Here is the order:

1) You’ve got to have the tithe,
2) the person who presents the tithe,
3) and a high priest to receive the tithe.
4) And, some way or another, He’s got to be able to return a blessing back to the tither.

Many have thought that all we’ve got to do is tithe or give and that’s that, but that’s incomplete.

Anytime the tithe is given the tither is empowered. Tithing the tithe is the process by which you present your tenth. This is done by “speaking” over the tithe (watering it) before you sow it, planting it into the kingdom.

We present the tithe with words, our High Priest takes the tithe, looks over the promises and returns the promise for the tithe. He’ll bless us in the same way that He blessed Abraham.

If you’ve got a sick body and you’re standing on the promise of healing, then you ought to take that tithe, that day, in what the Bible refers to as your “evil day”, and present it to the High Priest, Jesus. Go to Him and say, “I present to You my tithe, in the name of Jesus. I speak to You and say that You are the Healer in my life.”

He takes the tithe, looks back over the agreement and says, “There’s healing here. I’ve got the tithe. You’ve got the promise. Put healing back on her because she gave the tenth.”

God’s promises being kept in your life are all based on how you handle the tithe!

Jesus is the High Priest over the covenant!

Hebrews 7:5, “And verily they that are of the sons of Levi, who receive the office of the priesthood, have a commandment to take the tithes of the people.”

God is using the priest to receive His tithe. That’s interesting! The only people who could go into the presence were the high priests. I can imagine what would happen if someone was to decide they were just as anointed as the priest, and go into the Holy of Holies. They’d have to drag his dead body out by the rope that was put around him. As long as people could hear the bell they knew everything was alright. If it stopped ringing then everyone knew the high priest had messed up that week.

In those days you didn’t see everyone including their cousin claiming to be called into the ministry.

Hebrews 7:5b, “…that is, of their brethren, though they come out of the loins of Abraham.”

But look at Hebrews 7:6-7, “But he whose descent is not counted from them received tithes of Abraham, and blessed him that had the promises. And without all contradiction the less is blessed of the better.”

That’s why Jesus has to be our High Priest. No one is ever going to be better than Him. But now the lesser… you and I… when we give our tithes, we will be empowered to prosper and to excel by the greater. It’s His job to carry out the promise. The order of Melchizedek is the process of tithing.

Skeptics and people who prefer not to tithe will insist that the subject of tithing doesn’t appear in the New Testament. However, if you’re not aware of what the order of Melchizedek is, you won’t know that the Word on tithing does indeed appear when Jesus is on the scene.

It DOES appear past Malachi!

Speaking of Malachi…

I’ll save that for another time.

Since Abraham represents all of us, if we do what he did, then we can have what God promises in our lives the same way Abraham got them to operate in his life by faith not under the law. All these promises put together represent what is the “Abrahamic Covenant.” Since the Bible says this is an everlasting covenant there is no end to the vows made or the blessings promised. Everlasting means without end.

So, if tithing is part of the Abrahamic Covenant, does it make a difference that you read about it in the Old Testament? No! It doesn’t. It’s part of an everlasting covenant which transcends and breaks the boundaries of the New Testament.

We are Covenant people. Not only do we live by the New Testament, but we are also heirs of the Abrahamic Covenant, and anything in the OT that is part of the promise God made to Abraham, IS applicable to our lives today.

Abraham tithed more than once and not just with the increase that came from the war because we see his seed who wasn’t even born yet when Abraham first tithed, continuing this lifestyle… and so on and so on.

What about the NT? In Luke 11:42, Jesus is talking, “What sorrow awaits you Pharisses! For you are careful to tithe even the tiniest income from your herb gardens, but you ignore justice and the love of God. YOU SHOULD TITHE, YES, but do not neglect the more important things.”

They were tithing all these different things but neglecting matters of the heart. Why do people miss that JESUS, the King of kings and Lord of lords, God Himself said, “You should have practiced the latter WITHOUT leaving the former (TITHING) undone”?!

Jesus is saying they ought to tithe, but added that when they tithe they are not to omit the wieghtier matters, such as the love of God and judgement. You can’t act like a fool and tithe. There are other things you must consider.

