So the Church Takes 30%?

As you look at life, have you ever reflected on the fact that as life goes along, your point of view and your perspective can change? When I was a young man, I was taught, or when I was a child, I was taught a child's nursery rhyme and encouraged to live by it. The rhyme is a very simple one that many of you know. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.

Now, it isn't really true, but it was a nursery rhyme to teach that retaliation isn't the route to go. As I got older, especially when I reached the point in life where I became very involved in board work, I came to the place of being taught and realizing that those things that are said that are unkind or untrue, especially the untrue, when you simply allow them to go by and treat them in that same way, simply shrug your shoulders, smile, and walk away, that they become embedded in the Internet world or in the communication world as fact.

And so you learn that when somebody says something that really is not true, that there is a responsibility to respond to that, or it becomes embedded in social media as a literal fact. And then you have to live with it. A few weeks ago, I was doing research on a topic, and as I was doing research, I went online to Google, as I often do, to look for a certain piece of information. And I happened upon one of the websites that really doesn't appreciate us. That's the nicer way to put it. And as I was looking at that particular website, I shook my head and I thought, here is one of the oldest resentments toward the Church of God in the book.

And I reflected back all the way to my sophomore year in college, where I was a male reader in Pasadena. And every so often, somebody who was communicating with us would send us a flyer or a tract that was against us.

And you'd look at the tract and you'd see the charges that were made and the claims that were made against the Church. And so I can go all the way back to probably about 1962, which would be where I am conscious of the first time that I've heard this particular charge. So it's been around for a long, long time. But that charge is that the Church, and it doesn't matter which generation of the Church of God—you can go back.

My first set of ministerial credentials, a little 3x5 laminated card that I carried in my pocket, was my ordination into the Radio Church of God. And since then, that changed once, and then it changed again. So it doesn't matter which iteration you happen to look at, the charge would have made against any of them.

And that charge is that the Church takes 30% of the members' income. Now that charge, as I said, had been around, what, 60, 70s, 80s, 90s, that's 50 years at least, that that charge has been on the books. Now, you know it is true that the Church believes in, and it teaches, three tithes. Or put in modern language, for those who may end up across this message who are not a part of the Church, tithe means a tenth.

So the Church does. We don't apologize about teaching that God tells us that there are three tenths or three tithes. And that brings me to the purpose for this particular message. The purpose of this particular message is to give an apology, but first to caution. I think most of you in this room know that apology has two different meanings. And for the sake of those of you who are in this room and those who are online today, this is the apology in the fashion of Stephen's apology. And that's sufficient for all of you to know where this particular message is going.

So let's talk about that 30% of income that the Church, in the pejorative use of the website's words, quote, takes from its members. Let's begin with a premise. I think a premise that we all understand.

God owns this earth. Very simple statement. God owns this earth. The best you'll ever get, no matter how vested you think you are, the best you'll ever get in God's perspective is the right to be a tenant.

And that's as far as it's going to go.

In Exodus 19, God was beginning to set the stage for the contract that he was going to make with the nation of Israel.

Chapter 19 is when he said, Moses, get everybody ready. I want them all to take a bath. I want them to all get dressed up, come to me neat and prepared to listen. I want you to rope off the mountain so that nobody tries to go up it, which could be terminal for them. And I am going to talk to you, and I'm going to make a covenant or a contract with you. So Exodus 19 begins in verse 3, So he's now introducing that I'm going to enter a contract with you.

Now, this is not a novel comment by any means. Abraham, back at the time that he went out and delivered those people who had been captured from Sodom and brought them back and gave them back to the king of Sodom, reminded him that God was the possessor of the earth. And we go all the way to the writings of the apostle Paul to the Gentiles, who reminded them that God is the owner of this earth.

Put simply, and I'm speaking on your behalf, put simply, I pay rent to God and accept that the church is the agent that he uses to collect that rent.

