Hi, I'm David Bercot, and tonight we're going to be talking about what the early Christians believed about tithing and about fasting. You know, if there is one doctrine that you will find uniformly taught in virtually every evangelical, charismatic, and Protestant church, whether they're conservative or liberal, whether they believe in the Bible or not, it's this doctrine of tithing. In fact, it's one of the great ironies of the evangelical and Protestant churches that they teach this so consistently.
And I say that because, for example, the evangelicals emphatically teach that not only are we not under the law of Moses, we're not under any law whatsoever. Evangelical churches teach that even Jesus' commandments aren't really commandments because we don't have to obey them.
In fact, I'd say it's almost normal in the typical evangelical or Bible-believing church that the preacher will completely gut at least half of the commandments in the New Testament, saying that," Well, that was for that time," or," No, that's not really a commandment." Whatever. We're not under law. We're under grace. We don't have to worry about those. And yet they'll turn right around and emphatically preach tithe as though it were a law handed down by Jesus and His apostles.
And when I say that they teach tithing, I mean that we are under an absolute obligation to give 10% of our earnings to God. If we give 9%, then we're stealing 1% from God. Now, the liberal churches are even more inconsistent because they don't believe that the Old Testament is anything much except a work of man. They don't view it as inspired. They don't believe in the inheritance of the New Testament.
And they pretty much allow their people to do whatever they want, accepting things like divorce, abortion, even homosexuality nowadays. Typically, even these liberal churches that gut so many of the teachings of the New Testament, yet they will emphatically preach tithing as though it were the one and only commandment that Jesus gave us. Well, why is there this inconsistency?
Why would these churches wipe out all of these other commandments in the New Testament, these other teachings of Jesus Christ, and yet emphasized tithing so much as if it were the sole or primary commandment of the New Testament? Well, I think the answer is obvious that so many churches today resemble more of a corporate business than they do a biblical New Testament church. I mean, they've got a whole staff on various salaries, often very well paid in relationship to what the business world pays.
And they've got building programs, family recreation centers, special music programs, all of these things. And so it becomes, like you say, practically a business. To run that business, they've got to be able to have a certain amount of income. And to get that, they preached tithing very emphatically. Because without that teaching, there's not going to be enough funds to pay for all of those programs. And I think there are many seeking Christians today who see this inconsistency.
And I say that because I've received quite a lot of letters from readers who have wanted to know, what did the early church teach about tithing? Now, as I say, I guess in every one of these messages, if you want to know what the early Christians believed about tithing, go to your New Testament, look up every verse there that has anything to do with tithing or giving.
And take those very seriously and very literally, and you'll have rather what the early Christians believed about tithing, because the primitive Christians were people of the Bible. If you can find a commandment in the New Testament to Christians that we are to tithe, then I can assure you the early Christians tithe. But my problem is I haven't been able to find a commandment in the New Testament saying that Christians are to tithe.
I've looked very carefully throughout all of the gospels about the only mention there of tithing are Jesus' words saying that the scribes and the Pharisees tithe even the mint and the cumin. But he was talking about the Mosaic law. Nothing is said about tithe in the future under His church. I've looked through the letters of Paul, Acts, all the various letters and books of the New Testament. Again, nothing there is said about tithe.
The only other reference I found was in Hebrews where it talks about tithing in the past and the old priesthood under Moses and makes mention that Abraham tithes to Melchizedek, the point being that therefore Melchizedek was greater than Abraham or else Abraham wouldn't have paid tithes to him. And that's it. There's not one single commandment in the New Testament that Christians are to tithe. And so since the New Testament doesn't teach it, the early Christians didn't teach it either.
Let me read to you just a few quotations from their writings. The first one is from Justin Martyr, being written about the year 160. You can find this in volume one, pages 185 and 186 of the Ante-Nicene Fathers. He says," The wealthy among us help the needy. As for the persons who are prosperous and are willing, they give what each thinks fit." See, nothing about 10% just each gives what he thinks fit. Tertullian wrote, this is about the year 197.
Volume three, page 46, says," On the monthly day, if he likes, each puts in a small donation, but only if it is his pleasure and only if he is able. For there is no compulsion. All is voluntary." So that, I mean, that pretty well says it. Giving in the early church was voluntary. Nothing was said about 10%, either as a maximum or as a minimum. And this is what we see in the Scriptures.
1 Corinthians 16:2 says," On the first day of the week, let each one of you lay something aside, storing up as he may prosper." In 2 Corinthians 9:7," Let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity, for God loves a cheerful giver." In the Old Covenant, there was a tithe to support the Levites and the priesthood who had not received an inheritance in the Promised Land. But in the New Testament, there isn't any such priesthood. There are no Levites of that nature.
And giving is voluntary. It's out of our heart. It's not under compulsion. It's to give freely. Let's say it is so strange that the New Testament would teach that. And yet our pastors turn that around and preach from the Old Testament tithing, saying," Oh, if you've held back 1%, you're stealing from God." If you give 12%, wow, you've gone over and above what God expects of you.
