IBL01 The First Commandment

Law of the Tithe

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Prerequisite/Law

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 4 of 5

Track: 6

Dictation Name: RR130C6

Date: 1960’s-1970’s

Malachi three verses seven through twelve. In this scripture we have summed up some of the essentials of the law concerning the tithe. Malachi three verses seven through twelve.

7 Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of hosts. But ye said, Wherein shall we return?

8 Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings.

9 Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation.

10 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.

11 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.

12 And all nations shall call you blessed: for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the Lord of hosts.

Our subject today is the tithe. To most people this is a humdrum subject, but in reality it is a very explosive one. In the Soviet Union, for example, there is technically a law guaranteeing freedom of worship, and there are a number of churches, a limited number, permitted to operate. But even though the law specifically guarantees freedom of worship it prohibits, pointedly, any discussion of the things that I shall treat this morning. There is a reason for this. While most people in our country have no awareness of the explosive significance of the tithe, the Marxist do.

The tithe was once a requirement of all Christians, from the days of the early church. As a matter of fact it was through the centuries paid in produce in farming communities, so that a routine part of the landscape in earlier days was the tithe barn in farming communities, where the farmers brought their tithe. The council of Trent, as far as the Catholic Church was concerned required the tithe on pain of excommunication, it was required in protestant circles, Lutheran, Reformed or Calvinist, and the Church of England, as well as the Church of Scotland. It was universally required, but towards the end of the eighteenth century it began to be dropped as a requirement, and from the French Revolution on it has been largely dropped. The very fact that the dis-occurrence of the tithe and the French Revolution tend to coincide in dates should make us sit up and wonder “what is the connection?” In this country it was required in many states by law and when in 1785 Virginia passed a law abolishing the requirement of the tithe George Washington wrote to George Mason expressing his distress at the new legislation.

Now to analyze the tithe first before we go into its significance. The tithe of course appears very early in scripture, Abraham tithed a tenth to Melchizedek and it was nothing new in his time, so it quite obviously went back to the direct revelation of God to Adam and to Noah. The laws of the tithe appear in Leviticus twenty-seven verses thirty to thirty-three and Numbers 18:21-26, Deuteronomy 14:22-27 and Deuteronomy 26:12 & 13. There are other references to it.

Now there are three kinds of tithes referred to in the law. The first is the Lord’s tithe; this went to the Levites who tithed a tenth of it to the priests. Second there was a festival tithe. This festival tithe was to be spent by the family in rejoicing before the Lord. The only amount of it that was not spent upon themselves was that which included the Levite, in that the Levite in their midst was to receive some portion of it. This depended on the individual; he was to include the Levite in his rejoicing before the Lord. We would call this a vacation tithe, except that the significance then was not merely rest and recreation, but a religious rest and recreation. It was not only to be used in pleasure, but pleasure that had a religious overtone. It was to be a means of rejoicing in God’s goodness. The third tithe, which was ever third year in a cycle of seven, so that it was the third and the sixth years, was to be a poor tithe, to be shared with the local Levite and in particular helpless foreigners who were stranded in their midst, orphans, and needy widows.

Now as we analyze these tithes first of all, the tithes set forth God’s sovereignty. God is absolute Lord and Creator as landlord, so to speak, of heaven and earth, required for Himself a tithe as His tax on man. Now as the tithe was taken God was gracious to man so that a man, if he tithed his produce or the flocks of his field was to tithe every tenth, literally, thus if he had 16 cows, he was to run the through the gate, or allow them to come through the gate, and to mark the tenth one, let us say with red paint. And the tenth one was the Lord’s. This meant if he had 19 cows, or 11 cows, or 10, only one was the Lord’s. SO that actually it amounted to less than a tenth. If however he decided to make the tithe a monetary one, that is to sell and to give in the form of money, or to retain it and to give the price, then he had to add a fifth to the price, but even then this did not equalize it fully, so that God in computing the tithe was generous to the farmer or to the cattle. If it was a monetary tithe it was strictly a tenth, but if the farmer retained it for his use he added a fifth of the cost of the tenth cow or the tenth bushel or the tenth box of fruit.

The second tithe which was to be used in rejoicing before the Lord actually involved no additional tenth, in that it was to be given of the first fruits of the flock, that is the firstborn of the flock, and of the first fruits of the field, which were to be consecrated unto God, and then he was to use them, either the produce or the money that came in from it, to rejoice before the Lord. The poor tithe, as we have seen, came every third year of a cycle of seven. This seventh year for the farmer was to be a sabbatical year. There was to be no pruning, no sewing, and no gathering. However in the seventh year there could be a gleaning, that is the widows and the orphans could be permitted to go into the field and take what they wanted. But the purpose was that the earth be rested and refreshed, it had an invaluable purpose in so a conservation in allowing the land to lie fallow. It also is specified as helping the beasts of the field so that the birds and the wild animals prospered thereby, and the whole balance of nature was furthered and retained.

