Mitchell Landress

One of our college students asked a very good question last week. The question was this: Is giving to the poor the same as tithing? That is, if your tithe for the week is ten dollars and you have given five dollars to the poor, do you give the other five to the church? Or, if ten percent of your income is a hundred dollars, is it the same to give it to a local or national charity as it is to give it to the church? These are good questions and questions that deserve a solid answer from the Bible. From the very beginning the tithe has been an expression of worship. The tithe belongs to the Lord (Leviticus 27:30, 32) and was used to provide for the priests in the temple. But even the priests in the temple were not exempt from tithing, for of all people they were expected to give as a part of their worship (Numbers 18:26). But isn’t all of life to be worship? In one sense the answer to that question is yes; all of life should be worship. So, is it acceptable to worship God by giving yo...

In the sermon last week I tried to encourage our church to live lives of holiness. Holiness is no easy task. It does not come naturally and, unfortunately, sin does. So, any and all attempts to purify our thought life, our words, or our actions will be a fight. Like any fight, the fight for holiness can get discouraging. You battle and battle against sin and it just seems to resurface when you are at your weakest. In those moments we need some encouragement to stay in the battle and not give up. The greatest encouragement in my life to pursue holiness is the presence of God. The Holy Spirit lives inside everyone who has believed in Jesus for salvation. He is God and he is also a person. He can be saddened (Ephesians 4:30) and he can be enlivened (Ephesians 5:18b). Because the Holy Spirit is a person and a person living inside us, we know when he has been grieved by our sin and we know when he is enlivened by our pursuit of a godly life. My point is this, the pleasure and joy of...