Today, I want to talk to you about tithing, and the crowd goes wild.

I do. I want to talk to you today about tithing, and I want to start with a statement that might sound strange coming from a pastor.

Are you ready for it?

Here's a statement about tithing. You might not want to tithe.

You might not want to. Some of you are saying, this may be my favorite tithing message ever.

And what I want to do is I'm going to show you my cards up front, just be real transparent.

And I'm going to tell you why, very clearly, that you may not want to tithe. And then what I'm

going to do is I'm going to tell you very, very clearly why I feel called by God through His word to

tithe. And so without any kind of manipulation, I'm going to tell you why you might not want to,

and I'm going to tell you why I do. But before we go there, let's just make sure that we're on the same page, and let's talk about what does it mean to tithe. And so we're going to define tithing. On the wall is the Hebrew word for tithe. It's the word maasur. Everybody say maasur. Maasur is the word that means the tithe, or literally

it means one-tenth. And I'm going to show you three different verses in scripture that talks about

the maasur or the tide. The first one is from Genesis 28 when Jacob said this. He said,

the Lord will be my God. I have a relationship with him.

I declare that he's the king and the Lord of my life. And all that I give to you will be a maasur.

I'm going to give you because of who you are. I'm going to give you a tenth is what he says.

Next verse is from Leviticus 27 that says, a maasur, a 10th, or a tithe of

everything the Bible teaches us. It actually belongs to the Lord, a tie, the tenth of what God

gives to us, it belongs to him, it is holy, is set apart for him. The Bible says in Deuteronomy 1422, be sure to set

aside a maasur, be sure to set aside a tenth of all that your fields produce each year.

So when we're talking about tithing, let me tell you what we're not talking about. We're not talking about a tip.

We're not talking about a random or occasional donation. We're not talking about giving whenever

the spirit moves you. We do that, but that's something different. We're not talking about a payment

...