Ruslan KD

There was a component to it of like a...

almost like a civic use for sometimes infrastructure and stuff like that as well.

So it's to take care of the Levites, but then there was also stuff to take care of just the society as a whole.

Who are the Levites?

The priests in the Old Testament.

Okay.

Yeah, so the Levites are the priests.

They would minister in the temple, and so the tithe would go to them to care for them.

And so it's one of the commandments in the Old Testament, and it had multiple utilities to it.

In our modern day context, we as followers of Jesus, we don't follow the letter of the law for the Levitical law, but we do extract principles from it, right?

And there are certain laws that are moral, there are certain laws that are civic, there are certain laws that are identifying markers for the Jewish people, right?

Tithing, those sorts of things.

And so today, in our context, New Testament Christianity with the letters of Paul

We're called to radical generosity.

We're called to give and be generous, open-handed, not under compulsion.

but to be consistent in our giving.

And so when most people are talking about tithing, they're not saying you have to give a literal 10% or God's going to curse you.

Generally speaking, there are some people that do that, but generally speaking, when we're talking about tithing, we're using a shorthand for saying, hey, this is a great principle for you to walk out.

There's something to this.

In the same way, we would say Sabbath is good for you.