Dr Greg Bahnsen - Proverbs: Proverbs 3:9-10 (Vats as Full of Wine) (Part 9)

I want to preach to you this morning, but I have gotten over that. It is customary in most evangelical or conservative churches that at some time before the yearly congregational meeting a sermon is preached on our obligation to tithing and offering to the Lord. I have since beginning to preach regularly and to have to do this, found that it is not something that we should draw back from, especially as preachers. Although you understand the source of the embarrassment, the difficulty for a preacher. If I preach to you about tithing, it's very easy for you to say, well, of course, but you get paid out of those tithes. And so you have to say those things. Well, it's a far more important subject than that. And there are far better reasons for tithing than to take that into account. It is a great joy to be in a position to support the work of the Lord. The Bible tells us. In fact, I think it's one of the themes that we like to emphasize in our circles, that Christ is lord over every area of life. And the subject of tithing, you see, gives us an opportunity to see in a very concrete way how God controls every aspect of our lives, even our finances. So please turn with me in your Bibles this morning to Proverbs, the third chapter, where I'd like to read verses 9 and 10. Proverbs 3, 9, 10. Hear now God's Word. Honor Jehovah with thy substance, and with the first fruits of all thine increase. So shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy vats shall overflow with new wine. And thus far the reading of God's word. This morning's message is entitled Vats Full of Wine. It may not seem a very religious thing to say. It may not appear to be a very pious thing to look forward to. But the Bible says that God holds out a promise for those who are responsible in their use of money that their vats will be overflowing with new wine. And I'd like to show you how that comes about. I'm going to consider this in three parts this morning. First, why should we tithe? Secondly, how should we tithe? And then thirdly, what will happen to us if we tithe? Why should we tithe? Proverbs says, if you're a person who understands wisdom, if you're not a fool, short sighted and self centered, Honor Jehovah with thy substance and with the first fruits of all thine increase. You stop and think about it. The use of one's money tells you a lot about that person's true commitments, doesn't it? I Mean, talk is cheap, but opening the wallet isn't. Talk comes easy for us. Following through concretely does not. In fact, I think for most of us growing up in the materialistic culture that surrounds us in America, the use of our money may be a far more important indicator and barometer of our spiritual commitments than even our outward activities. We may give ourselves to marching at abortion clinics, or to evangelism, or to coming to church regularly. But you know, when all is said and done, where the rubber hits the road is how we use our money. How do we say it? Put your money where your mouth is. We can say a lot of things, but when we put our money behind it, that shows that we are really, in a heartfelt way, committed to whatever it is. It may be Dodger baseball games, for all we know. It may be the support of the poor, it may be the Lord's work, but where our money goes is a pretty good indication of where our heart really is. On the other hand, it seems to me our practice or our failure to tithe is an insight as well. An insight into the faith we have in God, an insight into the reverence we have for God, and an insight into the grateful love we have for the Lord. You understand what tithing is? I don't think it needs to be greatly introduced to this group. Tithing is paying or giving. Offering the first 10% of your income to the Lord. The first 10%, a person's willingness to do that or one's failure to do that, I say, are an insight into that person's faith, reverence and grateful love for God. First, a person's faith. Let's ask ourselves whether we believe. Do we really believe that God is the source of all of our well being? And we say that and it sounds very pious. It's the religious thing to say. But do we believe that? Do we act like it? You see, if we act like God is the source of our well being, then when God asks us for 90% of what he gives us back, he doesn't, by the way. But if he were to ask us for 90%, we'd say, no problem. Lord, everything comes from you. If you want this, it's yours. You gave it to me in the first place. Do you trust then that God will take care of you? If God asks but 10% as an indication that everything that you have is his own. But a small and oh, it is small, a mere token indication that the wealth that you have, the increase that has come to you, has really come from the hand of God. If you really believe that, then is it such a thing to give that back to him and say, God, I know you'll take care of with me. You see, faith is easy to talk about, not nearly so easy to walk about. We talk about trusting God, that everything will come from him, but that, you know, when the bills come in, we have a tendency. And I want you to know it's not just a preacher up here who has never made mistakes in this area. I know what it's like to look at the bills and say, maybe I better hold off tithing till next month so I can cover everything. But you see, that