And the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and with great terror and with signs and wonders; and He has brought us to this place and has given us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. Now behold, I have brought the first of the produce of the ground which You, O LORD have given me.
I wasn’t feeling much faith and trust as I looked at the numbers on the spreadsheet. It was time to review our finances and see how things were looking for the month.
For the last three years, we’ve been keeping a very close eye on our finances as we work toward our financial goals. We built a budget and a plan for managing our expenses, but progress has been slow.
This particular week, it seemed like we had missed something. Something was off. By a few hundred dollars. We were each scanning our own screens, trying to find the discrepancy, but the longer we searched, the harder it became to keep my eyes from wandering over to the charitable giving part of our spreadsheet. Our tithe.
Why Tithing Feels So Hard (And Why That’s Normal)
I don’t know if you’ve ever been there, but as my eyes scanned the number again, I just couldn’t help thinking that those few hundred dollars could solve so many of the financial challenges we were experiencing.
Whenever I’ve heard preachers speak on tithing, it seems to either revolve around the idea that the money was never ours to begin with or the idea of trust. This is a way you can demonstrate your trust in God. And that is true. To sacrifice what feels like more than you can afford is a demonstration of trust in God, even if we don’t feel it at the moment. But I was surprised yesterday by what I read in Deuteronomy because it had nothing to do with trust.
What Deuteronomy 26 Says About Tithing
Just like last week, we’re in a part of Deuteronomy that contains a long review of all the laws God instituted among His people. When we get to Deuteronomy 26, God starts talking about everyone’s favorite—finances!
The first half of the chapter focuses on tithing. Then the second half of the chapter explains, in part, how tithes will be used and sums up the chapter. Believe it or not, trust is never mentioned. Not once.
Instead, two other purposes for tithing stand out to me. The first comes in the first half of the chapter in verses 3-10. In these verses, God is describing the protocol for how Jews were to offer their tithes. He actually gives them a script that they’re to recite to the priest when they deliver their tithe. And what’s in that script? The entire story of how God prospered Abraham’s descendants and delivered them from Egypt.
The Two Purposes of Tithing: Remembering God’s Faithfulness and Commitment
God didn’t command an exercise in trusting through pure willpower. He told His people to remember all He had done for them when they brought their offering. Certainly, doing so could help build trust in the God who provided, but they weren’t being told to gut it out. He told them to take up a mental, emotional, and spiritual posture that would promote trust through remembrance.
All I can see in this is the gentle guidance of a good Father who wants His children to learn how to trust Him even when it’s hard. He is so kind and good to us!
The next purpose I see is at the very end of the chapter. It sums up the chapter, and likely the entire section of laws, by saying that keeping God’s commands is a sign of their commitment to Him.
That’s interesting because commitment is quite different from trust. We tend not to commit ourselves to people we don’t trust (not a bad practice), but these two concepts fall in two very different categories. Trust is a feeling. Commitment is a choice.
How God Designed Tithing to Help You
When you look at the two purposes together, it creates a full framework for giving to God that speaks so deeply to God’s consideration and care for our human weakness. First, He tells us to give in a way that positions our hearts to feel the trust that would provide us with so much peace and comfort when giving becomes hard. Then, He tells us that even if that feeling of trust doesn’t come, we can rely on our choice to commit ourselves to His ways rather than how we feel.
That speaks so deeply to where my heart has been so many times with tithing. I don’t automatically feel the trust, and that makes it so much harder to be faithful to that commitment. It makes it so tempting to use that money to pay off that debt, fix the house, or pay that bill.
You may or may not be in that place where trust feels far away, and commitment feels small. But there’s no time like the present to start practicing the system God designed for us! It can either bring us some relief as we walk through tight times, or it will prepare us for the next season when we’ll need it. So let’s be faithful by remembering both what God has done and our commitment to obey Him.
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