God’s Law of Tithing, Pt. 5

Ronald Weinland

August 28, 2021

This is Part 5 of the series God’s Law of Tithing.

We’re going to pick up on some verses that we were covering at the end of Part 4, but before we do that I want to review something that I stated last Sabbath about Holy Day offerings before we actually get into the scriptures and so forth, and other things here at the end of that Part 4 of last week.

It was a question that came up concerning the Holy Day offerings, and there was some confusion in an area, and probably if it was there it was in quite a few places and I probably didn’t make it as clear as I needed to when I talked about how that God specifies that there are three seasons in the year, Deuteronomy 16:16. There are three seasons in the year that we are to give offerings. I mentioned how that there are those Holy Days on those specific periods of time, and we know what they are. First two, Unleavened Bread, first season. Second season, Pentecost. Then all the Holy Day seasons in the fall.

There are seven Holy Days and there should be seven designated offerings. So, you can give it three times a year, if you want to, but please put on your check or whatever, ever how you’re paying for this, or on a note or whatever, a notation. Let’s say you did it in the first season of the year. You have the 1st Day of Unleavened Bread and the Last Day of Unleavened Bread – two offerings. It can be one check. Say it’s $10.00 - $5 for the first and $5 for the next…or more…or less.

So, the point being is that you need to put on there for the 1st High Day and for the second High Day, this amount, these amounts. Okay? That way it’s recorded what you’re doing, how you’re doing it, that you’re obeying God. Because it’s a matter of your mind toward God. It can be done once a year if you have a kind of business or whatever that you don’t know even how much you have until the end of a year you may want to do it once a year. We’ve heard different reasons. I heard one here recently of an individual that wanted to do it that way and they had a good reason, because everyone’s situation is different. But they always specify all seven days and how much for each, or just say this amount for all seven days.

Let’s say it was $5 a time, 7 x $5 = $35; thirty-five dollars here, it covers five dollars for every Holy Day. Make sense? Good! This helps us in a lot of ways as a Church. One of them is that we’re doing our part so that when that white paper does come out and we have to sit there and fold them and put them in there it’s obvious that everyone is doing what they’re supposed to before God.

Because if we’re not obedient to that, and sometimes in times past some of this has changed through the Church, especially during Laodicea, different things happened, and people got confused. But we shouldn’t be confused. Every Holy Day we should be coming before God. That’s our tradition as the Church; that’s the way we do it, and that settles that.

Because there are individuals, and I’m just going to tell you, there are individuals who tithe and don’t ever give Holy Day offerings, or they give one Holy Day offering. So, how am I to look at something like that when I have a question about someone, and generally have other things going on in their life as well that I know of, and so when that name comes across with one or two lines up there on this white piece of paper and I see Holy Day offering, one in a year on a particular point in time, if it happens to be close to Unleavened Bread, what am I supposed to think? They didn’t give any more Holy Day offerings the rest of the year.

They don’t belong in God’s Church! They don’t belong in God’s Church! So, I have to be the bad man, huh? So, I have to notify someone, “You’re not doing what you are supposed to be doing in obeying God.” Well, they can look upon me ever how they want to. That’s fine. But I don’t like doing it. But I will do it, and I have to do it and I’ve done it over and over and over again in God’s Church because it shows a total disrespect, a dishonoring of God. If someone can rob from God Almighty you don’t belong in God’s Church!

That’s like sneaking into somebody’s house and robbing them blind. What do we think we’re getting by with? You wouldn’t think that would happen in God’s Church. Actually, it doesn’t. If you understand what I’m saying, it doesn’t really happen in God’s Church. But sometimes individuals are around and in the environment of God’s Church, but they’re not in God’s Church. Because to do that, the moment they’ve done it, God doesn’t have anything to do with them, they’re cut off from His holy spirit.

We can deceive ourselves into thinking we’re okay. We have our friends here, wherever it is you are, and we still have these relationships. But “It’s okay, I can do that.” No, you can’t. God will take care of you one way or another. One of the ways is when I’m sitting there folding white paper, and if I see it, I’ll take care of it, because as God’s servant I obey God above everything else. I have no problems addressing it. Because it blows my mind how anyone thinks they can do that in a relationship with God. And yet it’s happened year after year after year. Every year. Every year it’s happened in God’s Church without exception.

How can a mind think that they can do that? It kind of blows my mind. But we can deceive ourselves mightily as human beings.

I get a little bit worked up when I think about this because we do that toward God as human beings. Then, how much easier is it then to do things we shouldn’t be doing on a physical plane? If we can do that on a spiritual plane toward God Almighty I can tell you absolutely the ability then to have other sin in your life is mighty and it’s strong, and it’s there. It’s an absolute.

God is cleaning up the Church more and more, refining us more and more, and that’s a good thing. But sometimes it leaves me speechless that such things can happen, that we can think that way toward God, think that somehow we’re in God’s Church and do that. There are some individuals I’ve been very patient with in times past, given them opportunity with tithes, talked to them, and they stand there and tell me as though they’re sorrowful, that they haven’t done it, they’re going to take care of it, they’re going to do it. Little bit later same old thing. You see the pattern. In those situations, I do watch because I know they’ve had a problem in the past and they have other problems with it, because there’s always something else in there. And sure enough a little bit later, and you think, how long?

God gives us great opportunity to repent and change, but we don’t have a whole lot of time to do that anymore in the sense of if we want to be a part of a new age, whether it be if we’re being prepared as 144,000 or to be able to go on as a part of the Church into a new age. Because I know without a shadow of doubt, no doubt in my mind exactly what God is going to do to anyone and to everyone who does things like this. They’ll not be there.

Tens of thousands didn’t come into a promised land for a very specific reason. Incredible. Rebellion against God, some of the things they did. God made sure they didn’t come in the promised land. To a certain age He cut them off. Incredible.

We serve a mighty God and a very giving God filled with love and purpose and desire for us, and if we can treat God that way in the environs of God’s Church, well, it’s why God’s cleaning up the Church more and more. And sadly, I have some I’ve got to go to because it’s a matter of continuing to clean here and I’ve been very busy and there’s been some patterns of different ones. I think of one individual that has to be taken care of. It’s gone on for years, off and on, off and on. No more! It’s over with.

So, I hope that clears it up about Holy Day offerings. It needs to be seven times a specific amount that we state that we’ve given to God, regardless of the amount. It has to be there. I don’t care if it’s a dime, fifty cents, or whatever. We’ve done our part. If we don’t think in truth and spirit, in spirit and truth toward God, who are we? What are we doing?

