1. It All Belongs to God

Before we say one word about tithes, offerings, or budgets, we must settle a question most people never settle in a lifetime: who owns it? Everything else in this course stands or falls there. David answered it in a single line: The earth is the LORD'S, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein (Psalm 24:1). The soil, the seed, the rain that waters it, the strength in your back, the breath in your lungs, the years He has numbered for you.

Notice that God says the same thing about money specifically, in case we should think He owns the mountains but not the mint. Through the prophet Haggai He said, The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, saith the LORD of hosts (Haggai 2:8). Hear how final that is. God is not asking for a percentage of what belongs to you; He is telling you that the whole of it already belongs to Him, and that He has placed a portion of His own property into your hands for a season. That changes the conversation. The question is no longer how much of my money God wants, but what God wants done with His money that He has trusted to me.

Scripture has a word for a man in that position. He is a steward — not the owner and not a slave, but a trusted servant who manages another man's goods and gives account for them. Hear the Lord Jesus Christ: He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much (Luke 16:10). Then He drives it home — If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? (Luke 16:11), and if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own? (Luke 16:12).

There is a doorway in that. God uses money as a testing ground for greater things, watching how a man handles a small paycheque, another man's tools, the church's petty cash — and by that He decides what spiritual weight He can lay upon him. Many a believer has prayed for years for a bigger anointing while being careless with a small amount of money, and has never once connected the two. Paul stated the standard plainly: Moreover it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful (1 Corinthians 4:2). Not required that a steward be brilliant, nor that he be rich. Required that he be faithful.

This is the point of the parable of the talents in Matthew 25. A man travelling into a far country delivered unto his servants his goods — five talents, two talents, one talent, to every man according to his several ability. Notice two things. First, the goods were his goods, never theirs. Second, the unequal amounts were not unfair, because each man was measured only against what he himself had received. The man with two talents gained two more and heard exactly the same commendation as the man with five: Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things (Matthew 25:21).

Then there is the third servant, and look at him closely, because he is the most religious of the three and the most common in the Church. He did not steal the talent or gamble it away. He buried it, kept it clean, and handed it back exactly as he received it. His defence was a wrong idea of God — I knew thee that thou art an hard man — and out of that came fear, and out of fear came burial. His lord called him wicked and slothful and unprofitable. With God, doing nothing with what He gave you is not neutral; it is loss. The believer who says, I have little, so I will give nothing and risk nothing, has just repeated the third servant's speech in modern English.

Now, if all of it is His, where did what I have in my hand come from? Moses warned Israel about the moment of arrival — when the houses are built and the heart begins to say, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth. Against that he set the truth: But thou shalt remember the LORD thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers (Deuteronomy 8:18). He does not always hand a man money; more often He hands him power to get wealth — a skill, a trade, a clear mind, a healthy body, an open door. And read the end of the verse, the part men leave out: He gives that power that he may establish his covenant. The increase has a purpose beyond your comfort.

So begin here. Sit down with what you actually have — the income, the debts, the possessions, the hours in your week — and hand the ownership back to God out loud. Then keep the books like a man who will give account, because you will. Faithfulness in a small thing is not a small thing; it is the whole test.

2. Tithes, Offerings, and Firstfruits

Once you have settled that everything belongs to God, giving stops being a painful subtraction and becomes an act of worship. That is the right order, and if you reverse it, every offering will feel like a robbery. The tithe is not God taking from you. The tithe is you acknowledging, with the first and best of what came into your hands, that He is the Owner and the Source.

Now let me show you something that settles a great many arguments. The tithe did not begin with the law of Moses. Turn back to Genesis 14, hundreds of years before Sinai, before there was a commandment about it. Abram returns from the slaughter of the kings and meets Melchizedek, priest of the most high God, and the account says, And blessed be the most high God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand. And he gave him tithes of all (Genesis 14:20). No law compelled him. He gave a tenth because he had met God, and because he understood who had given him the victory. The tithe is older than the law, which is why it did not die with the law.

Then there is Jacob at Bethel, a running man with a stone for a pillow, who saw the ladder and woke up afraid. Listen to what he counted as the proper response to God's promise: And this stone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be God's house: and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee (Genesis 28:22). Notice the sequence again. Of all that thou shalt give me — Jacob knew the increase was coming from God's hand before it ever reached his own.

