Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church

We’ve been talking about the reason why we approached the place we have today in the study of God’s word. Several months ago we were going through Psalm 15. We read some verses there about not loaning money out at usury. We know that’s qualified by the rest of scripture to the poor. And so we began talking about the obligations of the covenant people. That’s what Psalm 15 is all about—covenant inclusion in the covenant nation.

We talked about the requirements of citizenship, that in terms of our relationship to the poor. And we also read, for instance, in Isaiah 58 and other passages of scripture where God commends his church to have a vital concern for the poor. Additionally, about that time George Grant’s book was getting some circulation, bringing in the sheaf, and we decided to eventually get to the place of discussing that book and rowing up some position papers for the church in relationship to some of those issues.

That’s kind of the background for why we wanted to begin a study of those sorts of things with the poor tithe. And we wanted to not just jump into the tithe. We wanted to lay a good foundation in terms of what the tithe is first. And so we spent a week, for instance, talking about the tithe in general and establishing the fact that the tithe is for today. That the tithe is a covenantal fact and that the tithe belongs to God.

And to take the tithe is to keep the tithe and not give it to God, as a denial of your covenant relationship to him, is also sacrilege, which is theft from God.

We then went on to talk about the Levitical tithe. And we talked about the fact that God had definitively established the use of the tithe for the Levites under the system that he was developing for the people of Israel as they went into a land to possess it.

The tithe predates that, of course, in terms of Abram and Jacob, and also probably goes all the way back to creation itself. But in terms of understanding how the tithe is to work in a nation, we look at the Levitical tithe and understand that God had given the tithe to the Levites specifically. So the institution of that particular use of the tithe was for the Levites. Additionally, we looked at the historical record and saw that whenever Israel had fallen into apostasy, one of the steps back in terms of reconstruction and reformation was to restore the tithe.

And we looked at the historical record that shows the restoration of that tithe was for the purpose of supporting Levites. And that’s important because Levites are to preach the word of God and to teach the word of God and show the application of the word of God to all of life. And so it’s very important to recognize that’s the primary use of the tithe.

And then we established the fact that today’s elders perform the same function in the church as the Levites did in the Old Testament.

We’ll have more to say about that in the next six months. Hopefully, at this point my plan is, after we finish with a study of the poor in scripture, to move on to a study of the offices of the Old Testament to lay a foundation for the New Testament eldership. We’re a growing church. We’ll have to be adding elders soon. We want to understand the office of elder in relationship to the entire scripture and not just look at a truncated New Testament view.

By the way, in that regard, I’ll probably be using The Hebrew Republic by E.C. Wines as a good beginning work and a reference work. And if you want to start looking through that book, if you have a copy, it’d be a good idea.

In any event, today’s elders have a parallel function to the Levites in establishing the word of God and its relationship to all of society. We talked about how, for instance, in the time of Hezekiah, the Levites were to be supported again so that they could devote themselves to the word of God. In the New Testament, the elders, at one time who were apparently involved in some of these other things, had deacons established so they could devote themselves to the study of the word of God and prayer.

And so you see a parallel development there. And we know from First Timothy that elders were definitely supported, not necessarily full-time, but in relationship to the amount of labor they put into that task.

We then spent a week talking about the rejoicing tithe, and we did that on Easter Sunday. And we talked about the fact that the tithe is a rejoicing sort of event. It’s not to be seen as binding only, of course, but it’s not just binding. It’s a blessing for us to be able to tithe and to support the work of God and to recognize through the tithe his ownership of all of our money and his use of all of our money and all of our energy for his purposes. And it should be a fact of rejoicing.

And we’re actually commanded in scripture to use a portion of the tithe to rejoice before God, buying whatever your heart desires—you know, ox or a strong drink or wine, whatever. And we in this church believe that’s still in effect. We believe that our love feast at the end of the service is parallel to some of that rejoicing that went on before God in a centralized location in Jerusalem.

And so it’s proper to use a portion of your tithe to support that rejoicing time we have together downstairs every week. And that means it’s proper to use a portion of your tithe to spend for the food or strong drink. No, we don’t have any strong drink downstairs, do we? But sometimes when we go away for a special time of rejoicing, there’s strong drink. There’s not a thing wrong with that.

In fact, you know, probably most of you know that Greg Bahnsen was asked if wine was a thing indifferent. There was a technical term, “things indifferent,” which means you can’t really legislate on the fact of whether or not we have, you know, Cheerios or Wheaties tomorrow morning for breakfast. And in this question-answer period they asked him about wine and if that also was a thing indifferent. He said no, it’s not, because it’s commanded by God that we drink wine and that God’s given us wine to make our hearts happy.

And specifically, of course, he instituted wine in the communion service. And so wine is not a thing to be in the negative light that we have seen in this country. On the other hand, the Christian position has always been temperance.