shows a lack of faith in God. It forgets that the source of our well being is God in the first place and that he has promised to take care of us. Now let's walk like that. Let's show that we do have faith in him. The Bible says we are to walk by faith and not by sight. You see, our problem so often is that we want to be Christians who walk by sight and then call it faith. We want to be able to see how every step is going to be taken, how everything is going to work out just right. And, and then what it does, we say, oh, we give God the glory. We just walked by faith. No, we didn't. No, we walked by sight. And so when you can't see how the bills will be paid or, and I have to be honest here, I don't want to step on any toes, but usually how our pleasures will be satisfied. When you can't see how all the luxuries and the things you want or your bills will be paid will be taken care of, then we have this tendency to kind of fall back on our giving to the Lord's purposes. Malachi, the third chapter, verse 10. I'm sure you've all heard this before in sermons on tithing. It's a very popular one. The prophet Malachi indicts the people in verse nine by saying, you are cursed with the curse, for you rob me, even this whole nation robs me. God says, and then Malachi says, bring the whole tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house. And prove me. God says, prove me now herewith, saith Jehovah of hosts, if I will not open to you the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. You're worried whether there's going to be enough money to stretch over all your obligations and bills. God says, trust me, I'll give you so much in return that you won't have room to put it everywhere. I will open the very windows of heaven for you, if you trust me. So bring the tithe in. And if you refuse to do so, the Bible says you are robbing God. And so I move secondly to the point that tithing is an indication of our reverence for the Lord. Who would dare steal from God? And when I put the question out just that simply, if you don't think about the fact that you may be stealing from God by refusing to tithe, you say, well, of course, nobody would be so foolish. How ridiculous. Anything that belongs to God, who would dare lay his hands upon it? But don't you see that the first 10% of what you have earned belongs to God? It does not belong to you in the first place. And when you look at it as though this is our money and it's really a discretionary matter, we'll have to decide whether to give it this month or not. You are robbing from God. God could, as I've already said this morning, demand 100% back. He could say, everything you have comes from me. This is my wealth that you are sharing. This is my world that you live in. Everything you have comes from abilities I have given. God says, look, just show that you understand that by giving 10% back. And when we will not give 10% of what we earn to the Lord, God says, you robbed from me. What an ungodly attitude. What a failure to show godly fear toward the Lord. God wants us to obey him at all costs. God wants us to obey His Word and to follow his will and to show that that is more important to us than anything else in life. And that's why God reveals in His Word that we are morally obligated to tithe. It isn't just a recommendation from God. It isn't just good advice. It's a requirement. In second Chronicles 31, 4:6, I think we see a very strong indication of that moral obligation. Second Chronicles. Look at the 31st chapter at verse four. This is a time of reformation and revival among God's people. Hezekiah has recovered the books of the law, is restoring the temple service, and bringing the people back to the worship of God. And look at verse 4. Moreover, he commanded the people that dwelt in Jerusalem to give the portion of the priests and the Levites that they might give themselves to the law of Jehovah. And as soon as the commandment came abroad, the children of Israel gave in abundance the firstfruits of grain New wine and oil and honey and all the increase of the field and the tithe of all things brought they in abundantly. And the children of Israel and Judah that dwelt in the cities of Judah, they also brought in the tithe of oxen and sheep and the tithe of dedicated things which were consecrated unto Jehovah their God, and laid them by heaps. When the people show that they are revived, when spiritual life comes to the people, when there's a return to obedience to God, what is one of the signs people willingly bring in the tithe? They lay it up in heaps. If we had time to study this passage, you would see that there was so much that all of the needs of the temple and the priests and Levites were met. And they had to build storehouses finally to keep the overflow of all these things. Okay, is there revival in our land? This doesn't sound very pious and very evangelistic. Maybe it doesn't sound like American religiosity. But, you know, the question you can ask whether there's revival in our land is, do our churches have too much money? Are we having to have storehouses to heap up all the tithes and so forth? Because God's people are really from the heart now, giving what they should be giving all along. In Matthew the 23rd chapter, our Lord Jesus Christ also reflected on the practice of titles tithing. Interestingly, the Pharisees, the hypocrites of his day, were very good at