Foundation for Living #12
January 1, 2006
Our Scripture reading this morning
is in Psalm 119. I began reading
through Psalm 119 a couple of weeks ago, a meditation on the importance of
knowing the Word of God. It is
based on the Hebrew alphabet, so each section begins with a different
consecutive letter in the Hebrew alphabet. We read through the first section two weeks ago, we will
read through the second one this morning, the section called Beth, which extends
from verse 9 through verse 16.
Beginning in Psalm 119:9:
9 How can a
young man cleanse his way?
By taking heed according
to Your word.
10 With my whole heart I have sought You;
Oh,
let me not wander from Your commandments!
11 Your word I have hidden in my heart,
That
I might not sin against You.
12 Blessed are You,
O LORD!
Teach me Your statutes.
13 With my lips I have declared
All
the judgments of Your mouth.
14 I have rejoiced in the way of Your testimonies,
As
much as in all riches.
15 I will meditate on Your precepts,
And
contemplate Your ways.
16 I will delight myself in Your statutes;
I
will not forget Your word.
Before we get started this morning
we need to make sure we are in fellowship. The Lord has given us a grace provision in 1 John 1:9 that in
order to recover from sin and failure, no matter how egregious it might be, all
we need to do admit or acknowledge
our sin to Him and He instantly forgives us and cleanses us from all
unrighteousness. We are restored
to fellowship, we recover the sanctifying ministry of God the Holy Spirit,
known as the filling of the Holy Spirit, so that we can resume our walk by
means of the Holy Spirit. So we
always begin with a few moments of silent prayer to give you the opportunity to
use 1 John 1:9 if necessary, and then I will open in prayer.
Father, we are indeed grateful, as
we begin this new year that You have given us
salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ.
Your grace has been shed abroad in our hearts, and we have come to
understand the magnificence of Your love for us, as
demonstrated by the fact that You sent Your Son to die on the cross for us.
Father, this is the beginning of the Christian life, when we have faith alone
in Christ alone, and then we have duties and responsibilities as we advance in
the spiritual life. Now, Father,
as we continue our study on the basic responsibilities of our priesthood and
duties of our ambassadorship we pray that You would
help us to focus on these things and understand them perhaps in a fresh way,
that God the Holy Spirit would use this as He produces spiritual maturity in
our lives. We pray this in
Christ's name. Amen.
In the last few weeks we have been
continuing our study on the basics related to the Christian life. And I have organized this section,
called the Foundation for Living, in three ways. We looked at the foundations, or the basic spiritual skills
over the first five weeks, confession, filling and walking by the Holy Spirit,
the faith rest drill, grace orientation and doctrinal orientation. Then we shifted to talk about the
duties and responsibilities of our priesthood and the duties and
responsibilities of our ambassadorship.
I thought I would put this together in a chart.
As a believer, you have duties and
responsibilities towards God in relationship to your priesthood, and you have
duties and responsibilities in your ministry to mankind, and this relates to
the doctrine of ambassadorship. So
we are both royal priests and royal ambassadors. Under the priesthood we looked at prayer, because prayer is
directed toward God, and is pictured in the Old Testament through the burning
of incense. And it shows the
intercessory prayers of the saints, of the believers going up to God, that is part of our priesthood. Last time, two weeks ago, before
Christmas, we looked at Bible study. This incorporates two aspects, not only
the coming to church and studying the Word in an in depth environment where you
have a trained pastor teacher who is taking you into the depths of the Word of
God and teaching not only the milk of the Word, but also the meat of the Word,
which is necessary for spiritual growth, but also, that you as an individual
believer priest need to be reading your Bible. Not because you can necessarily grow as a result of that, as
I used the analogy last time of somebody panning for gold, there are principles
you will be reminded of, there are promises that you will be reminded of. You need to know the people, the places
the events of Scripture, just to be reminded of that and to learn about that,
so when a pastor is teaching the Word, you are not out there wondering who he
is talking about when he mentions people like Mephibosheth
or Maher-shalal-hash-baz, or some of the other people
in the Old Testament. See, that
will give you something to do today.
Look those names up in a concordance and find out who
they were. But, Bible study at
both levels is important so you are a knowledgeable believer.
This morning we are going to look at an aspect of our priesthood
related to giving. Giving is
interesting because it is relates both to our priesthood and to our
ambassadorship. As Scripture says,
giving is part of the sacrifices we bring to God, so that relates to the
priestly function and it is often used, the giving to the local church, it is
used for support of the local church, for missions and other ministries, and so
that relates to our ambassadorship.
So giving can fall under either of these two categories. Then, when I get back from Ukraine,
we’ll talk about witnessing as a function of our royal ambassadorship. So this just orients you to where we
are going.
The last class on witnessing will
come, as I said, when I return, and that will be the last class in the series,
and then at the end of January, we will go back to our study in
Revelation.
So, this orients you to where we are
in terms of our priesthood and our ambassadorship.