Hebrews 12. So, I mentioned that we’re going to continue from what we talked about toward the end of Chapter 4, and it was about Esau, it involved Esau here, some of the things that were mentioned about him and this attitude, this spirit. Because this fits so well of what we’re talking about here, of our thinking and our attitude toward the Great God of the universe who has called us, who has placed before us that which is so incredibly great, far greater than what He’d placed before Esau. Far greater! And look what Esau did.

To be in God’s Church, to know the things we do, to grasp what God has placed before us on a far greater plane and to treat it in a way that so many have over time boggles the mind. It’s far worse than Esau. Esau never had God’s spirit. He didn’t have God’s holy spirit. He didn’t have access to God’s spirit. He wasn’t called to have a relationship with God.

Hebrews 12:21. This is talking about the occasion where Moses and all of Israel had come before the mount and God’s presence was there, and how awesome, how incredibly frightening it was for everyone there.

It says here, Hebrews 12:21—So terrifying was the sight that Moses said, I was exceedingly fearful and trembled. Can you imagine Moses fearful and trembling at what he saw in his 80’s?

But you have come to Mount Zion… Not a physical mountain, physical mountain out here with a huge number of physical people out here and a nation that had just been taken out of Egypt, taken out of slavery, been given incredible promises of what was going, what was before them and what God was going to do with them, take them to a promised land flowing with milk and honey, rich.

But you have come to Mount Zion, the ultimate, the ultimate of God’s purpose and plan for us. …and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly of the Church of the firstborn registered (recorded) in heaven. In other words, the 144,000. Paul is talking here at this particular time, after, a little after 4,000 years of mankind being on earth, and he’s talking about how that there is this body of those who are part of the first begotten of God, if you will, waiting for the time, the firstfruits, when they’re going to be resurrected.

It says, here we are, wherever we’re called in our time in history in the first 6,000 years, if that’s the purpose, the first resurrection. What an incredible thing of what God has placed before us. It’s awesome to think about and we know much, much more than that particular time when Paul wrote Hebrews. Incredible!

So, all this, God says, “Look at what’s before you, this great family, this first part of God’s Family,” after Joshua. It goes on to say, those who are recorded (registered) in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men (just people) made perfect. Sometimes I get a little frustrated with how things were translated. A lot of it was translated in a certain way because of how human beings thought at that particular time, differences even between men and women.

…and to Joshua, the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks of better things than Abel. See that you do not refuse Him who speaks. For if they did not escape who refused Him who spoke on earth, this mountain, a great nation of people that God had just taken out of Egypt, and still that attitude, that thinking on a carnal plane after something they saw so incredibly great. What effect did it really have on them? They still refused. But what about us when God calls us out of this world, gives us the begettal of His holy spirit, continues to draw us with His spirit, desires to mold and fashion us, desires to give us help to grow even more, to be filled with more of His mind, His being? How do we think towards that? How do we treat that?

For if they did not escape who refused Him who spoke on earth, and much more so if we turn away from Him who speaks from heaven. So anyway, it’s this same thing here. What do we think? What do we think as a result of this? What do we think is the outcome of this? Mind-boggling.

Just like the Apostasy was mind-boggling, just because of focusing on the book again and thinking about some of those things that are there and writing a particular portion right now in Chapter 6 and thinking about again what we went through and the process of what led up to it, and then what actually happened. Then the response of a third that was scattered that still had an opportunity to repent of what we had done, of acknowledging our part. Laodicea. Weak. Instead of being haughty and thinking still Philadelphian. Mindboggling.

It brings things to the forefront. How precious is it what God has offered us, what He’s placed before us, and how others have treated it?

So, within the context of what we’ve just covered, again, in Hebrews there is something else I want to insert here as an example from which we should learn to be sobered. An email came to me this past week of something I gave an answer to that I know is within the Church, different ones I have counselled with in times past. And if I’ve counselled with a few, I know there are many others who have never counselled because they haven’t brought themselves to that point in time. This is just one area.

There are many other areas as well in our lives that we need to look at when we talk about things like this, in attitude and spirit and thinking toward God and toward God’s Church…and toward God’s ministry. At the very beginning in talking here about Esau, so often when we talk about something like this and think about what he did (that we didn’t go into that part, the portion here, but this is in the context of things that were covered here last Sabbath), and to think that he would treat so poorly this? That’s the warning being given here.

What are we like? We’re coming before the Great God of the universe in a very powerful way, in a calling that’s been given to us, and especially here at this time of those being recorded in heaven, of which at that time it was saying, in essence, “of which you have been called to.” Because that’s what they were called to at that time. They were called to become a part of this Family, the first born. But over many who have been called few have come through all that through time. Astonishing!

They fit in this category, of individuals who had rotten attitudes like Esau where they began to show disrespect toward God, disrespect… How can the mind think that way, of something so powerful, so mighty that God says we can inherit, we can have, that He places before us to be His children in His Family for all time? You think, incredible! To think the human mind can treat that flippantly, like Esau did? Horrible. He thought it was owed to him, basically, carried that attitude with him. He had some sorrow about it when it was all said and done, when he realized he wasn’t going to have it, and still wanted to try to receive it, but not for the right motives, not for the right reasons, not because he was going to change anything in a right way in his life at all. He wanted it his way.

Many in God’s Church through time, we have to make that choice. Do we want it God’s way or do we want it our way? Are we going to do things our way? Even hold money that belongs to God and misuse it?

He treated the inheritance with a horrible spirit and horrible attitude. We have to comprehend then or strive to comprehend what it is that God has placed before us that’s so much greater. Doesn’t even compare. You can’t compare it.

I want to read through a letter here that had something to do with an individual who had counselled in times past in a particular matter in his life. Pornography. This can be alcohol misuse. It can be something like this. It can be drugs. You’d probably be surprised—maybe you wouldn’t be—how many people have been put out of God’s Church because of using drugs, misuse of drugs, coming to a point in time where their minds become almost gone, as it were.

People do that with drugs, and in God’s Church, in the environment of God’s Church, so often if that’s a direction someone chooses God will allow that to happen. “You want that? Then you can have the full measure of it.” The spirit world is allowed to do whatever they want to do to what extent they can do it. Generally, it has to do with the mind and the thinking and how horrible that life then becomes. I haven’t known a few like this; I’ve known far, far too many in the environment of God’s Church.

It’s like, “A little of this won’t hurt.” You know, I’ve heard every argument under the sun, all kinds of things in times past. People legalizing things now it’s like, legalize the rest because if people are going to use it at least maybe the government can get the taxes out of it instead of the criminals. That’s how people think. That’s how mankind thinks.