tithing. And Jesus, in a sense, ridicules them for that, but not because they tithed. He ridicules them because they tithed and didn't bother to go to the heart of the law. Matthew 23 at the 23rd verse is, Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you tithed mint and anise and cumin, and have left undone the weightier matters of the law, justice, mercy, and faith. But these you ought to have done and noticed, not to have left the other undone. Jesus doesn't say, choose between these holy virtues of justice and love and faith or tithing. He says, rather, you should be doing both. You can't have one without the other. It's going to please God. And so our Lord Jesus Christ recognizes the obligation of tithing. He says, you ought to do it. And so I ask you this morning, do you reverence God? Do you tithe? And thirdly, tithing is a sign of grateful love to God as well. If we have thanksgiving toward God for the prosperity he has afforded us, and if we love God with all of our heart, soul, strength and mind. If we are grateful for the fact that eternal redemption has been brought to us by the matchless gift of the blood of Christ, then you see, we won't be hesitant. We won't for a moment hold back the gift and token representation that God really owns and deserves everything from us. God bought our lives. He brought us into this world. He sustains us in this world. He has bought new life for us for all eternity. He gives us everything we need spiritually. You see, if we hold back the tithe, what we're saying is we're not really grateful. That doesn't really mean that much to us. I want you to consider the example of Abraham, whom Scripture calls the father of the faithful. He's the father of all of us who have faith in Jesus Christ and in Hebrews. The seventh chapter. The author of Hebrews rehearses for us what Abraham did when God had blessed him with victory. Hebrews 7. I'm going to read verses 1 and 2 for this Melchizedek, King of Salem, priest of God most High, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him, to whom also Abraham divided a tenth part of all. See, Abraham went out to war and the odds were against him. And Abraham prayed, God, give us the victory. And when he did, and he came back from the slaughter of the kings of Canaan, he met Melchizedek. And as a sign of his gratitude to God, he gave one tenth of all the spoil to the priest of God, Melchizedek. Verses 4 and 5. Now consider how great this man was unto whom Abraham the patriarch, gave a tenth out of the chief spoils. And they indeed of the sons of Levi that received the priest's office, have commandment to take tithes of the people according to the law, that is, of their brethren. Though these have come out of the loins of Abraham. Then two more verses nine and ten. And so to say, through Abraham, even Levi, who receiveth tithes, hath paid tithes. For he was yet in the loins of his father when Melchizedek met him. You see, the law of God specifies ties to the Levitical priest. Levitical priests come from Levi, who was in the loins of Abraham at the time. Okay, so here's a son of Abraham is to be born. He is still in Abraham's body, as it were. Symbolically and biologically, Abraham pays tithes to Melchizedek. Do you see how important this is? It isn't tied to to the Mosaic Ceremony isn't tied to Mosaic law. The Levitical priesthood looks to Melchizedek for its tithes as well for the pattern of tithing. But why did Abraham do this? Because he came back and is a sign that God is the one who gave him the victory. He gave a tenth of his spoil to Melchizedek. And so thus it is we see that Proverbs, the third chapter, teaches that wisdom will. Honor Jehovah with your substance. If you're a Christian, put your money where your mouth is. If you're a Christian, show it. By the way you use your money. Honor Jehovah. It's foolish, the mark of a fool, to withhold your tithe. It's a mark of spiritual immaturity. And I think, worst of all, it shows dishonor to God. It's interesting, isn't it? Proverbs doesn't say, obey God with all your substance. It says, honor God with all your substance. Because when we disobey at this point, it's a special sign of lacking reverence toward him, dishonoring him. Okay, why should we tithe? To honor God, to show faith in him, to reverence him and to demonstrate grateful love. And how should we tithe? Secondly, we ask, how should we tithe? I'm going to give you four ways in which you should tithe. First of all, the Bible says you should tithe as a sign of first fruits. Honor Jehovah with thy substance and with the first fruits of all thine increase. What's the first fruits referred to? You must remember that God required his people at the very beginning of the harvest to bring to him as an act of gratitude and as an act of faith that he will bring in the rest of the harvest to bring to him the first of the fruits when the harvest comes. You see, the tendency is to say, okay, when we get enough, let's say apples and pears and beans and potatoes up on the shelf. We get all these things canned and ready to go, and we see our way through the winter. Then anything that's left over, we'll go take a gift to the temple. God says, no. The very first and the very best of the fruit that comes in, you bring to me. Well, but I'm not sure that if I give this offering of the first of the harvest that the rest is going to come in. How do I know