GOD’S PEOPLE FREE

From the Tyranny of Tithing and the Curse of Corban

Time-honored church traditions must always be examined in light of the Word of God, as it applies to us today as New Testament believers. When they are not sanctioned by Scripture, they’ll do far more harm than good, and should be repudiated as false; even popular, deeply entrenched doctrines. The Gospel of Grace, as revealed to the original apostles,  must be the sole foundation upon which we practice our Christian faith (Galatians 1:8-9; Romans 2:16; Jude 3). NOT ONCE does Paul, Apostle to the Gentiles, ever command New Testament believers to tithe on their wages.  If he had mandated such a law, he could have lived in luxury, rather than saying: At this very hour we are hungry, and thirsty, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwellingplace (I Corinthians 4:11).

Today, plenty of televangelists can boast: “At this very hour we are feasting at five-star restaurants, sipping champagne, and wearing $1000 suits. We enjoy lavish  buffets on cruise ships and dwell in million-dollar mansions.” One eminent evangelist  boasts a stable full of pedigree Arabian horses. Another flies around in a gold-plated jet. Believe it or not, still another boasts that he wears a pair of new shoes only once   “because he has a shoe fetish”. Are God’s people to blame for waking up to their game? Are they to blame for not saying “amen” to the amenities enjoyed by carnal “ministers of the Word”? How do they get all that mad money  so easily?  They sure don’t get it by punching a time clock everyday!

One reliable source squeezed out of  Christians is the tithe.  But is the Christian tithing ordinance  God-given or man-mandated? What was the purpose of the biblical  tithe, what did it consist of, and to whom was this regulation really given?

The Tithe: An Edible Product

What launched me on the most exhaustive Bible study I have ever done on any  topic? A burning desire to know the real truth.  God has guided me in my search.  Here’s how it all began.

One day  I was taking a tour of the Word of God when I happened across a passage of Scripture I’d never head any preacher expound on in all my long life.  I thought my eyes must be playing tricks on me, so I read it again to make sure it really was in the Bible! It made me ask myself:  Could my suspicions be well-founded? As a student of the New Testament,   I’d always had a question nagging at the back of my mind:  Why didn’t the apostles ever  remind church-goers to pay their tithe every Sunday?

So I began digging and researching.  I accumulated an overwhelming body  of evidence to prove that no minister, whatever his credentials,  is authorized by Scripture to collect tithes today, only freewill offerings!

Those shocking Scriptures contradicted  a sacrosanct exhortation I’d heard  all my life:  DON’T EAT THE TITHE! But what was the original purpose of the tithe, and what did it  consist of?

Deuteronomy 14: 22-27  deals with the Festival Tithe, one of three tithes brought by the Israelites to their place of worship.

VERSE 22 Thou shalt truly tithe all the increase (harvest) of thy seed, that the field bringeth forth year by year.

VERSE 23 And thou ( the tithe-payer!) shalt EAT before the LORD thy God, in the place which He shall chose to place His name there, the tithe of thy  corn, of thy wine, and of thy olive oil, and of the firstlings of thy herds and of thy flocks; that thou mayest learn to fear the LORD thy God always. What an eye-opener!

VERSE 24 introduces the only context in all of Holy Scripture where money is mentioned in conjunction with tithing!  Let’s read.  And if the way be too long for thee, so that thou art not able to carry it; or if the place be too far from thee, which the Lord thy God shall choose to set His Name there, when the Lord thy God hath blessed thee;

VERSE 25 Then thou shalt turn it into money, and bind up the money in thine hand, and shalt go unto the place which the Lord thy God shalt choose:

VERSE 26 And thou shalt bestow that money for whatsoever thy soul lusteth after; for oxen, or for sheep,  or for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatsoever thy soul desireth: and THOU SHALT EAT  there before the Lord thy God, and thou shalt rejoice, thou and thy household,

VERSE 27  And the Levite that is within thy gates; thou shalt not forsake him; for he hath no part nor inheritance with thee (in the Promised Land).