I was always dumbfounded as I grew up and went through different things before I even came in the Church, and then later on, about people who would smoke the weed. Because it’s like, “It doesn’t hurt you.” After you’ve known them for a few years you realize, “You know, you may not see it, but I see it. I see a person who is so changed. You’re slow. You’re slow! Your speech even starts getting a little slower, ‘Yeah, man.’ It starts getting a little slower. Your thinking… You think it’s okay.” It’s like someone who’s drunk, they think they’re functioning fine. But you can see they’re not as they go all over the place.

We as human beings so deceive ourselves sometimes, and even in the environment of God’s Church. Various kinds of sins, most of which are in God’s Church that have led people away, are sexual in nature. It’s just the way it is. Human nature. Individuals who don’t strive to control their thinking, their actions. It is a very strong pull in human life. God says we’re to use things in a right way. A person has to determine, are you going to fight that fight or let it fight you and win and have its way?

It doesn’t matter what it is in sin. So, areas of alcohol? Large numbers of people in God’s Church. Large numbers in the ministry in times past. People didn’t know it, as a whole. It was kind of kept secret except for their closest friends, and they kind of knew they were alcoholic. Some things you can’t hide. Alcoholic! What kind of blew me over was the ones who had some of the greatest problems were the ones who kind of went around to different Churches telling how to fight it, and they still hadn’t fought it. It’s like, “I want to listen to that. I want to sit down in a bible study on that one from someone who has no control, is not changing their life.” Kind of boggles your mind, doesn’t it?

Anyway, so here, whatever kind of sin it is, I don’t care. This is what the Church has to say:

“The counsel from the Church to anyone is that this is a matter between them and God.”

I don’t care which one it is, which battle you have that by all rights sets you outside of and cuts you off from God’s spirit and sets you outside of God’s Church. God says there are specific segments of life that will… Not. Be. In. His. Kingdom! That means we have to conquer and overcome them. Conquer, overcome, has to do with battle. It has to do with fighting. You have to fight. The way you fight is the exact matter Herbert Armstrong used to talk about doing the work.

You have to work like you’re doing it yourself. You have to fight with all your being in whatever it is, whether it be the work, whether it be things in your life, but whatever it is you have to fight with all of your being, in that respect, to fight this nature, to fight yourself, and to know though that you can’t do it without God’s help, that God’s the one who’s going to do it. But you have to work in it. You’re a part of it. You’re involved. He doesn’t just give it to you because you pray about it, and all of a sudden, things are gone. Constant, fight, battle, work. Work. Work. Work.

“…it’s a matter between the individual and God. The first thing one must do is to continue to go before God and repent.”

You know, it’s really simple! It really is a simple process in so many ways.

“…go before God and repent whenever this wrong desire manifests itself in one’s thinking, and especially if they have acted upon wrong thinking.”

Regardless of what it is, of the things I have mentioned so far.

“Certainly, it also is a matter of fleeing such avenues that make it easy to go and whether it be search out…” as an example, pornography, search out a liquor bottle, search out whatever it might be.

Because human beings deceive themselves and if they want something then they put themselves in an environment that they should be fleeing from. It’s a basic principle. You should flee whatever it is. Cut off any avenues. If you’re having a difficulty with alcohol, you don’t go to a bar! You don’t get in that environment! And you certainly don’t become a bartender! You laugh a little bit because people have done that. That’s the way to do it. Free booze! Free booze then! Human nature, what an incredible thing the human mind.

So, whatever it is, whatever you need to do you have to work at that. You have to ask God for help in it too because it’s a spiritual matter of your thinking that lets you be drawn towards something and for you to begin or at times act upon certain aspects of it. If you draw closer to it you become entrapped. That’s just the way it is.

It involves a matter of fleeing such avenues that make it easy to do those things, whatever it might be. So, you have to work at this. You have to plan how not to sin. What an incredible, novel thought. You have to plan how not to sin. You’ve got a weakness in an area; you need to think about it, of what you need to plan to do in order to arrange things around your life so that it’s not so easy. If you make it easy you know what you’re going to do? There’s going to come a time when you’re going to give in. That’s just the way it is.

And how much do you want God? That’s going to determine how often you’re going to be willing to go on your knees, to go before God and say “Father, forgive me. Help me fight this. Help me conquer this. Help me be stirred up in spirit. I can’t do it on my own.” We’re weak as human beings, I don’t care what the sin is. I don’t care what it is.

“Both learning to repent and obeying God to repent is a battle.”

You might not think that it is. The human mind doesn’t want to do it. It wants to justify itself. It wants to hide. That means you don’t go before God; you don’t repent because you kind of want it to go away, so you kind of hide. But you can’t hide from God. It’s kind of like what Adam and Eve did. They tried to hide. It’s like, “You think you’re going to hide from God?” Well, they thought they could at that time because the carnal mind thinks on a physical plane. If you start sinning, especially once you’ve had access to God’s spirit, that’s the direction you’ll go, and more and more you’ll deceive yourself.

“It is a fight against carnal human nature.”

If we don’t grasp, of all people, that we have a fight on our hands, and if we’re not fighting, something is wrong with us. I don’t care at what level you are in your growth, in your maturity spiritually, there are always things to ever learn and see that you don’t see right now, to grasp that you don’t grasp right now. Things about the mind and why we think and do the things we do. That’s the greatest key of all, is coming to the point where you can begin to grasp and comprehend your thinking, your very mind, the thoughts, to know that everything originates in the mind and what that means and where that battle is, why we think the way we do, why we respond to certain things the way we do.

Whenever you sin, that gives you an opportunity to begin to go back and ask God for help to see it. Because this is what has to be addressed in time. We have to address the physical aspect of many things in the beginning. Just like we do when we come into the Church, there are things you have to work at to change. No longer working from Friday sundown to Saturday. That’s work. It involves a kind of work because it means changing your financial status, your financial means, your financial way of working at things in a different way than you did before because so often people depended on that extra day. It makes a big difference in a budget. You have to work at maneuvering everything and working things around and sometimes working elsewhere or more at certain times to get through, to make things work, and you cry out to God for help to do it. Constantly. You constantly look to God for help to know how to do certain things, what to do, how to do it. God will bless you in that, if your desire is to obey God, but the actions are there, the mind is there. We have to look at and we learn from as we grow, more and more of what’s in the mind.

“It’s a fight against one’s own wrong thinking and wrong actions.”

One of the greatest dangers of all is we get to a time where we think we don’t have wrong thinking, wrong thoughts, wrong actions. If anybody thinks that way, they’re sadly mistaken. I don’t care where we are, how long we’ve been in God’s Church, there will always be something there that you have to work on in your life. Because you’re a carnal human being and your mind is not the mind of God. It is a carnal mind.

We have the other aspect of God’s spirit that helps us to see what we need to do and how to do it and those are choices. But there’s this battle. And we, of all people, have to see that and know that. So, going on:

“So, it is both about fighting and fleeing, but fighting is the greatest.”

