God gave us a covenant and then He gave us this system called tithing which is the avenue by which we maintain or break the agreement. To tithe is to maintain the agreement between you and God. Bringing the tithe is the process by which you present your tenth to Jesus, our High Priest – the author and finisher of our faith. When you tithe the tithe you are constantly affirming your agreement with God and with the covenant promises attached to the tithe.
The problem most people (who don’t believe in tithing) have is that Leviticus 27 is in the Old Testament. Because it is located in that portion of the Bible – people will say they don’t have to receive that as a commandment from God, and believe that we are governed only by the New Testament.
If we are not obligated to keep the entire Bible, then God would have only given us the New Testament. Now, we do live under the NT but the OT is a foreshadowing and a foundation. It acts as a column to hold up the beliefs and confirm the position of the NT.
But how obligated are we? Is this just an OT issue as some would lead us to believe. Can you ignore the commandments about tithing because you consider yourself a NT Christian?
Let’s back up a bit, before “the Law.”
In Genesis 2 begins the story of a man named Adam. God is talking to Adam. He gives him the garden, authority, and makes promises of what is to come. Then he says in vs. 16-17, “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Adam couldn’t eat of the whole garden. God told Adam that that tree was a dedicated tree. And that they would be able to maintain the agreement they had, just as long as Adam did not touch that which was God’s. The success of their agreement was based on whether or not Adam touched the dedicated thing.
If he touched it, the agreement was off and He would have to separate from Adam.
He did eat and the Bible says he was going to die, but yet he lived for several hundred more years. There was still a death, a separation that took place. The glory that Adam had been walking in, the promises were over. Since he touched God’s stuff the agreement was off not to be reinstated until someone came to redeem the crime.
To be continued…