 The Tithe: Ancient Israel’s  Public Service and Social Welfare Tax

Even the prophet Malachi, so often quoted to keep the funds flowing, says the purpose of the tithe was to keep FOOD, NOT MONEY, in God’s House (Malachi 3:10). Why? God doesn’t need farm produce to stay alive! The Levites (priestly tribe of Israel) were denied an inheritance (of real estate) in the Promised Land. The tithe was their compensation for this, and their reward for their Tabernacle service (Numbers 18:21-24).

Three  tithes (Ma’aserah) were paid by the people, two each year, during a seven-year tithing cycle (the Shemittah cycle).  Every seventh year the Land was to lie fallow, to take its sabbath rest from being worked, even as the people rested every seventh day from physical labor. No tithes would be collected that year at all.   Have you ever heard of any churchgoer getting a rest every  seventh year from paying tithes?

Here’s how the Levitical tithing cycle worked:  The first tithe, the Ma’aser Rishon, 10% of all the produce of THE LAND,  went  for the support of the Levites (Numbers 18:21-32). This was paid once every year, except the seventh year. The second tithe, the Festival Tithe (Ma’aser sheni), was levied on  the remaining 90% of the crop, and   was eaten by the worshippers themselves, as well as the stranger, the fatherless, the widow, and the Levite. It was collected on the first, second, fourth, and fifth years of the Shemittah cycle. In the third and sixth years, the Poor Tithe, (Ma’aser  ani) was    tithed on the 90% remaining after bringing in the tithe for the Levites.  This one was paid  instead of the Festival Tithe.1 In all, 19% of Israel’s produce was brought in by the people as payment of tithes.2 Tithes  were collected to feed the  stranger, the fatherless, the widow, and the Levite (Deuteronomy 14:28-29; 26:12-15). Let’s see what Deuteronomy 14:28-29 says:   And at the end of three years thou shalt bring forth all the tithe  of thine increase the same year; and shalt lay it up within thy gates:  (And the Levite, because he hath no part nor inheritance with thee.) and the stranger (foreigner), and the fatherless and the widow, which are within thy gates, shall come and eat and be satisfied; that the LORD they God may bless thee in all the work of thine hand which thou doest. Notice, the landless Levites were counted among the poor! Thus, there were six Levitical tithes, four Festival Tithes, and two Poor Tithes in any given tithing cycle, followed  by a sabbatical (seventh) year of rest for the Land.  In every case, the tithe was eaten, not deposited in a bank account!

Finally, there was a fourth tithe paid not by the people, but  by the Levites on the tithe they received, 10% of the tithes offered by all the other tribes of Israel to the tribe of Levi., or 1% of all the produce of the land.  This tithe of the tithe  was hand-picked  and  presented by the Levites to the High Priest; who in turn presented it as a “heave offering”  to the Lord,  as described in  Numbers 18: 25-32.  This best part of the crop was eaten by the Priestly division of the tribe of Levi, who were descended from Aaron, brother of Moses. To qualify for the Levitical Priesthood, the highest calling among the Levites, only physically perfect  male specimens (no ladies, please!)  of Aaron’s clan qualified to serve as priests  at the Altar (Leviticus 21:16-24). All other Levites  ate the remainder of the Levite’s tithe (Ma’aser rishon) brought by the people.  It was their  wages for the service they rendered in the Tabernacle of the congregation, under the authority of the Priesthood.  These subordinate Levites played supporting roles. They served as policemen, health inspectors, and ministers of public education. Some Levites (the sons of Kohath) were responsible for transporting the sacred articles of the Tabernacle during the Israelites’ wilderness wanderings.   All priests had to be Levites (members of the Tribe of Levi) but not all Levites were priests; just like all Alabamians are Americans, but not all Americans are Alabamians.

It was the Land, not the Federal Mint, which produced the tithe!  Leviticus 27:30 says: And all the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land, or of the fruit of the tree, is the Lord’s: it is holy unto the Lord.  It is safe to say that only landowners who reaped the fruits of livestock or land cultivation ever paid tithes in ancient Israel.  Fishermen surely did not tithe on their catch! Nor did God require tithes of manufactured articles, such as pottery, plows, tents  and sandals.

Most poor Christians do not  possess any Biblical inheritance (land), and  poor people must rent their living space at exorbitant rates. Surprisingly, a lot of “spiritual Levites” own luxurious mansions situated on   prime real estate (privately owned, of course), although Old Testament Levites were not given a stake in the land, except for a few scattered towns set aside for them to dwell in.