You know, somebody has to collect it. There's an old joke. I don't know which ethnic group it is aimed at. I think the first time I heard it, they called it an old Jewish joke that this Jewish merchant was being chastised by somebody because of his tight-fistedness.

And he said, no, no, I'm not tight-fisted at all. I am as generous as generous can be. He said, every time I get paid, I go, I cash my check, I take my money, and then I go out, and I throw it all up in the air, and I say, God, take whatever you want. And he says, I keep whatever comes back down.

Well, we all know that's not exactly how it all works.

You know, there is that deceptive ability for any one of us if we reach that lovely place in life where we make that last mortgage payment, and we now hold the deed to our house to feel that we are free.

It's an illusion. In fact, I'm not sure it's not a joke, because you miss paying your property taxes, and that deed goes somewhere else.

You try to dig on your property, and you may find out there are all sorts of people that say, can't do it.

The last ice storm we had, I had a decorative pair on the corner of my lot. The ice broke it right down the middle, splayed it out on the cul-de-sac, and I had to cut it down.

And as we looked at bringing up the root ball, we found out that the power company, the gas company, and the telephone company had all laid in line within 16 inches of the backside of that trunk.

And they all said, oh, by the way, if you sever any of these, it's on you.

Now you can say, well, it's my property. And they say, well, not that strip.

Ever tried to dig a well or put a septic system in a city lot and found out that the ordinances said, you can't dig wells here.

In fact, if you have a well, you have to cap it. You're on city water.

And as far as mineral rights, I can't help but how many of you who own a mortgage even know whether you own the mineral rights or not.

And the probability is you don't. And so it's an illusion when you tear up a mortgage that you are now free of obligation as a tenant.

You're less encumbered, but not free.

You know, each one of us chooses who we will be financially obligated to.

And we in the church have chosen to be obligated to God for rent.

I'm just simply the way we live. I've lived that way for the vast majority of my life.

Simply look at tithing and say, God is my landlord. He is a phenomenally generous landlord.

He asks that I give him 10 percent, and for that he gives me the air I breathe, the sunshine that sustains all of life, the rain that nourishes all that grows, and all the other good things that we simply wake up every day, look at, take for granted as being there.

I don't think we resent the arrangement. Can't help but wonder why someone who doesn't pay it resents that we do.

That one's a little head scratcher. Why does somebody who wouldn't, in the worst of circumstances, give a tithe, resent that those of us who cheerfully give it do give it?

But there's something that needs to be understood in all of this. For the sake of the grumpy website, or the viewer who reads it and believes what it says, there's more to this rent than meets the eye.

In fact, none of those that I named who say I have my hand in your pocket would ever be this generous.

If a farmer, I'll use a farmer as an example of a tithe payer, if a farmer brought in a crop this last fall, sold his crop, and when all the crop was brought in, we'll take one of the Western Washington grain growers.

And when all of his grain was harvested and all of it had gone to the marketer, Wade examined and the check was cut.

And they handed him a check for $100,000 for his wheat crop.

Would that farmer, if that farmer was in the Church of God, then sit down, open his checkbook, and write a check for $10,000?

One-tenth.

And the answer is no. He wouldn't.

Why?

Well, he wouldn't because of Deuteronomy 14 and verse 22.

In Deuteronomy 14, for all people who do tithe and understand the Biblical laws regarding tithing, here is a caveat.

Deuteronomy 14 verse 22 says, I grew up on a farm. My grandfather was a dairy farmer, had about 170 acres. Half of that was in pasture. The other half was either growing silage for the winter or cash crops.

And so I'm not unfamiliar with farm life.

But, you know, that farmer, that hypothetical western Washington grain farmer, had to pay several thousand dollars for the seed that he planted.

And he paid several thousand dollars more for the fertilizer and if he used an herbicide or an insecticide for that.

And so out of his pocket, before he ever saw the first grain harvested, he had thousands of dollars in seed, thousands of dollars in fertilizer, thousands of dollars in insecticide or pesticides before he ever saw penny number one.

So when he saw that hundred thousand dollars, how much of it was increase?

