Thursday 19 February 2015



Scripture:

2 Chronicles 24:8-10
"8 So the king gave command, and they made a chest, and set it outside the gate of the house of the Lord. 9 A proclamation was made throughout Judah and Jerusalem to bring in for the Lord the tax that Moses the servant of God laid on Israel in the wilderness. 10 All the leaders and all the people rejoiced and brought their tax and dropped it into the chest until it was full."

Observation:


If you ask me, this qualifies as a full-blown miracle story! 

I mean, can you really imagine any scenario whereby the 

king (president, prime minister, or premier) declares a 

new tax and the people rejoice?

What gives?

King Joash and his advisors have noted that the temple of the LORD has fallen into disrepair because of a lack of faithful leadership in Judah over a couple generations. They set to work making repairs. In order to fund this important work, they look to their past and remember that Moses had laid a tax upon the Israelites during their exodus wanderings in order to create the tabernacle of the LORD.  

As we look through the the exodus saga there are three main traditions for how to think about collecting resources from the community to support its worship.  

"The tabernacle [in Exodus 25] is to be constructed through free-will offerings from the people (see Ex 35:4-9, 20-29, 36:3-7). The people give more than what is needed (36:5-7). An alternate tradition says a half-shekel was collected from each male twenty years or older (Ex 30:11-16; 38:21-31). Tithing, giving one-tenth of one's wealth or income, is yet another way the worship of God is supported (See Genesis 14:20; 28:22; Deut. 14:22-29; 26:12-15)." (Lutheran Study Bible, Augsburg Fortress, 2009)

Application:


The communities of faith I grew up in did not do a very good job of educating me about financial stewardship, nor did they equip me to practice this discipline well as an adult member of the church.

It seems to me that, too often, we are silent on issues of ethics or discipleship with our young people. Our silence is mostly about our own awkwardness and feelings of inadequacy about those same topics. The problem is our silence doesn't do our youth, or our communities as a whole any favours. If we don't talk to our people about healthy, life-giving, God-honouring sex; they will come to their own conclusions and we may not like the results. Same goes for money: specifically, we need to talk about what our faith communities require to operate and what our faith has to say about stewardship that is healthy (abundance based as opposed to scarcity based), life-giving, and God-honouring.

As I am growing in my walk of discipleship, this has been an area of much challenge and growth. Now comes the scary part ... helping others to grow by raising (helpful) challenge with them.

Prayer:

Lord, we are so blessed. Your hand guides us and provides for us always. Let us bless those around us as you have called us to do, guiding and providing with your word as our foundation. Amen.

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