This weekly feature is dedicated to Adventists who are looking for biblical insights into the topics discussed in the Sabbath School lesson quarterly. We post articles which address each lesson as presented in the Sabbath School Bible Study Guide, including biblical commentary on them. We hope you find this material helpful and that you will come to know Jesus and His revelation of Himself in His word in profound biblical ways.
Lesson 3: “The Tithing Contract”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problems with this lesson:
- This lesson ignores the hermeneutical principle of prescriptive and descriptive passages.
- This week’s argument is based on the model from the Mosaic covenant in spite of pre-law examples of tithing from Abraham and Jacob. Malachi 3 is not a contract with humanity describing tithe-paying.
- This lesson did not deal with any of the New Testament commands for the church regarding giving.
The assumption behind this lesson is that God has made a tithing contract that involves all mankind. Adventists have conscripted God’s words in Malachi 3 and have applied them to themselves, regarding Seventh-day Adventist churches and conferences as the “storehouse” which Malachi mentions when he reminds Israel to pay its tithes.
This entire lesson is misguided and arrives at an unbiblical conclusion because the author (in line with the Adventist organization) does not believe there is a distinct Old Covenant separate from the New Covenant. It holds to the Old Testament commands as His intention for us all.
What about Abraham?
One of the most important rules of hermeneutics is distinguishing between DESCRIPTIVE and PRESCRIPTIVE writing. Descriptive writing tells a story, or it gives the details of an account. It imply describes an event. Prescriptive writing, on the other hand, gives a command. It “prescribes” a behavior or action that the reader is expected to do.
For example, when God told Noah to build an ark before the flood came, that story found in Genesis 7 is a descriptive passage. We are never to read that account and deduce that we are to go into our yards and construct an ark to save the human race. God’s command with instructions to Noah to build the ark was prescriptive FOR NOAH, but when we read the story, we are simply reading a description of an event that is not a command to US.
Similarly, in Genesis 9 when God gives Noah the new rules for eating on the earth post-flood, that account was prescriptive. God gave not only the plants but also “everything that creeps on the ground” for food to the human race after the flood:
And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man (Genesis 9:1–5).
These commands God gave to every human being alive at the end of the flood, and the provision of flesh foods for humanity was a universal command. Not until God gave the levitical food laws to Israel in the books of Exodus and Leviticus did any part of humanity receive a new food law. Under the Mosaic law, God gave a PRESCRIPTIVE command to Israel that they should eat no “unclean” animals. When we read those passages in Exodus and Leviticus, however, we have to read them contextually.
For us on this side of the cross, the accounts in Exodus and Leviticus of the food law for Israel are merely DESCRIPTIVE passages for us. God clearly told Israel that those laws were for them, the nation He created and defined by His covenant through Moses. For us, living in the new administration of the new covenant, those laws for Israel are not prescriptive. Rather, when we read them, they are descriptive accounts of how God dwelt with Israel. They are not prescriptions for us.
Similarly, one cannot use the story of Abraham in Genesis 14 as a PRESCRIPTION for all people for all time. The account of Abraham paying a tithe of his war spoils to Melchizedek is a DESCRIPTIVE passage, an account revealing to us a truth that the writer of Hebrews fleshes out in Hebrews 7: Abraham, the one to whom God made the promises of seed, land, and blessing—the eternal covenant that God ratified without Abraham’s fallible promises (see Genesis 15)—this Abraham was NOT greater than Melchizedek. In fact, Melchizedek was greater than Abraham, a fact demonstrated by Abraham’s paying tithe to him. Furthermore, Hebrews 7 reveals even further that Melchizedek was greater than all the men who became the leaders of the tribes of Israel. Even Levi, the man who, with his descendants, eventually collected the tithes from Israel, figuratively paid tithe to Melchizedek because Levi was still “in the loins” of Abraham when Abraham paid tithe to Melchizedek! (See Hebrews 7 for the full explanation of this reality.)
The point of the story of Abraham and Melchizedek is that the person who received the unconditional covenant from God was not as great as the Lord Jesus. Jesus, in the order of Melchizedek, is a new kind of high priest, and the fact that Abraham paid tithe to a type of the Lord Jesus reveals that Jesus is greater than ALL the fathers of Israel.
Thus, the story in Genesis 14 of Abraham paying a tithe to Melchizedek and the explication of that story in Hebrews 7 are DESCRIPTIVE passages. They are accounts revealing to us that Jesus is greater than the Levites and greater even that Abraham, the one through whom all the spiritual blessings God promised flow to all believers. The story of Abraham’s tithe-paying is never a PRESCRIPTION for anyone else, not even for Israel. It is pure DESCRIPTION.
The laws of tithing which God gave to Israel were part of the Mosaic covenant, and they were described in detail and prescribed to every Israelite. Until the Lord Jesus came and FULFILLED the Mosaic covenant, all Israel was commanded to pay tithes as part of the national provision for the support of the Levites and also for the support of the Israelite families who couldn’t travel to Jerusalem for the mandated yearly feasts.
Thus, the laws of tithing in the Old Testament, including the prophetic reminders to them that they pay those tithes (as in Malachi 3)—those commands are PRESCRIPTIVE for Israel. The tithes were described in the law and were associated with the laws of firstfruits. They were commands given within the bounds of the Mosaic covenant, not with all people. These Old Testament commands, however, are not prescriptive for us on this side of the cross any more than animal sacrifices are prescriptive for us.
All the commands in the Law were prescriptive for Israel; the accounts of those laws for Israel are DESCRIPTIVE passages for us. The laws of the Mosaic Covenant were never commands to people living in the new covenant after Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection.