Again I emphasize: Numbers 18:21-24 makes it plain that only the  sons of Levi were ever authorized by God to collect tithes, and only from the children of Israel. No other tribes of Israel were ever  supposed to collect tithes, and certainly not Gentiles!

The Tithe:  Old Testament Law Reimposed By Men

Many clergymen simply do not trust God to inspire a spirit of liberality in His people. Compulsory tithing helps ensure a minimum contribution from each parishioner. In this paper I’ll present some solid support for my firm conviction that the early church did not compel its members to tithe.

According to McClintock and Strong’s Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature, “In the early Christian Church the custom of consecrating to religious purposes a tenth of income was voluntary, and it was not made obligatory until the Council of  Tours in 567 A.D.  The second Council of Macon in 585 A.D. enjoined the payment of tithes under pain of excommunication (article ‘tithes’).

The Encyclopedia of Catholicism  states:  “Paul’s instructions on the Jerusalem collection urge voluntary giving (I Corinthians 16:1-4; II Corinthians Chapters 8 and 9) which became the practice of Christians until religious and civil authorities (sixth and eighth centuries)  initiated legislation mandating tithing.”

By the beginning of  the Middle Ages (the sixth century  A.D.), Like a bloated bureaucracy, Big Religion had  grown so complex that it needed a more predictable  source of income than freewill offerings to keep its machinery running. It was hard for organised Christendom to subsist by faith alone.The prelates sitting on Church councils knew that  the poor peasants generally could neither read nor gain access to  the Scriptures, let alone scrutinize Church laws in the light of Paul’s Gospel.  So the council met with no serious resistance when they took material out of the Old Covenant and spun it into a panacea for their financial ills:  obligatory tithing on money.  And even though most modern Christians are well able to check this doctrine out for themselves, they are made to feel guilty for even questioning its validity. It would be too costly for organized Christendom if too many tithe-payers learned the truth. But why should modern Christians be burdened with   man’s  version of an ancient ordinance the early  Church didn’t have to keep? Jesus denounced the Pharisees for teaching as doctrines the commandments of men (Matt. 15:8-9; Mark 7: 6-7).

That logic escapes some ministers of modern-day Christendom who scarcely bother to “search the Scriptures to see if those things are so” (Acts 17:11). Perhaps they’re afraid to do this, for with knowledge comes responsibility to walk in the light of it. Nevertheless,  tithing is hardly ever held up to unbiased scrutiny by those who profit from it.  In one  American “Word church”, one non-tither was singled out for open censure from the pulpit for “helping satan hinder the spread of their ‘gospel’.

The Tithe: A Tax on Christian Liberty

To resurrect,  reinvent and reimpose part of a Law nailed to the Cross of Christ is contrary to the will of God, whatever the rationale behind it. Religious legalism is at enmity with our Liberty in Christ.  Paul admonishes us, as believers freed from the Curse of the Law,  to stand fast in our liberty (Galatians 5:1).

It is the business of politicians to “spin and grin” and compromise with lies in order to try and placate everyone at the same time. Religious opportunists do the same thing when they use the Word of God deceitfully to gain their own ends (II Corinthians 2:17;  4:2).  In Galatians 2:4-5, Paul warns of false brethren who come into the congregation to “spy out our liberty in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage.  Bondage to what?  The old Law of Moses, the 600-odd ceremonial ordinances which were added to the Ten Commandments.  He goes on to say firmly:  To whom we gave place by subjection, no, not so much as an hour; that the truth of the Gospel might continue with you.  This was the same apostle who  urged believers to “insofar as possible, live peaceably with all men” (Romans 12:18). It might ruffle some folks’ feathers,  but the truth of the Gospel of Grace is never open to compromise!

In fact, Paul, who said, “bless, and curse not” (Romans 12:14) pronounces a curse on anyone who preaches any other gospel than the one he himself presented (Galatians 1: 8). To drive home that point, he repeats that curse in verse 9. That in itself shows God’s disapproval of  seasoning the Gospel of Grace with  a little legalism!

Now for even more  Scriptural evidence that mandatory tithing violates your liberty in Christ Jesus.