And yet all of these other teachings in the New Testament, they just ignore things that are actually commanded, are ignored, and things that aren't commanded are preached as if they were a written law. Now, the early Christian view of tithing, that is voluntary giving, the New Testament view, I should say, may sound quite easy, but actually it's not so easy.
Irenaeus wrote volume one, page 477, he said," Instead of the law commanding the giving of tithes, Jesus taught us to share all our possessions with the poor." See, it doesn't mean that we give less than the Jews because we're not under law or under compulsion, but rather there is no limit of what we are to give other than what we have. In other words, in Christ, there is no minimum. If you give 6%, you're not robbing God of 4%. And if you give 10%, that doesn't mean that you've met your obligations before God.
Now, Jesus had taught that the widow who put in just a little mite, and this wasn't a tithe, but this was in the temple contribution box. He said she gave more than all of the others who had put in quite a bit of money because she gave out of her necessity they gave out of their excess.
So see, I would say most of us American Christians have never experienced, or maybe only when we were very young, experienced giving that came out of necessities, that it was going to affect what we ate or how much we were going to have to eat or affect other things that at least our society might consider a need or a necessity. Generally, our giving cuts back on our luxuries, on our wants. It does not affect our normal living.
Now, it's ironic that I'm preaching on the subject of tithing and pointing out that this is not a New Testament commandment because I am a very firm believer in tithing as a minimum. I think that we middle-class American Christians are guilty of sin if we don't give at least 10% and we may well be guilty of sin and probably are giving just 10%. I see 10% as the minimum. It's a good starting point.
And for a lot of people, it may require quite a shifting of their spending patterns, their way of life to get in the habit of consistently giving 10%. But once we've reached that, we shouldn't feel like, okay, now I've met my obligation because the obligation is to help our brother in need. And just even John the Baptist has said," Let him have two coats, give one to someone who has none." I mean, even somebody in our country that the government would say is living in poverty.
I don't have the figures right in front of me, but someone recently told me that the family of four is living on $25,000 or less that the government considers them being in poverty. I'm very actively involved in ministry to the poor in Honduras.
And I know the brothers there and sisters would find it laughable that someone is called as living in poverty, is labeled as living in poverty, and they're making $25,000 a year for a family of merely four people, because most families in Honduras are quite a bit more than four, and they live on much, much less than $25,000 a year. In fact, a family of four who earned $25,000 a year in Honduras would be considered rich, not living in poverty.
In fact, in reading the writings of the early Christians, what I found was not less preaching about giving, but more preaching about giving of alms. There's no preaching about tithing, but there is a lot of preaching and writing about giving alms, about giving our money to help the poor. They recognize it as a fundamental Christian responsibility. And of course, they believed it to be a fundamental Christian responsibility because the Scriptures teach that it's a fundamental Christian responsibility.
For example, James 1:27. This is from the New American Standard. This is pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father to visit orphans and widows in their distress. That doesn't mean just pay them a call and say," Hi, how are you doing?" Excuse me, but helping them.
Again, James chapter 2 verses 15 and 16," If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them,' Depart in peace, be warned and filled, but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body. What does it profit?
Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead." Again, 1 John 3:17 and 18," But whoever has this world's goods and sees his brother in need and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?" Let's pretend that we have love for God, as John said, if we cannot love our fellow man. And if we have this world's goods, which we in America do have, and we see our brother in need, and if we open our eyes, we'll be aware that our brothers and sisters around the world are in great need.
Then if we're born of God, we're not going to shut up our heart against Him. But now notice that at each of those verses that I've just read, the emphasis is on giving to the poor and needy, not on simply giving to your church. In other words, we Christians individually have a responsibility to see how our money is spent by our church. I know a lot of Christians who tithe religiously now, they write a check every Sunday when they're in church and put it in the box.
And they think, well, that's fulfilled all my needs against God. And yet that money is paying for music directors and sometimes paid musicians and recreation centers and glorious fancy buildings. It's those things that act as a money trap, taking most of the giving and then a little small percentage goes to the poor and needy. And that's simply not acceptable to God.
We are kidding ourselves if we imagine because we give a good amount of money to our local church or to some national ministry that if we are not seeing that that money is used to help the poor, I don't mean that that's the only use it can have, but I mean that that is a substantial part of its use, then Jesus is still going to be able to say to us on Judgment Day, your brother was in need and you shut up your heart.
You gave your money so that you could be part of a church that had a great big building and had a recreation center and all of these things. And you gave virtually nothing to the poor. Now I'd like to read to you some passages from the early Christian writers to demonstrate their great concern about helping the poor. From the letter of Barnabas, which is one of the earliest writings that we have after the New Testament. In fact, some would date it as early as the year 70.
