Today as I will continue to address the subject of the widows and orphans, and I will try to bring to remembrance to many followers of Yehovah and of Yehoshua, the obligation that we have, according to Yehovah’s Word, to provide for the widows and orphans who live where we live. I am sure many of you, who are reading this message, has given offerings, one time or another, to business who take care of orphans far away from where you live. However, Yehovah wants us to be personally involved with the widows and the orphans who are close to our home.
At times we may not realize that our own neighbor is a widow and is suffering. Or we may have relatives who are widows or divorced and are going through a sad time of adjusting to the new life they are now experiencing. There may be even adults who have lost their father and are in a time or mourning. Such people need comfort, and a connection with a family who will understand them.
Recently I began to ask Yehovah whom I may bless and asked Him to reveal to me who it is. Amazingly names began to come to my mind. I discovered that I had some people very near to me, and some very far away in Italy. All I could for them was to make phone calls and speak to them.
Whatever we can do to alleviate the pain of another person it is well appreciated by our heavenly Father in Heaven, and He will remember our positive actions.
Sing to Elohim, sing praises to His Name; extol Him who rides on the clouds, by His name Yah, and rejoice before Him. A Father of the fatherless, a defender of widows, is Elohim in His holy habitation. Elohim sets the solitary in families; He brings out those who are bound into prosperity; but the rebellious dwell in a dry land.
Tehillim/Psalm 68:4-6
We just read that He, Yehovah, who is our Creator and also the Creator of the widows and the orphans. He cares for them and sets them, who are alone, in families.
It is our privilege to help His children who are lonely and need our support, to take them into our own families and support them spiritually first and foremost, and secondly economically according to their need and our own ability. This does not mean they will move into your home, unless you have a great big home and can afford to do so. It means to give them a place in your home, as if they were your very family. Love and accept them, as your true relatives. All of us can do this. Yehovah will not ask us to do anything we cannot do.
Next, I want to share about the third tithe. At churches we have never heard a message on the third tithe, yet both are in the Scriptures.
I understand that Israel paid their tithes according to their harvest times. Three times a year they would tithe on the Feasts, when they gathered their harvest.
We now work and receive a paycheck. I suggest we pray and ask Yehovah how we can fulfill this commandment.
As for me I divided the total tithe I give in one year into three. One third portion I have designated to the needy. But you can ask Yehovah how it is possible for you to do it. I know that He will reveal to you how to do it.
However, I can hear some pastor screaming now.
Let us read the Scriptures together.
“At the end of every third year you shall bring out the tithe of your produce of that year and store it up withing your gates. And the Levite, because he has no portion nor inheritance with you, and the stranger and the fatherless and the widow who are within your gates, my come and eat and be satisfied, that Yehovah your Elohim may bless you in all the work of your hand which you do.”
Devarim/Deuteronomy 14:29
Let me say something that many will not agree. The Word of Yehovah has not termination, which means it does not bring it to an end. What He has spoken yesterday is just as vital today and tomorrow and forever. His Word endures forever. The coming of Yehoshua and His Death and Resurrection did not abolish the Torah. Yehovah is still Holy and wants our obedience.
Yehoshua said it this way:
“Do not think that I came to destroy the Torah (Translated Law in English) or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till Heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the Torah till all is fulfilled. Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of Heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of Heaven. For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of Heaven.”
Mattithyahu/Matthew 5:17-20
Yehovah is not unrighteous or capricious, as many think. What He though us in the Torah stands forever. In the book of Hebrews we read the following;
Yehoshua HaMashiach is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Do not be carried about with various and strange doctrines.
Ivrim/Hebrews 13:8-9
And we read in the book of Ya’aqov (James) very important verses of Scripture.
Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted Word, which is able to save your soul. But be doers of the Word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the Word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately for gets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.
Ya’aqov/James 1:21-25
What doses it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed 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.”
Ya’aqov/James 2:14-17
If someone may say that the Torah (Law) is passed away according to Paul, it is mistaken. Paul never said that. He himself kept the Torah, for once He did the Nazirite vow and paid for other too. He said that the Torah cannot save us, and this is correct, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of Yehovah, and we need the Blood of the Sacrifice of the Perfect Lamb Yehoshua, to be applied to our lives for us to be saved. This is a true fact. We cannot be saved by works alone, but we need the works according to the Word of Yehovah if we want to be perfect. We cannot say, I have faith, and this is all I need. If you and I love, really Love Yehovah, we will obey Him.
Giving to the widows and orphans is not done to save us, but to obey Yehovah who loves us and the widows and the orphans and the stranger and the Levite. If we obey the commandment of
“Hear O Israel: Yehovah our Elohim, Yehovah is One! You shall love Yehovah your Elohim with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength,” Devarim/Deuteronomy 6:4
and “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Wayyiqra 19:18
“The first of all the commandments is: “Hear, O Israel, Yehovah our Elohim, Yehovah is one. And you shall love Yehovah your Elohim with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, it this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. there is no other commandment greater than these.
Marqos/Mark 12:29-31
If indeed we obey these two commandments, we never disobey Yehovah, but obey everything He commands us.
Will you let those people suffer because you refuse to lift a finger to help them? Can you say that you really love Yehovah if you neglect the poor?
Besides all this, Yehovah is saying that the third tithe which you would normally give to the church, you must give to the Levite, the stranger, the widow and the orphan. If we obey Him, He will make sure that the church and or ministries who are preaching the gospel, will still have more than enough. I suggest that many churches, do not meet their budget because they are refusing themselves to give their third tithe!
Obedience is better than sacrifice! Remember what King Saul did. He spared the best of the animals to give sacrifices to Yehovah, he said. But Yehovah did not approve to his disobedience. He was supposed to have killed all Amalek, and destroy everything, but he disobeyed.
Read the following Scriptures.
“Has Yehovah as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of Yehovah? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams.
For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. “Because you have rejected the word of Yehovah He also has rejected you from being king.
Shemu’el 1/1Samuel 15:22-23
Every time we obey Him, we are blessed! The contrary is also true.
We know in our heart what is wrong and what is right. However, if we do not care for the widows and orphans, and the strangers that may be near us, we are sinning, and cannot be blessed. I suggest that many Christians do not prosper in every area of their lives because they refuse to obey this commandment!
Yehovah have mercy on us! I have not kept this commandments to the fullest because I was only thought to do what the pastor taught me. But he missed the mark when it came to the tithe.
Yes, although the tithe is in the Old Testament, he and all the pastors, convinced us to pay the tithe, and this is correct, but never once mentioned to us to give our third tithe to the Levite, the strangers, widows and orphans. And this is sad, because if we had done it, we would have reaped the blessings from Yehovah.
Yehovah always has the better plan. He wants us to trust Him with our lives which includes our finances and all we have.
We should not complain or refuse His plans to do our own plan, which seems best in our own eyes. We are deceived is we do that.
Not all the tithe belongs to the church and ministries, but only two thirds of it. If we obey this commandment, there will be no poor people among us. Our taxes could be much less, and it would be a blessing all around.
“Father Yehovah, please help us to do Your will, and remove any doubt and unbelief from our own hearts. We love you and we prove our love by our obedience. Amen.”
“If you love Me, keep My commandments.”
Yochanan/John 14:15
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