the locust won't come or bad weather will come upon us or some kind of blight? It's because you trust God. And so he asked for the first fruits of your labor. And likewise, when we tithe, we should make it the first thing we pay from our paychecks. Do that. When you get your paycheck, subtract 10% and then start working with the money. When you get your paycheck, don't say, I wonder how far this is going to go. I wonder if I can pay these bills and if any will be left over for the lord. Rather, take 10% off and don't even consider it your own because it's not. It's not yours. You're robbing God if you touch that 10%. And so when you get paid, take 10% right off the top and offer it to the Lord before you start dividing up your money for groceries and gas and bills. Show God that you love him above all and you're willing to walk by faith even before you look around or look ahead to see if it's convenient to make this gift. I have another piece of advice. Once you've taken the 10% off and you pay your bills, you might ask yourself, is there anything I can give over and above this? Is there any offering I can make of a free will nature that goes beyond what God requires? Can I show that I love God and can I find some spiritual ministry that is worthwhile that I can support with more of my money than just the tithe? That's tremendous. You may do that after you pay your bills, but don't even pay your bills until you've paid the tithe. Paul gave expression to the same principle of paying the church first before paying anything else when he wrote in First Corinthians 16, verse 2, that Christians in Corinth were on the first day of the week to lay up as God had prospered them on the first day of the week. The point is at the very beginning, not at the end, when you see what has been required of you, but at the very beginning. You show faith in God and you lay it up on the first day of the week. How do you tithe on the first fruits? The very first part. Secondly, you should tithe upon all your increase. The Bible says, honor Jehovah with thy substance, and with the first fruits of all thine increase. This does not mean that all the money that comes into your possession is therefore to be tithed upon. Only that money which represents profit to you is to be tithed upon. I'll give you an example. Let's say you're a farmer and you invest in a tractor to help you plow your fields. The cost of the tractor represents what you put into the running of your business. And when the harvest comes, your business profit or increase is that amount which you earned over and above your operating expenses. And the tractor would be included in that. And thus the Bible calls on us to contribute to the Lord from our increase. This is especially easy for those of us in the congregation who may be self employed to understand, because the IRS really makes that clear. You have your business expenses that comes off the top, and then we're looking at what you made this year. Likewise, God is reasonable, far more reasonable than the irs, isn't he? God says, you tithe upon your increase, not upon every amount of money that comes into your hand. Can you imagine what a storekeeper would have to tithe if he paid on every amount of money that went into his cash register? Even though he had to pay for the stock that he puts on the shelf and people pay him, reimbursing him for the stock and a little extra, hopefully if he paid a tithe on all of that, it would be unreasonable and unfair. God says, tithe on your increase. And this helps us to answer the question that always comes up in sermons like this. Well, should I pay before or after taxes? Do I tithe on the money that I actually receive? Or do I tithe on what goes down on a piece of paper as what I earned, even though the government took it from me? Well, I would suggest that when the government extracts from us a portion of our income, and it's a very large portion, have you ever noticed how the government requires more than a tithe? Talk about oppression. Nevertheless, when the government extracts that portion of your income and withholds it as a mandatory fee called income tax, meaning a fee for the privilege of working and gaining an income. This is part of your operating expenses. This is what it costs to be active in the world and to make money in this country. It's what it costs in order to make any money whatsoever. Recently, Gary north put it this way, and I think it's very helpful. He says, you do not tithe on that portion which the locusts devour out of your field. And in the same way, we don't tithe in what the government devours and which never increases our cash flow in the first place. It is not part of our increase. Now, I realize you may get a pay stub that says you made so much money, but you know very well that what's on the paycheck is not that amount. When the government takes it in that way, it is not your increase and you don't need to tithe on it, but I do want to. Having said that which you say, oh well that's an advantage. I'd like to hear that. I want to remind you though, it says tithe upon all your increase. Don't forget we all have sources of income. I think most of us have sources of income that probably go beyond our ordinary employer's paycheck. There are bank accounts that we have. We may have investments we may have interest on, loans that are due us, our contest winnings, our tax