Dr Greg Bahnsen - Economic Ethics: Tithes and Taxes (Part 4)

The first One is Romans 13. The first seven verses. Hear now the word of God. Paul says, let every soul be in subjection to the higher powers, for there is no power but of God, and the powers that be are ordained of God. Therefore he that resisteth the power withstandeth the ordinance of God. And they that withstand shall receive to themselves judgment. For rulers are not a terror to the good work, but to the evil. And wouldst thou have no fear of the power? Do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise from the same. For he is a minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid, for he beareth not the sword in vain. For he is a minister of God, an avenger for wrath to him that doeth evil. Wherefore ye must needs be in subjection, not only because of the wrath, but also for conscience sake. For this cause ye pay tribute also. For they are ministers of God's service, attending continually upon this very thing. Render to all their dues tribute to whom tribute is due custom, to whom custom fear, to whom fear honor, to whom honor. Now turn to the words of our Lord himself during his earthly ministry, as they're found in Matthew the 22nd chapter, beginning at the 15th verse, Matthew 22:15. Then went the Pharisees and took counsel how they might ensnare him in his talk. And they said to him their disciples, with the Herodians saying, teacher, we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of God in truth, and carest not for anyone, for thou regardest not the person of men. Therefore tell us, what thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar or not? But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, why make ye trial of me, Ye hypocrites, show me the tribute money. And they brought unto him a denarius. And he saith unto them, whose is this image and superscription? They say unto him, Caesar's. Then saith he unto them, render therefore unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's. And when they heard it, they marveled and left him, and went away. Turn now to the Old Testament, to the prophecy of Malachi the third chapter, and I'll begin by reading at the seventh verse. Malachi 3:7. From the days of your fathers ye have turned aside from mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith Jehovah of hosts. But ye say, wherein shall we return? Will a man rob God yet? Ye rob me but ye say, wherein have we robbed thee in tithes and offerings? Ye are cursed with the curse, for ye rob me even this whole nation. Bring ye the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house, and prove me now wherewith, saith Jehovah, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it and I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground, neither shall your vine cast its fruit before the time in the field, saith Jehovah of hosts. And and all nations shall call you happy, for ye shall be a delightsome nation, saith Jehovah of hosts. And then one more text. Matthew, the 23rd chapter. Now in Jesus rebuke of the Pharisees, Matthew 23:23, Jesus said, Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. For ye tithe mint and annas, and human and have left undone the weightier matters of the law, justice, and mercy, and faith but these ye ought to have done, and not to have left the other undone. Ye blind guides that strain out the gnat, but swallow the camel and thus far the reading of God's Word in our series on economic ethics, we've had four installments, four lessons thus far. The first one was in general, about the standard of ethics for us as Christians, the standard of economic ethics as well, and that is the law of God, the written word of God, God's holy revelation as it's found in the Scriptures. We then looked at the foundation of every economic system, the question of ownership, and found that the Bible, especially in the eighth commandment, presupposes and teaches explicitly the right, the God given right of private ownership, private property as we call it. In our third lesson we looked at the teachings of Jesus and the parables and how they presuppose the right to free exchange, if you will, the free market, where people can enter into an economic arrangement for their own profit, set their own prices, determine whether they will or will not purchase or engage in the service of others. Then last week we looked at the biblical attitude toward wealth. It's a two sided attitude, an ambivalent attitude. On the one hand, wealth is a sign of blessing. It is a blessing of God for obedience and it is promised to those who are obedient to God. Nevertheless, wealth can also be a very treacherous temptation, being placed in a slippery place by God to bring the wicked down to destruction because they have trusted in themselves rather than. Than in the Lord. And now today we're coming further to a question that I think naturally is raised, given our previous considerations. See, if you believe in private property, if you believe in the free market, then it might seem a natural inference that I can do whatever I want with my own money. And no outside individual, no outside institution has any right to intrude in my economic affairs. Any claims upon my money, my wealth, my property, any claims have got to be claims that I have freely accepted. They have to be claims which I have decided upon because, after all, it is my private property and therefore I am sovereign over it. And because any time that I engage in an exchange of my property or money with somebody else, it must be freely done according to the conduct I would accept. And consequently, no one outside of myself may touch or lay any claim to my money, to my property, to my wealth. I say that might seem a