Nehemiah 10:37, 38
...The Levites are they who receive the tithes in all the rural towns.
...And the Levites shall bring up the tenth of the tithes to the house of our God, to the chambers of the storehouse.
God gave His laws and commandments and rules to His people so they could be an example to the rest of the world of how cooperating with the way God made this world to operate will bring its benefits and its bounty to them. All through the whole Bible we learn that to follow God's ways will bring us the blessings of the Lord.
Here we see the principle of the tithe. The people pay their tithes on their income to the Levites who are local in all the rural towns, then the Levites pay their own tithes on this income to the Priests at the Temple. So everyone prospers when this is followed. My local church follows this principle: our members give our tithes to the church, and the church gives a tithe of this income back to God by financing other ministries and missions that serve one another and the world. And my church is prospering, even through these "hard times."
I can testify to my own experience. My family began to tithe when we were "poor," when I had to prioritize my bill-paying, deciding which bills I could put off and how much I could pay on others. I knew that we couldn't "afford" to tithe, so I took God's share out first, then prioritized the rest as per usual. After a while I noticed that I didn't need to prioritize my bills any longer, as I was paying them each week. We didn't have any increase in income, nor any reduction in our bills, but God "stretched" the 90% to cover more than what the 100% was covering before we were tithing! I still don't know how He did it, but I've been thankful ever since, and God did prosper my family through the years and decades. And I still trust Him to meet all my needs, as I need.
Even so, come, Lord Jesus!
