Tithe The First 10 Percent Of Your Income Back To God

Hello and welcome to Social Media Ministries, my name is Spencer Coffman. Thank you so much for tuning in today. If this is your first time with us, thank you for being here, check out the buttons below to subscribe and hit the bell icon to be notified of new videos when we post them each and every week.

If you are a returning visitor, thanks so much for your continued viewing. Hopefully, you can use those share icons below to share this video on your social media networks, because after all that is our mission. We are using social media to spread the living word of Christ to as many people as possible and also to help them understand and interpret the scriptures in the Bible. Help us complete our mission by using those share icons, we would really appreciate that. Thank you for being willing to share this with others today.

We have a very powerful message that can wake up a couple of people or a few people or hopefully a lot of people. It is about how giving and tithing and what amount you need to be doing in order to be following what God commands in the Bible.

Let’s start out. We are going to take a look at this. If you have your Bibles, please turn with me to Proverbs 3:9. Now if you don’t have your Bible, don’t worry, because I am going to read it to you. In addition, the references will be referenced down below, so the verses will be referenced down below in the description, you can click on that and come back at any time, look them up, use them to discuss with your friends, etc. It is through repetition you will start to internalize it and then hopefully externalize it and share it with others.

Let’s go. Proverbs 3:9. It says, ‘Honor the LORD with your wealth, with the first fruits of all your crops.’ What does that mean? Honor the Lord with your wealth? Now LORD is capital L-O-R-D which means Yahweh. ‘Honor Him with your wealth, the first fruits of all of your crops.’

Now you don’t grow crops, I mean you might have a garden or something but it is not unless you are a farmer that you have a big crop. Then what are you supposed to do, take 15% or 10% or 3%? We will come to that amount later, take some amount to the church and say, here you go, here are 20 bushels of corn. They probably don’t know what to do with that or I mean they could figure it out but that is not what they need or that is not what they want. We are in modern times and things have changed since this was written.

In the Bible times, people grew. They harvested. They had trades, they had professions and that is what they did. That is why it says honor with the first fruits of all your crops specifically. However today we can apply that to wealth, just like here it says honor the LORD with your wealth, the first fruits of all your crops, you can substitute that word ‘crops’ with whatever it is you are doing today. The most widely and universal exchanged item today is money, so whatever the currency is in your area, that is what you should be honoring the LORD with.

Now God doesn’t want your money, God doesn’t need your money. He has everything. He created all of this, He could snap his fingers and millions of dollars would come or pile up. He could pull all the gold out of the earth in an instant. I mean He could have everything in an instant. He has it all already, so He doesn’t need it.

He doesn’t need it from you. That is not the point here, it is not that you are giving to Him. What He needs or what He desires or wants and the churches for the most part. They have got enough people coming in. They have got enough people donating. They are going to have money. It is not like they really need your money either.

I mean even us. Social Media Ministries. We have very very little money coming in but we are still able to put out content. Why? Because our overhead is super low. This space is donated. The things we use. Camera. Microphone. We are using it on loan from other places so we can still do this without a lot of money. Yes, we would love to have some operating budget but that is not the point.

These places, they don’t truly need your money. So what is the point of honoring the LORD with your wealth? What is the point of giving this tithe to other places, to the church, or to ministries? It is for you. It is for you. You are to give God the first of all your wealth.

Now this is the part where I say that it is going to wake up a few people. Because you might say, yeah you know what I got? I got money coming out of my check automatically going to the church, or you know I drop money in the plate every week, or I donate online or however you do it. But it is the first of your wealth.

You earn money, the money that you earn what is it from? It is from your job. What did you do to get that job? You used your skills, your knowledge, you have been trained, you are very good at your job, you do your work, you work hard. All of that was given to you from God. He enabled you with the ability to do the work you do and to work hard and hopefully be happy in what you are doing with your work. God gave you all of that. Now as a part of saying thank you, you are honoring God with the money that He has provided you.

How much do you give Him? If it is all His anyway, should you just give it all back? Well yes, but you got to live too, you got to live and operate in this world while you are here on special assignment. Remember we are not of this world. So how much? Does God say, hey you should give this amount in order to thank me for everything I am giving you?

We are going to turn to Deuteronomy 14:22, ‘Be sure to set aside a tenth of all that your fields produce each year.’ A tenth. So you are to give God one-tenth of all your income. That is 10%. If you make $100,000 a year, $10,000. You make $50,000 a year, $5,000. That money you are supposed to set aside and give it to God.

