However, it is obvious that these Aaronic and Pharisaical church leaders have continually exploit the illiteracy of many believers and the apathy of the educated ones about reading the Scripture to swindle them out of their hard earned money. These Judaic church leaders nose around the pages of the Scripture apparently in search of any suitable text that have some semblance of tithe and then, repackage and reword it and churn it out as the word of God.
Some of them have harped on Matthew 23: 23, saying that our Lord Jesus Christ has approved monetary tithes for Christians when He said; “For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law…These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone.” However, it is clear in the above context that our Lord Jesus Christ was not talking to His disciples neither was He talking to the church; rather His statement was directed to the scribes and the Pharisees who then, were under the law of Moses because as at that time, the law was still very much in force. Our Lord Jesus Christ saw that the scribes and the Pharisees were selective in their practice of the law which ought not to be as they were required to observe carefully all God’s commandments and not to observe some portions and neglect others. See Deuteronomy 28: 15; 30: 2 and 8; 31: 12; 32: 46 and Leviticus 26: 14. All of these Scriptural passages emphasize absolute compliance with God’s commandments.
However, it may also interest you to know that these remarks: “Woe to you” and “hypocrites” which our Lord Jesus Christ used against the scribes and the Pharisees (in Matthew 23: 23) are not complimentary but derogatory and dishonouring. My dear brethren, if you want to align with the truth, don’t allow anyone to cajole you into believing that our Lord Jesus Christ has endorsed monetary tithes for Christians in the above context. It is a complete fallacy!
Another Scriptural passage that is often craftily misinterpreted in the church today is Matthew 5: 17 – 20. This passage is most often used to combine the Gospel of grace with partial adherence to the law of Moses. In this context our Lord Jesus Christ was demonstrating that He did not come to destroy the law or the prophets, but has come to fulfill the Law of Moses and prophesies by bringing them to their anticipated eschatological end.
It is however, again and again argued by monetary tithes advocates that since our Lord Jesus Christ said, “He did not come to destroy the law”, then, it therefore means that the law of tithing (not burnt offerings and other sacrifices) must still be binding on Christians today. This assumption is grounded in a misunderstanding of the words and intent of this passage. In this context, our Lord Jesus Christ was not proposing that the binding nature of the Law of Moses would remain forever in effect for all nations of the world; otherwise, His death on the cross and subsequently His resurrection would be meaningless in the life of a Christian. Our Lord Jesus Christ has fulfilled the law’s prophetic utterances concerning Him. For the avoidance of doubt, we read from the book of Luke 24: 44, “Then, He said to them, these are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses and Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me.”
Evidently, our Lord Jesus Christ has fulfilled the demands of the law of Moses which called for perfect obedience under the threat of a curse, ” For it written,” according to Galatians 3: 10, “cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things which are written in the book of the law, to do them.”
If I may ask! How many of these Pharisaical and Judaic church leaders who frenziedly dissipate all their energies in teaching that the tithing ordinance is still binding on Christians today married their wives as virgin and; how many of them have brought out their wives to be stoned to death when they discovered that they were not virgins? Deuteronomy 22: 13 – 21, says if any man takes a wife and he discovers she is not a virgin, such a woman should be stoned to death. If the law of Moses has its binding effects on Christians, why do these self-righteous church leaders adjudge the offering of the blood of a young bull and a burnt offering of a ram (Leviticus 16: 3), as well as other burnt offerings and sacrifices as recorded in the book of Leviticus to be heathenish, but tithes which were the appurtenances of those sacrifices and offerings (see Malachi 3: 8) are loved, cherished and embraced with every fibre of their being?
It would amount to blasphemy to say that our Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled the sacrificial portions of the law, but did not fulfill the other aspects. The effect of the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ on circumcision and sacrificial system of the law is the same with other aspects of the Law of Moses which includes tithes.
My dear brethren, do not allow anyone to cajole you into believing that Jesus Christ endorsed tithing for Christians. Our Lord Jesus Christ has fulfilled the law for every believer “after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever… (Hebrews 10: 12).
“Owe no one anything, except to love one another for he who loves another has fulfilled the law”, says Romans 13: 8. Let those who have ears, let them hear!
…To be continued!