So, I think of Jacob. Fighting. It’s an awesome example. Never giving up. Never quitting. Constantly at it. Wherever, no matter who we are, what we are, where we are in our life, there are always things to fight and grow in, to draw closer to God, to become more fully transformed in our thinking.

“You cannot flee unless you are fighting your own wrong thinking.”

The reason for mentioning this in this particular letter here was because of an expression that someone had received that it’s not about fighting, it’s about fleeing. Well, it’s exact opposite. It’s about fighting and it’s both. It’s about fighting and fleeing, because to flee something you have to fight, you have to consider. To be able to flee something successfully, to cut yourself off from whatever it is, there is that planning, again, that has to take place in your mind as much as when you’re first called. When it has to do with sin in a particular area of life you’ve got to think about what leads to that. What in the mind leads to that? Learn to deal with that. That takes God’s help because it’s of the spirit, it’s of the mind.

“So, it’s both about fighting and fleeing, but fighting is the greatest. You cannot flee unless you’re fighting your own wrong thinking.”

If you’re not fighting that, and just letting life happen to you, and feeling that you’re right about everything you do, then you’re going to miss the mark.

“You cannot flee unless you’re fighting your own wrong thinking. It may involve a long fight for an individual to gain control of one’s wrong actions, and then control of one’s own wrong thoughts.”

So generally, we start with the physical part first. Maybe in how we talk to people. Maybe in things we’ve said to people. Maybe our reaction to certain things in life, whatever it is that we may have a battle with in life, eventually you have to come to understand why. Why do you have that problem, what’s up here in your thinking that leads to that? Awesome.

“If one does not fight these things, then they will continue to become weaker spiritually until they are completely cut off from God.” That’s what happens. “Then if God brings it to the attention of the Church because of a person continuing in sin then one can be suspended or even disfellowshipped from God’s own Church. If that reality does not shake a person into greater desire to fight and conquer then they’ll fall by the wayside.” That’s the history of the Church. “If this isn’t grounds enough for motivation to quit sinning then it will likely come to that reality in God’s timing.”

I have seen that over and over again and I’m seeing it a lot more now, that God is intervening in certain things in people’s lives. They will either learn the lesson because of what God brings upon them, because of what God allows to come upon them and repent, or not.

“This is nothing to fool around with and allow to exist (to continue), in one’s life. If pornography continues in one’s life then God’s spirit will not continue.”

If alcohol abuse continues in one’s life, if a wrong sexual desire toward others, toward someone else continues in one’s life… what’s the outcome? If a desire to use funds somewhere else because we want other things, we want whatever it might be (because generally that’s what happens), “I want this,” “I want that,” “I want to live there,” “I want to…” whatever, “but I don’t have enough. But I’m going to live there!”

God allows people to have what they want in those things, to have the sin. If that person wants to have sin, God will let them have sin. He’s not going to stop anybody. He’s not going to tap you on the shoulder and say, “This is not the way, don’t go there. This is the way to walk,” like we used to have sometimes about the Millennium or the Great White Throne period. Protestant as all get out.

“Indeed, these weaknesses can be taken advantage of by the spirit world, and these spirit beings can broadcast and seek to stir individuals to sin in those areas. That’s the greatest danger.”

I hope everyone in God’s Church is grasping more and more right now that spirit world is gaining in power and strength. They really are. The more they’re able to grow in that and influence in the world the more power they have unless God cuts it off. Mankind gives them that power. Mankind is giving them that power right now. God’s allowing that. That can happen in our lives individually as well. If we let them have that power they will take it. That becomes a most dangerous state to be in.

Because in that process of following their urges, their stirring up, whatever it is they’re trying to stir you to – and they know your thinking, your mind, in the sense of weaknesses, things you’ve done in the past. So, they know those things. They don’t necessarily, obviously, as God knows and reads the mind, knows what’s in the mind, the thinking, but they know how you are. They know how to come at you because of the past. They know God’s people. They know who you are. They know who has God’s spirit.

“If one does not fight as they should, then they will give in to their own selfish, perverted desires.”

Whatever that is. Disobedience to God is perverted. Sinning is perverted. It’s not right thinking. It’s not in agreement with God.

“Not fighting and giving into such things simply reveals (manifests) that he who is in the world is greater in an individual than God is.”

See, it’s supposed to be the other way around. “Greater is He who is in us than he who is in the world.” If we allow the other to happen—because it for us will be one or the other—there is no middle ground for God’s people because of our calling.

So, in referring to that particular scripture 1 John 4:4 that we are to overcome, conquer – that’s what that came from, about “Greater is He that’s in us than he that’s in the world.” That’s up to us of whether we’re repenting, whether we’re crying out to God for His help, for His spirit to conquer whatever our weaknesses are.

You think of all times to be cut off from God. So close! That’s why I’ve mentioned over and over again. Some of this is going to happen right up to the end, people being cut off from God right up to the end. And you think, how is that possible when you see certain things happening, when you see nuclear weapons go off, or know of it going off, and on you go. To think that it could continue after that? Yeah, it can happen.

So, we need God. God has to be in us to be able to conquer, to overcome. The very thing of giving in to sins is the very thing that cuts us off from the only help and strength that we can have to conquer – God, God’s spirit. Incredible!

Anyway, so this attitude of Esau, we can have. We can treat by sin, because of sin, because of doing things that God says we’re not to do, we can treat what God says He wants to give to us in a horrible way. So, that’s what this is so much about, if you will.

Let’s go back to Genesis 28 and continue on from there as we’d talked about some of this knowing here some of the story about how Jacob had been sent by his father, Isaac, to find a wife of his mother’s family. So, let’s take a look at that.

We went through and talked about certain things about Abraham, we talked about this thing of tithing and attitudes toward God, and there are things to be learned out of these things. To me one of the most exciting things is to realize that God has revealed that this is the beginning and one of the most powerful ways to develop a relationship with God. Because that’s what God wants to have with us, a relationship that’s in spirit and in truth.

Genesis 28:10—So, Jacob went out from Beersheba and went toward Haran. And he arrived at a certain place and stayed there all night, because the sun had set. And he took of the stones of that place and put them on his head. The word in King James says, “a pillow.” It was a pillow. Hebrew just means “a place at or for the head.” So, can see why they translated it the way they do. So, it was a place to lie down to sleep. …and lie down in the place to sleep, as it says.

Then he had a dream, and behold, a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold, the angels of God ascending and descending on it. There the Eternal stood above it… Now, what an incredible thing here to think, here is a dream that was so important God gave to him to teach us. That’s why it’s there, it’s to teach us, to help us to be in awe of something, as he was, of something even on a greater plane to come to comprehend. Because we have so much through time – think of how much has been written since that time. Here we have such an incredible wealth of understanding of things about God and a relationship with God. Because that’s what He wants, His Family.