Only that that was above all that he spent to get the crop in the ground and to get it harvested off the field.

It's no different with a small businessman.

You go to somebody, you say, I'd like a piece of custom made furniture. He says, fine, what do you want?

Well, I've got this table that I would like. I'd like it made out of cherry or out of walnut. I'd like it this size.

He says, fine, this is what it'll cost you.

The wood wasn't free. Nor were those things that were involved in the finishes on it.

Those items that he had to put into it before he could ever put it in front of you and say, here's my charge to you.

You see, God is not a money grubber. In fact, God tells you, I can give a whole lot better than you can.

And I think we believe that. In fact, I've experienced it many times over. God says, I am far, far more capable of generosity than you are.

And so he says, all I'm asking in the way of rent is 10% of your gain, your increase.

You know, the reports this year from Western Washington was this was one of the worst grain crops in the history of Western Washington. Theoretically, and I haven't read enough reports to know, but theoretically, with this being one of the worst grain crops in Western Washington history, theoretically it was possible that at the time the grower got his check and he figured how much was increase, that there may not have been any. You know, a farmer realizes he can plant a crop, spend his whole year tending it, and end up at the end of the year going backward instead of forward.

And so how much was his tithe? Zero. Now let's go on to a second tithe.

This first 10% that the church takes from you, it may range if you happen to be a person where every single solitary penny that comes in is gain, where you would actually give 10% of what came in.

It's a rare individual.

And so that's a scale that nobody knows but you. Nobody knows but you whether your first tithe at the end of the year when it's tax time was 10%, 5%, 2%, no%.

When we come to the second 10%, here's where those of us willing to pay that second 10% start chuckling.

If you ever happen across such a website, and I don't encourage you to go looking for one, they're really sour grapes.

But if you happen upon one and they're beating the drum that the church takes all of this money from its members and you sit there and read it as a practitioner of this way of life, this is the point in time where you start to grin.

You know, we sit, we could look at each other, we could even look at the person that wrote the site and say, yes, if they ask the question, do you believe that you are obligated to take a second 10% out of your paycheck?

The answer is very simple. Sure I do. Yes, I do. Absolutely I do.

And at that point in time, we reach a fork in the road and their mind goes this way and ours goes diametrically opposite direction.

Because the issue is that they're not asking is, okay, we both agreed that this was an obligatory 10%, but to whom is it paid?

And that's where the fork in the road takes place. Because that 10% is like a boomerang. It comes all the way around and it's paid to me.

It's mine. We pay this one to ourselves.

As we all know, the second tie, there's no other purpose than that the people may come before God on the holidays that God commands so that we can enjoy them at a level that probably many of us would not enjoy them if it was left up to us.

I don't know about you. I'll simply speak for myself. I did not come from a background and a mindset that would think of setting 10% of my income aside for a vacation.

Now, we took vacations, but not vacations that lavish. So you answer for yourself. If God left it up to you or before you came into the church, did you spend 10% of your annual income on vacation?

I'll tell you, my family didn't. That just simply wasn't the route we were going to go.

I'd like you to turn to Deuteronomy. Well, we're already there, are we not? Deuteronomy 14.

Let's continue on from that particular verse that we just read, verse 22.

It says, Now, this is talking about the second tithe.

And you shall eat before the Lord your God. So who's eating it? I'm eating it. You're eating it.

Whoever did the tithing is the one doing the eating. And you eat it before the Lord your God in the place where he chooses to make his name abide.

The tithe of your grain, of your new wine, of your oil, of the firstlings of your herds, and your flocks, that you may learn to fear the Lord your God always.

But, and you know, we're in a day and time where I don't know...

I'm trying to remember the last time I've passed... Well, I guess I could say, 1990 would have been the last time that I can consciously remember pastoring a person who made their living solely by farming.

Just, we're not there anymore. The small farmer who... his entire living is from his farm is a thing of the past.

