Deuteronomy 16

Can you imagine... there is the tithe, that is a tenth of everything annually to the temple, then there is the tenth that is supposed to be used to have a family festival each year, then every third year, that festival was to include extended family, neighbors, travelers, poor, priests, and all! Then, come on, at least three times a year during the main feasts: Passover, Weeks, and Booths, there was an offering you gave in proportion to the measure of God's financial blessing to you that year...plus all the other various offerings at the temple for various circumstances and calls to support the poor and travelers as occasion represents... so much of the a person's income in the Old Testament was given, not consumed. We often read Acts 2 and the generosity and commonality of the early Church as being a novelty but in many respects, it was a return to what God had always expected, less to advance our own personal standards of living and more for sharing!

Pastor Fred