I don't think any scholar dates it later than the year 130. It says this," Do not be ready to stretch forth your hands to receive while you draw them back when it comes to giving. You shall not hesitate to give nor murmur." That means complain when you give. Give to everyone who asks you, quoting from Jesus. Hermas writing about the year 150 said," Give to all the needy in simplicity, not hesitating as to whom you are to give or not give.
Give to all for God wishes His gifts to be shared among all." It's in volume 2, page 20, a quote from Barnabas is volume one, page 148. Again, Hermas on page 31," Therefore, instead of lands, that means lands for yourself, buy afflicted souls according as each one is able, and visit widows and orphans." Justin Martyr. We read part of this before. The wealthy among us help the needy. Those who are prosperous and willing give what each thinks fit.
And what is collected is deposited with the president who gives aid to the orphans and widows. So that was the bulk of the spending of each church in that time period was helping the poor. It wasn't building buildings. At the time of Justin Martyr, the church in Rome, which was rather large, didn't have any buildings. They met in homes or rented storefronts or the room above a store, something like that. Clement of Alexandria, this is from volume two, page 279, writes," They should take care of elderly people.
He that pities the poor lends to the Lord," quoting from Proverbs, also quoting again," In as much as you have done it unto the least of these, my brethren, you have done it to me," quoting from Matthew 25. Finally, Tertullian, this is written by the year 197, volume three, page 46, he writes," Though we have our treasure chest, it is not made up of purchase money as of a religion that has its price.
In some religions you had to pay to go through the initiation process." He says," Rather on the monthly day, if he likes, each puts in a small donation, but only if it is his pleasure and only if he is able. For there is no compulsion. All is voluntary." We read some of that earlier. He continues," These gifts are to support and bury poor people, to supply the needs of boys and girls destitute of means and parents, and of old persons now confined to the house.
These gifts also help those who have suffered shipwreck. If there happens to be any of us in the mines or banished to the islands or shut up in the prisons for no reason other than their faithfulness to the cause of God's Church, they become the nurselings of their confession. So the giving, the contribution box they had there, this would have been from the city of Carthage in North Africa. Look at Tertullian how he explains how it was spent.
Nothing on buildings, recreation centers, choirs, things like that to support the poor people, to bury the poor. In that day and age, often people didn't have the money to be buried. And so the church would buy or sometimes be given land that would be used to bury all Christians, poor and rich alike. In fact, that was the origin of the catacombs, was a burial place for the church in Rome for both rich and poor alike. And helping the elderly, the orphans, those sort of things.
Somebody who was shipwrecked had nothing, the church would help them. So it's quite different in the way our budgets today in most churches are, where most of the money goes to things other than helping the poor. That's nearly all where their money went. He says again on page 49 of Volume 3, Tertullian writes, he's writing to pagans here.
He says," Our compassion spends more in the streets than yours does in the temples." In other words, the Christians not only gave out aid at the church, but even in the streets, they would help the poor, even if they were not Christians. They did not limit it just to their brothers and sisters in Christ, although the poor in Christ certainly had the first they were taken care of first and then the poor of the pagans.
He says," You know, we do more to help your poor than you do in your temples." It's interesting because almost the same thing was said oh, about 150 years later by the neo-pagan emperor Julian, who said about the Christians, I'm paraphrasing this, that you spend more helping our poor than we do. That is, the Christians did more to help the pagan poor than the pagans themselves did. But I wonder if anyone would say that today.
I do want to clear up something and make it very clear before leaving this particular area. I don't want anyone to think that I'm saying we have no responsibility to support our ministers. I'm not saying that at all, because the New Testament clearly teaches that those who minister for the gospel should be supported by the gospel.
For example, 1 Corinthians 9:13 and 14, Paul wrote," Do you know that those who minister the holy things eat of the things of the temple and those who serve at the altar partake of the offerings of the altar?" He's talking about in the Jewish temple, says," Even so, the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should live from the gospel." So the early Christians normally supported their church leaders, their elders, overseers.
If the church was large enough to do that, they would support them so that they would not have to be entangled in the affairs of the world to make a living. But they didn't do that by preaching a mandatory tithe or anything like that. And as Tertullian said, all is voluntary. And usually the ministers were among the poor because the vast majority would have given up their jobs in order to serve as full-time pastors. And as a result, lived very poorly.
And that's why one of the qualifications of a bishop would be that he was not a lover of money. Because as Justin explained, all of the money would be deposited there and it was the bishop's responsibility to distribute it to the aged, the poor and the needy. And he himself would live off of that. But you wouldn't want somebody who was a money lover who might take a bigger chunk than what was required for his needs.
Please turn with me now to 1 Timothy chapter 5, and we're going to look at verse 17, where Paul writes," Let the elders who rule well be counted worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in the Word and doctrine." Now, when Paul talks about giving honor, that was understood to include giving material support. You may remember in reading the Gospels that Jesus talks about how the Pharisees violated the teaching of honoring your father and your mother.