But he's told something that all of us who are not farmers, and we draw a paycheck from our employer, he is told to do what all of us do automatically.

And that is, if it's too far to get to where God is going to keep that feast, to haul all that grain, to haul the livestock, to haul the things that you will convert into food, he said, cash it all in and bring your money. That's what all of us do.

We bring money, a checkbook, a credit card, a debit card, whatever form of cash or cash conversion that allows us to go to where we're going to go and pay for those things.

And so he said, then, verse 25, you shall exchange it for money, take the money in your hand and go to the place which the Lord your God chooses.

And you shall spend that money for whatever your heart desires. For oxen, sheep, for wine or similar drink, for whatever your heart desires you shall eat before the Lord your God, and you shall rejoice, you and your household.

And so the emphasis that God puts there is, this is not going to the church, this is going, I am commanding you to keep it because I don't think you would if I didn't make you.

But once you've done it, then I hand it all back to you. And I say, have a fabulous time. The best steaks, the best food, the best wine, the best whatever it is that you like to eat, enjoy it.

Absolutely enjoy it. You and all your family and your friends, have a wonderful time.

You know, this is one of those times that if we had the kind of makeup and time, I could take a roving mic and go around the congregation and we could spend the next hour, in fact we could spend a whole lot more than that, just regaling one another with the awesome time.

The awesome places we've been, the fabulous places we've stayed, the trips to get there and back, and it's absolutely unbelievable.

My mother came from a religious background where the people were really very mobile. Their missionaries went around the world. Some of her siblings had been in various parts of the world, and yet one of her sisters one time said, Norma, you know people all over the world. And my mother smiled at her and she said, yes I do. And it's because of the church. Sitting in this room right now are people who have gone to every corner of this earth to keep the Feast of Tabernacles, thanks to that second tithe.

This year, when you came back, there were people who had been to the Caribbean. There are usually people who go to Mexico every year. You know, these are the near-sights.

COVID and that for the last two years has put a real dent on our traveling. But normally, in a normal year, there will be people. The pastor here was going to Italy this year, and had it not been for COVID, he and his family would have been in Italy for the Feast. People go to Germany, England, and Wales. They go to the Southern Hemisphere, to Australia, and before COVID hit New Zealand and other places in the world. All of these, thanks to a second tithe, that the church doesn't collect. You simply save it for a year and put it in your pocket.

When I was early married and family had begun, at that point in time in the United States, the definitive guide to the finest restaurants in the United States was a mobile travel guide.

Every year, Mobile Oil published a travel guide, and they rated all of America's restaurants on a five-star basis. It was America's version of the Michelin Guide.

There were only a handful of five-star restaurants in the United States, and they were scattered here and there, obviously concentrated in major cities.

I've eaten in two or three of those on the way to or from the Feast of Tabernacles. I would never have had the opportunity otherwise.

The family remembers some of its finest memories.

Gradus, the Feast of Tabernacles.

One year, the family was assigned to Prince Edward Island in Canada from Ohio, traveled from Ohio up to Niagara Falls through southern Canada to Quebec City over to Prince Edward Island, down the whole length of New England during the fall of colors across New York to some of the fine museums, stopping in the colonial portion of Rhode Island and Massachusetts to see the Pilgrim sites and the early museums. All of that on second tithe.

All of us are very well aware of the fact, brethren, that the charge that money has taken from members is skewed.

That money's yours. That money's mine.

But there is a little asterisk there that I think we all respect.

It's optional. It's optional in the sense that church would never know whether you do or you don't.

Don't think it's optional to God. But that's found in Deuteronomy 16.

So he said to us in Deuteronomy 14, You go, enjoy the feast, spend what you have on the food that you find most delightful, the wine that you find most delightful, the things that you find most delightful.

Before I go to chapter 16, I have to do one more diversion that came to mind. I was talking to somebody, I think that we were talking at the Feast of Tabernacles this year, and we were thinking about past feasts we had gone to and exotic sites.

And the Feast of Tabernacles was in St. Petersburg for a number of years.