By the days of Malachi, Israel had grown cold, and God pressed a charge against them that ought to make every believer sit up straight: Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings (Malachi 3:8). Understand what makes that a robbery: you cannot steal what was never the owner's. God calls the withheld tithe theft precisely because it was already His. Then He does something He does almost nowhere else in Scripture — He invites men to test Him: Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, 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 (Malachi 3:10). Mark the purpose clause in the middle of that verse: that there may be meat in mine house. The tithe is brought so the work goes on, the ministers are fed, the poor are helped, the Gospel is carried. It is not a coin in a machine to make Heaven pay out.

Somebody always asks whether the Lord Jesus Christ said anything about the tithe. He did, and He said it while rebuking men who tithed. To the scribes and Pharisees who measured out the tenth of their garden herbs while trampling on people, He said: Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone (Matthew 23:23). Hear both halves. He did not excuse their tithing; He said these ought ye to have done. And He would not let the tithe stand in for judgment, mercy, and faith. A man who tithes and is cruel has not pleased God, and a man who is kind and keeps back what belongs to God has not pleased Him either.

Beyond the tithe stand the offering and the firstfruits. The tithe is the tenth, measured and returned. The offering is what love adds on top, and there is no ceiling on it. The firstfruit is a matter of order — what comes off the top before anything else is touched. Honour the LORD with thy substance, and with the firstfruits of all thine increase: So shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine (Proverbs 3:9-10). Anyone can give God what is left at the end of the month, and most months nothing is left. Firstfruits giving is deciding, before the bills line up, that God is honoured first.

Now the manner of it, because God cares about the heart behind the hand. Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver (2 Corinthians 9:7). Three things there. Purposeth in his heart — decided beforehand, not squeezed out by an emotional appeal. Not grudgingly, or of necessity — no arm twisting, no shame, no manipulation. And God loveth a cheerful giver — He is looking at the heart, not merely the amount.

So do not let anyone frighten you into giving, and do not let anyone talk you out of it either. Purpose it in your heart, take it off the top, bring it to the house where you are fed, and give it gladly as unto the Lord. Then let the blessing be His business.

3. Sowing and Reaping

In our Practical Training we teach a principle that runs through the created order: sowing and reaping is the balance of the universe. Balance is a law, not a slogan. God did not merely make a rule about seed and harvest; He wove it into everything He made, so that no life escapes it. Paul stated the law without softening it: Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap (Galatians 6:7).

Notice how that verse opens — Be not deceived — because men are constantly deceived here. They imagine they can sow selfishness and reap friendship, sow neglect and reap a strong family, sow nothing into the Kingdom and reap the blessing of God. It appears to work for a while, because the ground keeps its secrets until harvest. Then Paul adds the words that shut the door on every clever man: God is not mocked. He is not outwitted, not gotten around. You cannot mock a law of the universe; you can only obey it or be crushed by it.

The law works in both directions, and that is what makes it a balance rather than a promise of easy money. A man who sows to the flesh reaps corruption; a man who sows to the Spirit reaps life everlasting. Money sown into the Gospel, into the poor, into the house of God comes back as a harvest. Money hoarded, or spent only on appetite, also produces a harvest — a shrunken heart and an anxious life. Something always grows; the only choice you have is what seed goes into the ground.

Paul applies the law directly to giving: But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully (2 Corinthians 9:6). No man scatters a handful over ten acres and then complains about his harvest. But here is where a great deal of preaching has gone wrong. This is not a scheme for getting rich. God is not a machine where you put in a hundred and pull the lever for a thousand. Read the next verse and see what Paul says the harvest is for: And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work (2 Corinthians 9:8). Sufficiency for you, abundance for every good work. God increases the giver so that He has a larger channel, not a larger reservoir. If your only interest in sowing is what you get back, you have found a new name for greed.

The Lord Jesus Christ taught the same balance: Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom (Luke 6:38). It is not God's measure that determines the return; it is your measure, handed back to you full. Tight-fisted men live in a tight-fisted world. Generous men find that life keeps handing things back, and they cannot always explain how.