At any event, we talked about rejoicing before God being commanded and being a natural result of understanding the proper use of the tithe. I tried to stress there, and I’m not sure how well I did this frankly, but what I was trying to stress during that service is that rejoicing is a covenant fact. To rejoice outside of the covenant does injustice to what the scriptures tell us to rejoice about.

If you study the word “rejoicing,” particularly in the Old and New Testaments combined, you’ll see that God has specific things that he expects us to rejoice in. And those things are related to the covenant.

The first thing we’re supposed to rejoice in, in terms of the covenant, is the king—the king of the covenant, the suzerain, if you will, in light of what we’ve been talking about with Reverend Sutton here for the last week. We’re to rejoice in our king who saves us, who establishes the covenant.

We’re to rejoice in his law. What’s the law? It’s not an isolated set of precepts to say what’s right in society. It’s a law of the covenant. It establishes covenant relationship. And Jesus Christ kept all portions of the law for us that we’d have a covenant relationship to God. And so we now are to keep that law, to look upon it in a rejoicing fashion, to rejoice in the law of God.

A relative of mine was doing a study on the lifting up of hands. And I did a little search—you know, I had this computer program now and it’s easy to kick out a lot of verses. So I looked up raising of hands, and one of the scriptures in the Psalms talks about raising our hands to the testimonies and the laws of God. And it’s important to recognize that all this sign of rejoicing and of obedience and worship to God revolves around the covenant and the law of the covenant.

And then we’re to rejoice also in the results of the covenant for the covenant people—the blessings of God. And we saw specific verses then about rejoicing in the family. How the husband is to rejoice in the wife of his youth; the husband is to stay at home the first year of their marriage instead of going off to war. Why? So he can cheer up his wife. And the word there—we talked about it—it’s the same word for rejoicing, to teach her to rejoice in the marriage as well.

And so we have covenant family being a family that’s rejoicing, the wife and the husband and the husband and the wife. And then also Proverbs talks about rejoicing in a wise son. So the family should be a place of rejoicing because of its inclusion in the covenant and being a covenant relationship with God.

Work—vocational calling—should be a time of rejoicing. We can rejoice in the work that God has given us to do if we understand it in terms of its covenant relationship to God, a vocational calling. And then finally, the civil government is a thing to rejoice in—godly rulers. And so all these things about rejoicing also, like everything else we’ve been talking about, revolves around the covenant and a proper understanding of the covenant.

All that by way of introduction. Today we’re going to talk about what’s been termed the poor tithe. So if you turn your Bibles to Deuteronomy 14 and Deuteronomy 26, we’re going to be reading a couple of verses in both chapters, and these are specifically the two chapters in the scriptures that relate to what people have called the poor tithe.

Deuteronomy 14:22-29 and then Deuteronomy 26:12-19. Deuteronomy 14:22-29 first:

“Thou shalt truly tithe all the increase of thy seed that the field bringeth forth year by year. And thou shalt eat before the Lord thy God, in the place which he shall choose to place his name there, the tithe of thy corn, of thy wine, and of thine oil, and the firstlings of thy herds and of thy flocks, that thou mayest learn to fear the Lord thy God always.

And if the way be too long for thee, that thou art not able to carry it, or if the place be too far from thee, which the Lord thy God shall choose to set his name there, when the Lord thy God hath blessed thee, then shalt thou turn it into money, and bind up the money in thine hand, and shall go into the place which the Lord thy God shall choose. And thou shalt bestow that money for whatsoever thy soul lusteth after, for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatsoever thy soul desireth.

And thou shalt eat there before the Lord thy God, and thou shalt rejoice, thou and thine household. And a Levite that is in thy gates, thou shalt not forsake him, for he hath no part, nor inheritance with thee. At the end of three years, thou shalt bring forth all the tithe of thine increase the same year, and shalt lay it up within thy gates. And the Levite, because he hath no part nor inheritance with thee, and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, which are within thy gates, shall come, and shall eat, and be satisfied, that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hand which thou doest.”

Then in Deuteronomy 26:12-19, this portion of scripture we just read, of course, refers—the first part to the rejoicing tithe and the last few verses to what’s been called the poor tithe—to show the connection there.

In Deuteronomy 26:12-19:

“When thou hast made an end of tithing, all the tithes of thy increase in the third year, which is the year of tithing, and hast given it unto the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, that they may eat within thy gates, and be filled.

Then thou shalt say before the Lord thy God, I have brought away the hallowed things out of mine house, and also have given them unto the Levite, and unto the stranger, to the fatherless, and to the widow, according to all thy commandments, which thou hast commanded me. I have not transgressed thy commandments, neither have I forgotten them. I have not eaten thereof in my mourning. Neither have I taken away ought thereof for any unclean use, nor given ought thereof for the dead.

