsory matter. Now, I pointed out that George Washington protested strongly against it when Virginia dropped the compulsory tithe. The state law in Virginia, and many other states require that every man tithe. Now you could designate your tithe but you had to pay it. What happened?

Within a generation after the tithe began to disappear, the public school system appeared, and before this century was over, other areas had been invaded by the state, as tithing began to disappear, because revivalism and evangelicalism said, “We’re not under law, we’re under grace, and we don’t have to worry about laws like tithing.” The state began to grow rapidly after 1900. The state began to play God.

When we go back to the early church, we find that the preaching in the fifth century, for example, emphasized the fact that failure to tithe was {?} and even more. Consider, for example, these two passages from anonymous sermons that have survived from the Augustinian era, “Whoever will not give the tithe appropriates property that does not belong to him. If the poor die of hunger, he is guilty of their murder and will have to answer before God’s judgment seat as a murderer. He has taken that which God has set aside for the poor and kept it for himself.” Here, the reference is to the poor tithe.

Another such sermon, “Our ancestors had more than they needed because they gave God tithes and paid their taxes to the emperor. However, since we do not wish to share the tithes with God, everything soon will be taken from us. The tax collector takes everything which Christ does not receive.” They saw the issues, did they not? They saw very clearly you either are going to tithe and create a social order in which human needs are met, where education, health, welfare are met through the tithe, or else you have a state and a tax collector that’s going to do it for you. Take your choice.

This is why Charlemagne made the tithe mandatory for all citizens. Charlemagne could have made himself more powerful if he said, “I will take over and supply these services,” but as a Christian emperor, he felt that the tithe was God’s appointed way, and therefore, he arrested some of the disintegration that was taking place at that time, and made the tithe mandatory, and from that time until the last century, the tithe was mandatory. In some periods, it declined. In our era, it has been dropped almost everywhere, and thus, we have a problem with totalitarianism, with statism. The tithe is God’s way of providing godly order. The tithe, to repeat, is not under the state or the church.

The people of God must tithe. They can be required to tithe by the state, but the people of God must give to that which is in their eyes, godly. Remember in scripture the man from Baalshalisha whose gift is reported in 2 Kings 4:42. He brought his tithe to Elisha and his school, rather than to the priests, for the priests were apostate, but Elisha there in the wilderness was establishing a school to train up men who had proclaimed the word of God, a school of prophets, and so the man from Baalshalisha brought his tithe to Elisha. In scripture, it always is apparent that the believer is to judge wisely as to who shall receive it. In a time of decline where there are few who can receive it.

We have seen, as we have been pointing out, a shift of power from God to the state in the social order, and the growth of taxation to remedy the lack of social financing because the tithe has disappeared. Without the restoration of the tithe to its God-given function, no restoration of Christian social order is possible, nor can power be restored to the Christian man under God without the tithe of God. If the tithe become a state tax, the state gains. Today, modern taxation is a triple and a quadruple tithe by the state to the state, and where there is a church tithe, it is a tax to the church, but God’s tithe is given by the people of God where the work of God is done. A free society depends on a godly tithe. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we beseech thee to recall us again to thy law-word, and make us a people, tithing unto thee, reestablishing thine order in every realm, unto the end that the kingdoms of this world may become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. Bless us to this purpose, we beseech thee in Jesus name. Amen.

Are there any questions now, first of all, with respect to our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. You are. You are the chief administrator. In other words, you take your tithe and you say, “Now, I must give it where God’s work is being accomplished. Here is a Christian school. Here is a Christian agency of one sort or another. Here is a particular ministry to society in the name of God, and I as God’s administrator, will give my money to these agencies.” Yes?

[Audience] You said bring your tithes to the storehouse.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] Is the storehouse the established organized church {?}

[Rushdoony] No. The storehouse was a barn, literally, and you had the tithe barns almost until modern times in Europe, and also in this country, but I don’t know of any surviving in this country. There may be a few in the East, but it was a place where you took it in days when instead of cash, you had produce. So, you took so many bushels of wheat, or so many boxes of fruit to the storehouse, and you designated it. For example, you could take it to the storehouse of your choice. Part of it you might take to the church. Part of it you might take to another Christian agency. Now, in the Middle Ages, there was a lot of conflict because the priests resented the fact that the friars were getting so much of the tithe in their storehouses, in their tithing barns, but then the friars were establishing hospitals and schools and various agencies which the priests were not bothering to do, and so they were getting the tithe. Now this is the way it actually was, so the storehouse meant a little barn. Thus, in those days if there was a hospital for the relief of lepers, or an old folks home, or a church, you took a portion of your tithe to that storehouse. Now, you take cash, but that’s what the storehouse means. A barn. Yes?