My family went there, I think, twice.

But in the city of Tampa, in the old cigar district, in an area that when you drive into it, you say, where am I going and do I really want to be going here?

So it gives you that sort of feel.

But in the middle of that old warehouse district is a restaurant by the name of Burns Steakhouse.

And you're glad when you see it, at least that's my recollection from the 1970s, because you're not sure that you didn't get lost in the process.

And when you see the sign, you're glad to be there.

I have never in my entire life been to a restaurant like it.

They will cut any cut of steak that you can imagine any way you want it cut, any thickness you want it cut.

And so when you order your steak, it's all on you.

You determine how big you want it, what kind you want, the way you want it.

And if you ask the waiter, would you please bring out the wine list?

How many of you have seen the old information please, Almanac?

Well, not very many of you.

Okay. The wine list comes out, and it's a bound book that thick.

Now, you could look burns up sometime.

It has, if not the largest, one of the largest wine sellers in the world for a restaurant.

Thousands of different brands.

And so if you go in there unaware of what it is, and they hand you that wine list, your eyes cross, you wonder what in the world have I gotten myself into? It's a complete overload.

All of this God says, go and enjoy.

Go and enjoy it.

But in Deuteronomy 16, verse 13, He says, you shall observe the Feast of Tabernacles, and that's the primary feast we've been talking about. Okay? You shall observe the Feast of Tabernacles seven days. And when you've gathered from your fresh threshing floor and from your winepress, and you shall rejoice in your feast, you and your son and your daughter and your maidservants, and your manservants, and the Levite, and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow who are within your gates.

I've never had a manservant or a maidservant, so we mark those off. I have no daughters, so I mark those off. I've financed sons for many, many years going to the feast. So my wife and I and sons have gone before they were working and employed, or while they were in college, they went on my nickel. But you'll notice the other categories. These were categories that could not go to the Feast of Tabernacles and do what I've just described because they didn't have it.

And he said, don't forget them. Don't forget them. Those who are just going to get there, that's the best they're going to do, is get there. He said, while you're enjoying the best of the best, don't forget them.

And so it's a sharing. It's a sharing. It's not one of these self-centered, I-I-I situations where, okay, I've got it all, I'm going to go, I'm going to have a grand time. It is I'm going to go, I'm going to have a grand time. But I also know there are people here that are not going to have as good a time as I can have unless somebody helps them have a good time.

And God says, don't forget them. I'm not asking you to give it to me. I'm asking you to share it. The church many years ago, in recognition of this particular statement, we've created, and in United, I don't think we've ever created it by name. We've created it in principle, but we've never created it in name. Back in the earlier days, we had a label, and we called a portion of the second tithe, the tithe of the tithe.

And it was simply a way for the person who either didn't know, couldn't keep track of, didn't know if they were going to the same feast as they were going, those who were in the needy category. The church said, look, when you come home from the feast, or even before you go for that matter, if you'd be willing to give the church one-tenth of your second tithe, we then, each year, when the time comes to go to the feast, will ask—and Mr. Sexton did it this year as ministers have done it every single, single, solitary year— quote, if there are any of you who need financial assistance to go to the feast, please see me.

Where does he get the money? He gets it from the excess that people like you and I have at the end of the year, after we've done all of our rejoicing—and this is left over, and we say here— because I don't know all those people individually, I will give it to you to administer. And those people can come to you, and you can make sure that they have sufficient, that they can actually get there rather than stay home. It's simply a more organized way of applying the verses that I just read.

If you have it and you give it, then you know that somebody who would either not be able to go or would be going on a shoestring will either A, be able to go, or will be able to go and enjoy it more than they would if they were reliant totally on their own money.

Many of us are in a category where we know one another better. While I was pastoring, I was not unfamiliar with the fact that there would be people who fit in that category that would sit down and talk to me and say, well, I received this anonymous envelope, and in it was this amount of money and a little note that says this is for the feast. Go and enjoy it. That's always been a part of our culture. Those who have more than they need know those who are in need. They simply say, look, I can make sure that they have a better time while they're there.

