Should an offering be taken up on the Day of Atonement? What does the Bible teach about that? Steve Dupuie discusses this.
If you wish to support the Continuing Church of God and His end-time work, donations can be made at this web page: Donations – CCOG
TRANSCRIPT
Download: TRANSCRIPT The Day of Atonement Offering
Greetings, friends. This is Steve Dupuie for the Continuing Church of God. Today, I want to talk about the offering we are commanded to give on God’s holy days. The specific holy day this sermonette is made for is the fifth of God’s holy days, the Day of Atonement.
I’m going to break this down into two parts. The first part is the commandment of God concerning an offering on His holy days. The second part will be about how I personally feel about offering on God’s holy days.
I guess the first thing to point out is that these are indeed God’s holy days, not Jewish holy days. Let’s look at that in Leviticus 23, starting in verse 1:
“And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Speak to the children of Israel and say to them: The feasts of the Lord, which you shall proclaim to be holy convocations, these are My feasts.’”
We see here that the Bible declares these to be God’s holy days. Later on, we’ll also take a look at some scriptures that show God’s holy days were still being observed after Jesus was crucified. The holy days were not nailed to the cross.
For now, let’s drop down to verse 26 of Leviticus and read specifically about God’s fifth holy day, the Day of Atonement:
“And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Also the tenth day of this seventh month shall be the Day of Atonement. It shall be a holy convocation for you. You shall afflict your souls and offer an offering made by fire to the Lord. And you shall do no work on that same day, for it is the Day of Atonement, to make atonement for you before the Lord your God. For any person who is not afflicted in soul on that same day shall be cut off from his people. And any person who does any work on that same day, that person I will destroy from among his people. You shall do no manner of work; it shall be a statute forever throughout your generations in all your dwellings. It shall be to you a Sabbath of solemn rest, and you shall afflict your souls; on the ninth day of the month at evening, from evening to evening, you shall celebrate your Sabbath.”
As with all of God’s holy days, this holy day starts in the evening and continues through the following evening. For a more complete description of this holy day, you can read Leviticus 16:2–28.
I’m not going to read those verses here because the thrust of this paper is to first talk about the offerings that are required to be given to God on His holy days, and second, to talk about how I personally feel about giving an offering to God out of the money I worked so hard to get.
I want to tell you how I felt when I was required to give an offering, even though sometimes my family and I barely had enough to get by on ourselves.
But first, let’s talk about the requirement to give an offering on God’s holy days. We’ll find this commandment in Deuteronomy 16, starting in verse 16:
“Three times a year all your males shall appear before the Lord your God in the place which He chooses: at the Feast of Unleavened Bread, at the Feast of Weeks, and at the Feast of Tabernacles. And they shall not appear before the Lord empty-handed. Every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the Lord your God which He has given you.”
We see here that God has commanded all the males to appear before Him three times a year. These three times include all seven of God’s holy days, which happen to be commanded as holy convocations.
We also read in the last part of verse 16 that we shall not appear before the Lord empty-handed. That means we are to bring an offering to God on each holy convocation. Then in the last part of verse 17, we see the amount of our offering is to be given as we are able, according to the blessings of the Lord which He has given us.
At this point, I would like to add the fact that there are critics of the tithes and offerings that those in the Churches of God offer to God. I have no idea why anyone who is not a part of any Church of God is the slightest bit concerned with what I do with my money. Nevertheless, what I do with my money seems to be an obsession with some of the critics of the Churches of God.
Therefore, this will be the first point of the critics that I will address.
The critics point to these verses and say we only have to meet three times a year to give an offering, and we in the Churches of God meet on every holy day—seven times a year—to give an offering.
Here’s one thing to remember: there is no law commanded by any Church of God that we have to give an offering on any of the holy days. We don’t get excommunicated if we give little or if we give nothing at all. The commandment to bring an offering is commanded by God, not the church, and is between the individual and God—not the individual and the church, and certainly not between any critic.
We are commanded to give an offering as we are able and according to how God blesses us.
But for me personally, because God doesn’t give me all my annual blessing at the time the Day of Atonement rolls around, I’m not able to give an offering according to how God blesses me for the entire year. Therefore, I make an offering on all the holy days in accordance with how I receive my blessing from God. So I make an offering to God on all holy convocations according to how the Lord has blessed me up to that time.
Somehow I feel that if the critics were to give a large offering to their church, they would find fault with the members of the Church of God for being stingy. In other words, we will never be able to please the critics of the Church of God. Oftentimes, in cases like this, a person is criticized for exceeding the accomplishments of their critics.
Another complaint the critics of the Church of God have is with the ministry. They constantly complain that the ministry is just trying to line their pockets with the offerings of the members of the church. The critics say this because the ministry reads Deuteronomy 16:16–17 on the holy days.
That criticism is as ridiculous as complaining because the ministry reads Hebrews 10:5 on Passover. I don’t recall any of these critics ever complaining about their minister passing the plate at least 52 times a year—once every Sunday.
And by the way, I am not part of the ministry, and I have never received so much as one thin dime from the tithes and offerings of the members.
God plainly says we are to bring an offering on the holy days. It doesn’t matter what the critics say.
Now I want to shift gears and talk about how I personally feel about giving an offering to God out of my hard-earned money on His holy days.
To do this, I would like to recall: “Every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the Lord your God which He has given you.”
It seems as if God is telling me that yes, you may have worked hard for your money, but I—meaning God—got you the job.