Now what is giving it to God? Do you put it on an altar and hope He sends fire from heaven and burns up your money? No, things have changed. I mean in the past yes they would take it to where altars offer sacrifices, then they brought it to the temple and the priests and elders took care of it for them. Nowadays it is very similar. You bring it to the house of God or to the ministries you support.

Now we will come to this another time, but tithing and giving are two very different things. Tithing is what we are talking about here, it is the first 10% to God. Your giving is above and beyond the tithe. So if you say, well I am going to get new furniture in our house, I will donate all the old furniture rather than selling it, that is worth about $1,000. I make $50,000 a year, so now I only have to give out $4,000. No, that is giving. Tithing is the first 10% of all your income and that goes directly to the house of God. The tenth is to come off the top of your pay.

The first thing you do is honor God with your wealth. You get your paycheck and let’s say it is $1,000 for the month or the week or however much you make, it is a thousand bucks, you take that cash or it could be electronically deposited, maybe you are getting paid in crypto. I don’t know how it works for you nowadays, but you get the $1,000, it is in your account, whether it is. Numbers on your phone.

Whether it is cash in your hand as a physical paycheck. However it works. However you get it you have the $1,000. Now you take the cash or you take the money, you give $500 to your mortgage company. $200 goes to groceries. $100 goes for your car payment. $100 goes to the church. All right, so you gave $100 out of that $1,000 to the church.

But there is a problem there, because yes okay the $100 is 10%, but you gave that 10% out of the bottom of your check. The first 10% was a part of that $500 that went to the mortgage company, so what did you do? You gave God’s money to the mortgage company, you gave God’s 10% to the mortgage company. Now you may say, okay does it really matter I gave a hundred bucks out of my check to the church, to God? I did what it is. I honored the Lord with my wealth. I tithed the 10%. Is it really going to make a big difference whether that was the first thing I did or the last thing I did?

The answer is yes. It does make a difference. Now it may not make a difference to the church or to anywhere else or maybe even to you, because you say, I still did it. But it makes a difference because it is what is coming from your heart. If you get your money and the first thing you think of is, okay I gotta give 10% of this to God and you write out that check or you punch up the online giving or you send a text message or whatever you do. The first thing you do when you get paid is thinking of giving it back to God. That is in your heart.

If on the other hand, the first thing you do when you get paid is, all right I got paid, it is time for me to go out to eat and celebrate, it is time for me to go buy that item that I have been wanting, I have got to upgrade my this or I want to do this. Then at the end of your check, you are like, oh wait a minute I got to give 100 bucks to the church, then it is an afterthought. God wants you to be fully devoted to Him. Fully devoted to Him does not mean that thanking Him for all of your wealth and bringing money back to Him is an afterthought. It needs to be your first thought. The firstfruits of all your crops, Proverbs 3:9 is very clear when it says that you must give first to God, then to everybody else.

Yes, of course, you need to pay the mortgage company and, of course, you need to pay your car payment, all of these things are given to you from God. He wants you to have them, He wants you to have a very very blessed and rich life. He doesn’t want you to be poor. So honor God with what He is giving you and then do whatever you want with the rest. Save it, spend it, squander it, whatever. You do not really squander it because you need to be a good steward of what God is giving you but honor God first.

There is no exception, out of every paycheck you need to give first to God and then everyone else after that. When you get your direct deposit into your account and you say, all right it was $1,100 okay $110, that check needs to be written out. Now, I understand that in today’s world, everything is going into the bank account and you might have some stuff automatically withdrawn. Maybe the utility bill pulls before you end up getting that money to the church or maybe your insurance payment comes out, something like that happens, that is understandable.

But it is your thought, it is your intention, it is your heart. If the first thing you do is think of giving that money to God, even if it is simply writing a sticky note down after you get your paycheck and you put the amount of what you are going to do, you have decided that money is committed.

Now whether it has left your bank account or not you committed that money first and that is what it is. It is what is in your heart. Are you committing first to God and then to everything else or are you thinking about paying everything else, and then remembering to give to God later? It is what is in your heart that matters. God sees the heart.

Let’s check out what will happen. Does it really matter, and I say yes because it is what is in your heart and that is what the Bible says. But why, why does it matter that you give first to God? Even if you are still giving 10% but you are doing it later, why does this matter?

You could say at the end of the year, all right on December 30th every single year I look at my income statement for the whole year and I just write out a big check to God at the end, does it really matter if you do it first or later? The point is that you are giving, why does it matter? Here is why.