refunds or secondary jobs. Maybe you do a little extra but different sort and you kind of forget. Well I've been tithing on my main paycheck, but I should be tithing on all of my increase. The third thing to remember as to how we should tithe is that you should tithe to the local ordained overseers of God's people. Here that is the law says you bring it to the officers who have been chosen by God. And then in Acts 4, verse 35, we read in the New Testament church that believers in that early church brought the proceeds from whatever they sold. And it says they laid it at the apostles feet. That is very symbolically. They entrusted it to the wisdom and distribution of God's ordained leaders. It was no longer theirs. They were bringing it to God's people and that is to say to those who were ordained to lead God's people. Now don't get me wrong, there is nothing whatsoever wrong with using your money beyond beyond your required tithe to make designated offerings or to direct support of some worthy cause which you choose for yourself. There may be something that you wish received support and your local church is not able in its budget to take care of that. If you have a freewill offering that goes above your tithe that you want to use at your own discretion, you are free. Free to do that. We insist upon that in this church. We want to make it very clear. You're free to designate your offerings beyond your tithes. But the Bible does not say you should designate your tithe. Scripture indicates that the mandatory tithe is not yours to use as you should choose, but it's to be paid to the elders, those who are over the congregation, for their use in advancing the specific needs of the church. I'll give you a concrete example here. Suppose you want to distribute gospel tracts at the local high school football games. That may be a valuable way to evangelize. And you think I need to go invest in some good tracts and be able to have these on hand to Distribute at the football games. But it turns out that your local church's evangelistic budget cannot accommodate this project this year. By the way, as an aside, in our church, and I think in just about any other, if someone showed that kind of enthusiasm, we'd find a way to get it into the budget. It's just that important. But let's just say that so much is going on that we cannot afford this year to buy the tracts that you're interested in. You should not withhold your obligatory tithe in order to do what you had chosen to do anyway, distribute these tracks at the football game. But you may surely, in fact, you may do so with commendation. You may surely take money beyond your tithe and use it to that end. You might even designate it to the. To the local elders and say, would you please buy these tracts for me so I'll have a tax write off or what have you, or this will be under your control in some way. But this is going beyond my tithe. That is fine. My point is that the tithe, however, goes to the needs of your local church, and that is to be determined by those whom God has ordained to lead. And so this leads me to my fourth point, which should be an obvious one, and that's that we tithe with no strings attached. We don't like to hear that in America. That sounds so overbearing, perhaps to some of us. But I want to remind you that this is not just an insight that your elders have. If you have read the local, or, excuse me, the most recent New Horizons, you probably saw there an excerpt from Jack Scott's book entitled Putting youg Money where youe Heart Is. And I want to quote from what Dr. Scott says. Dr. Scott was an Old Testament prophet professor at Reformed Seminary where I taught. And it's just in the providence of God that the very point of the bylaw revisions that your session has set before you is also reflected on in the New Horizons. We hadn't even seen that when we proposed these bylaws. The concern of Dr. Scott is to recognize the teaching of God's holy Word, that money contributed to the church does not continue to be under the direction and oversight of the givers, but rather under the direction of God's ordained leaders. And so listen to these four short paragraphs from his book. And I quote him. We further learn that such giving is done by entrusting to the leaders of God's people, the officers of the church, those funds to be given to God, no strings attached. God's will in giving is done. When we bring what we wish to bring to his church and to the duly appointed officers, we must allow them to distribute it as they are led by the word of God, carrying out their duties, whether it be for the needy laity or for the needed and approved work of the church or for those who do it by designating their giving, as is the custom of many today, individuals tie the hands of the officers and are really doing nothing different from one who chooses to go into a store and buy this or that. Such money is not good given to the Lord. It is spent for what pleases the donor. To give biblically means to give over, no strings attached. Of course, it is the responsibility of the officers of the church chosen by the people of God to determine how the ministry of the church ought to be carried out, including how the money is to be used that has been given to the Lord. Officers of the church are to designate how the work of that church is to be done and what work they will support and how much they