But I have hearkened to the voice of the Lord my God, and have done according to all that thou hast commanded me. Look down from thy holy habitation from heaven, and bless thy people Israel, and the land which thou hast given us, as thou swearest unto our fathers, a land that floweth with milk and honey. This day the Lord thy God hath commanded thee to do these statutes and judgments. Thou shalt therefore keep and do them with all thy heart and with all thy soul.

Thou hast avouched the Lord this day to be thy God, and to walk in his ways, and to keep his statutes, and his commandments, and his judgments, and to hearken unto his voice. And the Lord hath avouched this day to be his peculiar people, as he hath promised thee, and that thou shouldest keep all his commandments, and to make thee high above all nations, which he hath made, in praise, and in name, and in honor, and that thou mayest be an holy people unto the Lord thy God, as he hath spoken.”

Let’s pray.

Father God, we thank you for yourself. We thank you, Father God, for your scriptures, the revelation they are to us, the pure words we find therein. Father, we know that you’ve commanded us to tithe in covenant faithfulness to you. And we seek now to understand how to do that. We pray the blessing of your Holy Spirit in terms of these words that we’ve just read, that he would teach them to us, that we’d understand the meaning of them with the idea that we would obey them.

Father, we desire to obey. We desire to comply with your statutes and regulations regarding the tithe. Give us now some understanding, that we may know how to properly do that. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

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Now, the word of God has a lot to say about the poor. It should be rather obvious that God is very concerned with the poor. There’s lots of verses in the scriptures that talk about the poor.

Deuteronomy 15 says that because the poor will never cease out of the land, therefore God commands us to open our hand wide unto thy brother, to the poor and to the needy in thy land. God commands us to do that.

Psalm 10: “Thou hast seen, for thou beholdest mischief and spite to require it with thy hand. The poor committeth himself unto thee, unto God.” In other words, thou art the helper of the fatherless. Poor commit the way to God, and God helps the fatherless and the poor.

Proverbs 14: “He that despiseth his neighbor sinneth. But he that hath mercy on the poor, happy is he,” the blessing results from our having mercy upon the poor. “He that oppresseth the poor reproacheth his maker, but he that honoreth him hath mercy on the poor. He that honors God will have mercy on the poor. So you can’t honor God if you don’t have mercy on the poor.”

Proverbs 19: “He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord, and that which he hath given will he pay him again.” There’s financial reward to honoring the poor and to lending to them when we’re in essence lending unto God.

Proverbs 21: “Whoso stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he also shall cry himself, but shall not be heard. If you hear poor people, and we’re going to try to define that over the next few weeks, if you hear poor people crying and close your ear to it, when you cry out to God, he won’t hear you.”

Proverbs 28: “He that giveth unto the poor shall not lack, but he that hideth his eyes shall have many a curse. The king that faithfully judges the poor, his throne shall be established forever.” Note there—it doesn’t say the king that establishes welfare programs. It says the king who judges the poor correctly. Civil magistrate in relation to the poor is to have equal justice for them. And we find in the nation of Israel historically that was one of their sins—as they perverted the justice due to the poor and the widow and the orphan and the stranger. And that same thing’s true today, and we’ll talk about that in future weeks as well. It’s not always easy to see how the poor are abused or how the poor are not treated justly. And we’ll talk about some of those things in the next few weeks.

Proverbs 31: “She stretched out her hand to the poor; yea, she reacheth forth her hand to the needy.” The Proverbs woman of Proverbs 31 has a concern, an active concern for the poor, for doing what’s right for her.

So we know that God’s scriptures talk a lot about the poor. Calvin in his Institutes talks about—has a section on church treasuries, their contributions to the poor—and he gives many historical occurrences that he says are completely correct where the early church and others would build nice buildings and have nice things, but if it was necessary for feeding people or for rescuing people, they would melt down the golden plates they made to hold the communion waters. They melt them down and sell them to help the poor.

Thus Cyril and Famine seized the province of Jerusalem and the distress could not otherwise be relieved, sold vessels and vestments and spent the money on poor relief. Acacius, bishop of Amida, when a great multitude of Persians was dying from famine, calling together his clergy, delivered this famous speech: “Our God needs neither plates nor cups, for He neither eats nor drinks.” Then he melted the vessels to obtain both food and the price of ransom for the pitiable folk.

Jerome also, when he invades against excessive splendor of churches, honorably mentions Exuperius, bishop of Toulouse in his day, who carried the Lord’s body in a wicker basket and his blood in a glass vessel but suffered no man to hunger.

Ambrose also talks about this. When the Arians reproached him for having broken the sacred vessels to ransom prisoners, he used this wonderful excuse: “He who sent out the apostles without gold also gathered churches without gold. The church has gold not to keep but to pay out and to relieve distress. What need to keep what helps not? Or are we ignorant of how much gold and silver the Assyrians carted off from the temple of the Lord?