He saw this particular, had this particular dream. There the Eternal stood above it and said, I am the Eternal God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. So, still manifesting things on a physical plane to be seen in the mind physically, whatever it was there. He’s letting him see this in this dream he had. This is what he’s seeing. Because we’re not spirit yet, we don’t grasp spirit things.

The land whereon you lie I will give it to you and to your seed. And your seed shall be as the dust of the earth; and you shall spread abroad to the west and the east, to the north and the south; and in you and in your seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Awesome! “All the families of the earth be blessed.”

Now, they couldn’t grasp this, of what God was doing. All a person could think of at this particular time is it’s going to become a great nation of people that’s going to come from them. They would think on a physical plane even as we in God’s Church so often in the beginning as we begin to have things restored to us, thought more on a physical plane. Because it takes time to get to a point, and God has to reveal it to us and help us to mature to where we can begin to understand what He’s doing. Because it’s about Elohim. It’s about Israel that will be forever.

It’s not about something physical that God’s establishing on the earth for physical people, just to be a great single nation. It’s not about that. Because all peoples on the earth are going to receive of this. Why? Well, then you bring in Christ, the matter of Christ. He’s going to be born of the tribe of Judah and all the things that followed later on that God revealed through time to magnify what He was telling them then. They couldn’t grasp that.

We better be able to grasp it. “And in your seed…” So, it’s not about just having a single family on the earth being great and all these different tribes, the twelve tribes, and somebody has to be called out of each one of the twelve tribes in order to be a part of the 144,000 as what was thought in times past, because that was a spiritual matter. “And in your seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” Joshua! That’s the seed.

Now, look, I am with you. What an awesome thing when God begins to draw us. He’s with us! He’s not only with us, He wants to give us of Himself. He wants to beget us with His holy spirit so that we can begin to grow. I love that example that God gave Herbert Armstrong to see about being like an embryo and this growth that takes place; not yet born but something that begins to change. Awesome!

I am with you and will keep, the word means to guard, to keep, as it says here, preserve you in all your places where you go, and will again bring you into this land; for I will not leave you until I have done that which I have spoken to you. So, there are times here that there are physical aspects of what He’s telling them that are going to be fulfilled. But as a whole, even all these have spiritual meaning and purpose and intent, of what God is saying.

God is always with us if we seek to obey Him, if we’re repenting of our sins, and therein lies the answer to so much. That’s why it’s so dangerous to sin. Because the moment you do you’re cut off from God’s holy spirit. You begin to quench the holy spirit that you have to have in your life to be able to grow in that embryo that isn’t yet born.

Because there are going to be in time a lot of miscarriages, by people’s own choices. We have things in the physical world to learn from that God has given to us. What a horrible thing to think that that can happen to individuals by one’s own choice, wrong choices, wrong decisions, to be miscarried. Because God doesn’t owe them birth. Just because someone is in the womb of the mother doesn’t mean they’re owed life. It’s a gift from God whether it be physical or whether it be spiritual. The spiritual, it’s far more important to have that life that’s going to come into Elohim if we want it, if we choose it, if we fight for it, if we persevere for it.

Not owed to a one of us, and yet we can treat it that way, like Esau did. Something is wrong in the thinking when individuals think they can just continue in sin and continue to do things – not even repent oftentimes in the process – and think they can remain in the Church or have God’s spirit. God doesn’t work that way, let alone being born into His Family. That’s up to God whether they’re going to be given opportunity in the Great White Throne. It depends on the mind and how far the mind has gone.

There are minds during the Apostasy who will not be given that opportunity. They hate God. They may say, “No, I don’t. I love God.” “I love Jesus,” because there are a bunch of them who do. But they had the truth at one time, and they rejected it and they plotted, and they planned, and they schemed, and they rebelled against God just as much as Satan did. That mind if it becomes set in that thinking, if it gets to a point where it will not repent, God’s not going to give it an opportunity again. It’s too far gone. It’s gone! It’s miscarried.

So, it’s one of the most horrible things. That’s why I think about the thing that God revealed to us about Gog and Magog, that there are people through time who will not be in His Kingdom because, well, they’ve come to know about God, but they don’t ever want it. They don’t want it—like in the Great White Throne—but there are those who are given opportunity, who even received God’s spirit into their life who rejected God, which is even worse, obviously. Anyway, two types of people who won’t be in God’s Kingdom.

There are going to be plenty of people who were baptized who will not be in God’s Kingdom. You think everybody throughout the Millennium, as a whole, after we get into it, hundred, two hundred years, everybody is not going to be getting baptized? Do you think during the Great White Throne as human beings tend to do because it’s “the thing to do?” One Church, one baptism, and people go through the motions of various things?

It says, I am with you and will keep (guard) you in all the places where you go and bring you into this land. So, whether it be a physical land for them or that which God intends, the inheritance, to inherit all things? Far beyond this earth.

And Jacob woke from his sleep and said, Surely the Eternal is in this place! It was so real, so powerful in his thinking and in his mind because it was filled with God’s spirit. Not just a vision or just a dream but it was filled with power. …and I wasn’t even aware of it! “Here just picked this place.” In other words, just by chance. It’s like, “Just by chance I’m here and this has to be the way to heaven. This has to be the way to God. God has to be here! Of all the places on the earth, this has got to be the spot!” Because we tend to think physically and that’s all that was given to him at that point in time. We can understand that.

And he feared and said, How fearful (awesome, incredible) is this place! To have an experience like that is both a kind of fearful thing and yet one of awe. This can be none other than the dwelling place of God, and the gateway of heaven! He was so moved by that.

Now, we can kind of maybe feel a little humor in part of that, but he didn’t know. He didn’t have all the knowledge and wealth of knowledge of things we grasp and comprehend to this day. He was just beginning to be worked with, in that respect, drawn by God. God had a purpose for him. God had set him aside to draw Him by His spirit.

Verse 18—And Jacob rose up early in the morning and took the stone that he had for his pillow and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. In other words, as an anointing, setting it apart, this rock, this pillar. And he called the name of the place Bethel – house, dwelling place of God. But the name of that place at first was known as Luz. It was known because it’s an almond tree. That’s what the word means, almond tree. Almond trees, maybe one tree? I don’t know.

It reminds me going up between Lubbock and Roswell, New Mexico. There was one area where there was a bigger tree and a couple of little shrubs on the whole trip. There was one place where there was an old telephone pole or telegraph pole, it was so old, with the big old nest in the top. Looked like an eagles nest it was so large, but it was huge. Basically, when you leave Lubbock, get out there a little way, it’s all you could ever see. I guess Brownsville. That’s all that’s there. Anyway, this is all that was here. So, anyway, it was known as this place.