There was a reason Jesus inaugurated the new covenant the night before He died, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood” (Lk. 22:20; 1 Cor. 11:25). We have new prescriptions within the new covenant, and they are for those who believe in the Lord Jesus.
New Covenant Rules for Giving
The lesson never mentions the New Testament instructions for giving which God has given to the church. The descriptions given in the New Testament never describe professional clergy who needed to be paid by a nation or organization. The church, as we have said before, unlike Israel, was not a nation; it is comprised of individual born-again believers scattered throughout the nations. The entire organization of the church is different from Israel.
The lack of New Testament contextual commands is an egregious omission in a lesson on “tithing”.
First, all believers are asked to give generously, not under compulsion but according to what they have determined in their hearts to give. This passage from 2 Corinthians is a PRESCRIPTIVE passage for the church:
The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. As it is written, “He has distributed freely, he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures forever.”
He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God (2 Corinthians 9:6–11).
Notice the prescription for new covenant believers is to determine in one’s heart what one will give—and Paul encourages—prescribes—that individuals be “generous”. One-tenth is far too limiting to describe what God provides to believers for the sake of being generous to other believers in need. When we are in Christ, we are not bound nor guided by a percentage; we are guided individually by the Holy Spirit who equips us to give more than we might otherwise give.
Furthermore, we see in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9 example of taking collections from one local congregation of believers for the sake of supporting congregations in another area who are in need. The model is completely different for the church than it was for Israel.
In 1 Corinthians 9:13, 14, Paul uses a comparison with the priests in the temple to explain that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel:
Do I say these things on human authority? Does not the Law say the same? For it is written in the Law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.” Is it for oxen that God is concerned? Does he not certainly speak for our sake? It was written for our sake, because the plowman should plow in hope and the thresher thresh in hope of sharing in the crop. If we have sown spiritual things among you, is it too much if we reap material things from you? If others share this rightful claim on you, do not we even more?
Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ. Do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in the sacrificial offerings? In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel (1 Corinthians 9:8–14).
Although Paul uses the support of the Levites in Israel as an example to say those who preach the gospel should be supported as well (a prescription for the church), He does NOT apply the levitical laws of tithing to this provision.
Paul is also saying that those who proclaim the gospel are not to expect to receive a certain percentage from the church. In fact, Paul describes his own decision among the Corinthians NOT to receive payment for His gospel service among them.
Levites did not have the freedom to accept the support of tithes or not; the law decreed (prescribed) what the people were to give, and it prescribed the ways the Levites were to receive that tithe. In the new covenant, however, gospel workers have the freedom to accept support from believers or not, depending upon the circumstances, and believers have the personal freedom to decide how much they will give.
The idea of a central “storehouse” is never used in the new covenant. There was no central church governing body; local congregations supported one another and gladly received the apostles when they came to teach. Local church collected gifts for other local churches where there was need, and the apostolic itinerant preachers often helped to deliver those gifts to other locations.
Adventist Appropriation
“Words matter, and context is everything”, Elizabeth Inrig has often said to her women’s Bible studies. The context of all the Old Testament teaching on tithing is the Mosaic covenant and the nation of Israel. We do not have “permission” to apply the commands given to Israel living under the laws of the Mosaic covenant to any other people in any other setting.
Commands are given by God to specific people in specific contexts. What is prescriptive for an Israelite woman, for example, that she must stay home 40 days after giving birth to a girl, is not prescriptive for an American woman living in the 21st century. The laws of “clean” and “unclean” were part of the Mosaic covenant, and those laws were fulfilled in the Lord Jesus who said He came to FULFILL the law (Mt. 5:17).
In Christ, we are all clean, and the new covenant law of Christ—all the commands given to the church in the New Testament—are the prescriptions we live by now.
Adventism, however, has appropriated not only the law (that is, the portions of the law they want to keep) but also the identity of Israel. Adventism operates on a false assumption that it is the one true church, the Israel of God, the “remnant church” of Bible prophecy. As such, they believe, they have the right to appropriate whatever Old Testament laws suit their purposes.
Adventism has an organization that, ironically, resembles the Catholic organization more than it resembles evangelical Christian churches. It has a central General Conference which delegates regional authority to union and local conference offices. These conference offices receive and distribute Adventists’ tithe moneys to their paid clergy.
This model, as we have seen, is nowhere taught in the New Testament. Moreover, Adventism has taken texts out of context throughout the Old Testament (with a few passages from Hebrews and Acts thrown in) to create an illegitimate mandate for tithing.
Adventist tithing is, for all practical purposes, a “church tax”. The tithe is what keeps the organization running; hence the organization sees a need to spend an entire quarter’s Sabbath School lessons on teaching its unique rules for tithing. Using proof texts taken out of context, Adventism (led by the prophet Ellen White who laid the groundwork for this illegitimate use of Scripture) has created a doctrine based on the misuse of prescriptive and descriptive passages. It has ignored the first audience and the context of the Old Testament commands and has recombined the verses to make a new argument to hold Adventists is a vice grip of guilt related to giving.
If they do not give, Adventism teaches, they will not receive the material blessings from God. Only if they are faithful tithe-payers can they hope to receive God’s blessings.
Words matter, and context is everything. Passages are either prescriptive or descriptive. Context determines application and meaning.
Being faithful and generous with giving requires first that we be faithful and honest with the Word of God. When we rightly handle God’s word, we become grounded in truth and reality. God does not trick us, and He is faithful.
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