Now tithing meant proportionate giving. As Deuteronomy 16:17 says “every man shall give as he is able”. Now Saint Paul quotes the same verse when he specifies Christian giving. Now a lot of people have said “Where do you see Saint Paul,{?} obviously does not want Christians to tithe or require them because he says “let every man give as he is able”” But people who say this do not know that Saint Paul was quoting the law of the time. The whole point of the tithe was that it did not put an undue burden on the rich, or on the poor. In other words the tithe, a tenth, was required of all equally. This meant then that the burden of the Lord’s work did not fall simply upon the rich or upon those who were zealous in giving. In this respect it is significant to look back a couple of centuries to the beginnings of Methodism. John Wesley did not believe in tithing, he spoke against it. And he could point with pride to the fact that the average follower of his movement which became, after it broke with the Church of England, Methodism, gave far more than a tithe. But what was the consequence? And some of the evangelicals within the Church of England called attention to it in his own day. It soon meant that those who were zealous and thoroughly dedicated were giving far more than a tenth and the burden was falling upon a handful in each congregation and the rest were not giving their share. So that the burden of the giving fell upon a handful of the rich and a handful of the poor, in other words those who had faith, rich or poor. And every time there was a need for funds these were the people who gave, and the rest did not give but a very small fraction.

This of course meant unfair giving, it meant that the church was carrying a great number of parasites, and the law of the tithe prevented this, it meant proportionate giving, it meant rich and poor gave on a proportionate bases. It established a fair pattern for all. Moreover the tithe established a concrete lawful basis for dealing with God. As Samuel Rutherford, one of the great Scottish church men said “I am persuaded that Christ is responsal and Law abiding”. What does this mean? He declared “I believe that Christ will be respond to those who keep His law, and He will keep His law in relationship to them”. Now those who will honor God will not rob Him of His tithes and offerings. God says “I will open the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it”. Again as G.H. Pember, an Anglican rector said some generations ago, and I quote “We know generally that the grace of God follows every act of direct obedience on our part, if we search out even the most minute commands of His law and do them, if we show that we would not have a word uttered by Him fall to the ground, we testify both to ourselves and to others that we do in very deed, and not in word only, recognize Him as our God and our King. Nor will He on His part be slow in acknowledging us as His subjects, as those who have a claim upon His aide and protection”

It is important, finally, to add this point. The tithe was not regarded by the law, as a gift to God. No man could say he was giving a gift to God until He gave above and over the Lord’s tithe. And these were called “free will offerings”. The free will offerings then were only the gifts above and over a tithe. Deuteronomy 16:10-11, Exodus 35 verses 3-7, Leviticus 22:21 and other passages refer to free will offerings, and this means more than the tithe.

Now why is the tithe such an explosive subject in Iron curtain countries? Why is that after guaranteeing, technically, freedom of religion, they prohibit anything that points to the old Biblical tithe? This would be illegal preaching by even the most licensed of the Soviet preachers, it would immediately mean the concentration camp. The reason is a very obvious one, once we recognize a fundamental principle; the tithe took care of the basic social functions of any society, education and welfare. As long as you had the tithe faithfully observed and required, whether it was the Old Testament period in the early church, in the colonial period, or in Europe, medieval Europe or Reformation Europe, the basic social functions were taken care of without the state having anything to do with it. Education was taken care of by the tithe. Welfare was taken care of by the poor tithe. Every important social function was met by the tithe, and the state therefore had only a limited area of jurisdiction. And as a result the tax of the state was so insignificant that it was scarcely felt. Is it any wonder that God in I Samuel eight in speaking to Samuel and Israel said that the tithe which acknowledged His kingship would be replaced when they cast aside His kingship and His tithe with a totalitarian regime? Now God speaking through Malachi says “Bring ye the tithes to the storehouse” so that the law of the tithe place a responsibility upon the people of God. When God says “bring the tithes to My storehouse” He meant literally this, first of all bring them to the appointed place whether it be in food and produce or cattle or in money. That it has to be My storehouse, it cannot be the store house of Baal, or of false prophets, or of those who are not faithful to their responsibility in the use of the tithe. So that the tithe was first of all required and second it had to go where it would be used for the Lord’s work. This places the responsibility therefore on the people who tithed to see that their money went to the Lord’s work, to education, to welfare, to various social functions under God. So that they were not tithing therefore if they took it where it was not properly used, it had to be truly God’s storehouse. It is not a tithe if it is misdirected.