I think of this particular rock. We know it’s history. To me, what an awesome story. I think of that throne, all the kings and queens have for hundreds of years in Europe, in United Kingdom being coroneted on it because it was underneath the throne, this old throne that was over a thousand years old. Awesome story! That particular stone that they carried around with them and kept with them all that time. Incredible! Because as prone to do, people have a way of having a relationship, an attachment to something and then they take it, take it with them, this living place where God is with us. This is what Jacob experienced and so the family had it. The Stone of Scone.

Verse 20—And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to put on… Well, what is that way that he is going? God’s way. That’s what he was talking about. It’s about this relationship. He saw things in his father, he was choosing those things of his father. Esau wasn’t. Esau was pretty conniving. He tried to get things in a different way. Jacob was different.

…so that I come again to my father’s house in peace. So, “Here I am going. It’s not easy to travel.” He’s wanting safety, desiring safety. And if God will continue to take care of me in peace, then shall the Eternal be my God. So will this stone which I have set as a pillar be God’s house. Do you think he forgot it when he left there?  Think he told the story a lot, over and over again? Do you think others came to know exactly where that stone was? Incredible. …which I have set as a pillar be God’s house (representation, reminder of), and of all that You shall give me I will surely give You the tithe.

So, this presses it even more than the previous example when we talked about Abram before he became Abraham. Here in the beginning of his life and his becoming set in his thinking, in his purpose, that he wanted God, he’s going to live, want, work toward God’s way. He wanted a relationship with God like he saw his father Isaac had. He wanted that. He chose that. He made a decision. Awesome!

That’s what so much of this story is about. It’s about a relationship with God and it is set, if you will, by this desire, by this purpose that he’s going to have. It’s like putting your hand up and saying, “I declare this is what I’m going to do before God,” which is something, basically, in one respect, they did. It was like an oath before God to tithe because it was about a relationship, a commitment… a commitment to God. “I’m going to do this.”

So again, means a lot with human beings when they come to this point and say something of this nature. So, to lie and cheat? If there is anyone in God’s Church that is doing that now, I feel sorry for you. I’m using that term loosely “in God’s Church.” If you’re in the environs of God’s Church because you were cut off the day you didn’t send in whatever tithe you didn’t send in. Whatever Holy Day offering you didn’t send in this past year, you’re cut off from God’s spirit until, if you will, if God offers it to you, to repent, to repent that you would rob from God Almighty, that you would lie to God Almighty.

First and foremost of all things, how can we begin a relationship or continue in a relationship if we’re going to do something like that. To steal? To lie? To connive? To deceive? Incredible, how the human mind can think. So again, over and over again, these matters are about a relationship.

Let’s turn over to Matthew 23. It’s good to see one of the main areas of focus that uses the example of tithing which Christ addressed because it takes us beyond the physical practice that works to establish a true and a right relationship with God, and goes beyond that, if you will, to what is spiritual. So often we can read through things like that and not grasp what is being given to us.

God continually through scripture strives to reason with us to get through to us, to help us, and if there is a way to break through by a certain line of thinking or thought, God strives to do that with us as carnal human beings so that we can hear what He’s saying and begin to see ourselves and our own nature and to know that this is about a relationship.

God wants to give us Elohim, to be in His Family for all time. He’s not just going to hand it out “hurry scurry” like human beings do and a child is born and then forgotten, and they don’t care about them and whatever happens oftentimes in life through growing up and there you go. God is with us. God is there all the time, has a great desire for us to give us something far, far greater than anything physical on this earth.

Yet for physical things people will lie to God, turn against God for something physical. How long are you going to have it? How long are you going to have that relationship that you want to have that’s not right for you? How long are you going to have it? How long are you going to have that vehicle or that apartment or that whatever it is that you had to have, and then all of a sudden just realize, “I don’t have enough money for tithes. I got to make my bills.” Give me a violin.

Matthew 23:15—Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Anybody that robs God is a hypocrite, a liar! Lie. Lie. Lie. Be gone! Just get away. Don’t want you around. If you won’t repent, be gone!

I was going to mention about offerings, the seven times. I’ve had situations come up in times past where people when it comes to young people have said, “Well, a person doesn’t have to start tithing until they’re baptized.” Bull! I’d say something a whole lot stronger than that, but it would probably hurt some of your ears.

There are some in God’s Church who aren’t baptized yet who aren’t tithing, who work. Starting off on the wrong foot. Do you want this or not? Because that’s going to determine how God will work with you for the future here, for what’s coming, because it’s about a relationship God has and desires for you. So, yes, all people should be tithing, not just someone who is baptized. If you have a job, if you have work, God says you’re to tithe on it. Doesn’t matter what the age is.

That’s why I always mention to people it’s such a good thing to begin, whether it be a system of an allowance through different chores and whatever it might be, small, doesn’t matter. But to start teaching at a young age so that an individual can understand what this means, and to teach them and use that as a tool. If we don’t teach our own children, what are we doing? What are we doing? We have a responsibility.

What would it be like if I just said I’m too tired to go to Sabbath services this week to give a sermon? “Don’t feel like it. Don’t think I’ll go to the Feast either.” A parent that won’t teach their child basic things about a relationship with God? This is about how to build a relationship with God, to make a commitment toward God, to begin that process of making a commitment toward God. God will work with them then. There are things that God will do in their life. But if they don’t have that opportunity, then we rob them of that.

So, young people, if you’re a teen, whatever age you are, you’re expected to tithe as well. And if you’re older and it’s not done, you shouldn’t go to the Feast. Shouldn’t go to next year’s Feast for sure if we have another Feast that’s like it is this year. There’ll be a Feast every year, but…

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you go throughout sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, you make him twofold more than the child of gehenna as yourselves. So, had some pretty strong language for them, for their attitude, for their thinking, for their pompous ways, pride, haughtiness in using God’s name and misrepresenting everything that’s there, not true to it at all, changing it to fit ever what they wanted or how they wanted things to be done.

Woe to you, blind guides… People who want to be teachers. People who want to teach others sometimes. We’ve had a lot of that in God’s Church through times past because it’s about them, about them wanting to be seen. It’s the way the Pharisees were. They want to be seen. They wore certain things in a certain way. God says, “You do it to be seen.” People who go into the temple and they throw their coins in. It’s to be heard. “Look how much they’re giving. Woo. Impresses me!”

