God Hath Spoken

by Harris J. Dark

Now, if you expect me to tell you exactly how much you should give, you will be disappointed. I am not going to tell you because the Bible doesn’t tell me. If I were to undertake to tell you, I might put it too low. I would certainly be afraid to tell any one that he was giving too much. A man once asked me a question which several other preachers had been unable to answer. He said, “My wife and I make $150 per month. We give $25 of that to the church each month. I want to know if we are giving enough.” When I heard the question I knew why the other preachers had not answered. He and his wife were giving more than a tenth. They were giving 16⅔ per cent, but I was afraid to tell him whether they were giving too much or not enough, because I didn’t know. Jesus Christ watched the poor widow give away all her living, and He didn’t tell her that she was giving too much. Some of our brethren today would probably have said, “Just wait a minute, lady, we appreciate your motive and admire your liberality, but you ought not give all you have. We wouldn’t want you to starve to death or to do without the necessities of life.” But Jesus stood there and watched her give away the very last thing she had and He made no effort to restrain her. So, I can’t tell any one that he is giving too much or the exact number of dollars that he should give. Each one must answer for himself.

How much is liberal? I can’t answer for you; you can’t answer for me. You must answer for yourself and your answer must be a definite one, expressible in terms of a certain number of dollars and cents. You must decide how many dollars and cents you should give in order to meet the requirement of liberality. How much have you studied the question? How much have you prayed about it and investigated the word of God in your search for an answer? How much time have you spent on the question? Are you sure that you have reached a scriptural conclusion? You must not merely decide what is liberal according to your own standard, but what is liberal according to God’s standard. For, after all, God is to be the final judge as to whether you are giving liberally. You must reach a definite conclusion as to what God will consider a liberal amount from you. I urge you to study the question of liberality. Search the Scriptures, pray God to lead you to the right answer. Because the question must be answered. It is a commandment of God in the New Testament.

III
Abram

Although the New Testament does not, and I can not, tell you definitely how much is liberal in the sight of God, we can get some light on the question by studying what God has required of his people in other dispensations. In the 14th chapter of Genesis there is an account of four kings who went to war against five other kings. The four kings won the war and among the captives was Lot, the kinsman of Abram. “And when Abram heard that his brother was taken captive, he armed his trained servants, born in his own house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued them unto Dan.” With this small band of men he won a great victory over the four kings and their powerful armies and rescued Lot and his goods and his people. After his return from this battle Abram met Melchizedek, priest of God, and gave him tithes (a tenth) of all. God wants you and me to know that Abram gave a tenth.

The book of Genesis is very brief. In a very few pages, less than the number I hold in my hand, God has given us the history of the world for a period of several thousand years. It is very brief. If man had written such a history, the volumes would have filled a shelf all the way around this room. Men have written many volumes of history concerning the United States which has been a nation for less than two hundred years. But God has condensed the history of the world, for a period of thousands of years, within these few pages. Yet, he took enough of that precious space to tell us that Abram gave a tenth. If man had written an account of this war, he would have told the names of the captains in each army, how many men were killed, how many were wounded, how much the war cost, and so forth. God omitted all those things of interest, but he did take the space to tell us that Abram gave a tenth and that he prospered. He even repeated this information in the New Testament, where he says, “Now consider how great this man [Melchizedek] was, unto whom even the patriarch Abraham gave the tenth of the spoils” (Heb. 7:4). He had some reason for wanting us to know this, for He has a reason for everything He does and says. He took the space to tell us twice that Abram gave a tenth, and Abram prospered. You may draw your own conclusion from these scriptural and vital facts.

IV
Jacob

Turning on over to the 28th chapter of Genesis we find another interesting story that throws some light on our question. Jacob had taken Esau’s blessing. Esau was angry. Jacob was afraid Esau would kill him. For refuge he went to Padanaram. On the way he spent the night at Bethel, and slept in the open, with a rock for a pillow. I don’t know why he chose such a hard pillow. People do some strange things. I have heard that in days gone by the Oriental people slept with their feet, instead of their heads, on the pillow, because the feet did the harder work. According to that rule I think I know some people who ought to change ends with the pillow. While Jacob was sleeping with a rock for a pillow he had a strange dream. He saw a ladder reaching from earth to heaven and the angels of God going up and down (not down and up) on it. The Lord stood above it and promised to be with Jacob and to bless him. When Jacob arose early in the morning he vowed a vow saying, “If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father’s house in peace; then shall the Lord be my God: and this stone which I have set for a pillar, shall be God’s house: and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee” (Gen. 28: 20-22).

With this vow in his heart Jacob continued his journey to Padanaram, where he spent twenty-two years and became very wealthy. As he was returning to Canaan we find him praying to God as follows: “O God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, the Lord which saidst unto me, ‘Return unto thy country, and to thy kindred, and I will deal well with thee’: I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, which thou hast showed unto thy servant; for with my staff I passed over this Jordan; and now I am become two bands ...” (Gen. 32:9-10). Please note that twenty-two years ago he had passed over this Jordan with nothing but a stick in his hand and in his heart a vow to give one tenth of all his increase to God. In the meantime he has become very wealthy.

The extent of his wealth is partially indicated by an incident that followed. Jacob was afraid that Esau was still angry. (He should have known that Esau was too lazy to stay mad twenty-two years.) To find grace in the sight of Esau he sent him a present, a token of his good will. Such presents usually represent only a small fraction of one’s total possessions. Yet this is what Jacob sent Esau: “two hundred she goats, and twenty he goats, two hundred ewes, and twenty rams, thirty milk camels with their colts, forty kine, and ten bulls, twenty she asses, and ten foals” (Gen. 32:14, 15). Few farmers in this county have that much livestock, yet that represents a small fraction of what Jacob was worth and had acquired since crossing the Jordan twenty-two years before. Since that time, he had been giving one-tenth to Jehovah. Again, remember that God has taken space to tell you and me about that in this much condensed book, the book of Genesis. He evidently meant for us to get some lesson from these facts.

During a financial depression, a business man in Kansas went broke. He lost everything he had and found himself $50,000 in debt—fifty thousand dollars in the hole. A friend of his offered to give him a medical formula to be used in any way he saw fit. The man took the formula and went home. He turned to Genesis 28:22 and drew a ring around these words: “Of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee.” With that vow, now become his vow, he began to manufacture a medicine. You probably have some at home. It was Mentholatum. On the bottle or tube you will find the name of A. A. Hyde. When I first heard this story he had become a millionaire and was still giving one-tenth of his income to what he considered the work of the Lord.