natural inference from the fact that private. From the fact that property is private and the market is free. However, that is not an inference which the Bible draws. It's an inference which in fact is contradicted by the Bible. And at this point, somebody might say, well, now wait a minute. What right has the Bible to intrude in these things? Well, very simply, the right the Bible has to intrude in these things is that it's only the Bible that lays a moral foundation for private property in the free market in the first place. It's only the revealed word of God and the holy character of God that is a moral guarantee that we have the right to ownership and to free exchange. And since it's God's own character which stands behind the free market and private property, God in his own character in Revelation certainly has the right to qualify and limit the use of our freedom and the privacy of our property. It turns out that the Bible in two particular areas says that no matter how much money we have, no. No matter how private is our ownership, no matter how free the market in which we live, there will always be two outside claims upon our wealth, two outside claims upon our property and money. And those two are called taxes and tithes. And that's the subject of this morning's lesson, taxes and tithes. In Romans, the 13th chapter, a passage which I hope is well known to many of you, you've probably heard exhortations upon it, have read about it. Most of you will have done that. Paul tells us the familiar message about the need for submission to those civil authorities which have been placed over us. And Paul reminds You they have been placed over us by God. And that brings a double obligation. One, my obligation for not only the sake of avoiding the wrath of the magistrate, but also for conscience sake, my obligation to submit to my civil ruler as well. It brings an obligation for the civil ruler to submit to God because he is, as Paul very plainly puts it twice in this passage, a minister of God. He avenges God's wrath against evil doers. And the only reason I for conscience suffer must submit to him is because I recognize that he that is the magistrate is under the higher authority of my Creator and Redeemer. And so my conscience, as a creation of God and as the person redeemed by God, must be in submission to the civil ruler because he is but the deputy of my Creator and Redeemer in the state. Okay, these are familiar words. As I say, Paul says, rulers deserve our submission. Rulers must also obey God, but we must obey them. Now in verse five, he points out the motivation for this submission when he says, you must needs be in subjection, not only because of the wrath, not only because you'll be punished as a criminal if you don't, but also for conscience sake. And I've explained that already, it's conscience before God. So since God is the ruler over all and I submit to God, I must submit to those rulers God sends to be over me. So he says, you must be in subjection for the sake of wrath and for the sake of conscience. And then verse six says, for for this cause you pay tribute also, for they are ministers of God's service, attending continually upon the very thing. Since these are ministers of God, and since you submit for the sake of conscience, Paul says you pay tribute. That's going to be a hard thing for this preacher to say, but you don't pay tribute with clenched teeth begrudgingly. You do it for the sake of conscience and as an act of service to God, because this is the minister of God. Now, I'm laying a foundation to say something later about tithes as well. I just want to warn you. But as a matter of fact, when I clench my teeth and say, I don't want to pay any taxes to the government, I'm really saying in the very face of God, I don't want to do what you say. And you may think I need certain ministers, and you may think that these rulers should be over me, but I don't want it like a little child defying the wisdom of his or her parents. And God does not brook that kind of rebellion. The failure to pay Our taxes is a deep and deadly sin because it is rebellion against the most high God. It may by its consequences and implications be a more deadly sin than even some of the ones that we really stand back in horror of sexual sins or what have you. For you see, when you sin by refusing to be in submission to those rulers that God has put over you, and that is a lack of submission not to support them in the way that they duly tax you to do, when you fail in that regard, you are really rebelling against God. Is this so surprising to you? What did Paul say at the beginning of this passage? Let every soul be in subjection to the higher powers, for there is no power but of God, and the powers that be are ordained of God. Therefore, he that resists the power withstands the ordinance of God, and they that withstand shall receive to themselves judgment. When we refuse to pay our taxes, or when we have a rebellious attitude toward our taxes, we have a rebellious attitude toward the authority that has put the civil authorities over us. And so that bad attitude, if not refusal to pay our taxes, is in fact a bad attitude toward and refusal of obedience to God himself. And those who withstand God in that way will be judged. And so, no matter what a person may say about the free market, whatever a person may say about private property, the free market and private property at their moral foundations may not exclude the idea of government taxation may not. And so, from time to time, I engage in discussions, not only with good people here in this congregation, but elsewhere around the country, about economic ethics. And often it is said, you know, the libertarians in our society are very close to