will will give to that work. And that ends the quote. This is Dr. Scott speaking and our session would certainly stand behind this. As we read the Bible, it seems to us we have to recognize that a gift is a gift. It's not something which through the back door by designating or even by a yearly budget that binds the session that the giver continues to control, either individually or corporately. The giver should not try to play the role of receiver at the same time as he's giving, trying to give his money and yet retain control over it. I guess that would be the financial version of trying to have your cake and eat it too, right? No. Let's bring our tithes and recognize this is the Lord's money. It's given to the Lord's people and his ordained leaders will take care of it. I don't continue to try to control it. So let me review. How should you tithe? First of all, you should tithe as a mark of first fruits, the top 10%. Secondly, you should tithe upon all your increase. The increase, not all the money that comes into your hand, but all the increase. Thirdly, you should tithe to the local ordained overseers of God's people. And fourthly, you should tithe with no strings attached. Okay, what will happen if you do this? This may be a radical beginning for some of you. You haven't been doing this sort of thing. What if I were to start living this? What's going to happen to to me if I do this? Are you wise? If you're wise. Here's what the Bible says to you. And so shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy vat shall overflow with new wine. Proverbs promises that God is going to fill your barns and make your vats overflow with wine. It's a very common figure of speech. You can find it in Deuteronomy 28 and Joel 2. Whenever God wants to show his people how good he's going to be them, he says, your barns will be full and your vats will overflow with wine. It's something of the Old Testament way of saying what Jesus did in the Sermon on the Mount, that if we seek first God's kingdom and his righteousness, then all these other things will be added to you. You're worried about what you'll eat. You're worried about what you put on. Jesus says, God will take care of all that seek him first. Put his kingdom first in your life. In short, God promises life's provisions and God promises financial well being to those who will honor him with their substance. Those who honor God are honored by God. Malachi 3:10 has said it. Malachi says, bring in the whole tithe and see. Prove me. God says, if I want to open the windows of heaven and take care of you, notice that one of the blessings of God is the abundance of wine. I want to end on this point this morning. Contrary to fundamentalism's cultural additions to the Word of God, there's nothing evil about drinking alcoholic beverage. Far from being evil, the Bible says this is. You know how much God will bless you. He'll give you wine to drink. He'll give you a lot of wine to drink. Can't help but remember that when Jesus went to the wedding feast of Canaan, the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, he ordained that wine would be used in it. Now I realize what people are going to say and say, yes, but you don't understand, Dr. Bonson, that wine in the Bible was not fermented. That just meant grape juice. I've heard that so often that it sickens me when people bring that up. It is so entirely wrong. Mistaken, in fact. I just want to give you one example. I promise not to delay here, but if you look at Hosea 4:11, you are going to see the very same word in Hebrew that we find here in Proverbs 3:10. The word tarosh in Hebrew means new wine. So someone says, yes, new wine, not fermented. It's just grape juice at this point. Well, in Hosea 4 11, whoredom and wine and new wine. Take away the understanding. The Bible says, you want to get intoxicated, Try some of that wine or that new wine. It'll do it for you. It takes away the understanding. It is something which could lead to drunkenness. The Bible surely condemns drunkenness, does not condemn drinking. In fact, God says, I'll show you how happy I am with your gifts to me and your faith in me. I'll give you wine to drink. I'll give you an abundance of it. God wishes for us to be happy. God wishes for us to be blessed with abundance. It's not his desire, by requiring our tithes to take away a good life then, is it? It's just the opposite. It's precisely to provide a good life for us that he says you should tithe. Lord, help us today to have true faith in you. A faith that shows reverence toward your holy word and its requirements. A faith for all that you have done for us in our physical and spiritual needs. Help us, Father, to see that the course of wisdom is not to try to dictate the outcome of our spending and demand. Be so clever in our budgeting that we can cover every need and that maybe finally there'll be something to give to you. Help us to see true wisdom is to recognize that the first 10% is yours in the first place, as a token that everything is yours. We wish this morning not to have lives that are deprived. We don't pray for that, Father. We aren't ascetic. We don't wish to become monks. We wish to be blessed by you. And so, Father, increase our faith that we would be willing to give up our money to see how we have first come to know you in a living way, through Jesus Christ our Savior, in whose name we pray. Amen.