Tithing Under the New Covenant Denies Who We Are in Christ

Nowhere in Scripture is any believer  authorized to waive the Old Testament preconditions of being a physically perfect  male descended from the line of Aaron in order to lay claim  to imaginary perks of that ancient  priesthood (Rolexes, perhaps?).  Nor is any pulpiteer supposed to officiate as a feudal lord  collecting rent in God’s name from lowly peasants out in the pews (at least that’s the way worshippers are often treated!). Even Pharaoh pressured God’s people with quotas. Tithing on money is an example of offering “strange fire before the Lord, which He commanded not” (Leviticus 10:1). If God’s people give a set  amount of money because some preacher threatens them with divine retribution,  that springs from fear-mongering, not  faith, and whatsoever is not of faith is sin (Romans 14:23). We who have entered into God’s perfect rest of faith (prefigured by the Jewish Sabbath) have ceased to rely on our own works to earn God’s approval (Hebrews  4: 1-13). Notice verse 10: He that has entered into his (God’s) rest,  he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his.

God does indeed have a spiritual priesthood under the New Covenant,but that includes every member of the Body of Christ, not just a privileged few! Not only have WE (everyday believers) been made a royal priesthood and a holy nation in Christ  (I Peter 2:5,9), but we are the Temple of God (I Corinthians 3:16). What right does  anyone have to force us, the so-called laity (a man-made division in the Body of Christ) to pay tithe money to “spiritual Levites”, when every blood-washed believer in Christ is called a priest? A believer’s position under the New Covenant is a much more desirable one  than that enjoyed by any Old Testament Israelite or Levite. Why?

The term “laity” , as we understand it, could be applied to all Old Covenant Israelites not of the tribe of Levi, since these other tribes were not chosen to draw near unto God to perform sacred rituals. “Laity” is derived from a Greek word meaning “people”, and in this paper, I use it to distinguish the ministers of the Tabernacle  from those who are not chosen for such a vocation.  Although Israel was God’s Chosen People, only sons of Aaron,descended from Levi, were chosen by God to minister before Him at the Altar.   And of that one clan of Levi , only  the High Priest was allowed to pass beyond the inner Veil of the Tabernacle  into the Holiest Place of all, the  Holy of Holies, where the sacred Ark of the Covenant was.  And even he could only enter once a year (Hebrews 9:7), to sprinkle blood upon the Mercy Seat of the Ark, as an atonement  for himself and for the people.  Hebrews  10:19-22 assures us that now every true believer can enter into the Holiest Place and draw near unto God  because   the Blood of Christ makes us acceptable to Him. We who are saved by faith in Christ ARE the Temple of God, and God’s Holy Spirit dwells in us (I Corinthians 3:16; II Corinthians 6:16).

Preachers confuse the issue when they say only professional ministers  are spiritual Levites. Now if you’re gonna  spiritualize the chicken, you’d better spiritualize its eggs, or your analogy just won’t fly.

In time of warfare, men from all the tribes of  Israel were conscripted to  fight real flesh-and-blood foes on literal battle fields.  Not so the  Levites, who were exempt from military service.  II Corinthians 10:3-5 and Ephesians Chapter 6 speak of the spiritual warfare waged by believers.  Are  “spiritual Levites” (tithe-collectors) then exempt from having to fight spiritual battles with satan? On the contrary, a lot of preachers claim they fight the devil harder than anybody else!

Truly there is a spiritual Israel, which is the Household of Faith, composed of believing Jews and Gentiles (Galatians 6:10; Ephesians 2:11-22), who are built together into a Holy Temple of the Lord. I believe in the priesthood of all true believers in Christ, spoken of by the early apostles.   On that basis  I’m convinced that   there is no such thing as “spiritual Levites” in the Body of Christ, anymore than there are spiritual Benjamites, Gadites or Danites.  If you spiritualize one egg in a carton of twelve, you just gotta spiritualize all the others!

Why were the  Levites were set apart from the rest of Israel in the first place?  God’s original intention is stated in Exodus 19: 5-6:  Now therefore if ye will obey my voice indeed, then ye shall be a peculiar (special) treasure unto me above all people:  for all the earth is mine.  And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests and an holy nation.  These are the words which ye shall speak unto the children of Israel.