Would it not be better for the priest to melt it to sustain the poor if other resources are lacking than for a sacrilegious enemy to bear it away? Will not the Lord say, ‘Why have you allowed so many needy to die of hunger? Surely you had gold with which to minister sustenance? Why were so many prisoners carried off and not ransomed? Why were so many killed by the enemy? It were better for you to preserve vessels of living men than of metals.’”

And Calvin says, “This is completely proper.” To those who cannot give reply, for what would you say? “I was afraid lest the temple of God lack ornament,” he would reply, “the sacraments do not require gold, nor do those things pleased with gold that are not bought with gold. The ornament of the sacraments is the ransom of prisoners.”

To sum up what the same man said in another place—we see to be very true: “Whatever then the church had was for the support of the needy. Likewise the bishop had nothing that did not belong to the poor.”

Now we know that in the Old Testament, of course, God specifically required various beautiful vessels to be made for his habitation. That was not wrong. But what the early church fathers said is that has God required the same thing of us today—now that we have the reality that those things were a shadow of? Now there are those in the land in the Christian Reconstruction movement who believe in beautiful churches, but I think it’s a proper balance to recognize that historically the church has not built up art edifices and beautiful adornments for the church at the expense of helping the poor or the oppressed.

Now it’s obvious then that the scriptures and historical evidence of the church shows a great concern on the part of the church for the poor. And we’re going to be talking about that in future weeks.

However, although the title of today’s talk is the poor tithe, that’s not what we’re going to talk about today. I think that the poor tithe is probably not a good name for the tithe that we want to consider now. And for that reason, although I’ve just talked about God’s importance of the poor, we’ll deal with that in later messages. Today’s message we’re going to look at specifically the groups that God tells us to include in that particular tithe.

And you’ll notice the poor doesn’t come up there once. Now I think a better term—and we’ll see this as we go through—for what we’re going to talk about today would be the third-year local tithe, as opposed to the poor tithe.

The distinctiveness of the tithe that we’re going to talk about today was not its inclusion of poor people. The distinctiveness was number one, it was the third year, and number two, it was administered locally. And as such, it completed the tithing cycle. And so in Deuteronomy 26, it calls the third year “the year of the tithe.” It completed the tithing cycle. There were two years where the tithe was administered nationally, primarily, and there was the third year when it was administered locally.

And so it completed the cycle of tithing—the third-year local tithe. Now why do I say that?

Well, the word of God has lots of references to these three groups that are specifically mentioned in addition to the Levites in this passage of scripture that are to be specifically mentioned in terms of receiving some of that tithe. Those three groups are the fatherless, the widow, and the strangers. Now if you do a search in the scriptures where all three of those words occur in each verse, there’s seventeen references in the Old Testament where those three words occur as a unit.

In a couple of those references, the poor are thrown in, but in most of them, the poor are not included. Okay. So there’s something specific about these three references apart from just a generalized sense of the poor that’s important in the word of God. And so I think it’s important when we get to who this tithe goes to, to talk about that a little bit more.

Additionally, we talked about the rejoicing tithe, and we know that the rejoicing tithe was to finance the participation of the family and the Levite at the Feast of Booths, or Tabernacles, which is like at the end of the harvest. Okay. And it says that he would go up and rejoice before the Lord. However, in Deuteronomy 16:11 and 14, there are specific references to include the same group of people: the widows, the strangers, and the fatherless.

And I’m using “fatherless” instead of “orphans” for a good reason, which we’ll talk about a little bit later because the word of God is first and foremost, and I think there’s a distinction to be made. Those same three groups—widows, fatherless, and strangers—are included in the rejoicing that’s to occur at both the Feast of Weeks and the Feast of Booths. Okay?

There were three times when the men of Israel had to go out and present themselves to God. Two of those times were the Feast of Weeks—it’s also called Pentecost or Hag—Feast of Harvest or Firstfruits came forward. Then there was the Feast of Booths or Tabernacle or Ingathering.

At both those occurrences, it says specifically in Deuteronomy 16:11-14 that the rejoicing that’s to occur there is to include not the poor—there we go—the widow, the strangers, and the fatherless. So it’s wrong to get in your mind that the first two years’ tithe excluded the widows, the fatherless, and the strangers. You understand what I’m saying? When you went up to rejoice, although the rejoicing time specifically makes reference to yourself and a Levite, other places in the scripture specifically Deuteronomy 16:14 tells us that at that same feast—at the Feast of Booths—and this rejoicing is occurring, that the widows, the strangers, and the fatherless were also there rejoicing.

Okay. So what I’m saying is perhaps their inclusion was not financed by the tithe. We don’t know that for certain, but they were there and they were rejoicing with the tither and his family. Okay.