A few generations ago Landsdale of The Church of England said “That the person who is against the tithe is a spiritual anarchist.” This is quite a bold statement, but if we analyze its significance we will see that it is right. He is a spiritual anarchist and a political totalitarian, we might add. Today the state has assumed the basic social functions of society, and it is requiring for more than a tithe to maintain them. The state has moved into education and welfare not in order to fulfill a responsibility under God, but in order to use them as stepping stones to power. Totalitarianism is the result. It is not enough to be against the states interference in education and welfare, it is not enough to oppose the states control of these basic social functions, these functions are necessary functions, they are not being discharged by the state. The state is not performing its duty in education, we are having miseducation, it is not producing a true welfare program, it is not helping widows and orphans, it is destroying them. It is creating a pattern whereby the breakdown of character and dependence on the state, is the goal. When I was in the pastorate I saw what welfare was. Those who are independent have nothing but trouble, when through need a widow or orphan is dependent on state welfare, federal welfare. Everything is done to breakdown those who have character. The preference is for those who are immoral, dissolute, totally dependent. Upon those who will look to the state as their God, not to those who briefly and temporarily want help and feel somehow they could get on their feet. The basic social functions are not met by the state, and the state has no intention of meeting them. The state is after power, and although it does lead to economic breakdown ultimately for the state there is no answer to the problem other than a continuing social crisis, anarchy, totalitarianism. Until the people of God cease to be spiritual anarchist and recognize the basic social functions must be met, God has provided a law whereby they can be met, we must meet them under God, and step by step strip the state of its pretensions, of its power, of all its claims, until it becomes again what it was intended to be, a ministry of justice and no more.

The law of the tithe therefore is an important one. It is an area of great neglect, and yet of tremendous social consequences. Not until the people of God are ready to reconstruct society in terms of a Godly pattern can we undercut the totalitarian pattern. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God we give thanks unto Thee for the sufficiency of Thy salvation, and Thy word, and of Thy care. Thou hast provided a way for us, teach us to walk therein. Grant that we as Thy people may begin day by day by our living and our giving the reconstruction of things, and to conformity to Thy word. That we might strip the present totalitarian regimes that surround us, of their pretentions, of their arrogations, and of their power, that we might render Thee Thy due praise and power, and under Thee have a new birth of freedom. Grant us this we beseech Thee in Jesus name, Amen.

Are there any questions now?

[Rushdoony] Yes?

[Audience member] {?} …and you keep it, and you don’t tithe {?}

[Rushdoony] This is what Malachi says [audience member interrupts] yes, Malachi makes it clear that we are robbing God if we do not give him the tithe. Now the tithe is to be computed on our income, this is the basis of the tithe. It is not computed on anything else, not on wealth. This is an important point because several times the church has misinterpreted the tithe. The tithe therefore is not to be computed on an inheritance; an inheritance is not a part of our income you see. A tithe was paid if we inherit something from our parents, or our relatives; they paid a tithe on that. There is no inheritance tax on it as it were, that is not a tithe, but income is to be tithed.

[Rushdoony] Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] No, that is not a tithe then because the tithe has to go to God’s storehouse. In other words, it is not a tithe if it doesn’t go to the proper place. And you see this is where the tithe puts the power back into the hands of the people. [Audience member interrupts] Exactly. You see, in other words, you are maintaining the basic program. Now it is significant that when the tithe was practice most people don’t realize how extensively it was practiced until recent years. It was people through their tithes who maintained schools from one end of the country to the other, maintained the churches, maintained orphanages through their poor tithes. But now of course those orphanages have been abolished as supposedly not conducive to the welfare of the child, but the purpose has been to destroy the whole of the Christian tithe and its social program. And some years ago I had an opportunity briefly to do a little bit of, to have a little insight into the work of the orphanages which originally were started with the gifts of Captain Dollar, The Dollar Steamship Lines, do you remember that firm? A very fine Christian, he established some orphanages and these were further maintained with a poor tithe of Christian people until not to many years ago. Now those tithes were everything the state regarded as horrible and were ended finally, as far as any of their historic function was concerned, they were converted into social welfare agencies. The boys had, I think, one matron to about 50 or 60 boys, they slept in dormitory rooms, about 20 to a room. Everything that the modern welfare social agency says is all wrong. But captain Dollars boys, as they were known, all turned out to be outstanding citizens. And California from one end of the state to the other, a generation ago was blessed captain Dollar’s boys, because they were trained in terms of character, maybe they weren’t picked up by a mother or a foster mother and maybe they didn’t get all the love and attention because each matron had so many boys to take care of, but they did get character.