our point of view. Well, I guess at the bottom line, many of the practical output issues many of the judgments made by libertarians, not by any means most, but many, do accord with Christian morality on that matter. The libertarian philosophy is at base a wicked philosophy. It stands under the judgment of God because libertarianism takes as its understanding of private property, which it has no moral foundation for anyway, and its understanding of the free market, that the government may not intervene in my economic affairs. But that isn't what private property and free market mean in the eyes of God. God is the authority, God is the one who lays down the standards of morality. God is the one who stands behind my right of private ownership. And God is the one who says, you do not own things to such an extent that you can close out the support of your civil ministers. You owe them for conscience sake, if not for the avoidance of wrath, the paying of your taxes. Now, people in our day Many people who have the reputation for being followers of the law of God, people who supposedly have studied this subject have often enough said that it's a matter of religious scruple for us not to pay our taxes. Now, before I go any further, let me distinguish the. The particular case I'm talking about from another kind of case which has its own snarls. Really, another kind of case has to do with the testing of a point of legal interpretation in our country. There are those, I know, some people who believe that, to use an illustration, the Internal Revenue Service stands in violation of the highest law of this land. So the Constitution of the United States of America forbids the Internal Revenue Service from doing what it is doing. And therefore they believe that it is an appropriate strategy, at least for some people in God's kingdom to challenge that contradiction in the procedures of our government. Okay. Now, that challenge has as its goal, then, the clarification of what the magistrate in this country really wishes of us. Are we submit to the Constitution or the IRS code? That's the nature of the issue set before them. It must be understood, of course, even in that case, that when that is resolved, rightly or wrongly in the eyes of Christians, when that is resolved, then we do know what the government means by our obligation with respect to taxes. And whenever that has been clarified, at that point we are under obligation to pay. And I might say, not so much from the pulpit, and thus saith the Lord, but just as a private citizen to you. I have no doubt as to how it's going to be resolved when it finally is pushed to the Supreme Court of this land. As much as I do not like the Internal Revenue Service and will condemn it morally in just a few moments, it will in fact be supported. Because that's just the nature of the wicked society in which we live. And at that point, the challenges to legal interpretation will all become now just a matter of simple Christian obedience or disobedience, given the provisos of what is going to come in a few moments. But there are some Christians who say government is doing things that I don't agree with. An example, abortion, funding abortion, that I may willingly withdraw my support. I do not have to pay my taxes. Paul says, for conscience sake, you must. Jesus says, do you see whose image is upon the coin? Don't you understand that since this is coined by the government, if the government demands it, you pay it? Now, I know this congregation. I know most of your backgrounds. I know your sociopolitical bents. I know your economic prejudices. I know what you're thinking. Now, I know you're saying but, but, and, but. And there are plenty of those to be taken account of, and I hope I will take account of them even without my computer readout this morning. But you must first of all understand that paying taxes is a privilege and a moral obligation, and it must willingly and gladly be. But a few other things have to be taken into account as well here. Now, I said that Paul teaches in Romans 13, the obligation we have to give up some of our money for the sake of taxation. I need to go on to point out that taxation is a terribly awesome power. We must remember that taxation is, in the nature of the case, not a free will offering. Taxation is not a suggestion. Taxation is not something that somebody comes to your room and says, would you like to, you know, help us out in some common social function here? And then you say, well, yeah, maybe I will, or I know I gave at the office, or whatever you may say at a time like that. Now, taxation is, in its very essential character, coercive. What stands behind taxation is the threat of violence from the government if you refuse to contribute. That violence may be imprisonment, it may be confiscation of property, it may be any number of kinds of punishments, looking at the history of Western and Eastern civilization for that matter. But the point is, taxation is a contribution made not willingly, even if you happen to agree with it. I mean, if you gladly drop in your contribution on the 15th of April, that doesn't make it a voluntary thing just because you're happy to do it. What I'm saying is, in the nature of the case, whether you're happy or unhappy about it, it's coercive because when it's not paid, you will be punished. Now then, if I were to come to you after church this morning while you're enjoying coffee or whatever, and I were to say, I want you to give me $50. And you were to say, well, I mean, it's my $50. I have to think about it. What do you want it for? I say, no, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. I don't care whether you agree with how I'm going to use the money or not. I don't care if you feel