Let’s look at what the Bible says
about giving. Giving is one of
those doctrines that, at least from my background and my perspective and many
of the pastors I associate with is something we don’t like to talk about. We are so sensitive, I think, to the
pastors and ministries and television evangelists that over emphasize money and
put it in a wrong perspective, and teach error about it and basically spend
most of their time dunning the sheep or fleecing the sheep for financial
support instead of teaching the Word that we err by going in the opposite
direction and we hardly say anything about it. Every now and then, when I get into this study, I get
corrected a little bit as a pastor and recognize that it is important to talk
about giving. The Bible says a tremendous amount about money and how the
believer is to responsibly use his money as unto the Lord. So we shouldn’t shy away from the
topic, even though at times it seems like it gets a little close to home,
because it starts hitting us in our pocket books.
There are several misconceptions
that people have about what the Bible teaches about money. Most of these are the result of not
understanding the distinctions in the Scripture between the Old Testament
dispensation of the Mosaic Law and the New Testament dispensation of the
church. In the Old Testament there
were two types of giving, there was mandatory giving and there was free will
giving under the Mosaic Law. If
you go back to Genesis 1, and begin to go through Genesis, the first time you
have any mention of financial giving or the giving of financial gifts, is when
Abraham gives a 10% offering from the spoils when he defeated the four kings
after they had invaded down through the Jordan valley and wiped out the cities
of the plains. After Abraham
defeated them, he brought the spoils back and gave 10% to Melchizedeck. That was called a tithe, which is an
old English word for 10 %. One of the misconceptions I often hear is that
unlearned people use tithe almost as a synonym for giving. Tithe is really a
type of giving, it was a 10% gift, and you only have two examples of giving in
the book of Genesis. You have
Abraham and Jacob, and they both give a tithe or a 10% offering to the
Lord. But they are not mandated, there is no place anywhere in Genesis where you
find instruction from God to give 10%.
So they are free will offerings to God, they are a 10% gift because that
was pretty much the norm in the ancient world. We have examples in the Code of Hammurabi and from other
ancient law codes that this was a standard figure for taxation and for giving
of gifts to various deities. So
they gave 10% to God, but it was a free will offering, it was not mandated, and
as far as we can tell, it was the only time in the course of their lives that
they gave this. It was a one-time
free will gift based on 10 %.
When the Mosaic Law came along,
there were tithes and free will offerings that were laid out in the Mosaic
Law. There wasn’t just one tithe though, there were actually three tithes. Each tithe was a
10% offering to the Lord. And
these were mandatory, for the purpose of supporting the government. They would
be equivalent for us of what we pay in terms of taxes, we pay property taxes, we pay income tax.
This was a 10% income tax that was designed to support the government. The
government under the Mosaic Law was a theocracy. In a theocracy, God is the head of the government, God
rules, and God was the ultimate ruler, but He administered the kingdom
initially through the priesthood.
So the priests and the Levites were equivalent to the bureaucracy in the
theocracy. So the first tithe was
a 10% tithe for all Jewish citizens, which included both believers and
unbelievers and it was for the maintenance of the Levites for their teaching,
for the service in the Temple and for their teaching of the Word of God. This is given in Numbers 18:21 &
24. Of course, that could not be
pertinent today because we don’t support a temple
priesthood, or a tabernacle priesthood.
We don’t have a formal priesthood anymore, so that could not apply in
any way. The second tithe was
again a 10% tithe for all Jewish citizens, both believers and unbelievers, to
support the cost of the Lord’s sacrifices in the temple. This is laid out in Deuteronomy
14:22-24. So 20% of the income
went to the nation to support the Levites and to support the ritual in the
tabernacle and later, the temple.
And then every third year there was another 10% tax, so you have 20 %
every year, and every third year, it’s 30%. This tax was equivalent to their welfare program. It was to provide a financial resource
to provide a safety net to widows and orphans. It was true biblical charity, it was not socialism.
It was a 10% income tax that was paid by all the people. The money was kept in the temple in the
Old Testament. That was typical in
almost all the ancient religions, the temples served as banks. This is the background for
understanding a passage that is often misunderstood, misquoted, taken out of
context, and that is Malachi 3: 8 and 10. This takes place in Israel after
their return from the Babylonian captivity. And as they are reestablishing the priesthood,
reestablishing temple worship, they also failed to apply much of the Mosaic
Law, so there is a challenge to them in terms of paying their tithes
Malachi 3:8 says:
“ Will a man rob God?
Yet you have robbed Me!
But you say,
‘ In what way have we robbed You?’
In tithes and offerings..
They had failed to give their tithes
to the Lord.
Malachi 3:10:
Bring all the
tithes into the storehouse,
Now, I can’t tell you how many times
I have heard that phrase mentioned in some sort of giving message in various
churches. It doesn’t have anything
to do with the
church, it does not say bring all your tithes into church, it says bring all
your tithes into the storehouse, and the storehouse was the temple treasury and
that is where the money was kept.
