Out With The Old, In With The New
Entry posted by Standing Firm In Christ
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When teaching tithes , many teachers like to point out that tithing was mentioned before the Law.
But when teaching the tithe, many fail to teach the Scripture's account of the tithe. Instead, they teach an account that was invented by man in the late 8th Century A.D..
There was a tithe prior to the Mosaic/Levitic Law, but Hebrews records that there was a changing of the Law.
What was that change? Well, Melchizedek received tithes in Abram's day. But when the Law was handed down to Moses to be given to the children of Israel, the Laws that governed people prior to the Mosaic/Levitic Law changed.
Melchizedek was able to receive tithes of the spoils of war. Notice in the Word of God that there is no mention whatsoever of Abram ever tithing his own property, his own assets. No, Hebrews clearly reveals that Abram tithed the spoils of war.
But later, the Law changed. Melchizedek was no longer authorized to receive tithes. God gave that authority over to the Levites. If Melchizedek was benefitting at all from tithes before, it no longer mattered. He could not receive the as long as the Levites were in office.
But the authority wasn't the only thing that changed. The contents of the tithe also changed. Prior to the Mosaic/Levitic Law, the only thing mentioned being tithed were the spoils of war. When the Mosaic/Levitic Law was instituted, spoils of war could no longer be tithed. God told Moses in Numbers 31 that the amount to be given of the spoils of war was to be far, far less than ten percent.
But God still wanted a tithe. That tithe is described in Leviticus 27:30-33. It is a tithe of agricultural produce. This was the ordinance the Israelites were to OBserve under the Dispensation of the Mosaic/Levitic Law.... a tithe of agricultural produce. The Israelites had money, yet God did not want a tithe of money.
Later, after the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead, the Law was governing the tithe was disannulled. (Hebrews 7:18) God's Church has been brought into a new covenant, a new and living way. The old Covenant is no more.
Hebrews 8:12-13 For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more. In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away.
There is no command to tithe written in the New Covenant. To teach people under the rules of the Old Covenant that God proclaimed were ready to vanish away is to point away from the New Covenant and to bind people with burdens that they were not to be yoked to.
Acts 15:10 Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?
2 Corinthians 3:7 But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away:
The Old Covenant was a ministration of death in that, it could not save. It only could reveal to man that he was dead in trespasses and sin and that he needed a Saviour.
We are not taught to tithe in the Word of God. Why run to the house of the Law when God has freed us from the Law of sin and death?
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