Anyway, human nature, it really sucks. Human nature is really evil, it’s ugly. It’s the mind of Satan. It’s what we all have to come to understand. Our human nature, our carnal human nature is the mind of Satan. That’s what God gives us the ability to begin conquering and overcoming. Because it’s all about self, “lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.” And you don’t get rid of it until you’re dead or God changes you. You don’t. It’s always going to be there. Sometimes we deceive ourselves into thinking that’s not true.

Woe to you, blind guides, which say, Whoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing, or they’re bound by nothing. This is a matter of debt or whatever it might be at times, as an example, and someone binding their word. So, it’s not like the expression I used to like, you know, “Your word is your bond.” Because if it isn’t, if you don’t have that kind of thinking, that kind of a mind, which used to be many, many years back (it hasn’t been a century back because it used to be when I was growing up, in part). People’s word, oftentimes they’d use that expression, their word was their bond. “If I said I’m going to pay this back, I’m going to pay it back.”

Anyway, anyone who does this by the temple is bound by nothing, but whoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is bound by the oath. That’s really a better translation of what’s said there. So, if it’s by the gold of the temple, “The gold! Now, that impresses me. The temple? It’s a building. It’s a big building. It’s a nice building. Took a lot to build it. But that gold! I can relate to that, see. Woo, that’s what impresses me. So, if you will declare by all the gold that’s in the temple then your word is good, you’re bound.”

Human beings are nuts sometimes, crazy in our thinking. Anyway, Christ is pointing this out. “Look how screwed up you have things!” Fools and blind! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that sanctifies the gold? Think, they didn’t get it. “The tithe or God who sanctified it.” God says the tithe is holy, set apart to be holy. Which is greater? And if we don’t get that, if we don’t get that about the tithe or the Holy Day offering, that it’s about a relationship with God Almighty, then we’re missing the mark. It’s about a relationship with God. That’s why we do it. That’s our attitude. That’s our thinking. That’s our spirit. It’s not about something physical that’s difficult to do at times in life, it’s about a relationship, that relationships can be difficult in life because you have to work things out – a lot of times in the mind in self, to change certain things about your own thinking.

Also, Whosoever shall swear by the altar, it is nothing; but whoever swears by the gift that’s upon it is bound by the oath. So, it’s like the gift, look at what they’re giving. Swear by that. Let’s put a bull up there, you know, or whatever other things you’ve got to put up there, whatever you’re able to put up there, a lamb, whatever. That becomes more important in their thinking. Why? Because it’s all about this thinking, physical, carnal – gold, money, the cost of an animal, a creature that’s put up there or whatever it is that’s offered up, the garden, the things of whatever you have that you put up there.

Fools and blind! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift? So, sometimes it’s just a matter we’re just not thinking right. We have to have God’s help to think right, to see things on a spiritual plane, to recognize this is about God, this is about a relationship with God. God doesn’t play games. He knows when we’re lying. God hates lying and liars, the lying. He loves us all, please don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. But if we lie to God?

And whoever shall swear by the temple, swears by it and by Him who dwells therein. So, “On a physical plane, a carnal plane this is what you should grasp, and you don’t even grasp it.” Which we understand that this is not what it’s all about. But they were carnal. They were being dealt with in a carnal plane. The sacrificial system was all a carnal, physical thing.

He who will swear by heaven swears by the throne of God and Him who sits upon it. Believing they’re living righteously but deceiving themselves. It’s incredible how far the human mind goes.

Verse 23—Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You pay tithe of mint, dill, and cumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law. So, here we really get down to some of the nitty gritty. Here is an example here then now about tithing that’s brought in, that Christ brought in. He talked about these other things that they couldn’t grasp nor comprehend and said, “Look at your righteousness, your self-righteousness,” in essence, “and you will do this. You will go through this routine.”

These are minute little things here. So, to do 10% of these can get very detailed. Rather than rounding up to the next dollar it’s like to the very detail, to the very centile, you know, type of thing in our thinking. It’s like you do this and it’s like you’re not going to give any more to God, but you will be very minute, very detailed about getting to that point in time and saying, “No more!” That’s basically the attitude.

But you have omitted the weightier matters of the law. So, that’s what he’s giving in contrast here. “You don’t get it. There is that which is far greater than going through the physical routine of tithing.” Yes, it’s about a relationship; it’s about obedience. But if we don’t have that and don’t have that kind of commitment, how can we grow? Because the weightier, the more important things are about this. This is what it’s to lead us to, especially in God’s Church through the power of His holy spirit, matters of judgment, mercy, and faith.

The ability to believe. The blessing of being able to see and hold on to it. Sin cuts us off from our ability to believe! We begin to lose what we believe. We begin to lose the conviction of what it is we believe. That happens. You can’t help it because it’s a spiritual thing. Our ability to see the truth is given by God. We don’t figure it out.

That’s why I used to hate with all of my being attitudes and thinking that used to exist where individuals thought that they could go into scriptures and read scriptures and grasp things and find new things to give to the Church because they needed to see what they could see. They were off in left field or right field, and basically just out in a ditch somewhere way out because it takes God’s spirit to have any of that which is sound and balanced and right.

So, the ability to believe. Look at what happened to people around the time of the Apostasy. One day they were one way, and literally the next day their mind, it was gone! It’s just gone. Don’t know them anymore. Who are they? That’s why I used the expression, the old movie, the old show, the Invasion of the Body Snatchers, because you didn’t know them anymore. Something had gotten a hold of them.

When you sin something will get a hold of you unless you repent, and you’ll get weaker. Because, you see, in God’s Church and in a relationship with God, God doesn’t just let things go by. Because He’s placed before us the greatest of that which is in the universe physical and spirit, His Family for all time. The value we place on that, if we don’t grasp and don’t see that and want that with all of our being and think it’s worth fighting for, working for, whatever it is in our thinking we have to do, if we’re not willing to fight for that and work for it, whatever that work might be, we’re not worthy of it.

Because, you see, that’s involved as well. We have to work. We have to fight for it. We have to persevere. We ask God for the help to accomplish that because the reality is we learn we can’t do that on our own. We need His help and the encouragement, the strength of His holy spirit. He’ll give us that if that’s our heart – that mind of David, going back to those sermons. That mind, that attitude. If it’s there, God will work with us. The moment a person sins, they repent, God works with that. But if we continue in sin and not in God, God can’t work with that.

…judgment, mercy. Our ability to judge things clearly, soundly, with a sound mind. We live in a world right now that is absolutely nuts! Stark raving mad from the right to the left. That’s why I partially get a bit of a charge in a way that they can’t grasp or would be able to, when an expression is used about the news and it’s “fair and balanced.” They can’t see themselves. There are people who really buy into that and think it’s fair and balanced. No, it isn’t. It’s all messed up. It’s not fair and balanced at all. Yet people think they’re doing the right thing no matter what side they’re on.