[Audience] {?} person having {?} for instance, if I {?}

[Rushdoony] That’s true. Today our tax set-up makes it very difficult sometimes to administer the tithe, but we have to administer it as unto God. Sometimes we take a penalty, tax-wise. A few years ago, you see, they did cut off the personal aspect of it. Not too many years ago you could give directly to certain kinds of persons. Today, a personal gift is not tax exempt. So, the state law is working against us here, but we still have to reckon that this is God’s tithe, and we’re giving unto the Lord, and we reckon 10% unto the Lord. Plus, the poor tithe, another 5%. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] It is not wrong for the church to use it for other purposes. In fact, they should. They are not the only agency of God’s tithe, and good church will, of course, use it for a variety of purposes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] You could, right. Today, you see, since we do not have very many agencies to receive the tithe, we have a rather chaotic situation. So, you do have the freedom. You could give the whole 10% to the church. You could give the whole 10% to a school. The could give the whole percent to any Christian agency. You are the administrator. In a godly society, of course, this balances out. Someone will concentrate on one thing, another person on another thing, but when everybody is paying the tithe, a great many functions are furthered. Yes?

[Audience] No, because then you’re offering unto idols, false gods, you see, and God will not count what you give to a false god as given unto him. Yes?

[Audience] I wondered if the {?}

[Rushdoony] Right.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, of course, the term “Dark Ages” and “Middle Ages” are propaganda terms. Historians with the Renaissance and after, looking back, said, “The days of the Roman Empire were a golden age, and when Rome fell and the Christians began to take over, that was the Dark Ages of the world.” Well, they couldn’t call the latter portion of the era between Rome and the Renaissance dark, because they had the gigantic cathedrals and what not around them, and so they said the whole thing was really the Medieval period and we’ll call the earlier part the Dark Ages. It was purely propaganda. William Carroll Bark of Stanford has called the era that is referred to as the Dark Ages as a very important area, when there was more industrial development than any time, more inventiveness, in history until the Industrial Revolution, and he speaks of the Christian thinkers of that era as the frontier thinkers of Western Civilization. It was not a dark era. Yes?

[Audience] Most people {?}

[Rushdoony] Because it was Christian, you see, and that made it bad. Yes?

[Audience] This is more of an announcement {?} everyone {?} talking about {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. That term is becoming an embarrassment to them as scholars are admitting the tremendous learning and insight at that period. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] The pole tax was on all men, married or single, 20 years old and up. It was a fixed tax, so that the poorest could pay it, and it had to be the same for everyone. Now, this naturally kept the government a limited government, because this was all that went directly to the state, and the state could not become a powerful agency when this was the only tax it could lay upon its people, its citizens. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, the fact that outwardly, he complied with God’s requirements and established more or less a godly law order, but not with a full inward compliance with it. He went through the motions of having a godly order, but he was not entirely with it, inwardly.

[Audience] {?} directed by God {?} do they know what {?}

[Rushdoony] In terms of normal, lawful procedure, that is, courts of law, operations of the law, every man shall die for his own sin. This never changes and it’s never been changed by God. In terms of any operation of the court, this is to be the function of the court, to punish the act of a particular man. Now, the commandment when they invaded Canaan was not with respect to law courts, or any procedure in a court. It was warfare. The people had been permitted 400 years and had not repented. They were degenerate, lock, stock, and barrel. Everyone represented a thoroughly degenerate breed{?}. This was now a part of their being and their inheritance. They were therefore to be destroyed, totally.