Notice the little word “if”.  IF the Children of Israel obeyed God’s commandments the WHOLE nation, not just Levi, would belong to the priesthood.  But this CONDITIONAL promise was made a few chapters before they threw a wild orgy around the golden calf at the foot of Mount Sinai.

The Israelites blew it big time.  It was only through the intercessions of Moses that the entire nation wasn’t wiped off the face of the earth.  It was then an uneasy distance was created between God and the people because of rebellion. Only the Levites were willing to take sides with Moses against their idolatrous brothers.  Instead of the entire nation serving as priests, only the tribe of Levi would execute  that office.

But, contrary to popular belief, this division of God’s people does not apply to the Church of the New Covenant.The whole  Church, preachers and parishioners alike, are called to offer up spiritual sacrifices unto God.  The Church is not guilty of dancing around a golden calf, and it never incurred the penalty of losing its all-inclusive priesthood for doing so. As for obeying God’s voice, the obedient Son of God, the High Priest of a better Covenant, lives by faith in my heart, and God has written His Law of Liberty on my heart,  not on tables of stone (II Cor. 3:3; Rom. 2: 28-29; Phil. 3:3).  Christ is the One Who makes me worthy to  belong to the New Covenant priesthood.

But, some might say, there’s still a difference between a vocational evangelist who wins thousands of souls to Christ and somebody who toils at a secular job. Well, Paul made tents, and that didn’t make him any less of an apostle!  Somebody who prays with a friend over a cup of coffee at work is doing the same type of work on a smaller scale as a big-time evangelist, and who’s to say such obscure faithfulness is  not just as precious in God’s sight!

I might not be a seminarian, but I’m filled with the Spirit of the Living God, and He gives me a few  insights I’d otherwise miss.  I’d say it is much more wonderful to have the Spirit of God dwelling in our hearts by faith than to live as an Old Testament Israelite; someone who truly loved the Lord but didn’t dare approach His glorious Presence within the Veil, for he would have died for doing so. Now if our position in Christ is far superior to what any of   the Levites had,   how can any religious leader exalt himself over us as God’s IRS agent?

You Just Can’t Improve on God’s Ways

King Saul performed an unauthorized religious rite out of personal expediency (I Samuel 13:8-14).On another occasion, he kept the best of what God ordered destroyed (I Samuel Chapter 15). These acts of self-will cost him his kingdom and led to his spiritual ruin.  Oh, it might “prosper” preachers to compromise the liberty of the saints by latching onto their favorite Mosaic ordinance,  but in the end they must answer to God for painting a picture of Him as a   stern landlord, rather than a loving Heavenly Father. Even innovations which seem to be spiritually motivated can ultimately spring from satan, who often appears as an angel of light in order to distort  the simplicity of the Gospel message (II Corinthians 11: 3, 14).

Contrary to what modern-day charlatans teach, we are to give freely, not tithe,  as God has already prospered us (I Corinthians 16:2).  And, if you choose to be part of  a  church which is paying off a big mortgage on a beautiful building, it is only fair that you contribute what you can to help pay it.  If you don’t feel right about worshipping there because you can’t afford the fixtures, go elsewhere, but don’t get caught in the tithing trap. Perhaps you could find a fellowship meeting in a private home  (Romans 16:5; I Cor. 16:19; Colossians 4:15; Philemon 2).  Some churches meet in storefronts, which is cheaper than paying a mortgage on a fancy building situated on prime real estate.

If the 10% standard of surrender to God transfers to money, it should transfer to everything else, don’t you think? Otherwise the whole equation gets a little lopsided. If 10% of your earnings belong to God, by inference, 90% is your property, and you, not Christ, are lord over it!    That means you can fritter it away as you like, and He has no say in the matter!  And what about  your most precious possession, your soul?  Does God own only 10% of that?  Christ is either Lord of all, or He’s not Lord at all!

By the way, a question is nagging at the back of my mind: Why aren’t preachers as eager to claim 10% of the squash and butter beans in people’s gardens as they are to demand a tithe of their other greenery? And yet these same preachers go on and on about people straying  from the inerrant Word of God! Talk about hypocrisy!