like supporting it, you must give me this $50. And then when you say, well, I'm not so sure that I have to do that, and I were to grab your wallet out of your hand and, and open it up and say, here's that $50 and here's your wallet and walk Away. Now what would you call that besides rude? You'd call it thievery, theft, robbery, mugging, stealing, whatever term you want to use. The point is, I've taken something which is yours and it's not right to do that. So now let's think about this. When the state comes and says, if we go through the scenario again, not, not 50, probably closer to 500 or 5,000, depending on the particular kind of transaction. When the state says I want your $50, and you say, well, I'm not so sure I want it. And the state grabs your wallet and takes it out through confiscation or through a lien against your employment and your income or whatever it may be. When the state violently takes your money away from you and then leaves the rest, do we call that thievery? One might think the analogy is such that that is the conclusion to be drawn. But it isn't. Because in this case, provided it's an appropriate tax, etc. Etc. All things being equal, in this case, it is morally warranted by God. Now do you see the difference here? Now do you see the awesome power of taxation? The state has the right to violently, if need be, take my money and use it for its purposes. And so taxation implies coercion, coercion implies sovereignty. The state has a sovereign right over that portion of my money which we call taxes. Now in this day and age, one wonders how the secular world can justify this. I think the libertarians have a very good argument against that. If there's no moral authority behind the state after all. But as Christians, we do believe the state has been given a moral authority by God to tax. But remember, the state has that only as subordinate to the higher sovereign, the higher authority, God himself. And what does that imply about the state? That implies that the state's power must be curtailed within the appropriate, if you will, boundaries of its own sovereignty. It may not intrude into other sovereign domains. It may not bloat its sovereign beyond what God has given it. And when it does so, when the state starts coercing from its citizens money that it has no right to, that is the same as my coming to you and taking the $50 out of your wallet. It is nothing less than theft. And so the state may become guilty of thievery and using them, or masquerading, if you will, under the rationale of taxation. And so as Christians, it's important for us to understand the proper boundaries of the state. The state may tax for its legitimate functions, and when it taxes beyond its Legitimate functions, it is guilty of theft. Now what do we do when the state is guilty of theft? Pay your taxes anyway. Why? Because Jesus said so. Remember how Jesus said, and when they compel you to go a mile, be willing to go a second mile. That compelling to go a mile is not a legitimate service that was owed to the Roman soldiers who came and said, you'll carry this cargo for a mile. But Jesus says the way to handle that situation is not to say, hey, I stand on my right, you can't tell me to do that. Jesus says, no, go the mile, Offer to go another if need be. You're being taxed in a way that's illegitimate. Be willing to pay even more. Go the second mile with the government. How about the third mile, fourth, fifth, tenth, hundredth? What about a government that just gets completely out of hand? Well, in one sense we're going a little bit beyond the range of considerations in economic ethics now. And we're really talking about authority, submission to authority, and the Christians response to the civil magistrate in general. And I cannot get into all of that, although I think that probably is fascinating enough to many of you in this congregation. But what I would say is at some point, I believe the Bible does warrant refusal to obey your government, or to put it better, refusal to see that as your government any longer. That is, there is at some point the right of resistance against the government. I cannot at this particular point for you because it takes so long and there are so many considerations. Define that point. And I want to get back to economics here. But when and if you have reached the moral right to rebel against your government, at that point you have the right not to pay taxes. Why? Because it is not your government. So I hope you can see the point that I'm getting at. We are to pay our taxes even when we think our government is wrong. And the only proviso that can be put on that is that only at the point in which we say this is now to be thrown off as our government. This is such a wicked beast under which we are living that we must have a new government at whatever point that is morally justified. At that point it is morally justified not to pay your taxes. But not until that point. Well, parenthetically one might reason this way. It's a little strange. The Lord expects me to pay a tithe. We'll see that in a couple of minutes. 