From ancient times, stealing has been a serious crime. However, for things that belong to a person, if you don’t get caught stealing, you can cover up your sin.
But you can’t deceive God by not offering tithes. God who created every mankind knows your thought and heart. Since he created your eyes and ears, he knows what you see or hear. God watches over us all the time. How can we hide from the presence of God? Therefore, from a spiritual viewpoint, robbing God in tithe and trying to deceive God, who is almighty, is more wicked than robbing another person. You shouldn’t even think of robbing God.
You must not disobey the Holy Spirit and lie to God no matter how you value the money. How meaningful is the money that you can pretend to be godly in the church with robbing God of the tithe? Greediness for money makes you a thief before God. It also makes you disgraceful before other people. Nevertheless, many people think that money makes them happy.
When you see the parable of talents, a man who had received the one talent was severely rebuked by the master because he brought back what the master entrusted to him with no gains. The man was thrown into the darkness, hearing “You should have put my money on deposit with the bankers so that I would have received it back with interest.” Then, how much worse the punishment would be for those who robbed God?
You must keep yourself from being ashamed to see God because of money. How disgraceful you would be? You should not allow money to separate church members and make them enemies of each other. Your greediness to earn more money shall not cause you to stop your faith life. It is a stupid decision. Rather than that, you should be wise to use money as a useful tool for the life of faith. “My Lord, help me not to love the money but to use it wisely for the Lord. Help me to make the best use of my money for the time of my soul and the gospel.”
Pastor Seok-Jeon Yoon
Extracted from Yonsei Newspaper #704