Now this is the kind of thing that has been abolished you see. It’s much better, we are told now, to pay a mother who is breeding illegitimate children on a state subsidy, leave the children there, they get love and attention, or they’re getting something that is better for them. But in those days you could take your poor tithe every third year and say “now I’m going to give it to this and that cause because they are doing something, or to this individual” and similarly with the Lord’s tithe you could say “I am going to give it to a church and a school to things that I know are definitely doing the Lord’s work” you have the control, it belonged to God but you appropriated it and you had to be sure it went to God and His work or it wasn’t a tithe. This meant therefore that you had a check against misuse of your funds.

[Rushdoony] Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] No, it has to go to the Lord, and very often now days the organized ecclesiastical bodies have no connection with the Lord except by name only.

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] No, definitely not. We are responsible for the tithe even if there is no church existing that can be called by the name of the Lord. We still owe it to God.

[Rushdoony] Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes he would give the tenth and the twentieth and he could not choose, you see, he was to take the tenth and the twentieth, irrespective of the fact that the tenth and the twentieth might be crippled cows or his best cows. It had to be as they came. In other words he was not to choose out the best or the worst.

[Rushdoony] Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well of course this is a problem that many people have concerned themselves over and there have been different kinds of answers some have said your actual income is only your net income, not your gross income because the state is taking that. We have no answer to that in scripture. I think we’re safer if we figure in term of a gross income, as I say there is not clear cut statement in scripture on that. But we still should figure in a way to be on the safe side.

[Rushdoony] Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, of course if the blackbirds steal it, he can’t harvest it, it’s what he has actually harvested [interruption] I think that’s a good argument and I accept it as valid as mine because as I said the scripture doesn’t speak on this point. I simply prefer to lean over backwards to be on the safe side, but they are blackbirds and there are crows or worse, these various governmental agencies because they are robbing us. So I would say there is no sin in computing it on that basis, we do not have any guidance as far as I can see at that point, it is up to our conscious. Actually you get what is your check, if you want to figure it out on that basis, fine.

[Rushdoony] Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, that’s a good question. Again it’s one of these difficult ones and there is no set answer. Now some Christian schools have re-organize so that you pay, to be specific, I visited one school which required, I believe, ten or fifteen dollars tuition and the rest was by donation. And it expected its parents to tithe. And to give a major portion of the tithe to the school, this way it got around the problem of a double burden on the parents with regards to taxation, they had a tax benefit from their tithing. It did not intend to rule on the matter as far as “did it constitute a portion of the tithe”. Here again I have to say that we cannot go beyond scripture to lay down a law, we have to go in terms of our conscious in a situation. Again I would lean over backwards in the other direction but if anyone has anything to contribute on the subject let them speak up now.

[Rushdoony] Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] I agree the Christians are doing far more than most of the churches are doing, they are doing the Lord’s work, but again I say it has to be a personal decision. I can’t speak for God.

[Rushdoony] Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well there’s this today. If the people who are truly Christian would tithe, and see that the tithe went to the right place, the social impact would be tremendous.

[Rushdoony] Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, you see we don’t realize the tremendous social power of the tithe. If you have fifty families, the likely hood is that that out of those fifty families some having a larger income, some less, and just an average collection of people, you will have perhaps fifty thousand in tithes. Now this is an amazing fact. You can see how that much money in every fifty people, or every fifty families, put together, would have a social impact on the country if it were properly used. And this is why the power that is in the hands of the Lord’s people is not properly used or not realized. This is why of course in the Soviet Union there is nothing more deadly then to give the kind of sermon I have given this morning, and it is specifically spelled out, it cannot be done, you cannot even say to a congregation, supposing we were in the soviet union and if I were to say “one of our group is sick, unable to work and desperately in need supposing we take up an offering and give it to this person” it would lead immediately to the concentration camp for us. Because they realize the minute you do something that person cannot look to the state, you see, for help. And they’d rather have that person die waiting for the state agencies to come around and help them then for us to do something; because it would immediately say there is another power afoot in the land. And the minute you started that and then started talking then about a poor tithe periodically every third year, and a regular tithe to be used for religious and educational work in the community, you would create a rival power. Even in the Soviet Union with the limited amount of means those people have. That would overthrow the regime, this is their feeling. They realistically are aware of the potential in the tithe.