So now we're 20% into this 30% that the church takes. And that 20% so far is 10% or all the way down to 0%. All depends on one single word, increase. And that brings us to third tithe.

As I said unapologetically at the beginning, these are what the church teaches. The church does teach that there is a third tithe. That's very true. If somebody was upset about what we teach and came to me all red in the neck and said, why is it or I hear that you teach, I would simply look at them and say, yes, we do.

Now, if you want me to explain it to you, I'll be happy to explain it to you. But in answer to your question, yes, we do. We teach that God has described a first tithe, a second tithe, and a third tithe. Probably the most telling proof that there is by God's command a third tithe is provided by a place that we're not familiar with. We know the term, but we're not familiar with it.

The most telling proof is provided by the Septuagint. Now, for those of you that are not familiar with the Septuagint, Septuagint somewhere between when it started, around 300 B.C., and then it was translated progressively over time, the Torah or the Pentateuch, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Those were translated first, but it was strung out over a considerable period of time, starting around 300 B.C. By the time the New Testament era began and Jesus Christ was walking the earth, the Septuagint was widely available and widely used translation.

Now, its original purpose was simple. When the Greeks conquered the Mediterranean world, the Greek attitude was, there are two ways of seeing life, Greek or barbarian, and there are two kinds of people, Greeks and barbarians. The Greeks saw the world as having two phases. You were either Greek, you thought as a Greek, you speak like a Greek, you thought like a Greek, or you were a barbarian. The Jews said, the Greeks need to understand we're not barbarians, and they need to understand our culture.

And the only way the Greeks are really going to understand our culture is if we take our Bible and translate it into Greek and give it to them. That way they will know who we are. So the Septuagint was the Greek translation written for that purpose.

Do you ever read a quotation in the New Testament from the Old Testament and then turn back to the Old Testament, and it doesn't say that? Ever done that? If you haven't, you can. You can read a quotation in the New Testament, and then you can turn to the verse quoted, and you can read the quotation, you can read the verse, and it's not. It's not. And the reason is very simple. There are roughly 300 citations in the New Testament of Old Testament Scriptures. So in the ballpark, 300 times in the New Testament the Old Testament is quoted. Roughly 200 of those are quotations from the Septuagint. So it's like it happens, and all of you are familiar with this. One of us will get up here and give a sermon, and we will read from the New Living, or we'll read from the English Standard, or we'll read from something else. And you're sitting there reading in the New King James, and as we're reading what we're reading, you're not reading. Because we're reading to you from one translation, you are reading what we ask you to turn to in a different translation. The Septuagint is the source of some of the best doctrinal material when it comes to understanding second and third tithe. I'd like you to turn to Deuteronomy 12. In Deuteronomy 12, we're going to read a scripture that deals with second tithe. Verse 17, it says, and I'm reading from the New King James. So this is what the New King James says, So he says, Because the Jews who translated the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek wanted the Greeks to understand their religion. In the Septuagint, this verse would read, So if you, in your New Testament, you Google the word tithe and you have a strong's number and you punch the strong's number, it'll say, When the Jews translated this verse for the Greeks, the word they put in there was epidechaton. Epi meaning additional. And so there's a tithe, a decaton, we simply call it the first tithe. And there's an epidechaton, an additional tithe, which we simply call a second tithe. In Deuteronomy chapter 26, though, we round out the picture. Deuteronomy chapter 26 and verse 12 is talking about the third tithe. And it says in verse 12 of Deuteronomy 26, In this particular case, And the telltale sign is in the third year. This is how it would be translated from the Septuagint. When thou hast completed tithing, all the tithe of thine increase, the third year thou shall bring the second additional tithe to the Levite, the stranger, the father, and the widow, that they may eat in their gates and be merry. This tithe is described in the Greek. You know, when you and I read the first five books of the Bible, what crosses your mind when you see the word Deuteronomy? Do you know what Deuteronomy means? Deuteronomy is second. Deuteronomy means this is the second time I'm telling you my laws. I gave them to you in Exodus. It's 40 years later. I need to give them to you again. And so the name of the book where I give it again is Deuteronomy, second time.