So the third-year distinctive is not the fact that this group of three is with you rejoicing in your homes or in your local towns. It’s not the inclusion of that three—those three groups. You understand that? Because we know that they were also at the Feast of Booths where we are told to rejoice with God.

It’s proper therefore, when we come together to rejoice Sunday afternoon in our meal together, to not just have a sporadic inclusion of the fatherless, the widows, and the strangers, but to have a continual inclusion of them if we know them. If we are going to make use of these verses, you understand what I’m saying? It’s not a sporadic inclusion of them in rejoicing. It’s a continual inclusion.

So the distinctiveness is not the emphasis on those three groups.

We’re going to talk real briefly about how much was this portion of the tithe to be, how is it to be distributed, and to whom. Okay.

First, how much of the tithe went to support the inclusion of the fatherless, the widows, and the strangers, specifically in this third tithe? We don’t really know, do we? It seems that from Deuteronomy 26, where we talk about we’ve made an end of tithing all the tithes of thy increase in the third year, it does seem there that a portion of it was definitely given over to each of these three members as well as to the Levite, because he says, “I have given it to these people.” And in the institution of this third-year tithe, it says you’re to lay it up in your gates. So we know that there is this specific portion that is specifically designated to the fatherless, the strangers, and the widows, but we don’t know how much it is.

Now you could—I’m not sure this would be correct—but if you want to have a figure for your own household, you could look at that third tithe and say that those four groups are all mentioned simultaneously. And so each one of them, the Levite, as well as the fatherless, widow, and stranger, that each one would get 25% of that third-year tithe. If you want to do that, that’s fine with me. And it might not be a bad idea if that’s true.

That means out of the three-year cycle, 75% of your tithe went to the Levites and about 8 or 9% went to each of those other three groups. You can divide it up that way if you want to. I’m not sure that’s the vehicle to use, however. But if you’re looking for a figure in order to serve as a guideline for you to apply in terms of the distribution of this, you can use that as a figure.

Remember that we said all along that what we’re talking about here is the method of distribution of the tithe. We know the tithe is definitively established in numbers for the primary use of the Levites and their ministry and teaching the word of God in every area of life. We know that from the historical record. But we know also here that in terms of how you distribute that, the first and second years were national and the third year was local. And that the third year makes specific reference and specific commanding reference to inclusion of using some of your tithe money for the support of widows, strangers, and fatherless.

So how much? I don’t know. I’d figure 8 or 9% maybe, if you want to use a pretty structured format based upon those three-year cycles you understand how I got there. First year basically went to the Levite; second year to the Levite; third year 25% each to the Levite, fatherless, widows, and strangers. So you add all those up, you get 75% going to the Levite, 8 or 9% going to each of those other three groups. So you’re actually, if you want to know how much, I’d use that as a basis—not a significant portion is one way to think about that, isn’t it? The significant portion still was to provide for the Levites or elders in the land.

Now it’s important there that I just mentioned briefly what we’re going to do over the next few weeks is we’re going to look at some of these different groups. First, the fatherless and the widows and the strangers and the poor. And we’re going to look at not just in relationship to the poor tithe, but the other mechanisms that the word of God has put in place or commanded us to do to assist these people.

So don’t think that we’re cutting them short here by not giving them very much of the tithe. It’s not the primary purpose of the tithe to support widows, fatherless, and strangers. The primary vehicle to do that is gleaning, and we’ll get into that in future weeks. But right now we’re talking about the tithe. So how much? I don’t know. You can use that as a guideline.

Secondly, how do we go about distributing this tithe? This is another hot question, particularly in the reconstruction perspective, because now we say, “Well, we’ve got a tithe—how do we do it?”

Now, as I said, the distinctive of the third year was that it was locally administered. You didn’t take it up to the place where God put his name. You did it in your towns, within your gates. Now we don’t have any specific centralized geographic location anymore. And as a result, we are now in a position of always distributing it locally.

There is no central place where God has set his name. He’s claimed the whole earth now, not even a nation in the center of a nation. He’s claimed the whole earth. And so we’re in a completely decentralized situation. Everybody agrees with that. We don’t say that two years we go up to some mountaintop and deposit the tithes there. It’s decentralized. So we’re in that third-year situation now continually in terms of the local—it is to be distributed locally.

Normatively for us now, that’s what it’s always been distributed—is locally.

Now there are some who believe that it is to be deposited solely with the institutional church. Even that portion of it that we’re talking about today, that’s been called the poor tithe, that portion that’s to go to the widow, the fatherless, and the stranger, they believe even that should go to the church. The church then sets up some sort of benevolence fund and distributes that as the elders of the gate think proper.

