It’s truly amazing to see Christians going on mission trips to orphanages and it’s also amazing when Christians adopt orphans.
In the same way He loves and helps orphans we are to imitate Him and do the same. God comforts, encourages, and upholds orphans because He loves them. God Almighty is the father of the fatherless. Even if our earthly father is not there, we can rest assure that in the Lord we have the perfect father. Rather, we are encouraged to share our money and possessions as generously as we can, to support those in our communities who need extra help, and to provide for the work of God to flourish in the church and beyond.When you become a Christian you are automatically in God’s family. The amount we give is not now the most important thing. So the Bible seems to suggest that tithing is an Old Testament practice that is broadened out in the New. And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work’ ( verses 7–8). The key seems to be generosity and personal integrity: ‘Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.
And in 2 Corinthians 9, Paul talks about financial support and gifts for needy communities but, again, does not set down an amount that believers are expected to contribute. In Acts, we have a picture of the newborn church community sharing everything rather than giving a proportion: ‘No one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common’ ( Acts 4.32). He was financially supported in his ministry by some of his followers (see Luke 8.3), but there is no mention of an amount or proportion of money given. And in his challenge to the rich ruler in Luke 18.22, he tells the man to sell all that he owns, not just a tenth, and give it to the poor. Jesus (as far as we know from his recorded words) did not command his disciples to tithe. Jesus’ only mention of the practice is a rebuke to the Pharisees for carefully measuring out a tenth of their tiniest herbs while failing to recognise the really big moral imperatives: ‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practised without neglecting the others’ ( Matthew 23.23).
However, when we get to the New Testament, we find a different perspective. God promises that if they obey him in this, they will be rewarded with ‘an overflowing blessing’.
#What does the bible say about widows and orphans full#
He commands them to ‘bring the full tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in my house’ ( 3.10). Nehemiah 12.44 and 13.5 mention at least one large store room in the temple where such offerings were kept.īy the time of the prophet Malachi (possibly the mid-400s BC), it seems that the people of Israel had become lax in giving the tithe, as Malachi had to give them a reminder from the Lord about the matter. Later in Israel’s history, when the temple had been built and was the centre of the nation’s worship, tithes were brought to the temple and stored there. Given that there were 12 tribes of Israel, the gift of one-tenth of everyone else’s produce seems disproportionately large, but the Levites were instructed to give part of the tithe – the best of it – as their offering to the Lord ( verses 25–29).ĭeuteronomy 26.12–13 says that the tithe should be given not only to the Levites but also to orphans, widows and resident foreigners in the land. So the practice of tithing ensured that the priesthood and other members of the community who might otherwise have been without support did not go hungry. The Levites were allocated no land to cultivate they were supported by the gifts of their fellow Israelites instead. Numbers 18 tells us that the tithes were to be given to the Levites, the Israelite tribe who were set apart as priests. Tithing is the practice of setting apart one-tenth of one’s earnings as an offering to God. The Israelites, after they had left Egypt and were being established as a new nation led by Moses and the high priest Aaron, were instructed by God to tithe all of their produce, whether grain, fruit or livestock. Question: What does the Bible say about tithing?
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