In this particular verse, as it talks about the tithe, the Greek term is Deuteron Epidechaton, the second Epidechaton, the second additional tithe.

You know, commentators are all over the place. If you happen to bother going into a commentary, in fairness, they don't know whether they're coming or going. Some of them will catch a snippet of what we've just covered. But I'm still trying to find a commentator that will go all the way back to the Septuagint and say, here is how the Jews wanted the Greeks to understand how they practiced their religion.

Well, let's stop here and check the math. We're 20 percent into the claim that the church takes 30 percent, and we're well aware of the fact that, as I said earlier, the maximum is 10.

If we add the third tithe, do we add another 10 percent? I won't turn there. I will give you the citation Deuteronomy 14, verses 28 and 29, because we've already gone there in principle.

He talks about the third year as the year of the second additional tithe. We know, and it's a whole additional sermon to go into the math, God gave them a system that worked on seven-year cycles. And so they all understood that I'm working in seven-year cycles. I count one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and after that I go back to one.

And so every third year means one, two, three, that's a third year, four, five, six, that's a third year, seven. Now I go back to one. One, two, three, four, five, six. And so what it is is a third year and a sixth year in a cycle of seven years. And if you annualize the third tithe, let's say a person was trying to do the math, so they said, okay, in seven years God is telling me that I give a total of 20 percent third tithe in seven years.

Or 10 percent in year three and 10 percent in year six. It comes out to an annualized 2.86 percent per year. And so our claim of the church taking 30 percent of your income is at the absolute total maximum, 12.86, if you were maxed out. Far cry from the reputation, far cry from the image that is portrayed. But what is the third tithe? Between what I read you last time, the previous scripture, and the inferences and the other scriptures that I read earlier, it's not that hard to understand that if you wanted to give a title to third tithe, that title is very simple.

It is God's way of funding social services. Since I pastored for 50 years, it gave me the opportunity to literally administer tens of thousands of dollars of third tithe. To help widows and their children. To help those whose social security was not sufficient to keep a roof over their head. To help people who had lost a job and were trying to preserve a home while they were looking to replace the job they lost. To help people who had gone through tornado, hurricane, flood, or any other natural disaster that could have left them in the position of being unable to cover their bills.

That particular 10% does go to the church, and it is administered by the church. But that money is restricted. It is restricted both by God and by the church, as that money which funds social services. Far cry from the church being in your pocket to 30%, isn't it? And also skews the image of a body that simply is saying, gimme, gimme, gimme, and give me everything you have that you will let loose of.

And I'll try to find a way to see if I can get more of it. Well, now you've heard my apology. And as we close, I want you to turn to 1 Peter 3, verse 15. And as you're turning, I'd like to take you back to the beginning of the sermon, where I said the purpose of this sermon was to give an apology, but I caution you at the beginning that you do need to understand that there are apologies, and there are apologies. And I knew that you were familiar with biblical terminology, so I simply referenced Stephen. But here is the formal definition of the apology that I just gave from the dictionary.

Quote, A reasoned argument or writing in justification of something typically a theory or religious doctrine. I have just given you an apology. I ask you to turn to 1 Peter 3, and verse 15, for a simple reason. 1 Peter 3, 15 says, But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give an apology. To give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear.

So it isn't a, let's do combat, let's roll up our sleeves. It is done respectfully. It is done honorably. But God says every single one of us needs to reason and think in our minds in such a way that if asked, doesn't say you go out and cram it down someone's throat. It says, If you are asked, be able respectfully, meekly and humbly, to give an answer for the hope that lies within you.

So what's the conclusion of our charge and our response? Simple. The next time someone makes such kinds of charges to you, apologize.