They base that upon the fact that in the scripture we just read, God tells us to “lay up that tithe within thy gates.” And they say, “Well, it says thy gates. That’s where the elders of the town sat.” And today we have elders at the gates of the church. Therefore, you’re going to bring that up and lay it up within the gates—in the Old Testament, in other words, the town elders took care of it. And today, the local church elders would take care of the use of that tithe. And there’s some merit to be said for that.

The word is “lay up.” That word, that Hebrew word that’s translated “lay up” is used ten times in the scriptures. It talks about setting aside something. It talks about manna. On the sixth day, they were to gather up enough manna and lay it up for the next day. Manna—there was Moses laid up some manna in a pot to keep as a memorial forever of what God had provided there. Reverend something was talking about the ashes of the red heifer the other night, and all about that stuff. And the ashes of the red heifer were to be laid up in this jar—okay, set aside, laid up, set aside for another use, deposited somewhere. After the priests ministered at the temple, their garments were to be laid up in a specific room in the temple. Okay?

So there is something to seeing that tithe there in terms of laying it up. But I question whether or not that laying up is necessarily within the institutions of either the town in the Old Testament or the church in the New Testament. I think it’s somewhat of a leap to go from the fact that it’s talking about gates in the Old Testament—that was the place where the elders sat—and then to go to the New Testament and say that means the church takes care of it.

Particularly in light of Deuteronomy 26, the second passage we read earlier. This is applicable to us today, and we don’t have a service where we go up before God and say this. But remember, we talked about the individual affirming that he deposited God’s tithe correctly or used it correctly. It’s that portion of the suzerainty treaty we’ve been talking about for the last week or two, and we’ve talked about this before, where you’re affirming that you’re going to walk in obedience to all the sanctions that God’s placed upon you.

And that’s why I read those last three verses that didn’t speak specifically about the tithe after I read that a couple minutes ago. God says, “If you say this, you’ve said, ‘I’m going to keep this covenant and I’m going to walk in obedience to God,’ and I’m cut apart. I’m set apart to God now in this thing.” It’s important. It’s not just an isolated event. It sums up the whole covenant. And you’re to declare before God that “I haven’t eaten this up myself. I haven’t used this tithe for myself. I’ve given it to the Levites, to the widows, to the strangers, and the fatherless.”

Now if you want to use the institutional church for that purpose, and if you’re concerned that portion of your tithe has done that so you can say before God every year with a clear conscience, “I’ve done that thing,” then we will provide a vehicle here at Reformation Covenant Church. If you want to specify a portion of your tithe, and you bring it up to the box and write us a specific instruction—”This is to be used for the fatherless, the widows, and the orphans”—we will honor that, and we’ll set up, I’m sure Debbie can do this, a certain pot of money, as it were, to administer those funds.

Because otherwise, if you just give it to the church and assume the church is going to do what’s proper with it, I’m not so sure. How I think we’re a good church, but I’m not so sure if I want to go before God saying, “I’ve got a clear conscience of this thing. I’m giving this to the Levite or to the strangers, widows, and fatherless,” relying on the church to do it. You see what I’m saying?

And I think in the Old Testament, wouldn’t it—to me the language seems to be saying that it’s personally ministered—is what I’m getting to. Now I’m not going to stand on that and say that’s definitively the word of God, but from my understanding of the scriptures, and I realize there are people who have studied this out who take the contrary position, that it’s to go totally to the church, but from my understanding of the scriptures, I think it should be locally administered in your own household so that you can give it to widows, strangers, and fatherless. And then you can say, “I have done this thing.”

Now how do you go about doing that?

Oh, by the way, just one other thing there, and we’re going to talk about each of these groups specifically in the future, but there’s one other point that both people who make that position would make, I think, and that is that there were widows placed in the role of the early church. We know that, right? “Widow indeed” would be placed on the rolls if she’s over three score, whatever it is. We’ll go through the qualifications when we talk about widows specifically. And so they see there that the church institutionally does have a responsibility toward widows and of the fellowship.

I’ll deal with that in more detail later. I don’t think that contravenes what I just said about personal administration. We’ll talk about that specific set of verses in a couple of weeks when we deal with widows. But that’s another one for you to consider as you’re sorting it out for yourselves.

You know, you’ve got to—I was going to, I was thinking about maybe I will in the next couple of weeks give a whole talk on one Sunday morning about studying the word of God for yourself, being noble Bereans. Okay, we heard a lot of different sorts of things this last week, and I think we were all encouraged by a lot of what we heard. But I don’t care if it’s we’re bringing somebody up from Texas or from Valisceto, or if I stand up here on Sunday and say something—for you to take that and just run with it and believe that’s the word of God is wrong.

