There are folks who pine for the old-time religion. There are preachers who prate: “Give me the old-time religion. Free us from modernism. I’m a fundamentalist. In matters of religion, I’m old-fashioned.”

Not long ago I received a letter of inquiry from a pulpit committee asking about a friend of mine whom that church was considering as a possible pastor. In the letter was this question: “Is your friend a modernist or a fundamentalist?”

Now, I’m not much for putting tags on people. In fact, I don’t like it at all, but I’ve no quarrel with anyone who insists on being old-fashioned, fundamental in religion, if he just goes back far enough into the olden time — say to the New Testament era and Apostolic age or even to the Reformers like John Calvin and Martin Luther. The Reformation which we are remembering on this Reformation Sunday was just a return to fundamental principles of the religion of Jesus Christ. It is fine if your fundamentalism gets down to real fundamentals.

But too often the fundamentalism that parades itself the most publicly just wades in the shallows of the vast sea of theology. It is a fundamentalism that makes a great shout and commotion over the way a man parts his theological hair and crosses his theological legs, but pays no attention to that deeper fundamentalism of practice — of abiding fidelity to the living spirit of the reigning Christ, as He leads men onward in the modern world.

Oh, for a fundamentalism in the church that gets fundamental about fundamental things! One of the rock bottom fundamentals of faith and practice in God’s Kingdom is His divinely ordained finance plan for the spread of God’s rule in the hearts and lives of men. That plan is the tithe — the giving of one-tenth of his income by every God-serving person for the extension of the Eternal Kingdom. Are you or aren’t you a fundamentalist in faith and practice, where the tithe is concerned? How old fashioned is your faith at this point?

Now, the scriptures clearly teach that the tithe is God’s divinely ordained finance plan for the Kingdom, from way back. Yes, in the very first book of the Bible, in Genesis, we read that Abraham, the father and founder of the Hebrew nation, offered to Melchisedec, the high priest of God, tithes of the spoils he had taken in battle out of gratitude to God for success and victory.

When the divine law was given to Moses for ordering the social and ceremonial life of Israel, the tithe was designated as the fixed proportion of each man’s substance, rich and poor alike, which belonged to God and must be offered to Him. All through Israel’s history the tithe remained as the approved divine plan for financing God’s Kingdom. Sometimes the people did not keep it as they ought, but the law was never repealed.

Nehemiah, in his day, returning to Jerusalem, found the temple profaned and religion through the land perverted by idolatry. He wondered why. Upon investigation Nehemiah discovered that the tithe had been neglected. Indeed, it became abundantly clear that tithe-paying and respect for God’s house went hand in hand. When the people ceased to be honest with God, they neglected His worship and let His house fall into disrepair.

At a later date the Prophet Malachi made the same analysis of another evil day which fell upon Israel. The reason? Neglect of the tithe. Listen: “Why is the land cursed with a curse?” “Ye have robbed me, even this whole nation.” “Will a man rob God? Wherein have we robbed thee?” “In tithes and offerings. Bring ye all the tithe into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it.”

And when Jesus came, while the record does not show that He expressly commanded His disciples to tithe, neither does it show that He commanded them not to tithe. He certainly gave them no other plan for financing the Kingdom to supercede the tithe. Jesus said that He came not to destroy the law and the prophets but to fulfill them. The Master took it for granted that His disciples would, as a minimum requirement, remain conscientious tithers. Did He not say to the Pharisees: “Ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin and have omitted the weightier matters of the law; judgment, mercy and faith; these ye ought to have done (that is, tithe) but not to leave the other undone.”

It is a notorious fact that Jesus Christ, the most spiritual of men, had more to say in His teaching about money than about any other subject. Why? Not only because He was concerned for the orderly and competent financial support of His Father’s Kingdom, but also because He was desperately concerned with saving each individual soul from enslavement to possessions.

The early New Testament church enshrined in it teachings and its practice the divine plan for financing God’s Kingdom. The Book of Acts pictures for us a church with four outstanding characteristics: a praying church, a spirit-filled church, a united church, and a giving church. The church at Jerusalem even went farther than giving a minimum one-tenth of one’s income, and put at the disposal of the Christian community and God’s redemptive program everything they had. They willingly had all things in common and no man called anything his own. The early church took care of their widows and orphans, sent relief funds to the poor in other cities, carried on an extensive missionary program and supported the general work of the church at home.

The writings of the ancient church fathers such as Augustine, Ambrose, Jerome — approve and urge the tithe as the divinely appointed plan God has for financing His Kingdom on earth.

And the most blessed and effective churches and individuals of our modern day are believing and practicing tithers. The last issue of the Presbyterian Men’s Magazine told the story in picture and print of the great Myers Park Church in Charlotte. The fact that this church ranks highest throughout our assembly in per capita gifts to the benevolent causes of our church is not accident. There’s a reason. Tithing! Great scores of their members tithe. The chairman of their board of deacons is quoted as saying: “I tithe because it is taught in the scriptures and because of the personal pleasure.” Another man, who is an elder of that church and a textile executive, is quoted as saying: “For me, tithing is a commandment. I believe that the command to tithe is just as strong as any one of the Ten Commandments.”

Closer home to us, there is the thrilling example of High Point’s Green Street Baptist Church. This year, with a budget larger than any previous one in the history of the church — nearly $100,000 — the whole business was over-subscribed — not in a week’s heavy campaigning, not in a full day’s canvassing, but in one hour at the Sunday School session. How? Ask the pastor. He says: “Tithers. Our people believe in giving to God His tenth of their income.”

Yes, fundamental in the divine revelation of God’s word and in the practice of His church through the ages is the God-ordained tithe.

