Speak to the Levites and say to them: ‘When you receive from the Israelites the tithe I give you as your inheritance, you must present a tenth of that tithe as the LORD’s offering.’ – Numbers 18:26

Today’s Scripture Reading (November 3, 2018): Numbers 18

We are great consumers. And our culture has taught us to consume everything. And we have learned that lesson. We spend everything that we have, living from paycheck to paycheck, and often even people with good jobs find that they actually don’t have enough to last them to the next paycheck. The last few days before the next paycheck is received are often spent either in forced deprivation or deepening debt.

But that is not how we are supposed to live. Being a people who are committed to living within our means is repeatedly taught within the pages of the Bible. And biblically, this includes the uncomfortable idea of the tithe. The tithe is ten percent of the money that you generate, either by a job or through your investments. And the tithe has two intentions. The first intention is that it is the means by which the priest is meant to live. The rest of the tribes of Israel would receive an inheritance in the form of land that would be given to them, but the priests and Levites were to be excluded from this inheritance. There would be no land that they could call their own. Their inheritance and the means by which they would buy food and purchase shelter would come in the form of a tithe that would be given by the twelve tribes of Israel.

But there was a second purpose of the tithe, and that purpose was to break the embrace that consumerism holds on us. God intends his people to be a generous community and not a people who hordes for themselves. And it is this second purpose that is stressed here. For the rest of the nation, the tithe was in support of the class of people who served in the temple. But if that were the only reason for the tithe, there would have been no expectation for the priest to tithe. Yet, even priests and ministers need to be taught to live generously – and to live within their means. And so a tithe is expected even from those who are called to serve within the Tabernacle.

I would go a step further. As a people, we need to learn to live on eighty percent of what we receive. With eighty percent of the money we receive, we pay our bills and the things that are essential to living. Ten percent, the tithe, we give to God and his operations. And the other ten percent we put away for our own futures and for the financial goals that we want to achieve. And in this way, the grasp that consumerism has on our lives is broken, and we can truly live.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Numbers 19