So what I’m trying to do is facilitate here, and I can say definitively, “Here’s what’s required in certain places. I know you have to tithe. Okay? I know that a portion of that tithe is to go to the fatherless and the widows and to strangers.” I am not going to say that I know definitively how to administer that, within your own household or through this institutional church. We’ll make allowance in this church if you want to go through the church. You see what I’m saying? But you’ve got to sort that out. You have to come to a position on all this stuff between you and God on this thing.

And that verse on the widows would help you to sort through some of that stuff.

Now Sam Blumenfeld was here a year and a half ago. I was thinking about this back then too, because it’s been kind of a puzzle in my mind for several years. And I asked Sam, who was raised basically orthodox—fairly Orthodox Jewish, at least somewhat orthodox—I asked him what they did with the poor tithe, and he said they always had a little box that hung on the wall of their house, and they would deposit portions of their income in that box specifically for relieving the poor. And then when something came up, they would have a little fund of money there, sitting in their house, to take care of—you know, a widow or an orphan or fatherless or poor, whatever it be. And I thought that’s a real good device, and I’d encourage each of you to think about that in your own household, particularly those of you with small children.

Because then we’re showing to them that we’re trying to walk in obedience to the scripture, and we’re showing them we’re laying up money within our gates, okay, within our house, for the use to help the fatherless and the widows and the strangers. And then when we use that money for specific occurrence, it teaches them something about God and about his grace and about our hearts of compassion.

So that’s one vehicle you might want to consider—if you’re going to administer this yourself, personally or individually—setting up a little box, making it prominent in your house somewhere, even on the wall. A nice place for it. So your children understand that, you can teach them then about God’s tithe and the necessity to include a portion of that tithe for these groups.

But who do you give it to? What sort of circumstances occur that you should administer a portion of the tithe for that purpose?

Well, as I said earlier, I don’t think that it’s correct to lump all these people together and call them all poor. I was in a study at Saddleback Bible Church that most of you know about, going through some of these things, and we came up with the term “vulnerable”—the poor and vulnerable in society. And it’s certainly true that aliens are vulnerable.

I’ve got a brother-in-law in one of the Dallas areas, I believe, and he knew a friend who didn’t know English, a stranger to the land from Mexico, I believe, and the guy was getting ripped off all the time, you know, because he couldn’t really protect himself. He got his car fixed or whatever he had done. He’s always getting ripped off. And it’s very common for that to occur. They are vulnerable in that sense. They don’t know the language. They don’t know the customs.

Widows are obviously in a vulnerable position. They don’t have the head of the household there to serve as a protection over them. And the same thing is true with the fatherless—with children who don’t have a father. They may have a mother; they don’t have a father, and they’re also vulnerable. So it’s certainly true that they are vulnerable. But I think that these specific groups, although it’s true that they may be poor, they may be vulnerable, I think God chose these groups for a reason. And I think that as we go through a couple of these references now, we’ll see some of what I’m getting at here.

And again, remember, we’re going to go in more detail on these things over the next few weeks.

Now I just told you a couple minutes ago that there were seventeen occurrences of these three groups in scripture—verses that include all three groups: widow, strangers, and fatherless. It’s really emphasized in the Old Testament to do these people justice, to have a heart of compassion for them. God says, “I’m going to take care of them myself. You better do right or I’ll come back on you.”

We know that it’s stressed in the Old Testament. That’s obvious. And it should also be rather obvious from a cursed reading of the New Testament to see that stressed there as well.

In James 1, he says that “pure religion undefiled before God the father is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their afflictions and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.” He says there one of the basic things in terms of Christianity of religion is to visit fatherless and widows.

And then in 1 Timothy 5:10, it talks about the requirements of widows to be placed on the roles, and one of the requirements is “if she had lodged strangers,” if she showed compassion and in lodging strangers. So we see that those same three groups—fatherless, widows, and strangers—are emphasized.

Additionally, in Hebrews 13:2: “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, but thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” Okay. So it’s important there to recognize that God, in the New Testament, stresses also that concern for the stranger and for the fatherless and the widow.

Let’s go through some of these verses then and see why God chose these specific terms.

First of all, in Deuteronomy 24:17 and 18, we read the following:

“Thou shalt not pervert the judgment of the stranger, nor of the fatherless, nor take a widow’s raiment to pledge. But thou shalt remember that thou was a bondman in Egypt, and the Lord thy God redeemed thee thence. Therefore, I command thee to do this thing.”

What God is saying there is that in a particular way of looking at things, all these three groups—the stranger, the widow, and the fatherless—are bondsmen in a sense. They’re slaves. They’re capable of exploitation as slaves. They’re all wrapped together in verses 17 and 18 of Deuteronomy 24 into the general category of bondsmen. He says, “You are bondman in Egypt. I freed you. Now you show concern to these other people that are in that same sense of exploitation.”