10% must be left out. The Bible also says anybody who doesn't provide for his own house is worse than an infidel. And so whatever percent. Can I just arbitrarily say 50% of what I earn is necessary just to clothe and feed my family? That 50%, or 40 or 60, whatever it turns out, the government can't legitimately take that because I have a higher authority, God, that tells me to spend it this way. So if I add those together, I. I get 60, and therefore, after the government starts taxing me beyond 40%, the remainder. @ that point I have a moral right to stand up and say, no more. My family must be supported, my church must be tithed to. So you pay your taxes until the right of revolution comes, if ever. And the only proviso I'd make is you have a higher obligation to take care of your family and to pay your tithe, and consequently the government can't intrude in that area. But up to that point, you pay and pay and pay. You go the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth mile, whatever it takes. Those aren't very happy words, not the sort of thing we like to hear. It's not what I like to hear. I'm not preaching this sermon because I figured it out myself. I'm preaching it because I think that's what the Bible says. My personality would be such to stand every inch nose to nose with the government and say, prove it, prove it, prove it. But the Bible says, no, for conscience sake, pay tribute to whom tribute is due. That's my obligation. There's another obligation, the obligation of the state to God. Let's talk about taxes now from that perspective, and here probably to get a little more favorable to what you would like to hear, but the whole picture has to be laid before you. The state is under obligation to God to take taxes only where God permits it to take taxes. Or else it is a theft state. It is the state guilty of robbery, one which we aren't to resist until the point of revolution is legitimate, but nevertheless guilty of robbery against God and against God's people. When the Israelites of old asked for a king to be put over them, God said, all right, you'll have your wicked desire, you will have a king. And let me tell you how oppressive this will be, how bad this will be. Now understand the context. God is telling the Israelites, you're going to get a really terrible, wicked situation out of this. I'll tell you how bad it's going to be. So God does not approbate what he's talking about. He disapprobates it. He finds it unfavorable, untoward, a terrible curse Something which should not have to be endured by people. And he says, when you have a king over you, he's going to take a tenth of your money for taxes. His tribute will be a tenth of your income. That's how bad it's going to be. Now, some of you, especially those of you who have learned to pay income tax, say, if that's what God thought was wicked, what must he think about our government today that doesn't flinch at taking up to just recently was Limited up to 50%? Well, I'll tell you what God thinks. He thinks that it is a downright messianic false message. Messianic state guilty of robbery. And it will come under his judgment. For the state is a minister of God. And in our particular day, the state has become far, far too big. Property taxes. Foundational to the tax structure of our country and our state. Property taxes. Property taxes are wicked, first of all, because the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. And no man dare tax the Lord's possessions. He gives them. He deputizes those possessions to people under him to be used in his service. They are to be taxed. But even apart from that, I think you can see how wicked property taxes are. Because property taxes are but a way of the state confiscating the property. Property of its citizens. How so? Imagine. I'll give you two illustrations quickly. Imagine that some relatives of mine, my parents or somebody else who own property die. They will this property to me. It's part of my inheritance. But it turns out that I'm not gainfully employed at such a level anyway that I can keep up with the taxes that the government is placing upon that property. And therefore I am deprived of the use of my family's holdings just because I'm not in a certain socioeconomic class. You see, that is my property. But it doesn't make a shoe repairman a lawyer just because he inherits property. And when you tax him as though he had the income of a lawyer and he's only a shoe repairman, what you eventually do is confiscate his family's property. And that is wicked. Or what if a man who has worked all his life and has worked hard, but in so doing has had to work hard to keep up with the property taxes on the land that he wants to enjoy, finally comes to the point of either forced or voluntary retirement? He would have enough money to live on, and he could now enjoy the hard labor that he's put in all these many years of his life on his Property, except that he has to keep year by year paying his property taxes. And many people, many elderly people, find themselves forced to sell their property just to escape the confiscation that will come because they can't meet the property tax. See, the property tax is one of these things that once you put it in motion, is like a wicked machine that just keeps gobbling and gobbling and gobbling. And when you want to retire, forget your retirement. When you want to lay this property up as an inheritance for others, forget that too, unless you just happen to be in the right socioeconomic class. So property taxes discriminate in that way and oppress in another. Moreover, the assessment of property for the same of taxation is a wicked process. You know who does the assessing? The person who gets his pay from the very agency that is going to tax you. And as such, the control of his considerations is not the control of the free market. Efficiency and justice. Truth, if you will, is he a private assessor who is way out of line with true values, is driven out of the marketplace? He doesn't have any business after a while. Okay, we have people who make assessments for the sake of selling houses, right? People who make assessments in that business, in the free market, who do a terrible job of it, who do not really give the market value of the house, find themselves without clients. The free market rewards or punishes inefficiency and inaccuracy with its appropriate, appropriate reward, driving