I suspect a lot of preachers who claim to feed on the pure Word of God add their own seasonings to it so they can get others to swallow the parts they like, sections they’ve yanked out of context and given a facelift. There’s money to be made from doing that.  Years ago, I would give away money on a tidal wave of emotion, stirred up by “faith teachers” who bamboozle people into giving to “God” out of their want. That can easily turn into an addictive bondage of gambling with “God”; a compulsion  to  mail off money your family needs  to “miracle” ministries in hopes God will multiply your “seed” of $20 into a bumper crop of $2000.  But it’s more likely you’ll suffer a spiritual  crop failure, following that slick sales pitch.

When the Temple was destroyed  in A.D. 70, the Levitical priesthood also ceased. Why should we Gentiles, who never were commanded to tithe at all,  bring the wrong kind of tithe to some church building which substitutes for a Temple which was reduced to rubble ages ago? God’s Spiritual House  now exists only in the form of the whole Body of Christ, which is His Royal Priesthood, of which I myself am a part!  I maintain that if a professional pulpiteer has the right to take tithes, I do too!

So What About Pre-Mosaic Tithing?

Didn’t some people tithe before the giving of the Law? Yes, two examples are cited. But they did it voluntarily, not to avoid breaking some law. One lone New Testament verse, Hebrews 7:8  is the only  Church Age scripture which some might use to construe that the Law of Tithing is still in force today, and only because of the present-tense italicized words which appear in the KJV: he receiveth them , which were added by translators to help the verse make grammatical sense. When this book was written, the Second Temple hadn’t been destroyed yet, and Jews (or Hebrews), not Gentile Christians, still presented tithes of agricultural produce to the Levites (the “men that die” the verse refers to).  I believe that  the  word “there” which appears before ‘he receiveth them’ points back to the time in Abraham’s day when He Who lives forever took tithes, voluntarily offered on one occasion by Abraham, out of the spoils of war (see  Genesis 14:18-20 and Hebrews 7:1-10.  In this context, the eternal nature of Christ’s perfect priesthood is contrasted with the temporary priesthood of mortal sons of Aaron.  It is always dangerous to build a major Christian doctrine on one lone verse, especially one   whose ambiguous  wording must be carefully interpreted in the light of the context in which it is found.

Abraham gave tithes of OTHER PEOPLE'S STUFF to Melchisedek, King of Salem (Genesis 14:18-20), who typifies the eternally living Christ. This  loot had been plundered from the citizens of Sodom by the Kings of the Plain, who were defeated in battle by Abraham’s men.  This was Abraham’s spoil.  But far from coveting this treasure he tells the King of Sodom in Genesis 14: 22-23: “In the Name of the Most High God, Possessor of heaven and earth, I will not take so much as a shoe latchet, lest you say you have made Abraham rich.”

Notice that inedible products must have been included in Abraham’s voluntary tithe (i,e, the “shoe latchet” he spoke of, and probably valuables like jewelry, gold or silver.  But mandatory tithing never included non-agricultural products! I really wouldn’t advise you to follow Abraham’s example in tithing anyway.  You would have to give away someone else’s possessions, and you could end up in the state pen!

In Genesis 28:20-22, Jacob makes a  VOLUNTARY vow to give back to God one-tenth of all that thou  (God) shalt (future tense) give me. But first Jacob attaches conditions.  First God must protect him from harm, provide the necessities of life for him, and bring him back again safely  to his father’s house.  Jacob didn’t get home for 20 years, so his vow wasn’t even payable until then!  A far cry from preachers who say God will disinherit you if you don’t keep their Law of Tithing to them, before you’ve provided for your family, regardless of the level of your faith!  No one has the right to use these two isolated  examples of voluntary tithing as an excuse to levy  an unscriptural religious tax on paychecks, a man-made statute which bears little resemblance to its supposed precedent in the Law of Moses, either in substance or implementation.

