Something We Ought To Know About Our Income
What you earn is not yours; there is a prior claim on it. The man that says, “What I earn with my own labor is mine and it is nobody’s business what I do with it; I produced it; it belongs to me,” is mistaken. What we earn or produce doesn’t belong to us–none of it–not until the Lord receives His part.
God has a prior claim on it. God the Creator claims it all. It is His by right as Creator. You say, “But didn’t I create it? Didn’t I produce it?” Not exactly. Everything produced, money and all that money can buy, came out of the earth. We didn’t produce that–God created that. All you did was apply certain energy and physical action and thinking to what God created and owned. And God even created the energy you expended. He created the brain that you use for thinking. He not only created, but He sustains what He created, including force and energy. So after all, it was God’s labor of creating and sustaining that really produced everything. God’s claim to its ownership is valid.
God tells us in His Word, “The earth is the LORD’s, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein” (Psalms 24:1). This is repeated in 1 Corinthians 10:26. “. . . whatsoever is under the whole heaven is mine” (Job 41:11). “Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens is the LORD’s thy God, the earth also, with all that therein is” (Deuteronomy 10:14). God says, “If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof” (Psalms 50:12). “. . . for all the earth is mine” (Exodus 19:5). “For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills” (Psalms 50:10). “The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, saith the LORD of hosts” (Haggai 2:8). Dare any deny this claim of God? These same words of God are the words by which every man will be judged at last; and if any man denies God’s claim, the decision will be rendered against him at the Judgment.
Our income belongs to God to do with as He wills according to holy writ.
How the Law Regulates It
God is a God of love. He created everything for us provided we cooperate with Him. God was not interested in our getting rich. What He was interested in was not only our own souls but the souls of everyone living. He said it was not His will that any should perish but that all should come unto Him and be saved. That is God’s business, and when we are born again, that is our business; and what God is asking of us is to be our partner–silent partner if you please–but nevertheless, powerful partner.
So God, the rightful owner of all things including our income, has made a law respecting its disposal and its use. By virtue of being creator and sustainer of the earth and everything in it, God is the supreme lawgiver.
God’s law respecting what you earn is, in fact, a deal He has made with you.
He allows you to work on His earth to use a part of the earth or what is on it or in it. In fact, we are stewards over God’s heritage. There is everything in and on the earth to sustain the human race. Yes, we can develop the country, and whether we work at a job or on the farm, buy or sell in any kind of business, let us remember that we are in partnership with God; and we are on our honor. I want to show that He is the best partner–there’s no other partner like this one. He furnishes us the land and everything on it. In fact, He furnishes everything, even the clothes, the energy, and the brains to think with. He not only furnishes the brains and energy, but He sustains all of the things that He furnishes. What a wonderful God we are in partnership with.
If we will sit down and count up what we get from God, we will find that he supplies all that we make or produce. God only takes one-tenth. After you pay God His one-tenth, then and not until then are you entitled to take the other nine-tenths. Not one penny of what you earn or produce belongs to you until you pay your tithe. If we fail to pay God His tithe, we are stealing the whole thing.
What does God want of His tenth? He wants to spread the gospel to the world. If God’s people that are called by His name had paid their tithes and offerings, we would not be in war today. The communists would not have such a hold on the world.
Does It Pay To Tithe? Yes
I know a man who thought he was tithing. One Sunday morning he heard a message on tithing and he found out that he was not tithing–only partly tithing. He told a brother that the preacher just tore him all to pieces, and he decided he would tithe the Bible way. Well, he did. This man was badly in debt, but he started to keep books with the Lord, and in just a few years he was out of debt. Now I believe he owns his own farm if I am not mistaken. His wife was in bad health, and her health is much better now. I don’t say that the tithing was the cause of his wife getting well, but I do say that God healed her. There’s no doubt in my mind but what that and other things, such as walking in the light and the prayers of God’s people, played a part. The last time I saw the woman, she didn’t look like the same person. I don’t believe I ever talked with a tither but what he or she said that they made more money when they tithed than when they did not.
Listen to what God says on the subject of tithing, and I quote: “Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings. Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation. Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the LORD of hosts. And all nations shall call you blessed: for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the LORD of hosts” (Malachi 3:8-12).
God has promised to protect your crops from the pests. He doesn’t only promise to protect your crops, but He also sustains your body. Oh, if we could just realize the goodness and mercies of God, how much better off we would be. For all of the privileges, He only requires one-tenth of what we produce. We ought to be eager to accept that kind of partnership and willing to throw in a good offering quite regularly. Besides, we don’t own a thing until we pay God His rent. If we rent a farm for so much money, the whole crop holds good for the rent unless it is otherwise secured.