[Rushdoony] Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well first of all most people in the churches you can’t tell them they’re dead, and you can’t the corpse hear you. But those that are still alive to a faint degree you have to tell them exactly what scripture says. We will get into the pattern of giving some months from now when we get into the laws of gleaning and so on, but of course the pattern there was, except in extreme cases they were to work for what they received. Now in the early church we know that if someone lost his job the church gave him one days income, that was all, the next day he was to go to work, and if no-one in the congregation could take him into their shop or place of business, the church helped pay for it so that on a very limited daily income he had a job with someone in the group. Now there was no incentive to stay on that job because he worked hard for much, much less, but he had to work, he had to earn it. This goes back to the Mosaic law, we’ll go into it as I say later, but it goes back also to the fundamental principle “if a man will not work, let him not eat” in other words, let him starve. That’s exactly what scripture was saying. Only elderly widows and orphans or people who were incapable of working physically were to be given direct charity.

[Rushdoony] Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Alright, a good question. Now it was a Levitical storehouse, was it not? You tithe to the Levites, the Levites tithed one tenth of the tithe to the priests. Which meant that one tenth of the tithe went to the sanctuary, so only one tenth actually went for the maintenance of the place of worship. The other nine tenths of the tithe went for the Lord’s work in a broader sense, did it not? And the Levite’s, in ancient Israel, as we studied the scripture, we find that they had the educational responsibilities, they also functioned as judges, as a kind of civil service very often, as lawyers, as musicians, and sometimes as artists. So you see what broad functions the tithe covered, now it went to the storehouse, the place where Christian work, or Godly work of a broad nature was then supported and furthered. That you can see why, for example, Kind David had very small expenses as far as taxation was concerned. Because he made use of the Levites, he made use of an already appointed group of people supported by the tithe, who thus had an independence from him, but he used them as a kind of civil service, so the functions of the tithe were very broad.

Now in the period of the judges about all the tax supported was the judge who was the governor, judge or governor is the same word, the governor of the country or the president you might say, and it supported the army that the army was often a volunteer army called together for the occasion, so the cost there was very little. And it supported a few officials, so the actual need for taxation was very, very limited. The Lord’s tithe had such a broad function and only one tenth of the tithe actually went for the maintenance of worship, now that proportion was not maintained in the new testament period but it gives you an idea of how broad the function of the tithe was, one tenth actually you might say went to the church, of the tithe in the Old Testament period.

[Rushdoony] Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes you’ve raised the case of the corruption of this in the medieval period. Lets take it at its worse. The amount of corruption in the use of the tithes by the medieval church doesn’t equal to the corruption you’ve had in one year in the poverty program in the United States. What did the tithe do, even at the worst periods of medieval corruption? It provided all the charity, it provided all the hospitals, until fairly recent times hospitals were religious organizations, a part of the tithe. It provided all the schools, it provided courts also, so that the people went to the courts for most cases, only in certain types of cases did you go to the civil court. And it provided a variety of other social functions. So granted that in the Medieval period there was corruption and it was real, yet those lands provided that the church held for all these functions through their incomes. The country was still living very cheaply, and the amount of taxes people had to pay was very little. So they were better off, as far as any drain on the society, then they are today. Today the amount of tax you pay is at least forty five percent of your income to all causes. It was never anything like that, that was just a tithe then. Today in Italy if the government landed on everybody with all the tax laws they’ve passed it would amount to 110% of their income. It won’t be too many years before we reach that point, because with the new taxes I wouldn’t be surprised if by next year it will be 55% of your income, which directly or indirectly will go for taxes. So granted, the medieval church is corrupt and we don’t want to reproduce that, it was still far superior to what we have today.

[Rushdoony] Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Of course there are advantages to modern life because we have all the technological advance of many, many centuries. But roads were being built in those days, very good roads in terms of the day. It’s interesting in this country for a long time to any state funds or federal funds for roads and the first time in this country when in Rhode Island the state tried to appropriate money for road construction the people rose up in revolt against it and they had to drop the program after they began it because the citizens said ‘this is like the establishment of religion, it’s a state subsidy to a particular group of road users, let private enterprise build it and charge tolls”. So they had to drop the program.

One more question, our time is up.

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] No, no it doesn’t. But you see it isn’t any drain on your pocketbook because you’re using it on yourself. And I said it was a part of the first fruits, well I won’t go into now, there isn’t time, but the first fruits and the first of the flock were to be dedicated unto the Lord. Then they were to be used in rejoicing before the Lord. Well our time is up now, we stand adjourned.