Deuteronomy 14:22-29 Bible Study | Episode 897

March 18, 2025

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

Deuteronomy 14:22-29  Bible Study | Episode #897

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

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Transcript

This is Chad Harrison and you're listening to Hope Applying God's word to your daily life. Hi, this is Chad Harrison and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open up his word to you and allow you to see him and to know him and to know his will, that you might glorify him and that you might walk in faith and power each and every day, especially today in Jesus name. Well, good morning. Welcome to Lake Community Church's morning Bible study. We are in The Deuteronomy chapter 14, finishing out the chapter on. Well, Moses is telling them the rules for going into the promised land. He's giving them the law and he is giving them really his last two rides, telling them all the things that he wants them to know. Now he's going to give them a instruction on the tithe. Now, what I'm going to describe to you and what I'm going to explain to you is going to be foreign to your understanding of what the tithe is in our modern context. I know the question you're going to ask is, well, how did we get to the tithe in our modern context? And the answer I have for you is I don't have an answer for that. I don't really know how we got there. And I could make some assumptions, I could surmise some things about how you would get here, the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages and the early church and the Industrial Revolution and all that kind of stuff. But I'm not sure that my surmising about what might, or how it might have worked out, I don't know that I would even get close. In fact, probably strong likelihood is that I would not get close to that. And the reason is, is because I'm not sure, I'm not sure that, that if I, if I teach you that legalism or, or, or following the law is, is not a New Testament understanding. We live by the Spirit, and the Spirit leads us into all of the things that the law points us toward as far as God's character, his nature, his. His divine will. Once you kind of get to that understanding, it's hard for me to place on you a law called the tithe. But understanding the principle is really, really a good idea because Kathleen and I, my wife and I do not specifically tithe in the sense of we do not give a tenth, we give way more than a tenth. And that is because my understanding of giving to God, my understanding of G in Scripture, is way more than just trying to work out a mathematical equation where I put a dot and a one and I multiply that times my income. That would be 10% or a tenth, where we get the word tithe. I believe that God gives me increase, which, by the way, is the real principle of the tithe. God gives me an increase, and my responsibility is to honor him with my whole life, which would include the increase. And so when we get to this study of the tithe, I'm going to explain it to you from Deuteronomy, and then I'm going to encourage you to explore what God says in Malachi, what God says as far as his blessings toward you and see that you don't come to a better conclusion about giving money to God. My. My position is, is that I cannot outgive God. God has been the source of all of my wife and I's blessings. We are blessed tremendously. And God has. God has expanded our territories over and over and over again. I truly believe that's because I have given him. I've given him lordship over them. And in his lordship, he always is abundantly more than I could ever imagine. And he works that way. That's how he works. So let's go to the Scripture, because I do want you to see it and understand it. He says, you shall truly tithe. Tithe, meaning the 10th. It's just an easy word. 1 10th, 1 over 10. For those of you who are fractionally challenged, and there's a lot of people who are. I will tell you this. I've taught math in high school, back when I was younger, for a year or two, kind of on the side. And tell you the truth, fractionally challenged is a reality. There are a lot of people who struggle with math. Basically, you take whatever you've got and you divide it by 10, okay? And that is a 10th. He says, you shall truly tithe all the increase of your grain that the field produces year by year. Notice the increase of the grain. So let's say I have 100 bushels, and next year I increase to 110. So the increase would not be 110. The increase would be 10. And then I would take a 10th of a 10, which would be one bushel. Well, Pastor, that doesn't seem like a tithe to me. Well, I'm just telling you what the tithe was in the Old Testament, he says, and you shall eat before the Lord your God in the place where he chooses to make notice. This tithe is to be given to the priest at Jerusalem. Now he's saying to the place where I set aside. They don't know where God's going to set aside the temple. They're to bring it to the priest and they're to eat it there. They're to offer it as a sacrifice, offer it as an offering, and then they sit down and enjoy the benefit of it. He says, place where you choose his name to abide. The tithe of your grain and your new wine and your oil. Notice, all these things are tightly associated with an aspect of God's character, nature. You've got the grain, which is the bread, what we make bread from the bread of life, your new wine. That's the goodness of God. Your oil, that's the power of God, your firstborn of your herds and flocks. That is a true increase from God. That is a true increase as far as. Because the more animals you have, the more possibility you have for having more animals. And so God's in the business of exponential growth in your life. And having more animals is how you do the exponential growth. Oftentimes Kathleen will come home and the boss, or a boss, this has happened over the last 30 years. We'll say, well, I'll give you a $5,000 bonus, or you can take a 4% raise. And the 4% raise would be, you know, she'd be making, you know, maybe $40,000 a year. And the 4% raise would be, you know, $1600 or whatever. It would not be as much as. As much as the bonus. And she would always take the raise, the higher raise, rather than, you know, making. Getting a 3% raise, it would be up to 7%. Four more percent in the raise or you can have a bonus. She'd always take the raise. Why? Because the raise happens every year. If I get a 4% raise, I'm going to get paid that extra 4% every year from now on. And so it's an exponential increase. And so as you grow, as God grows you, he's not in the business of giving you bonuses. He's in the business of giving you raises. He wants to exponentially increase you. And that's what having new flock is for them. That you may learn to fear the Lord your God always. But if the journey is too long for you, so that you are not able to carry the tithe, or if the place where the Lord your God chooses to put his