Raising The Bar by Ed Young
Every time Christ points to the Old Covenant, he sets a higher standard. He raises the bar under the New Covenant of grace. We see this especially in Matthew 5:17-20.
The law said, “Don’t murder.” Christ comes along, though and says, “Don’t even get angry.” The New Covenant holds us to a higher standard.
The law says, “Don’t commit adultery.” But Christ says, “Don’t even look lustfully at a woman.” Again, it’s a higher standard.
The level of righteousness that grace demands goes much further than the law demands. People will sometimes say, “I don’t tithe because I’m not under law. I’m under grace.”
I say, “Great! That means you should be giving a lot more than 10%, because the righteousness of grace always exceeds the righteousness of law.”
Think about how our perspective of tithing will change when we begin to see the local church as a visible manifestation of God’s love. Christ has gone away for a season. And I believe he is saying to us, “While I’m away, I want each of you to take care of my bride. Bring the tithe into the storehouse.”
Do you remember the Skittles story I told you about? When I shared that for the first time in our church, I got a letter a few days later with an empty package of Skittles in it. And inside the empty package of Skittles was a check for $80,000! Attached to the package was a note that simply said, “Dear Ed, Here are some of our Skittles that we want to bring back to God.”
Now, that doesn’t happen all the time. What that couple did was an amazing act of faith on their part. They recognized that the local church is the heartbeat of God. They recognized that they needed to step out and give to his church. They understood that God had given them a pile of Skittles and that they had a responsibility to bring some back. For that couple, it wasn’t all about what they had done, what they had accumulated or what they possessed. They knew that the pile of Skittles in their life wasn’t about them at all. It was all about God.
They were part of the 21-percenters that I mentioned earlier in the chapter, because they did something that only about 21% of the church does: they tithed. Statistically, about 79% of those who attend church on a regular basis do not tithe to the church; they do not give ten percent of their income and gain back to God’s work. Do you want to be a 79-percenter living outside the zone? Or do you want to be a 21-percenter, living inside the zone of God’s tangible and intangible favor? The choice is yours.
As we segue into other aspects of money management throughout the rest of the book, don’t forget what comes first. Put God first, remember the tithe, and the rest of it will fall into place. Materialism, greed, envy, debt, and every other money issue hinges on this critical issue of bringing first to God what is his. When you do that, and only when you do that, will you be able to get the rest of your financial house in order.
I don’t care how much money you make, how good I am, how good you are, how many times you have been baptized or how many times I have been baptized, or how many hours I read the Bible or how many hours you read the Bible, there is a debt that I cannot pay, that you cannot pay, a spiritual deficit. – Ed Young Church