As far as giving an offering to the Lord goes, I have never given one thin dime as an offering to the Lord because a minister standing behind a pulpit told me to. A minister may have read Deuteronomy 16:17 from the pulpit, but I read that scripture too. All by myself, every cent I ever gave the church was given because I wanted to and because I read the Bible.
And by the way, for those that complain because the ministry actually uses some of that money to cover their livelihood, I ask you: what does your minister do with the money he gets in the collection plate?
In both cases, I will quote this scripture for the critics—2 Thessalonians 3:6–11:
“But we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw from every brother who walks disorderly and not according to the tradition which he received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to follow us, for we were not disorderly among you; nor did we eat anyone’s bread free of charge, but worked with labor and toil night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you—not because we do not have authority, but to make ourselves an example of how you should follow us. For even when we were with you, we commanded you this: If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat.”
These verses are often quoted to prove ministers are not to be paid but are to work in another profession to earn enough money to live on. But let’s look closely at what Paul was actually teaching.
He was teaching the Thessalonians a lesson. In the first part of verse 9, Paul pointed out that he had the authority to receive money from the congregation as compensation for his work—the work of preaching the gospel. And then in the last part of verse 9, he tells the Thessalonians why he didn’t. Paul worked to set an example of a work ethic for the Thessalonians.
In the last part of verse 10, Paul spells it out: “If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat.”
The lesson was not that ministers are not entitled to a paycheck—Paul already said in verse 9 that he was. The lesson Paul was teaching was that the members of the church were to work, partly in order to pay the ministers and partly in order to eat. And when I say pay the ministers, that means to pay God.
Now let’s go back to giving an offering according to how God has blessed us.
“The silver is Mine and the gold is Mine,” says the Lord of hosts.
Any money we get originally came from God. Every nickel in your bank account originally belonged to God. He just transferred some of it to you—that’s all.
The next verses I’ll read explain a lot of how I feel about offerings to God on the holy days. These verses also talk about tithes as well as offerings, so I might just touch on tithes too.
Malachi 3:7–10:
“Yet from the days of your fathers you have gone away from My ordinances and have not kept them. Return to Me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord of hosts. But you said, ‘In what way shall we return?’ Will a man rob God? Yet you have robbed Me. But you say, ‘In what way have we robbed You?’ In tithes and offerings. You are cursed with a curse, for you have robbed Me—even this whole nation. Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in My house, and try Me now in this,” says the Lord of hosts, “if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you such blessing that there will not be room enough to receive it.”
Here we see that God is telling us that we have not kept His ordinances and tells us to return to Him. And we ask, “In what way shall we return?” Before answering, God tells us we robbed Him. Then we ask, “How have we robbed You?” And again, before answering, God tells us we are cursed with a curse.
Then in verse 10, God tells us how to return to Him and tells us how we have robbed Him—in withholding our tithes and offerings.
But in the middle of verse 10, God adds something very interesting. God tells us to try or test Him. Specifically, God tells us to test Him in paying our tithes and offerings. In the last part of verse 10, He then goes on to say that if we test Him, He will pour out for us such blessing that there will not be enough room to receive it.
And it’s those words of God in particular that I want to focus on when telling you how I personally feel about offerings.
But first, there are two more verses I want to quote. They are found in 2 Corinthians 9:6–7:
“But this I say: He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver.”
Verse 6 tells us that if we only put two seeds in the ground, we’re only going to get two ears of corn out of the ground. But put a hundred seeds in the ground and you’ll get a hundred ears of corn.
But the second verse is telling us one of the ways to be loved by God—and that way is to be truly cheerful and happy in the offerings you bring before God, not grudging or downcast.
There is no specific amount to an offering. We are told to bring an offering in accordance to how God has blessed us. The determination of the amount of that blessing is left entirely up to us. We get to decide how much God has blessed us and therefore we get to determine how much to give God on His holy days.
First, like I said before, my wife and I have never given one thin dime to God because some preacher said to. But we have taken God up on His challenge to test Him.
When we first started attending the Feast of Tabernacles in the mid‑80s, we loaded up the car with our two kids, drove off to our designated feast site with a styrofoam cooler. We would get free ice from the very inexpensive places we stayed, and we bought food from the very inexpensive grocery stores. And we gave our holy day offering to God from a heart overflowing with cheer.
And every year, God poured out more and more of His blessings.
But the question is: Did I receive so much blessing that there was not enough room to receive it?
I thought about that for a while as I was writing this. Here’s what I ultimately realized:
I have one or two friends that are truly wealthy. They own gas stations, golf courses, yachts, and mansions in Florida. I also have several friends that are merely rich, being worth only several million dollars. I am not in that league. I am not destitute, but I am a long way from rich.
I asked myself: Would I trade my gift of the Holy Spirit for the tens of millions of one of my merely rich friends? It could possibly be said that they had money that was overflowing.
So I took it to the next level: Would I trade my gift of the Holy Spirit for the hundreds of millions of dollars of one of my wealthy friends? Surely that was so much money that there was no need for more. Was that money equal to God’s opening the windows of heaven?
Before answering that question, I want to look at one more scripture to wrap this up:
“Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you.”
The wealth I now have far exceeds the gold and silver of all my wealthy friends. I have the gift of the Holy Spirit. The windows of heaven have been opened to me in good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over.
Test God.
This is Steve Dupuie for the Continuing Church of God.
LATEST SERMONS
