Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - Oct/91

Contributor - Arie Blok

Title - Thanksgiving, Giving and The Tithe

Topic - Stewardship

Thanksgiving Day is that one day of the year that we set aside for special thanksgiving to God. I say special thanksgiving, because the Christian who limits his or her thanksgiving to just one day of the year is a very poor kind of Christian indeed.

I sometimes find myself disappointed by people's expressions of thanksgiving because sometimes they are so quantitative. We have a lot to be thankful for this year, is the wording such a quantitative thanksgiving sometimes takes, just as if thanksgiving was to be given according to the quantity of what we have received. If we receive less in one year than in another, may we be less thankful in those years in which we receive less?

This has not been a good year for many people in the western end of Southwest Ontario. Factories have closed in Chatham and a severe drought has afflicted Kent and Essex counties all summer long. It was as dry here this year as in 1988, and the harvest will probably be more scanty than in that drought year.

Still the Bible tells us, "In all things give thanks" (Ephesians 5:20). Yes, in all things! That can be so terribly difficult. Yet we should remember that our thanksgiving, whether it be a prosperous year, or a year of adversity, is either great or small, not according to the measure of our prosperity but according to the measure of our sense of gratitude. As believers in Christ, as God's children, we have been so wonderfully engraced that we cannot afford to change places with an unregenerated person, even when the believer is a pauper and the unbeliever is a billionaire.

Having just said this, I am going to turn around, and at least partly contradict myself. There is a way in which our thanksgiving should be a measured response. There is a way in which we should be more expressive of our gratitude in a year of prosperity than in a year of adversity. The Psalmist in Psalm 116.12 asks How shall I repay the LORD for all His goodness to me? (NIV) The idea of 'repay' (or 'render' in the KJV) is to return value for value received.

This same word render is found in the KJV's description of Hezekiah's failure to show gratitude after God delivered him from Sennacharib. We read in II Chronicles 32:25, "But Hezekiah rendered not again according to the benefit done unto him; for his heart was lifted up and there was wrath upon him and upon Judah and Jerusalem". This is one case where the old is better, because the newer NIV translation says he did not respond to the kindness shown him. The careful expression of a proportionate response does not come through in the NIV

When the Apostle Paul was overwhelmed by gratitude in I Thessalonians 3:9, he asks, "How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we have in the presence of our God because of you?" Here again, the idea is to return back to God proportionately.

In the Old Testament, giving back to God proportionately, was a requirement of the law. The Israelite was not allowed to eat a tenth of his crop. Sometimes the tenth was to be brought into the temple, sometimes a tithe of something was to be used to feed the poor or the Levite who travelled to or from the temple to serve there. There was the principle that the tithe that the Israelite gave back to God was not something that the Israelite gave to God but something that the Israelite owed to God, a debt of gratitude, if you will.

When my father first came to America as a young man, he boarded with a family that did attend church but gave only sparingly. The mother of the family once said to him, "Religion is a good thing but it must not cost anything".

In that family there was no understanding of giving something back to God, no understanding that gratitude requires us to give back to God of what He has given us. The principle of a proportionate rendering back is also found in the New Testament. In I Corinthians 16:2, the Apostle says Upon the first day of the week let everyone of you lay by him in store, as God has prospered him. In the NIV, the Apostle commands each of you should set aside a sum of money according to his income, saving it up.

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