But you know, even if the scriptures did not teach the tithe, even if the custom of the church through all the ages did not sanction the tithing system, it would still be a logical deduction from our Presbyterian theology. Other denominations might be fundamental and orthodox and reject the tithe, but Presbyterians — Never!

For fundamental to our Presbyterian creed is the doctrine of the Sovereignty of God. This belief pervades our whole system of faith. We believe that the Sovereign God has a plan for His world and His people, which will be worked out, in spite of sin and the tragedies of history. We Presbyterians call this doctrine that God has a plan, pre-destination.

Such a trust gives us courage and calm amid all the vicissitudes and sorrows and troubles of life. We shall never waiver, nor fear, nor fall, for God’s at the helm of the universe. His plan will be worked out and that plan is good.

We believe that God had a plan for creating the world; that he has a plan for running the seasons in orderly succession: winter, spring, summer, fall. We believe God has a plan for the tides of the seas, for the growth of plants — that amazing unsolved mystery of photosynthesis by which plants take water from the soil and carbon dioxide from the air and by the use of chlorophyll, working as a catalyst, turn the two into cellulose, the basic food for all the world. All this is according to plan.

We believe that God had a plan for salvation, worked out in the long process of a chosen people, a series of prophets and law givers culminating with the sending of His Son in the fullness of time to serve sinful men as a divine redeemer and open to them the gates of eternal life. God had a plan for it all.

Now, to my Presbyterian mind, it is positively unthinkable that God, who had a plan for everything: from daylight to darkness, from seed-time to harvest, from birth to death, should have no plan for financing His Kingdom — should leave it to chance. Everything else in the whole creation He’s worked out in the minutest precise detail, but the most important business on God’s green earth — the preaching and teaching of the gospel, the humanitarian services of the church in Christ’s name and spirit, the salvation of immortal souls — left to chance, whim, caprice? Why, to the Presbyterian mentality, it is unthinkable.

Yet, that is the position of the man who rejects the tithe, either by argument or practice. He says to God: “I know a better way. Let me work this thing out in my own wisdom.” Talk about modernism! Talk about departure from the ancient and accepted Presbyterian way of thinking and doing things! Here is the rankest heresy, of rebellious, unbelieving, untrusting people who want to keep the name of Christian and parade under the pretension of generosity but are unwilling to pay the price. That’s what Ananias did, you know, in the Apostolic church. He wanted the prestige of generosity without being willing to pay the price. And we know what happened to Ananias.

The old-time religion — is it good enough for you? It was good enough for Abraham, Jacob, David, Moses, Malachi, Jesus, the Apostles and martyrs. Are you going to reject it for some more modern, up-to-date financing scheme of your own devising? Of course you can. But never let it be said you weren’t told of God’s plan. Never say you didn’t understand how the tithe worked. Never let it be said you didn’t know the tithe was obligatory — God’s own finance plan.

Col. Roy Le Craw, who has been going up and down our Southland in the interest of our Presbyterian Program of Progress, never fails to exhort our ministers to preach to their people on tithing: “For God’s sake, men,” says Le Craw, “don’t lay yourself liable to the accusation of your people in the Judgment Day and have one of your members or officers turn to you and say: ‘Preacher, why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you make it plain to me that when I didn’t give God his tenth I was robbing Him, stealing from the Almighty? Why didn’t you tell me?’”

Well, we’ve been told the fundamentals of God’s finance plan. We know. But just telling doesn’t get the job done. Everlasting preaching on the divine sanction of the tithe will not make many more tithers. I have no illusions.

What will make tithers? I’ll tell you. There’s an old Latin phrase: “Pectus Theologum facit” — “the heart makes the theologian.” It’s true, and the heart makes the tither, too. Whatever the divine commands may be — however clear and compelling, you will not keep them till your heart goes out to God in love and you rejoice to give to Him who has given so much to you. Then and then only are you ready and willing to accept as authoritative in your life the divine plan of accounting.

Friday night the fire went out in the furnace here at the church. Soon as I stepped inside yesterday morning, I knew something was wrong. The hall was cold as ice. I walked over and put my hand on the radiator in the church office. It was cold. I could hear the stoker motor running down in the basement — at least there had been no failure of power or equipment. Hurrying down to the furnace room, I found the stoker-bin filled with coal — Robert, our faithful janitor, had done his job all right. What was wrong? I opened the furnace door and I could see no fire inside. Of course, there was no heat anywhere in the house, no matter how hard all the machinery ran, since the fire had gone out. Not until Robert came, kindled a new fire in the furnace and let it run for a couple of hours, did the church get warm.

We can organize our church to the nth degree. We can set wheels within wheels a-spinning. We can launch a financial campaign with the best of plans and the most complete teamwork — but it won’t accomplish much if the fire has gone out in your heart. If the heart warmth of a blazing, fervent love of God is not there, all the preacher’s pumping you up on tithing, all the calls and exhortations of the officer-canvassers will accomplish nothing. Still the church won’t be heated, nor the Kingdom financed, nor the saving work of God done.

Yes, it comes finally to just this: What Jesus said to Peter on Galilee’s shore that frosty spring morning: “Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these?” The Master knows that if we love Him more than all the other things of this world, we will feed his sheep. How much do we love Him?

• Scripture Reference: Acts 4:31-0 • Secondary Scripture References: Acts 5:1-5 • Subject : Stewardship; Tithing; 665 • Special Topic: n/a • Series: n/a • Occasion: Every Member Canvass • First Preached: 2/25/1951 • Last Preached: 11/14/1954 • Rating: 3 • Book/Author References: n/a