Now, this seems strange to us, but we have become so infected with the modern, sentimental, humanistic approach that we fail to see how this is possible. A few years ago, I was in one, well, in Louisiana, and I learned of the existence of a group of people in the backwoods of Louisiana who represented renegade Indians, renegade Negros, renegade Frenchmen, Americans and so on, who had gone into this area. They were the total outlaws, people whose lives were forfeited, who were running for their lives. They had gone in here and had inbred. They were a vicious, degenerate lot, almost impossible to think of as human. They are so degenerate. Their children, all of them, from the earliest years as soon as they are able to crawl, show all the earmarks of both physical and mental degeneracy. Now this is the kind of thing we are protected from by our humanistic thinking, which makes us feel that every baby is born an innocent thing, and therefore, is all sweetness and light, but these are a degenerate people. There is no one that lives in that area who can say a good word for them. They live by thieving, and if you live in that part of the country, you have a gun by your bedside. Now, multiply that 100 fold and you have a picture of Canaanite culture. We are beginning to see a moral breakdown around about us now, but imagine what it would be like if every kind of perversion were ritually required as a part of temple worship, publically, that you had to participate in it, and your children, from their very earliest years, became participants of these various perversions as a part of going to the temple. The net result would be the production of a highly degenerate people. This is exactly what you had and God gave the order. He had been patient with them 400 years. They were to be destroyed. Now that was not a matter of court proceedings as far as man’s courts were concerned, but as far as total warfare against a totally degenerate people.

Remember, too, in the flood, the little children went also. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] I didn’t quite hear that.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] No, because the illegitimate child could become a believer. He had a place in society, but he could not become a part of the congregation nor could certain foreign peoples until so many generations of character had been demonstrated. Now in exceptional cases, like Ruth the Moabitess, they were received. In other words, they made room for people who were outstanding, but they did recognize that there is a difference between peoples, and some people are incapable immediately of being taken into normal communion with others in a congregation. There was definitely segregation of a sort, but it was segregation that provided for ultimate integration also, if character were maintained. Now this may sound rough, but it did preserve godly order, and today the idea is, “Well, if they want in, you let them in.”

What does it lead to? Well, the mentality now is increasingly the gate crasher’s mentality. Have you stopped to consider, it doesn’t’ get into the papers much now because there are so many more serious crimes, but if you stopped to consider what a major thing gate crashing has become. Have a birthday party for a child, and if it’s generally known there is a party, you get hoodlums you have never heard of or seen who crash the party. Any major social function, the gate crashing is enormous. There have actually been cases, not too far from us here, where a wedding reception has been gate crashed, and serious injury done to the bride and groom, as well as members of the wedding party. Why? Because the mentality today is that nobody has a right to exclude anybody. They actually believe they have a right to crash anything. They’re as good as anybody else. Well, the Bible doesn’t hold to that philosophy. It doesn’t think anybody is as good as anybody else, and you have a right to exclude, and God’s law says you exclude or else. This sounds rough, but it’s very, very healthy.

Our time is just about us. I’d like to remind you of the Sennholz seminar. Now, they are running into a little bit of a problem with regard to this seminar. They had so many people indicate they were coming that they thought they would run out of room, and would have to terminate the reservations they received, but none of these couple hundred or so people have sent in their names or done anything, so now they are wondering if they can hold it. So, how many are interesting, or planning rather, to attend the Sennholz seminar? Can you raise your hand so I can make a count? Nine. Very good.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. The seminar is on inflation and investments. Dr. Sennholz is a very able economist. He is also a working businessman as well as a professor. This is a very practical seminar and it will pay you to go if you are interested in knowing what the future of things is economically. So, I do urge you to attend. It’s $20 per person, an all-day seminar this Saturday, 8:30 a.m. to 5:15 p.m. at the Carillon Room at Glendale Federal, where we had our Christmas Festival. The announcements are on the desk in the back. Take them and please mail them in today or tomorrow morning so they will know.

One last little item to share a bit of humor with you that I thought was choice. It was from Mortie Meekle{?} in The Register, and little Winthrop is watching his favorite western on television, and the good guy has the bad guy cornered and his hands up, and says, “Know what I’m gong to do to you, Dirty Dan? I’m going to send you to my analyst. He’ll straighten you out.” And poor dazed Winthrop says, “They’re not making westerns like they used to.” [laughter] Well, with that, we are adjourned.

End of tape