And they did that by telling the adult children to give money to the synagogue or to the Pharisees rather than to use that to support their parents. And so when they talk about honor, they don't mean just respect. They mean also support.
And this is shown by verse 18, where Paul says," For the scripture says, you shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain, and the laborer is worthy of his wages." So since the early or rather since the New Testament teaches that ideally we should support our ministers, then we should not be surprised to find that that's what the early Christians did as well.
Now, certainly Paul set an example as a tent maker, and in some circumstances, that appears to be the best way for a church to function, for their leaders to provide either all or a portion of their support by working. But obviously, that's not the ideal situation. So in addition to what they gave to the poor, the early Christians also gave some of their produce.
In fact, probably most of the giving back in that time was not money, but rather it was out of their produce, their cloth, however they made a living, then they would give some of that to support the minister. Let me read to you from the Didache, which may have been written as early as the year 80. Unlikely that was written after 130. This is in volume 7, page 381, where it says," Every true prophet that wishes to abide among you is worthy of his support.
Likewise, a true teacher is himself worthy as the workman of his support. Every first fruit, therefore, of the products of the winepress and the threshing floor of oxen and of sheep, you will take and give it to the prophets, for they are your high priests. But if you have no prophet, give it to the poor. If you make a batch of dough, take the first fruit and give according to the commandment. So also when you open a jar of wine or of oil, take the first fruit and give it to the prophets.
So it illustrates the type of giving that was common back there in the New Testament period and in the decades right after that. And when he says that your prophets are your high priests, the Didache is not preaching sacerdotalism. Something like the Roman concept of priesthood.
He's simply using the analogy just as the Jews gave to their high priests and to the priests and Levites in general taking a tenth of their produce, of their flock, that sort of thing, that that's how Christians were to treat their prophets. Because in that early period, often the teacher you had was what is sometimes called the wandering prophet, an itinerant teacher, someone like Paul and Barnabas, but this is an age after the original apostles.
Now, you might be surprised to know that the tithe, as it's taught in churches today, is not something that anyone has taken from the New Testament or from the early church. It actually came into being after Constantine legalized Christianity. Because shortly after he legalized Christianity, he then made it the favored religion of the empire. And he used tax money to, for example, build ornate churches and to pay salaries to the leaders in the church.
Now, the primitive Christians viewed it as heresy to pay a salary to a minister. By that, I don't mean supporting minister. We've already talked about that's what they saw as a biblical responsibility, but rather to negotiate like a business and say, okay, we're going to pay you X number of denarii a year or something like that, as if this is a job, which is what has basically become today in most churches. But then Constantine started paying salaries to bishops and to presbyters or elders.
And the church at that time was in such a mode of compromise that they accepted it without question. And another 50 years after Constantine, Christianity officially became the state religion of the Roman Empire and paganism was outlawed. And the tax, which began there and it continued on through the Middle Ages, on into the Reformation was something the government imposed.
It wasn't always a tenth, but the tithe came to mean whatever tax the government took from the people in order to support religion, in this case, supporting Christianity. And so when you see tithing preach today, it's not because someone has taken this from the Bible. They're carrying over something from the days of church and state union. You had this in the American colonies.
I don't know if all of them, but I know certainly in Massachusetts and the majority of the colonies that the citizens were taxed to support the church. And usually there was an entrenched church like the Puritans in New England or the Anglican Church in, say, Virginia. But then with the, and that continued generally up to the time of the American Revolution, at least in some of the colonies. But then the U.S. Constitution had no tithe, no tax to support the church or the clergy.
And the new states that came in generally did not provide for that either. And the states that had been providing it, they dropped the provision. And so now for the first time in like 1,500 years, churches were actually going to have to survive or flourish on voluntary giving. And that's when you started seeing the teaching on tithing. That this was a commandment of God because the churches had grown so used to the state taking the money and giving it to the church.
And that's why tithing is taught so religiously in almost all Protestant churches today, whether they're Bible believing or even if they're liberal, because like I say, they had grown used to this unbiblical practice of the state collecting money as if it were a tax. Of course, I think preaching tithing is the lesser of the two evils in the Roman Catholic Church.
In many of the Eastern Orthodox churches, you have the church having bingo nights and Las Vegas nights and lotteries, things like that in order to raise money. I think I would prefer to be in a church that taught tithing as a law, but why settle for either one of the evils? Why not return to what the Scriptures say and let giving be voluntary? And if people's lives are truly dedicated to God, the giving is going to supply the needs.
It may not supply recreation centers and paid choirs and things like that, but it will provide the needs of the ministry. Now, before leaving this subject about alms, I want to talk just a little bit on a subject that I've hardly ever heard spoken of in churches today. And that is a scripture Luke chapter 16:9 that talks about making friends with unrighteous mammon.