name is too far from you, when the Lord your God has blessed you. What he's saying is, if you can't carry your grain offering, or you can't carry your new goat or your new lamb or whatever, or your new calf all the way to Jerusalem, because maybe you live way up in the north of Israel, he says, what can you do? Well, you can exchange it for money. Now, remember? And I've done a Bible study on that recently. If you were listening to the podcast, you'd have to go to Facebook and find. I did a three hour seminar on money and on finances and things like that. Just a teaching seminar. And that seminar teaches you that money is just an exchange of value. Money is just a medium to exchange value. And when you start learning how to actually think about money in a, in a real sense, a true economic sense, when you, when you start thinking of money that way, you begin to realize it's not God. It's not the God. It's just an exchange of the energy of my efforts and my abilities for something else so that I can later on exchange it for something I need it for. And when you begin to treat money that way, all of a sudden money becomes not a guide to you. Money becomes a tool in your arsenal that God gives you to bless you with. And so he says, 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. I love this. And you shall spend that money for whatever your heart desires. Well, that's a cool thing for God to say. For oxen or sheep, or for wine or similar drink, or for whatever your heart desires. You shall eat, therefore, before the Lord your God, and you shall rejoice in your household. Notice, this is a celebration. The tithe is really a celebration of God's best. And what he says is just, you know, look, if, if you're, you know, if you're five days journey from Jerusalem, just sell what you were gonna give as a tithe. Sell it for money, Take the money, go to Jerusalem, buy a banquet with you and the, and the priest. Y'all just go to the best restaurant and get a good old banquet together and y'all celebrate God. And that's really what the tithe was all about anyway. It was about celebration. You didn't know that, did you? It was. He says, you shall not forsake the Levites who is within your gates, for he has no part nor inheritance with you. What he's saying is when you take that tithe into Jerusalem, don't forget the Levites that live near you, the Levites who take care of your spiritual needs on a regular daily basis. At the end of every third year, you shall bring out the tithe of the produce of that year and store it up within your gates. Notice. So two years you take it to Jerusalem. One year you actually leave it with the Levites around you. And so the tithe was only gathered as far as locally once every three years, and then they would send the rest off to the temple in Jerusalem. Now, we don't have that kind of set up as far as the church anymore today. But this doesn't really look like any of the modern ways we do tithing, does it? It really doesn't. He says at the end of the third year, you bring out the tithe of the produce of that year and store it up within your gates. And the Levites, because he has no portion nor inheritance with you, meaning he doesn't have the land and the stranger and the fatherless and the widow who are within your gates may come and eat and be satisfied. Notice the tithe is used inside the city gates to take care of the Levites and take care of the poor and needy, that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hand, which you do. Let me just give you just some insight. You say, I don't have time to watch that three hour video on finance. God is the source of everything you have. And giving needs to be such that it is an amount that recognizes he is the Lord of everything you have. And for some people, because you're laden with such debt and you have not been faithful with what God has given you, you can't give as much. And I know that, and everybody knows that. But if you want to get to a place where you do have much, first of all, you're going to have to begin to make God the God of your finances. He needs to be the God of your life, and he needs to be the God of your vocation, whatever your work you're involved in. And you need to do your work as to the Lord, and you need to live your life as to the Lord and allow God to begin to bless you at your vocation or at your work and open new doors and provide for you new opportunities. And you need to be faithful and true with what he's given you as far as how you spend it. Meaning you need to pay off those who owe debts to. And then ultimately you need to begin to save and to hold back your money and allow your medium of exchange of your efforts and your life, which is money, to grow so that eventually you have more and more opportunities. This is a lifestyle living, it's not a quick fix, over a year proposition, although some that work really, really hard can get to that. And you say, well, I'm young and I got children. And that's true. And let me say this, in that portion of your life, you're not going to save a whole lot. Usually that's just the way it goes. Why? Because you're investing your life and your resources not only into God's plan for your life, but you're investing them into your prodigy, your children, the, the, the, the people that are going to be the major portion of who your life is about for the rest of your life. And so that's okay. It's okay to invest it in your children, investing in what they're doing and invested into growing them up. But that whole idea of investing into God's kingdom, investing into your labor, your vocation, the things you do, and investing it into your family and your children and the people around you, that whole idea of doing that, if you will do it in your 20s, on into your 40s, then you'll get good at it. And by the time you get in your 40s, your children start getting older and they'll start beginning to take on their role in society and they'll move out and they'll get married and they'll start having their children. And your continual growth and investment into the things God has for you to do will increase. And all of a sudden there'll be great increase there. And that's when you really are a blessing to the whole world and to the community as this is talking about, and to, and to, and to your family. And I just pray that that'll be the case for you, that you'll learn how to do that if you're in your 20s or 30s, that you'll learn how to, how to invest your life hardcore into what you do for a living, what you do with your family and what you do in your community and your church. And then one day when you wake up, you will be a blessing to a lot of people. And that's what the Christian life is about. And it's a long term thing, it's not a short term thing. And so I pray that that'll be the case as you go today. I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you, that he'll make his face to shine upon you and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.