Tithing Ordinance Suspended During Babylonian Exile

After the destruction of the Temple of Solomon in  586-587 B.C., the Jewish nation was taken captive by Babylon, and deported from the Promised Land.  As a rule, while they were captive in Babylon, the Jews did not tithe on the fruits of the pagan soil where they lived.  Why?  Because Babylon was not holy unto the Lord.  It was not that “place which He had chosen to set His name there” (Deuteronomy 14:22-23).  Viewed strictly from an Old Covenant perspective, no other territories on earth are holy unto God except the land He promised the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and He did not desire tithes of the Gentiles’ agricultural produce, much less tithes of their money. The only tithing Jews did during the Exile was if a Jewish community wanted to tithe on crops grown in the lands of the Diaspora (dispersion in Gentile nations).  In that case, they had to get a special Rabbinical dispensation declaring that because a large number of Jews lived in their area, its produce was kosher enough to tithe on.  Nevertheless, the Law required tithes to be levied only on produce of Israel, not that of foreign lands.

Although mandatory  tithing ceased during the Exile, Jews of the Diaspora still found ways to look after their own poor, as Esther 9:22 shows. God’s beloved children live in all nations.  But where it concerns Mosaic ordinances given strictly to  God’s  Holy Land,  no other places on earth fall under their jurisdiction. Enforcing a tithing law in Oklahoma is just as ridiculous as trying to collect Nevada state property  taxes on an estate in New Jersey!

SAINTS,YOU ARE FREE! THE TITHE HOLDS NO JURISDICTION IN 21st-CENTURY GENTILELAND! GIVE YOUR HEART TO JESUS, AND LET GOD TELL YOU WHAT TO DO WITH YOUR HARD-EARNED TAKE-HOME PAY!  NOBODY ELSE, AND I DO MEAN NOBODY! (except maybe your spouse, ha!)

This same principle of time and place jurisdiction  applies to Jewish Temple worship. Even though synagogues may be built throughout the world, God   did not order  replicas of the Jewish Temple to be built in the Diaspora for animal sacrifice.    Only the  Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Israel, qualifies as THE place for a rebuilt Jewish Temple where adherents to Judaism might offer those sacrifices, and at the time of this writing, that hasn’t happened yet!

To show what God thinks of people tampering with His divinely ordained instructions I’ll give you a case in point.  After King Solomon died, his son Rehoboam took charge. First thing he did was leave no room for doubt as to who was boss. The elders of the Tribes came pleading with him to ease up on them, for  Solomon had been a hard taskmaster. But the new king let the elders  know they were in for a rough ride.  He would be an iron-fisted tyrant, and they’d better get used to the idea.

Rehoboam threw such a scare into the Chosen People that they were afraid not to rebel against him.  The northern tribes had an ongoing rivalry with giant Judah  anyway, and it had taken much delicate diplomacy for King David to weld them all together as a single powerful nation in the Middle East, and then pass that peaceful Kingdom on to Solomon. But crude, rude  Rehoboam blew it big-time.

So the ten northern tribes (Reuben, Simeon, Issachar, Ephraim, Zebulun, Manasseh, Dan, Asher, Naphtali and Gad) seized on this excuse to secede, leaving Rehoboam with only his own tribe of Judah and the loyal little tribe of Benjamin. The Levites were forbidden by Jeroboam to perform their divinely appointed duties so they also defected to Rehoboam (II Chronicles 11: 14-17). The Levites weren’t numbered among the Children of Israel  anyway when military  censuses were taken, as Numbers 1:47-54 and  2:33 show. The territory Jeroboam retained was called “Judah”.  The other ten tribes to the north formed the Northern Kingdom,  “Israel”.

The northern tribes elected Jeroboam, foreman over Solomon’s forced labor and “a mighty man of valour” to be their king. God had earlier  promised to establish Jeroboam’s dynasty over Israel if only he would be faithful to walk in His ways as David did (I Kings 11: 26-40). But Jeroboam forgot God’s promises.  It made him sweat, just watching all his subjects go south to observe the Passover at the Temple in Jerusalem, which was in his rival’s territory of Judah. They just might defect to Rehoboam, he worried,  then his neck would be in the noose again.  He’d already spent time as a political exile in Egypt, afraid to return to Israel  until his nemesis King Solomon died.    It was because of Solomon’s idolatry that God had resolved to take ten of the twelve tribes away  from him in the first place.  After Solomon’s son Rehoboam  made his fatal  PR gaffe,  God  fulfilled His promise to set Jeroboam over the ten breakaway  tribes.  But Jeroboam didn’t think God had the power to keep him in power!   Just as medieval clerics invented the church tithe to keep the money rolling in,  Jeroboam resorted to clever religious innovations to s