Jesus told us," I say to you, make friends for yourselves by unrighteous mammon, that when you fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations." Again, that's Luke 16:9. Now, what in the world was Jesus talking about here? Make friends with unrighteous mammon? I have to confess, I never had any idea of what that was talking about until I read the early Christian writings, because I can't think of any sermons that were ever preached on that passage.
And so I was surprised to find that the early Christians actually talk quite a bit about that saying of Jesus. For example, Clement of Alexandria, volume two, page 601, he writes," Contrary to what is the case with the rest of men, gather for yourself an unarmed, unwarlike, bloodless, peaceful, and a stainless army. An army of godly old men, orphans dear to God, widows armed with meekness, and men adorned with love. Obtain with your money such guards for your body and soul.
All these warriors and guards are trustworthy. Not one of them is idle, none are useless. Some of them can obtain your pardon from God, others can comfort you when sick, and still others can weep and groan in sympathy for you to the Lord. So the early Christians, and that was just an example, understood Jesus to be saying," Use your unrighteous mammon to make friends for yourselves. Give it to the poor. Support the widows and orphans.
Support the aged." He says," That when you fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations, that these people could intercede for you in prayer." Or as he said in Matthew 25 on Judgment Day, He's going to say," I was hungry and either you gave me nothing to eat or you did give me something to eat, depending on what we did to the poor." Now, I realize that a lot of this got a real bad name because the Roman Catholic Church carried it to such an extreme in their theology, where it became almost like a
monetary proposition.
Okay, you would live a wicked life, and this is particularly true of the nobility of that time. But then, even though you commit adultery and drunkenness, and you kill and murder, steal, do all of these things, well then you give a bunch of money to the poor, and that's going to buy your salvation. Now, we know that that's not correct. As Paul told us, he said, even if I give all I have to the poor, it profits me nothing if I don't have love. So Christianity can never become a mechanical thing.
It has to be motivated out of love. But if we give out of love, as Jesus told us here and told us in Matthew 25, that this is something that is essential and vital to our salvation. Hermas wrote in Volume 2, page 32," The rich man refreshes the poor and assists him in his necessities.
He believes that what he does to the poor man will be able to find its reward with God, for the poor man is rich in intercession and confession, and his intercession has great power with God." So that's what Jesus meant by making friends. Make friends of the poor, and in particular, but not limited to the godly poor, the godly widows and old men who will pray for you and intercede on your behalf. But why does Jesus call it unrighteous mammon?
Let me read you just a few thoughts that some of the early Christians had. Irenaeus writes," There follow us a small and in some cases a large amount of property that we have acquired from the commandment of unrighteousness. For from what source do we derive the houses in which we dwell, the garments in which we are clothed, unless it is from those things which when we were Gentiles, we acquired by avarice or received from our unbelieving parents.
This is not to mention that even now we require, excuse me, we acquire such things when we are in the faith. For who is there that sells and does not wish to make a profit from him who buys? Or who is there that carries on a trade and does not do so that he may obtain a livelihood thereby? Tertullian shared this thought on it. If you have no interpreter with you, you may learn again from himself talking about Jesus what he would have understood by mammon.
In quoting," I say to you, make to yourselves friends with the mammon of unrighteousness." Now, this is Tertullian again. That is to say with money, even as a steward had done. Now, we are all aware that money is the instigator of unrighteousness and is the Lord of the whole world. Paul tells us that the love of money is the root of all evil.
So that's why Jesus refers to it as unrighteous mammon, not that we should be acquiring it by avarice now that we are Christians, but there is still something of the world connected to it. As Irenaeus pointed out, if you're a merchant and you sell something, you're not going to sell it for the price you paid. You may double the price. Maybe you paid the equivalent of $5 for, say, a scarf and you sell it for $10. You know, in a lot of other kinds of areas of life, that would be considered dishonest.
But that's viewed as a normal sort of thing, and the Scriptures don't condemn that. But there is something of the world just in carrying on day-to-day business. And that's perhaps why Jesus refers to it as the mammon of unrighteousness.
Before leaving the subject of tithing, I also want to just speak to you a couple of minutes on a theme that I had brought out earlier, and that is make sure that the money that you give, that it is going to help the poor, to provide for widows and orphans, and also to provide for the ministry of your church. And I'm not saying there's no other legitimate uses of it, but you certainly want to make sure that those two things are being done with your money because those are required of us by God.
And so if you're in a church that is fairly worldly and spends its money on things that would have been low priority or no priority items in the early church, then you may not want to give all of your alms through your local church. But to support either directly helping the poor or support ministries that are giving to the poor. But don't just stop there. Even in those ministries, look at where the money is going and how it's being used.
There are some, quote, charitable organizations that sometimes is like a fourth of their money. Sometimes it's considerably higher than that. I was going to say a fourth of it goes to overhead sometimes, but there are ministries that more than half of it goes to overhead and expenses. And a lot of that expense is soliciting money, putting bright big four-color ads in magazines and having TV spots, things like that that are extremely costly.