We are going to turn to Malachi 3:6-12. So it is six verses, follow along or listen with me, the caption is robbing God. All right, we are going to read it and then I am going to break it down for you because there are a few points that are very very solid here that you have got to remember.

‘I the LORD do not change, so you descendants of Jacob are not destroyed. Ever since the time of your forefathers you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me and I will return to you, says the LORD Almighty. But you ask, how are we to return? Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me. But you ask, how do we rob you? In tithes and offerings.’

‘You are under a curse, the whole nation because you are robbing me. Bring the whole tithe to the storehouse that there may be food in my house. Test me in this, says the LORD Almighty, and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it. I will prevent pests from devouring your crops and the vines in your fields will not cast their fruit, says the LORD Almighty. Then the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land, says the LORD Almighty.’

That is a lot. We are gonna break it down. First of all the LORD does not change. That means 2,000 years ago. 4,000 years ago. Today. Tomorrow. 1,000 years from now it is still the same. God wants your wealth first.

Next, return to God. How do you do that? Tithes and offerings. Right now you are under a curse, the nation is under a curse. Why? Because we are not giving God a thank you, remembering Him in our hearts first with everything He is blessing us with. You do this and what is going to happen? Well, the curse is going to be lifted and what does that look like? The whole nation, imagine this, if the whole nation started giving to God first out of their heart, committing the first 10% of their wealth, this is what would happen.

Test me in this God says, you are to put Him to the test in this. See if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven. Okay floodgates, that is like if you have a dam, think of the Hoover Dam and all of a sudden that whole dam cracked, how much would gush out of there and what would it do? There would be so much water coming forward, coming out, that things would be destroyed, leveled, there would be so much, there is no room for all that water to go. Think of this. God opening the floodgates of heaven and there was so much blessing that you would not have room enough to store it all.

Not just you personally, but the whole nation not having room for all of this blessing. What would happen with that if there is no room in America for all of this blessing? That blessing is going to pour out to surrounding countries, to other nations and it could truly be great again.

Now, what does this mean? Then I will prevent pests from devouring your crops. Again remember, the first of all your crops. We don’t grow crops today, so pests from devouring crops that was a big deterrent. What would it be today? Theft, natural disasters, any of that kind of stuff. Your household will be kept safe.

What else? The vines in the fields will not cast their fruit. Now that means it is not going to just throw them on the ground and drop it, the fruit will stay on the vine until it is time to be harvested. You will be able to collect a big harvest. That also means what for today? For today, you will be able to work hard and be rewarded for your work even more so than you already are now.

So in summation, what is it? God doesn’t change. Right now if you are not giving the first 10%, you are not committing that first 10% to God, you are robbing God. God is not a person to rob. That means you are under a curse, you have put yourself under that curse. God did not curse you, you have entered into that curse willingly. Get yourself out. Come back to God, commit to Him the first 10% from your heart, and test Him, see what He does when you commit and start doing that. There will be so much blessing in your life that you will not have room to store it.

This is very powerful. Share this and change other people’s lives as well. Get your whole family on the program of changing their hearts to commit to God first. Give that money back to God. It is all His anyway. He gave it to you. You are here taking care of it. Give it back and see how your life changes.

Let’s pray. Lord Jesus thank you so much for this excellent life-changing message today. It truly does have the power to change lives and I pray that each and everyone out there listening would take this to heart, that they would start changing their mind and their heart to remember that each and every time they get that paycheck that they need to commit that first 10% to you. Whether it is writing it down on a sticky note. Writing a check out right away. Sending the money electronically that instant. Whatever it may be. That as soon as they know how much they are getting paid they commit to you first and honor you with the first fruits of their wealth.

Lord, I ask that when they do that, you bless them abundantly, throw open those floodgates of heaven on their lives, bless them so much that they don’t have any room for all of the blessing. That they have no choice but to continue to share it with others so abundantly, that each and every person in their life would see that and start changing as well and that together we will become a blessed nation of true believers in you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Thank you so much for tuning in today. I really really do hope that you take this message to heart and that you make the change and that you inspire others to make the change as well. If you need to share this with them, feel free to do so. If you need any guidance or support, comment below because this is truly a life-changing message while we are here on earth. So let’s do it. Let’s put God to the test in this tithe. Thank Him. Remember it is all His anyway and see how much more your life can be blessed. God bless.

Money God’s Way: Rich Or Poor It’s Up To You – Devotional Book by Spencer Coffman