In Haggai’s day, the people were rebuilding after the desolation of Jerusalem. They were all spending their money on their houses, but not giving to the Lord’s house. They didn’t prosper because they did not care about the Lord’s temple. They don’t value it in their life.
It is precisely the same today. People who do not tithe do not care if the church is there tomorrow or not. It is the Non-Tithers who suddenly feel led to another church, or go to a conference rather than church, or put Christian TV above church, or even nowadays actually go to Bible College without going to church! They do not realize that the key to successful Christian living is local church.
We need people in this generation with a different attitude. Without the “I can always just find another church” attitude, never settled, never plugged in attitude. I would rather the attitude of David, who was one of the biggest givers to the temple, a man who always tithed, a man who said “I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever”. That’s the attitude we need.
We need to believe in local church to the point we put our money where our mouth is. This is so vital. Some people have actually stopped tithing because their pastor said something that upset them. We had a family once that only tithed certain months depending on what I was teaching! That is so immature, the Bible doesn’t say “Bring the tithes to the pastor”, it says “Bring them to the storehouse”. Tithing should be done to the local church, so if you have no love or respect for the local church, you will end up believing tithing is non-essential!
In Nehemiah, many priests went off to become farmers because the lack of tithing meant they could not continue in ministry. What a tragedy. Not tithing is a powerful declaration that you do not care about being fed the Word or about the body of Jesus Christ.
And tithing is a powerful declaration that you do.
Selah.
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