And so again, it's more run like a worldly business that, oh, if we can increase our money by putting these kind of ads out, even if it means that less of the money will reach the poor, well, then we do that. So see what the ministries you support are doing. I want to tell you of a small ministry that I'm involved with that was inspired when I read Tertullian's words about how the early Christians would help people who were shipwrecked, would support those in prison, things like that.
Other passages from other writers mention how if an orphan was left there in the church, say the parents were martyred or they died from a pestilence or something like that, that it was the bishop's responsibility to see that the young orphan would learn a trade, that somebody in the church would teach him a trade. Not just give him money, but show him how to earn his living once that he became of age.
And I thought, you know, our money would go so much further if instead of just giving money to feed the poor, which is certainly good and it's a high priority. But what if you enable the poor to feed themselves? There's an old saying that if you give a man a fish, you fed him for a day. But if you teach a man how to fish, you have fed him for a lifetime.
Now, the Society of the Good Shepherd, which is the parent ministry that Scroll Publishing is a part of, ministry that I'm very closely involved with, we have been working in Honduras along that principle, although even on a smaller scale, that we find Christians who are putting first in their life the kingdom of God. We work very closely with local pastors to know who would meet those qualifications.
And then if they have a trade, we're not in a position at this point to teach them a trade, but if they have a trade already, but lack the capital to be able to start their own business, or if they have a business vision that is sustainable and reasonable, then we lend them the money to enable them to start the business, and then they pay back the loan out of their earnings. And once the loan is paid off, then that's theirs. And then that money they've paid back goes to help another poor person.
And so instead of just giving $100 or something that feeds a lot of people for a few days and it's gone, the vision of this ministry is by giving usually about $1,000, $1,500, it takes from combined donations to set someone up in business, which is still for us Americans, that's an extremely small amount of money. But it can perhaps enable that person to provide for his family or to help provide for the family for the rest of their lives. And there are other wonderful ministries out there.
I'm mentioning that as just one place if you're not already linked up to another ministry that is helping the poor and helping them in a way that your money really goes a long way. I know of other ministries who are able to acquire large supplies of like grain and food products like that. And then all we have to do is ship it to another country and give it to the poor. I mean, the food is donated free.
And so again, by donating to a ministry like that and all you have to do is pay for the shipping, well, your money is multiplied in what you're able to do for the poor. Let's now turn our attention to the subject of fasting. Now, we've spent most of this hour talking about tithing, and that was on purpose because there's really not that much to say on the subject of fasting. That is, I can sum it up in relatively few minutes. Certainly not enough there to occupy a whole evening.
And that's why I've combined these two subjects. Let me tell you in a nutshell what the early Christians believed about fasting. All right, number one, they fasted. It wasn't something they read about or talked about. It is something that they practiced as a normal part of their Christianity. So that's point one. Point two, they believed that fasting made our prayers more effective. Number three, because they viewed fasting as such an important thing, they had regular fast days on which days most Christians fasted.
Now let me read to you the Scriptures that they based their understandings on, and then we'll look a little bit more at their practices. Matthew 6:17, Jesus said," When you fast, anoint your head and wash your face so that you do not appear to men to be fasting, but to your Father who is in the secret place. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly." So fasting is certainly something biblical because Jesus tells us how we should fast, not with faces distraught so everyone knows," Oh, he's fasting.
What a godly person." But do it in secrets between you and God. But did you notice how he begins his statement, something that had escaped me most of my life? He says," When you fast." Now, somehow in my mind, I always read that as if you fast. Because in my upbringing, fasting was not a normal part of Christian life. And most of the people I knew who fasted, they did it for health purposes, not for godly purposes. But Jesus doesn't say if you fast.
He says," When you fast." So he assumes that we will be doing it, that it will be a normal part of our Christian life. And that's why it was a normal part of the Christian life of the primitive Christians. Mark 9: 29, when the disciples tried to cast out a demon and were unable to do so, and then Jesus cast the demon out. And they asked him," Well, why were you able to do it?" And we weren't.
And he said," This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting." So the early church wasn't off on some weird tangent in teaching that fasting enhances our prayer because Jesus indicates that it does, that if you just pray in certain situations, you're not going to get any result, but praying and fasting will get results. Now, I don't pretend to understand all of that. This is what Jesus told us. It's handed down from Jesus Himself.
Another passage that, oh, I read, I knew it by memory, but the significance never set in with me. Luke 5:35, Jesus says," But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them. Then they will fast in those days." That was an answer to the question, why don't your disciples fast the way the disciples of John the Baptist do? And that's the part I always notice. All his disciples didn't fast. See, we shouldn't be fasting. That's not what he said.
Nobody fasts when a wedding is about to take place, when the bridegroom is with them, that's a time of joy. But he says, when the bridegroom is taken away, that's Jesus Christ after He returned to heaven. He says," Then they will fast in those days." Not maybe they will, but they will. And in fact, they did fast. It was a normal part of the spiritual life of the apostles, and it was a normal part of the spiritual life of the disciples of the apostle.