There is no clearer picture of this than the widow of Zarephath in 1 Kings 17. Famine is on the land, and she is gathering two sticks to bake a last small cake for herself and her son, and then to die. A prophet arrives and says the hardest thing anyone could say to her: Fear not; go and do as thou hast said: but make me thereof a little cake first, and bring it unto me, and after make for thee and for thy son (1 Kings 17:13). First. That word is the whole test. She had every reason to reason her way out, and she did not. She sowed her last meal into the work of God, and the record says, And the barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail, according to the word of the LORD, which he spake by Elijah (1 Kings 17:16). Notice what she did not receive: not a fortune, not a barn full of grain, but a daily supply that did not fail through the whole famine. That is how God usually answers — not with a windfall to make you independent of Him, but with a supply that keeps you leaning on Him.

Then there is the hardest part of the law, where most believers give up: the harvest is not immediate. Between seedtime and harvest lies a stretch where nothing appears to be happening at all. Paul knew we would grow tired in that gap: And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not (Galatians 6:9). Two conditions sit in that sentence. In due season — God, not you, sets the date. And if we faint not — the man who digs up his seed in the third week has destroyed his harvest.

So sow deliberately. Sow into the preaching of the Gospel, into the widow and the orphan, into the brethren who have lost everything for the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Sow kindness and prayer as well as money, because the law covers every kind of seed. Then leave it in the ground and let God bring the harvest in His own season. Balance is a law, and it has never once failed.

4. Debt, Work, and Contentment

A believer can tithe faithfully and still live in bondage over money, because giving is only one part of stewardship. What you do with the ninety per cent matters to God as much as what you do with the ten. So let us talk plainly about debt, work, and the quiet strength of a contented heart.

Solomon put the matter of debt in one unforgettable line: The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender (Proverbs 22:7). He is not calling borrowing a sin; he is telling you what it costs. When you borrow, you hand a portion of your freedom to another man, and he now has a claim on hours you have not yet worked and money you have not yet earned. I have watched believers who could not answer a call to the mission field, could not take a lower-paying post in ministry, could not leave a corrupt workplace, because their debts were giving the orders. A servant is not free to go where his master has not released him.

Paul says it as a standing command: Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law (Romans 13:8). The only debt a Christian is meant to carry permanently is the debt of love, which he can never finish paying. Everything else is to be discharged. So make a list of what you owe — the whole truth of it, not the comfortable half — and set about paying it down deliberately. Stop borrowing to soothe a feeling. And where you have given your word to pay a man, pay him, even when it hurts, because your name in that man's mouth is part of your testimony.

Now, debts are paid with work, and Scripture is not shy about work. Paul told the Thessalonians that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you; That ye may walk honestly toward them that are without, and that ye may have lack of nothing (1 Thessalonians 4:11-12). Two aims are named there. Walk honestly toward them that are without — unbelievers form their opinion of the Gospel partly from whether you turn up on time and do good work. And have lack of nothing — honest labour is one of God's ordinary means of supply. Do not despise it while waiting for a miracle.

To a group who had grown idle, waiting on the return of the Lord Jesus Christ while other people fed them, Paul was blunt: For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat (2 Thessalonians 3:10). Read it exactly. He did not say could not work; he said would not. Scripture is full of tenderness for the man who cannot — the sick, the widow, the disabled — and the Church is commanded to carry him. The rebuke falls on the man who will not. Spiritual language is no cover for laziness.

That is why Paul lays this at the door of the household: But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel (1 Timothy 5:8). That is strong language, and it was meant to be. A man who is generous in the offering and neglectful at home has his priorities upside down. Feed your family, keep a roof over them, plan ahead for them. That, too, is holy work.

But work and diligence carry their own danger, which is why Paul places contentment right beside them: But godliness with contentment is great gain (1 Timothy 6:6), and having food and raiment let us be therewith content (1 Timothy 6:8). Contentment is not poverty, and it is not laziness dressed up as spirituality. It is a settled heart that has stopped needing more in order to be at peace. And it is great gain, because a contented man is already rich and a covetous man is poor at any income.