Some will say, “I don’t know how to figure the tithe.” Well, it is easy. You surely want to be just as honest with God as you would be in your dealings with your neighbor. If you sell your crop and don’t feed it, one-tenth of what it brings is the Lord’s, and if you raise your stock and also raise the grain to feed them out, one-tenth of what it all brings is the Lord’s. If you have to buy a part of the feed, the amount you have to buy is deductible, and if you buy the cattle, the purchase price of the cattle is deductible, and for any other stock it would be the same. It is deductible assuming you have paid tithe on the purchase price you paid for stock. Everything that we produce on the land or get out of the land–gold or silver, oil, or anything of value–one-tenth of it belongs to God. If we work at a job, one-tenth of all we take in is the Lord’s tithe. In that way we are in full partnership with the Lord, not only materially but spiritually.
The tenth that we give the Lord, He uses to spread the gospel, and if the people that call themselves Christians had paid their tithe and dealt fairly with Him, this would have been a nice place to live. There would have been plenty of money to take care of the poor and to send missionaries and to take care of the Lord’s work. If we had dealt fairly and honestly with the Lord, this would have been a great place to live, and we never would have heard of communism or wars or pestilence. Remember what he promised Malachi.
You know the Bible tells us that it rains on the just and on the unjust. That was assuming that God’s people paid their tithe, but so few of God’s people pay their tithe. God punishes His people that don’t pay their tithe, and to punish His people, He has to punish the unjust also. We not only rob God, but we hinder His work. Men and women are going into eternity without God because we think more of money than we do of souls. Remember that God uses the tithe we give Him to send missionaries to the heathen that never have heard of our Christ or His Father. Also, we use a part of the tithe to pay our preachers and to Christianize our own people at home and to build churches and publishing houses or anything that will help the cause of the gospel.
Suppose we look at this from a fair and honest point of view. In Ephesians, Paul tells them in his epistle, “According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love” (Ephesians 1:4). So we can see why God created the world, we might say, to place upon it a holy people. God never overlooks anything. In fact, He counts the cost, so He created it to be self-supporting. In order for it to be that way, the people that He placed on the earth were to be holy, and holy people are honest. Now I am not trying to say that every person that claims to be holy is honest, but I do say that every holy person that is really holy is honest. I don’t say that every person that fails to pay his or her tithe is dishonest. There are people right here in America that have never heard of tithing. Most of the preachers in the older churches don’t preach on tithing, but we ought to remember that we will not escape the responsibility because the preacher doesn’t preach on it. The Book teaches it, and if we will search the scriptures, we will find it in them.
If the people that profess to be Christians had paid their tithe since the Reformation, the world would have been evangelized. As they have failed, it is plain to be seen where the blame is. Let us remember that God never overlooks anything and never makes a mistake. If we had paid our tithe, we would have had the opportunity of having part in the work which we–being partners with God–were supposed to do. When we stop to think that the world and everything in it and on it is the Lord’s, we as God’s people have failed Him. We haven’t paid God a thing until we have paid our tithe. The tithe is just the rent we owe, and until we give Him an offering, we haven’t paid anything. We even belong to Him by right of creation. It is wonderful, the goodness and mercies of God.
He gives us health and strength. We are indebted to Him for the breath we draw. He furnishes us the sunshine and rain. Without any one of the above, we would be helpless. He promises to protect us, and remember that we can claim every promise if we meet the conditions, and we can’t justly claim a single one unless we do meet the conditions. If we would meet the conditions, we could be farming under a blanket insurance of having a full crop of everything. Listen to what He says: “Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the LORD of hosts” (Malachi 3:10-11).
I would rather have the promise of God than of any insurance company in this old sin-cursed world. If we as a church had been honest with God, all of the nations of the world would be calling us blessed. But we failed to keep our part of the plan, and we are not being called blessed. That being the case, who is going to answer for the failure? We never will know how many souls will be lost because the people of the Lord have failed. Well, all I can say is this–it is awful to think about.
THIS MESSAGE WRITTEN BY
J W WHITNEY
THIS 23rd day of FEB 1954
© 1957 J. W. Whitney
All Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, King James Version (KJV).
For clarity and ease of reading, this sermon has been edited and condensed by Barbara Carpenter and Wynona Haun (granddaughters of J. W. Whitney) with special help from Elvin Dillard and Marie Haun. The author’s primary message remains.
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