So I mean, that in a nutshell is what the early church believed about fasting. But I think it's very important because like where I spoke on tithing, I mean, I knew all of my life that the Bible commands us and emphasizes that we should be giving to the poor. But to be honest, that did not play an enormous part in my spiritual life. I mean, I gave some to church, but I didn't have any particular burden that, oh, this should be going to the poor in addition to supporting the ministry of the church.
But reading the early Christian writings awakened that in me, it was in the Bible all the time. It was in the Bible over and over. But the significance of it just never sat home until I saw how important it was in the lives of the early Christians. And the same way with fasting. I mean, the verses have always been there, but somehow they didn't ever mean that much to me. And the churches that I were part of, fasting was never emphasized. It was not part of our daily life.
But it's right there in the scriptures and the early church woke me up to that. And I hope by just sharing that with you, that it will become part of your daily or weekly or monthly spiritual life. A regular part of your spiritual life will be fasting. Now, there were not just fasting at any time. I mean, the early church did that, but there were also special occasions for fasting. Let me read to you from the Didache. This is from volume seven, page 379.
It says," But before the baptism, let the baptizer fast and the baptismal candidate and whoever else can. But you will order the baptismal candidate to fast one or two days before, that is before the baptism." So it's very interesting that before baptism, Christians normally pray. And Justin Martyr mentions the same thing. He gives a description in his first apology of a Christian baptism.
And he mentions exactly this, that the person about to be baptized would fast for one or two days, would be praying, confessing his sins, repenting before the Lord for at least a couple of days before being baptized. Now, again, that wasn't a hard and fast rule because we know from the New Testament that people were often baptized on the spot.
So it wasn't like it was a law that you couldn't violate this, but that became part of the normal practice as a good thing to emphasize the seriousness of coming to baptism and being baptized, being born again of water and the Spirit, that you approach these things prayerfully and with fasting, if at all possible. And others in the church would fast for that person as well, be praying and interceding on their behalf.
Now, Didache continues," But do not let your fast be with the hypocrites, for they fast on the second and fifth day of the week, but you should fast on the fourth day," that would be Wednesday, and the preparation day, which is Friday. Now, that was totally new to me when I read that. To begin with, I didn't know that the Jews had special fast days each week, that they'd fasted on Monday and Thursday. It's not mentioned anywhere in the New Testament that I'm aware of, but that didn't mean they weren't doing it.
It just wasn't something that was mentioned. There's a lot of things like that, part of the daily life of the Jews and of the early Christians that aren't mentioned in Scripture. Everything essential that we need to know is in the Scriptures, but there are practices that were part of Jewish life or of New Testament Christian life that aren't mentioned in the Scriptures because they're not that essential.
So as I said, I was surprised to learn that the Jews had regular fast days each week and even more surprised to find out that the early Christians had regular fast days. They fasted normally on Wednesdays and Fridays. Again, it wasn't a law that you committed a sin if you didn't do that, but it was a normal part of their spirituality. It took me a little time to get used to that idea of having a special fast day. But then I thought about it.
You know what helps me to have a regular schedule of prayer is because I have set occasions every day when I pray. When I go out to my office first thing in the morning, the first thing I do is to pray, to begin my day with prayer before I ever even eat or anything else. And then I pray before each meal. We pray as a family before each meal. And we also pray as a family every night before bedtime.
And of course, in addition to that, like any other Christian, I pray anytime in the day when there's a need or my heart desires to talk to my Creator. But it really helps my prayer life to have those said times because there are some days that that's the only time I prayed that day. I've been busy with something else. And like most of us, where prayer should be something we would never overlook, it is so easy to get caught up in the affairs of everyday life that next thing we know, it's already noon.
We haven't prayed since the morning prayer. And if I didn't have those prayer times that are so normal to me, there might be times when I'd spend a whole day without praying, which I think would be a terrible thing. I thought, yeah, if I had regular fast times, then instead of fasting being something very abnormal, you know once in a blue moon sort of thing, it would be a part of my normal spiritual life. I wonder, well, what does it mean to fast?
Jesus fasted for 40 days and we know during that time he didn't eat anything. Maybe he didn't even have water. It's not clear. Perhaps he had water, but no food. And quite often fasting would signify eating absolutely nothing. But I was a little surprised to read that the early Christians didn't understand it that way. That, yes, that was one type of fasting, but there was another type as well. Let me read to you what Hermas says on the subject of fasting.
And this is part of a parable, this different person speaking here. Starts off, he says," You do not know how to fast unto the Lord. This useless fasting which you observed to him is of no value." I say to you, he continued, that the fasting which you think you observe is not a fasting. But I will teach you what it is a full and acceptable fast to the Lord. He continues," Do no evil in your life and serve the Lord with a pure heart.