people out of the market. But in the government, where there's a monopoly on this sort of thing, and when the man who is making the assessment gets his pay from the very agency that's going to tax you, the control is not efficiency, but expediency, political pressure rather than truth, and free market pressure. And consequently, assessment of the long history of assessing property value by a monopolistic agency like the government has been one of favoritism over and over and over again. Now in my research, which again I remind you, is back in my computer for this morning's exhortation, as of about 13 years ago, the statistic was given that in the state of California alone, the state was foreclosing on property for failure to pay taxes. You won't believe this 150,000 times a month. A month? A month. Incredible. Property tax is not what God has given as the way for the government to be supported. Rather, the Bible supports an income tax, non graduated income tax, and, or you may even consider the poll tax, an income tax if you wish, the head tax, the tax that enables a person to go to the polls and vote, if you want to put it that way, that gives him legal rights of citizenship, the exercise of those rights of citizenship, the income tax, provided that the rich do not pay more and the poor do not pay less. And the most equitable way in which that can be worked out in our own society is by a percentage, it seems to me therefore the poor do not pay any more or less than the rich and vice versa. You say, well, but what if we just set the rate at say, $100? Well, the difficulty is the poor would not pay more and the rich would not pay less, except relatively. They sure would. And there will be some who could not even make the $100. And so consequently, I do not find the Bible to be. I don't find the idea of a percentage rate to be contradictory to the principles underlying biblical law. However, the idea of an absolute figure, as long as it's low enough to meet those who are gainfully employed everywhere and not to deprive them of their political rights, is all right as well. Now, so you have the head tax, poll tax and or income tax as long as it's non graduated. But there are exceptions here. Who does not pay taxes? First of all, those agencies which have a separate sovereignty do not pay taxes. For instance, the church does not pay taxes. If the state were to move in and to make the church pay taxes, it would be saying that the church must answer first to Caesar along the way of obeying God. Caesar would enable, I mean would be in a position of destroying the church as well, which parenthetically I think you see happening in our humanistic culture right now. The state through its tax agencies would very much like to destroy a gospel preaching churches. The state has no right to intrude its sovereignty. Here we render to God the things that are God's and to Caesar the things that Caesar. So there is in that sense a legitimate separation of church and state. Another exception that must be understood is that those who are minors, those who are not socially accounted as mature enough or responsible enough to direct the society, ought not to be taxed. Why shouldn't they be taxed? Because they don't vote and they aren't drafted for war. But when they are drafted for war and must undergo that ordeal for the sake of their society, and when they have the privilege of voting because of that, they also have the obligation of paying taxes. It's a package deal, if you will. Another group of people that would be excluded would be criminals. Criminals ought not to be taxed. No, they ought to be Executed or put into the service of others for restitution or what have you. Criminals do not vote because after all, the person being punished does not determine the terms of his punishment. And voting indirectly is a way of doing that. Criminals do not vote, and as non voters, they do not pay taxes. And finally, the impoverished who do not have the money to pay the tax should not have to pay the tax. And by the way, they ought not to be allowed to vote either. You see, when you separate property from voting rights, as Karl Marx, no less an authority on this matter, said, you destroy private property eventually because what happened is those who do not have property or do not have as much property as others will vote out of the pockets of the rich, their money into their own. And consequently, those who do not have land or do not have enough for the head tax anyway ought not to be allowed to vote. But they ought not to be taxed either. The government ought not to go to a person and say, well, you don't have enough money, you know, you don't have the tax and so you go to prison or what have you. But nor should those who are, especially in our day, recipients of a welfare system be allowed to vote for those who are going to control the welfare system that supports supplies them. Okay, so there are these provisos that have to be given. The state ought not to become guilty of robbery in its process of taxation, but the state is owed its due. As a minister of God, We probably could go home and nobody would be terribly offended. You might disagree. You might want to think about some of the things I've said. But we need to take a look at a further form of taxation, one that is not backed by the threat of physical violence, but the threat of eternal damnation. And that is the taxation which supports the kingdom of God, which we call the tithe. Jesus said of the Scribes and Pharisees that they were really about figuring out how much tithe had to be paid. They even tithed their little garden vegetables, okay, so they really were meticulous about that. And in the process, they forgot the weightier matters of the