That’s why I think about some of these things, and I think about things that happened within the Church sometimes of stupid conspiracy theories and yet sometimes we don’t think they’re conspiracy theories because we think it’s true. It’s not a conspiracy. We can take it so far in our thinking to think it’s true because we’re plugged into something that we shouldn’t be plugged into and it’ll hurt your mind. You can’t help it. If you start thinking in a certain way rather than receiving things from God, like what God gives here. We have to make choices.

That’s why, candidly, this Covid thing is bringing a lot of things to the surface, within the Church even of where we are, of what we’re plugged into, of what we will listen to. We would rather do our own research and come up with what we believe is the truth and what we think is right in our own minds and our own self-righteousness, as God was talking to the Pharisees, rather than listening to things that God inspires to be given to the Church. I’ve been in the Church long enough to understand how God works and the kinds of warnings He gives us at times and see how they come out in time. I don’t care what it is.

Something like Facebook, and yet people have to have it. They want to do it. They don’t realize what they’re going to do to their mind. God tries to warn us about certain things. We go off on different tangents and we justify ourselves because, “I’ve done my research.” Ask me if I care. Ask me how I feel about that. Well, on second thought, please don’t. Depending on how I feel, I might just let you know.

But I do let you know here, and this is where I do it. This is where God’s spirit works. This is where God works in God’s Church. It’s His Church. It’s not mine. Incredible! So, the people who want to argue with me? I’m not going to argue. This is the way it is. We live it or we don’t. We listen or we don’t.

Blind guides, which strain at a gnat and swallow a camel! The point being is sometimes we can be so meticulous about something in our own lives it’s like straining, like your teeth, you’re going to close your teeth and you’re going to talk like this because those gnats are thick.

If you’ve been in Jerusalem, I remember the gnats. They’re not little gnats. So, when they use that expression, I’m a believer, because they’re big. They’re not as big as a fly but they’re bigger than our gnats. It was the Holocaust Museum where they were so bad one time. Horrible, these gnats!

This expression here means a lot to me. People who live in that part of the world, they knew what he was talking about, “You strain at a gnat,” because you don’t want something unclean. Well, you don’t want a bunch of gnats in your mouth anyway, but the concept here, the idea of having something unclean, well, you don’t want gnats because they’re unclean. It doesn’t fit in the cow family, the lamb family, the trout family… I’m sorry. But the point being is they’re not noted to be a clean food.

So, you strain at a gnat and hope you have good teeth when you do it because you don’t want it to get through, and if you’re able to do something like that and talk like that. So, that’s what it’s talking about, straining at a gnat. Keep your mouth fairly well shut; talk between your teeth if you still have them by that time, whatever it is. But you swallow a camel.

So, what does that mean? It means you can be so careful about certain things in your life, about what you’re righteous about, and because you’re going to go ahead and do certain things your own way and you end up swallowing a camel. You end up being, doing something that is far, far worse and you don’t even know it. You’d think someone would know if they swallowed a camel. That’s the point. You don’t. You’re blind to it. You can go so far with something that this gets screwed up, messed up. Spiritually, you swallow a camel.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You may clean the outside of the cup and the platter, meticulous about some times, some things, and inside they are full of extortion. Robbery. To rob God? Better believe it if it comes down to something like that. …and excess (self-indulgence). Self-indulgence. So many sins, that’s what it’s about, self-indulgence. We want. We want. I want. What is it you want that’s wrong? Repent of it.

Blind Pharisee, first cleanse what is within the cup and the platter, then the outside that they may be clean also. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful on the outside, but within are full of dead bones and all uncleanness. A dead, decaying body, unclean, but the outside looks nice. Did a great job on it.

Even so also you outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. Sometimes, the point being in all this, is sometimes we just don’t see our own sins. We deceive ourselves as human beings.

Finally, Matthew 5:20, we’ll close there.

So, hopefully anybody who’s had problems with tithes on a consistent basis gets their life in order. If you get paid every two weeks it’s fine to send your tithes in then, like some do. Some do it weekly. Some do it by the month because of their budgeting, type of budget process, because you pay bills once a month type of thing. That’s fine.

I personally don’t feel like it’s healthy to go way beyond that to a quarter unless you have a particular kind of job or business where you really don’t know where you stand. Then that’s fine. I understand that. Farmers, ranchers are very much like that because they don’t know what they have oftentimes. Things are getting better in that regard, as far as what people can measure, but still, sometimes because of crops or certain things that happen in the market you really don’t know until it’s done. That’s understandable.

But the type of work where people are paid on a monthly basis, as a whole, as a minimum, it’s good to get into that habit. You pay your mortgage once a month. If you don’t, there are repercussions. With God there will be a lot more on a spiritual plane.

Matthew 5:20—For I say unto you, that except your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will in no way enter into the kingdom of heaven. So how much do we want what God has placed before us? I believe as a whole within the Body, we want this, we want God’s way of life. That’s why we have gone through the things we have and continue on. But sometimes there are some that drag at that and drag along the way, and you wonder, well, what is it you want because you’re kind of dragging the Body?

I’d like to use that expression about “the pot” and “doing something or get off of it,” you know, but anyway, that’s basically the gist of that. When I said that one time the ones in the Netherlands looked at each other because pot is the drug, you know, so somebody having problem getting on marijuana a lot. I don’t know.

So again, I hope we grasp through this sermon series that tithing is just not a physical routine that we’re to go through. It’s not just a matter of obedience. It is a matter of obedience, of a desire, but it reflects what’s in the heart. What is our desire? It is a very physical routine, but it gets down to our thinking and what we think about it that God’s concerned with. Because this is where it all begins. Because if we can’t do that right, we can’t build a relationship with Him. That’s what’s so important about it.

So, those who do it faithfully, awesome. There are other things in our life we need to look at. Like I mentioned earlier, whatever sins they might be we need to work on, we need to repent. We need to do those things to place what God is placing before us, to honor it, to respect it, to be in awe of it, to love it, to desire it. It’s a good thing to have, to want. It’s a good thing to want to be in God’s Kingdom. It’s a good thing to want to be in God’s Family. It’s a good thing to want to inherit everything – everything! We can’t yet grasp that. We grow in understanding of that as time goes along but there’s a lot out there and it’s for God’s Family.

If we’re not careful, we can sell it all away for a bowl of soup, on a spiritual plane. It’s what happens in those who are called and not chosen. Because of sin, because of being cut off from God that’s exactly what takes place, because of the respect and the love toward God.

Prayerfully, we’ll grow in that more and more and become stronger and stronger as a Body here before Christ returns, because we are going to be a cleansed, a very cleansed body before God.

1. Chapter 1