Keep His commandments, walking in His precepts, and let no evil desire arise in your heart." If you guard against these things, your fasting will be complete. Having fulfilled what is written in the day on which you fast, you will taste nothing but bread and water. Then reckoning up the price of the meals of that day that you intended to have eaten, and give that amount to a widow, an orphan, or some person in need.
Now, that wasn't any law of the early Christians, but that was counsel being given in this one writing. That first of all, which is what the Scriptures do teach, make sure you're fasting from evil, how useless and absurd it would be to fast by having only bread and water that day or having absolutely nothing at all. Be engaged in sin. Be in a contentious mood, angry mood all day or cheating somebody at work, lying, these sort of things. It's a mockery to God.
He doesn't want your fast unless, first of all, your fast is going to be a fast from evil and that it will be done with a humble heart and a heart turned towards God and accompanied with deep prayer. Then when you've done those things, then concentrate on the physical part.
Now, Hermas there says," On your fast day, have nothing but bread and water." Now, some early Christians fasted by having nothing at all, but I think it was probably the normal thing to fast on bread and water on those two fast days, Wednesday and Friday of each week. Because for most people, they would be working those days. It was different when Jesus was in the wilderness. He was not carrying on a job when he was carrying on that fast.
And I think it's this misunderstanding that a fast has to be either total abstinence from food or else it's not really a fast. It's probably because of that misconception that most Christians today don't fast at all or just on very, very rare occasions. But the early Christians were able to fast regularly each week because they understood that fasting doesn't always mean a total abstinence, but certainly living on bread and water during that day. And I've done that. It may sound easy.
It is not an easy thing at all, but it does enable a person who's carrying on a job, taking care of children, et cetera, to be able to fast on a regular basis. Now, as I've read through various passages of the early Christian writings, one of the things that I've gleaned, and this is actually from a work of Tertullian after he became part of the Montanist movement. And he's writing very critically of the church in general and about how they fast.
And he mentions that they would finish their fast at the ninth hour, which would be about 3 o'clock. The general practice of the church, from what I can gather, was to fast on Wednesdays and Fridays. And it was a fast of bread and water, and more importantly, a fast from evil things, and that the fast was ended at about three o'clock. Now, we've mentioned a couple special times of fasting. One is right before baptism and then the fast on Wednesday and Friday each week.
Another customary fast was right before celebrating Christ's resurrection in the spring of each year. Now, today in English-speaking countries, this is known as Easter, but that's not what they called it back then. And so much of what's connected with Easter today is of pagan origin. But it was a very early Christian practice to commemorate Jesus' resurrection each year in the spring of each year. And no matter where you went on the earth, it was a normal thing to fast right before celebrating his resurrection.
And I think it was universal that on Saturday, if it was being kept as a Sunday day of celebration like it is generally today, that everyone in the church would fast that Saturday, and this might be a total abstinence of food, because this is the time when Jesus was in the grave. And so it was a time that we reflect on the terrible price that he paid for us to bring us our salvation. But generally, Christians fasted the whole week prior to the Sunday, the day of resurrection, during what's called today Holy Week.
And then other Christians fasted longer, 30 days, many 40 days. And that's where the practice of Lent originated was among Christians who fasted 40 days, based, I'm sure, on Jesus fasted 40 days when He was in the wilderness, fasting 40 days before celebrating His resurrection. It was never a law in the early church. And I'm not aware of any church that it was a church-wide practice at that time. It was certainly not the practice among all of the churches, but some people did that.
Now, later in the Middle Ages, that became a fixed thing where everybody had to fast then. In fact, it may have been in the very early period right after Constantine, but it was not the general practice before Constantine to do that.
And of course, most of us have been turned off by that whole thing because we've seen the hypocrisy connected with Lent, that in almost every Catholic country in the world, there's practically a pagan feast festival called Mardi Gras or Carnival or whatever, the day before Ash Wednesday, which is the day to begin the 40 days of Lent. And all kinds of lewdness and wickedness go on. And it makes it absurd. So you're going to go out and purposely sin before you begin fasting.
Imagine that that is somehow acceptable to God. And then the fast often is nothing more than don't eat meat. And my meat is considered red meat. And so it's okay to eat fish. You can have crabs. You can go to fancy seafood restaurants and all this sort of stuff. I mean, that's not fasting. That's playing games with God. And then so often people's lives are no different at all. I don't know for some people, there are people who carry on a meaningful fast during the period called Lent.
And I don't want to blanket, paint everybody with the same brush. But I would say most Catholic Orthodox Anglicans, the people who usually commemorate Lent. For the majority of them, it is not a true spiritual fast. Well, I think I've covered everything I need to say on the subject of fasting and on tithing. I do hope in conclusion that you will take these things to heart. If fasting has not been a part of your spiritual life, that you will make it a regular part of it.
And if giving to the poor has not been a major part of your spiritual life, then you'll give attention to that need. So then on Judgment Day, Jesus will be able to say to you, I was hungry and you gave me something to eat.