law, love and justice and faithfulness, these sorts of things. And he condemned them for that. But it's interesting how Jesus words that condemnation. He says, this you ought to have done love and justice and faithfulness. This you ought to have done without leaving the other undone. Jesus in the New Testament. This is not just some kind of dispensational Old Testament historic piece we're talking about. Jesus in the New Covenant says you ought not to leave undone your tithing. And what is a tithe? A tithe means a tenth. One tenth of your increase is to be tithed to the Lord. The law of God required this even before the Mosaic law. Abraham gave a tithe to Melchizedek, and he is of course, the father of the faithful in whose steps we are to all follow. Tithing is a universal, eternal principle, an obligation on God's people. One tenth of our increase is to go to the Lord's service. Now, let me do a little work of clarification here, because last few years, people who are well known, rightly so, for supporting return to the law of God as a moral standard, have taught some things about tithing which I think perhaps have confused God's people people unintentionally, but nevertheless it confused them. There is what is called the third year or poor tithe mentioned. It's never called the poor tithe in the Bible. It's called the third year tithe in the Old Testament. It has been thought that because in the third year there's another tithe that has to be added to the regular tithe, that when you really calculate the percentage that we are to pay to the Lord's ministry or the ministries in the name of the Lord Lord, that it comes out to 13% or 15. In fact, 1/7 Day Adventist author that I read in preparation for this morning said that if you really looked at it properly, it would come out to about a fifth. It would double the tithe to a double tithe, 20%. So if you will turn in your Bibles to the Old Testament, and we'll try to resolve this fairly quickly, in Deuteronomy 14, verses 28 and 29, we find the provision for tithe in the third year, Deuteronomy 14:28. At the end of every three years thou shalt bring forth all the tithes of thine increase in the same year, and shalt lay it up within thy gates. And the Levite, because he hath no portion nor inheritance with thee, and the sojourner, and the fatherless, and the widow that are within thy gates shall come, and shall eat, and be satisfied, that Jehovah thy God may bless thee in all the work of thy hand which thou doest. And so here we see that a specific tithe was to be given in the third year. Later, Jewish writers came to call it the poor tithe. And contemporary writers have adopted this idea for the particular offering. Notice that the tithe here is a tithe of one's increase during the third year, all of it, verse 20, is to be donated at the gates of one city or town. This is not then a second tithe over and above the ordinary tithe. It's all of your tithe is to go to the gates of the city. It's also to be noted that the tithe was not taken to the temple in Jerusalem, but rather contributed to the local authorities. This is why the third year tithe, the set apart. In the first two years, the tithe must be taken to the Levites at the temple. But in the third year, all of your tithes is to be taken rather to the gates of your own local town. And so it is a local tithe rather than a centralized tithe in the third year. And those who were to benefit from this tithe are called the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless and the widow. Verse 29. These would be people that had no self sufficient subsistence or little social standing and privilege in that society. And they would need the benefit of the tithe so they may eat and be satisfied. And so I would conclude that this tithe did indeed serve to aid the poor in society. But it must be remembered that the tithe of the first two years was also used for the Levite and the support of the poor and the sojourner and all the rest. And consequently, this was not a uniquely poor tithe, the unique tithe, to repeat, the uniqueness of this tithe then, is that it was paid locally rather than to the central authority, the Jerusalem Temple. And so, in conclusion, the obligation that God's Word lays upon us is the obligation of 1 10th, not 3, 13%, not 15, not 20, but 10% every year, and it's a 10% upon one's increase. Please notice that upon one's increase, not 10% upon the property that you've already been taxed on last year and now have to pay again, but upon the increase upon the profit you've had this year, whether through your investments or through your employment, your wages, salary, what have you but upon your increase? Now, here's a vexed question. Do I tithe before or after taxes? The question is, what is my increase? What is my increase? I do not believe that it can be reasonably argued that I increase from a simple paper declaration that I have a certain amount of money because one, I cannot destroy it, I cannot spend it, I cannot touch it, it has nothing to do with me, it is withheld from my income, I can never get to it, the government says I owe it, and that's it. I will give you an analogy to help you see this through. About increase. Certain people in certain lines of work, writers, singers, what have you, often get paid based on the income that is drawn from the audience that shows up for the concert or for the number of people who buy the books or what have you. Now, as you can see, the amount of money I'm a writer, I get small royalties every once in a while from my books. When I get paid. The amount I get paid depends on what. How much the company declares they made. And so now, what if I, as a writer, say, You've sold 50,000 more of my books than you think, and I'm going