Okay. Now in Exodus 22:22-24, we read the following:

“Ye shall not afflict any widow or fatherless child. If thou afflict them in any wise and they cry at all unto me, I will surely hear their cry and my wrath shall wax hot and I will kill you with the sword and your wives shall be widows and your children fatherless.”

God says, “Don’t afflict these people because then if you do, I’m going to afflict you and your wives will be widows and your children fatherless.”

And I think if you look at the grammatical way that God is saying that, he is saying this: the widow is my wife. I’m going to protect her as her husband. The fatherless are my children, and I’m going to take special care toward the fatherless as their father, and I’m going to protect them. And if you move against my wife, the widows, or my children, the orphans, I’m going to strike you and you’re going to end up with widows and fatherless here. Okay?

So God says there that his people are—comparatively, in comparison—also his wife and, as it were, widows.

In Ezekiel 16—well, that’s not Ezekiel 16:8, but Ezekiel 16th chapter—we’ve gone over this before. It describes God’s relationship to Israel. And he describes it as he came upon this baby that was not salted, had been left for dead after it was born. It was orphaned. And God says, “I picked that baby up and I nursed it back to health.” And he’s talking about Israel here. “And I adorned her. I spread my cloak over her and she became my bride.”

God says, “The nation of Israel is an orphan.” That’s the condition. God found the nation of Israel as being orphaned. Okay? Nobody to look after it. No head anymore. God says that the nation of Israel is, comparatively speaking, both a widow and an orphan.

Now we talk about the federal headship of Jesus Christ and of Adam. Jesus Christ is the second Adam. Adam was the first Adam, and Adam died, and as a result of that created a whole race that were widowed and orphaned in a sense. Okay. The widow has no covenant head over her in terms of the head of household. The family of God, the family of man apart from Jesus Christ—its representative head has died in sin—and it’s widowed. Therefore, it has no father either. It’s orphaned, as it were.

And so God uses these terms, I think, to express that truth.

Now in Exodus 23:9, read the following:

“Also, thou shalt not oppress a stranger, for you know the heart of a stranger, seeing you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

So in each of these three groups, the stranger—God says you were a stranger and I rescued you and made you not a stranger anymore. You were widowed, as it were. You were orphaned in your position in relationship to the covenant—your covenant head—and I took care of those things. I became your husband. I became your father, and I set you free from a position of stranger, and I made you a citizen of the kingdom.

God says, “I showed you grace in those ways. And therefore, I want you, therefore, to take these three particular examples of your relationship to me and how I restored you. I want you to take that out into your land and also show kindness and compassion toward these same groups, the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow.”

Now the same thing is emphasized in the New Testament.

You know, I was thinking about the fact—I was talking to Christie the other night about this—and I was thinking about trying to think through this idea of widow in the Old Testament. And I thought about how Elijah came to a widow and stayed with her and blessed the widow through his presence, and she had food. She had oil—a sign of the Holy Spirit overflowing, never running out. And so God, typologically, Elijah, of course, represents Jesus Christ. He comes to the widow. He restores her to her correct relationship—to her to her groom, as it were, he represents to her, of course, in a way—and she has a fatherless child also, an orphan in the story. And Elijah comes to him, produces blessing.

And Chris thought, “Well, I don’t know—that’s stretching it a little bit,” but you know, it’s interesting that in Luke 4:25-27, the same thing is alluded to.

And I found this and I thought, “Well, here’s confirmation of what I was saying.”

Luke 4:25-27. But I tell you the truth, this is right after Jesus has declared his ministry. And he says, “I’ve come to preach the gospel and to set the prisoner free.” And he says, “A prophet is without honor in his hometown.” And he says, “But I tell you the truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land. But unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. And many lepers were in Israel at the time of Elias the prophet. And none of them were cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian.”

Jesus is saying there the people I come to are widows and lepers. And of course it didn’t get him a lot of popularity in the group he was talking to. He said, “You’re a bunch of widows, you’re a bunch of lepers. And if you reject me, well it’s not unusual because Elijah only came to a specific widow, and only Naaman was the only leper that was cleansed.”

And so there’s a restrictive sense here in which Jesus Christ is going to reveal himself to the people. The point, though, is that Jesus Christ talks about the bride—he’s going to redeem as a widow and as a leper. And so we know in the New Testament that Jesus uses the same example of Elijah visiting a widow, creating blessings for her and her household and for her son. He uses that same set of occurrences to describe the relationship of Jesus Christ to the people and he comes to call forth for his own.

The church of Jesus Christ, the bride of Jesus Christ, is, as a widow, is what Christ’s saying here, and a leper. And Jesus Christ comes. He creates blessing in the church the same way that the widow was blessed by the presence of Elijah. And of course, he cleanses us from leprosy. Both things are a sign of ill favor, as it were, of a problem in terms of their relationship to the covenant head. And in both things, Jesus restores them back to a position of blessedness.