Hear the warning that follows, and hear it precisely: For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows (1 Timothy 6:10). It does not say money is the root of all evil. It says the love of it is — and a poor man can love money as fiercely as a rich one. The Lord Jesus Christ named the same danger in the parable of the sower, where the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful (Mark 4:19). Riches are called deceitful because they make promises they cannot keep. They promise security, and a market shifts. They promise respect, and it lasts as long as the money. They promise rest, and then demand more attention than any master you have ever served.

So work hard, get out of debt, provide for your house, and keep your heart free. A believer who owes nothing, earns honestly, gives cheerfully, and is content with food and raiment is one of the freest men on earth — and God can send him anywhere.

5. Money in the House of God

So far we have spoken of the money in your hand. Now we come to the money that passes through the house of God, where the standard rises, because it is no longer your own. It is God's money, given sacrificially by His people and handled in His name. Nothing has damaged the credibility of the Gospel in this generation more than the careless and greedy handling of church funds.

Begin with a sobering account. In Acts 5, Ananias and Sapphira sold a possession, kept back part of the price, and brought the rest as though it were the whole. Peter showed where the sin lay: why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God (Acts 5:4). No one had commanded them to sell the land or required them to give all of it. They were free. Their sin was not a small gift but a false one — generosity performed for the eyes of the church. God is not deceived by presentation, nor honoured by it.

There was a treasurer among the twelve. Of Judas, John writes, This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein (John 12:6). Notice the mask. He objected to the ointment poured on the Lord Jesus Christ by talking about the poor. That is how money is stolen in the house of God — never openly, always under a spiritual justification. And Judas walked with the Lord Jesus Christ, saw the miracles, and still had his hand in the bag. Proximity to holy things does not make a man honest.

Now look at how Paul handled the great collection for the poor saints. He did not carry it alone; he travelled with brethren chosen by the churches, and explained why in words every ministry ought to have framed on the wall: Avoiding this, that no man should blame us in this abundance which is administered by us: Providing for honest things, not only in the sight of the Lord, but also in the sight of men (2 Corinthians 8:20-21). There is the whole doctrine of church finance in two verses. An apostle of blameless character still refused to be alone with the money, protecting not himself only but the reputation of the Gospel. It was not enough that God knew he was honest; it had to be visible. He wrote elsewhere, Provide things honest in the sight of all men (Romans 12:17).

From that flow some practical things, and there is nothing unspiritual about them. More than one set of eyes should count the offering, before it leaves the room. Two signatures should stand behind every payment. Records should be simple, written, and kept — what came in, what went out, for what purpose. What is designated for a particular need must go to that need and nowhere else. And leaders should welcome questions about money rather than resent them, for a ministry that cannot bear examination is already in trouble.

Yet Scripture will not allow us to be suspicious of paying those who labour in the Word. Paul wrote, Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honour, especially they who labour in the word and doctrine (1 Timothy 5:17), and gave the reason from Scripture — The labourer is worthy of his reward (1 Timothy 5:18). A man who gives his life to prayer, preaching, and the care of souls is working, and is to be provided for without grudging. That is God's order, not a favour done to him.

Yet the same Paul requires that a bishop be not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a brawler, not covetous (1 Timothy 3:3). Hold those two truths together and you have the balance. A minister is worthy of his support and must be free from the love of money. He is to be paid, and not to be for sale. The moment a man's message bends toward whatever brings in the most money, his ministry has been bought.

Finally, remember where a great deal of the money is meant to go. When a complaint arose that certain widows were neglected in the daily ministration, the apostles did not dismiss it as a small matter; they told the church, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business (Acts 6:3). Men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom — over the food money. That is the standard God sets. And when the apostles gave Paul the right hand of fellowship, they attached one request: Only they would that we should remember the poor; the same which I also was forward to do (Galatians 2:10). Widows, orphans, the poor at your gate, and the brethren persecuted for the name of the Lord Jesus Christ are not a side project of the Church; they are near the centre of what the offering is for.

So handle God's money as a man who will give account for it, because you will. Keep the records plain, keep more than one honest pair of eyes on every penny, pay those who labour, feed the poor, and let it all be so clean that any man may look at it.