to give you credit for that. Now, you pay me on that basis. Wait a minute. Where are the receipts for this? No, no, I'm just gonna. I've got a computer. I'll just put my modem down and I'll just put it to your account. That's all. It's yours. But, of course, I want you to take it and turn around and pay me. Now, out of that artificially created wealth, did the company really have an increase from which they owed me a percentage? Not at all. Now, when I go to work, this doesn't happen to apply to me, by the way. But when you go to work and your employer withholds what would ordinarily be your salary and gives it to the state, I personally believe that that is a form of slavery. It is involuntary servitude to the state. The state has the right to tax. I don't believe the state has the right to take my money and to use it in that way. But when this. When I'm told you've made a certain amount of money and subtract this portion of it, because that, of course, never comes into your wallet and never will because the state believes it belongs to it. That is the same as a person, my being a slave of a master who says, you must do the following amount of work. Why? Because you are my slave. You're not going to realize anything. There'll be no increase to your food or to your money or to your housing or whatever. You'll just do it because I say you must do it. And this is what the state, in essence, does to those who have money withheld that they never can touch. And therefore, my own conviction on this matter, thought through at great length, is that that cannot be called increase when I can't destroy it, cannot use it, cannot touch it, can never benefit from it. And consequently, I would encourage you to tithe after Your taxes, the withholded portion being excluded. But if you don't agree, praise the Lord, you're going to tithe on a greater amount, and that means that our church is going to go ahead all that much more. So you say, we can't lose on this one. But you must pay your tithes. The Bible says that it's wrong to muzzle the ox as he treads. And therefore when you don't pay your tithes, you're not supporting the teachers in the Word. It's hard. I wish I could get a guest preacher to come in and have to tell you these things, but it's the subject that we're on. And it's wrong for you to starve your minister, your elders. It's wrong for you not to support your missionaries. Paul prays the Philippians for the support of you. It's wrong for united churches in desperate straits. Paul praised the Corinthians for their giving of money, even though it was tough for them. It's wrong for you not to help those who do not have a family to enable them to get by rough times, for instance, the widows. All of this is supported in the New Testament. And all of it, well, let's put it this way. None of it could be done apart from the tithes of God's people. By the way, God says in Malachi, the third chapter, not only does does he call upon us to give our tithes, but our offerings as well. Over and above the tithe, which is the automatic tax that must be given, God calls upon you to give a freewill offering. Over and above that, to whom should you tithe? I'll be very quick about this. Ordinarily, it seems to me, I'm just trying to tell you what I think the Bible says. Ordinarily you give your tithes to the elders in the gate. That's the language of scripture, or the Levites at the temple. In both cases, the analogy would be that you tithe to the local church authorities, that is, your tithe should come to your congregation. Now, it's true that in Second Kings there is the instance of tithes being paid to the schools of the prophets in northern Israel, over against the Levites in the southern temple. And so it does seem that under some circumstances we have the discretionary use of the Lord's money, his tithe to be given to agencies that are going to truly promote his purposes. But you see, if you're in a congregation that doesn't deserve your tithe, you ought not to be in that congregation. Or you ought to be working for reform in that congregation, changing your elders or changing the programs of the church, rather than saying, oh, well, then I'll just send my money to Wycliffe or what have you. Okay, so this is tough. It's not something that we harp on in this church. But when it does come round, it does have to be said. Most of your tithes, if not all of your tithes, up to the 10%, ought to be given to your local congregation. Your freewill offerings beyond that, by all means, to the schools of the prophets, the Wycliffe intervarsity, whatever you think is one worthy of that kind of support. Now you say, but if the tithe is all I can give, and I think these other agencies need it, what should I do? Well, you should come to your congregational meeting, which is another unpleasant task for many of you, but you ought to come. And when the budget is set, say, our congregation needs to support XYZ ministry, it's a good one. And when the congregation and the elders are convinced of that, then when you tithe to your local authorities, it is distributed to that ministry as you have indicated. And so there's a way of dealing with all these things. But let's try to wrap all of this up. You properly hold your property as private citizens. You freely enter into exchange in the marketplace. And the Bible puts two qualifications upon that. God says, nevertheless, you must submit to the authorities I've put over you in the state and in the church. And that submission is most plainly seen at the point of paying out of the pocketbook, paying your taxes, paying your tithes. And if you refuse to do that, or if you begrudge doing that, then one must wonder whether you understand the source of your income in the first.