Read Hebrews 5:5-6 Wasn’t this Melchizedek the same High Priest that Abraham brought his tithes to? Here the scripture is saying that Jesus is a High Priest forever – after the order of Melchizedek, He is the High Priest and He will operate in the same manner Melchizedek operated in. So that means if we want to know about Jesus’ priesthood and how it is to operate, all we have to do is find out how Melchizedek’s priesthood operated.

What we know is that Melchizedek received the tithe!

Read Hebrews 5:7-10 and further defined in Hebrews 6:20 and Hebrews 7:1-5

Genesis 13:16 “And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth:so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered.”

Read Genesis 14:13-14,16
Abram had been in battle, won the battle and received the spoils of the battle. Pay close attention to what Abram does with his “increase.”

Gen. 4:18-20
Right in the middle of this covenant being made, we see this man bringing in the tithe to Melchizedek the king of “Salem” or modern day Jerusalem.

Then another king, the king of Sodom says… read vs 21-23. Most people don’t catch this at all and usually attribute it to Melchizedek. But it’s not Melchizedek he’s talking to. What’s he saying to him? I don’t want anything from you. I’m going to continue to tithe. I’m going to give my firstfruits to God. and no one will be able to say they made me rich but God himself.

In chapter 15 they are getting ready for the covenant ceremony, Abram wanted to know how he would inherit all the things God promised him. Read Genesis 15:18.

Then going into chapter 17 – God says something fascinating about this “pre-law” covenant which answers the question so many have about whether this is an OT issue.

Genesis 17:6-7, “And I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee. AND I WILL ESTABLISH MY COVENANT BETWEEN ME AND THEE AND THY SEED AFTER THEE IN THEIR GENERATION FOR AN “EVERLASTING COVENANT, TO BE A GOD UNTO THEE, AND TO THY SEED AFTER THEE.”

God changed Abram’s name to Abraham when the covenant was cut between them. If tithing was a part of that covenant making process between God and Abraham, and the Bible says this is an everlasting covenant, then who else is included in the covenant?

Galatians 3:29, “And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” That means everything God promised Abraham, He also promises to us. Through the High Priest, He promised Abraham that He would bless him to be a blessing. Abraham brought the tithe to the High Priest and he was blessed. Bringing the tithe was the avenue by which Abraham could partake of the covenant promises of God.

to be continued…

Now God had a dilemma.

He needed a way to get the promises back to mankind. So He looked for another man with whom He could cut a covenant. Abel would have qualified because he was a covenant keeping man and also a tither (Genesis 4:4), but Cain killed him. At this point, God is still looking for someone with whom to cut covenant. He’s still looking for someone who will tithe.

Which brings us to a man – before the law – by the name of Abram in Genesis 12. Read Genesis 12:1-3 .

The word “bless” means to empower you to prosper, empower you to excel. Then He demonstrated what He had just promised. That’s what covenant is all about.

A covenant is a pledge, a vow, a promise between two or more parties to carry out the terms agreed upon. A covenant can only be broken by death, when it is made in blood. We don’t need to make agreements of that sort today because we have the blood of Jesus, but back then it was the strongest type of agreement known to man.

to be continued…

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…

Most people don’t know that there is a correlation between the tithe and the tree in the Garden of Eden.

The tithe is holy (“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.” Lev. 27:30) and being holy has nothing to do with how you dress. It’s not in the outward things. Holiness is a state of being in agreement with God.

To be holy is to find out what the Bible says and to be in agreement with what God says.

There was something else holy and sacred unto God and that was the Ark of the Covenant. This sacred portable chest along with its two items, the “mercy seat” and the “cherubim”, were the most important objects to Israel during the wilderness period. They were so special that you could’t just touch it irreverently. Even if you touched it unintentionally you would die. In the Bible the word death means separation. And when a man touches the tithe or mishandles the tithe, separation from God takes place.

When God says the tithe is holy, and we understand the definition of holiness, then we begin to see that the tithe is the thing that keeps us in agreement with what God has promised.

to be continued…