10 Bring all the tithes into the storehouse,
That there may be
food in My house,
So you see, the purpose for the
tithing goes back to supporting the people and supporting the widows and orphans,
as well as supporting the priesthood, as well as the bureaucracy of the
theocracy. Ant the Lord says:
“ 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.
So God says, if you will go back to
the principle of following the mandates, the tithes, then blessing will come
from heave. That was just standard
in the Mosaic Law, that obedience to God would result
in physical blessing, they would have agricultural prosperity and fertility,
productivity, and the nation would be financially healthy. Now that all related to just paying
taxes. But, over and above the
mandatory giving in the Old Testament, there were also free will offerings, or
voluntary offerings. These took
various shapes. You could bring a
voluntary offering to the tabernacle or temple for various reasons, these were
associated with different types of offerings, and then for the greatest example
of this would be when the
Jews were going to construct the tabernacle at the foot of Mt. Sinai, and Oholiab and Bezalel were appointed directors of the
building program, to gather all the materials together, to construct the
tabernacle, and the people were called upon to look at what they had, what their
possessions were, and to bring whatever the Lord led them to bring, to give to
the builders to use in the construction of the tabernacle. So the construction of the tabernacle
was built on the free will offerings of the people. So you had two categories in the Old Testament: a mandatory tax that went to the
support of the government that took care of the support of widows and orphans
in the nation, and then you had a free will offering which was grace oriented,
the amount was not set, the word tithe is never used in relation to that and
the amount was determined by the individual believer as unto the Lord.
Now when you moved from the Old
Testament, into the New Testament, there is a change that takes place dispensationally.
No longer is there a nation that is operative for God's people. The church is not restricted to one
ethnic group, it is not related to one nation, it is spread throughout all the
nations. There are Jews and
Gentiles alike who make up the body of Christ. So the body of Christ is international in its scope, and it
is not related to one particular government. So the mandatory taxation to support a government in
light of a theocracy no longer exists.
However, the principle of taxation to support whatever government you
are under, still exists. For
example, Jesus said, render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. He recognizes it is a legitimate
function of a national entity to raise taxes in order to support the
government. Now how that is done
is a different subject. But in principle, the principle of taxation is
legitimate and recognized by the Lord Jesus Christ. That is mandatory, but in
terms of the Old Testament tithe, it no longer exists. So we have a mandatory giving, as it were,
which is related to taxation. Then
we have free will offerings. That
is the support of the local church and various missionary ministries. And so churches are dependent today
upon the gifts of people in the congregation, on their financial support, their
response to the grace of God in their own lives. And to support local ministries, and these ministries may be
missions, they may have to do with what is usually classified as domestic
missions, home missions, where you support various ministries that are involved
in evangelism, seminaries, Christian camping, things of that nature that are
operational in this country as well as foreign missions where you are
supporting people like Moses Omwubiko, or Jim Meyers,
or Ralph LaRosa, or any number of these missionaries
who go to another culture and spend their lives teaching the Word and evangelizing in those foreign cultures.
So you have all of these different functions that are completely dependent on
the grace giving of believers.
As God oversees the church, part of
our responsibility as priests, is to recognize that what God gives us, in terms
of the amount of time that we have in life, whatever spiritual gifts and
resources that we have in terms of our natural talents; plus our spiritual
gifts as well as our financial resources are given to us by the Lord so that a portion of
that time or talent or treasure is used to serve the Lord either in support of
the ministry or mission or something of that nature, and that is where giving
relates to both our priesthood as well as to our ambassadorship. So in the New
Testament dispensation, the emphasis is on free will giving. It is between the
believer and the Lord Jesus Christ as to how much he gives to the Lord’s work,
whether it is to the local church or some other mission. In the New Testament we have an example
of giving and Paul’s instruction
related to giving in two epistles that are both directed to the same
congregation, and that is the congregation in Corinth. And so, to get the
background, I want you to turn to 1 Corinthians 16 and we will go over few
background items just to make sure that you understand the context. 1 Corinthians 16:1-4 gives us Paul’s
first written instruction, actually, it is not even his initial instruction, he
had given some instruction earlier to them, but this is the first written
instruction that we are aware of related to a specific offering. There is further information about this
given in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9, and we will go there eventually this morning because that
is where you have the greatest amount of teaching related to giving in the New
Testament. When we come to
Corinthians we have to recognize where it is, there are some geographical
designations here.
MAP
So you can orient yourselves. This is the area of the Greek
peninsula; the area up in the North is Macedonia, where Paul first went on his
second missionary journey. He
landed at Neopolis and first he went to Philippi
where he founded a church and that is where he witnessed to Lydia who was a
merchant, she was down by the river with other proselytes praying, and he led
them to the Lord, and from that core group he established a church in Philippi,
and from there he went to Thessalonica, and then he went to Berea. These are all the Macedonians, and
there is reference to the Macedonian believers in both of these passages. Then he headed south to the southern
part of Greece, which is known as Achaia, there is a reference to Achaia in
these passages and that gives you an understanding of where Achaia was located.
On a peninsula there is the city of Athens, then there is an isthmus that goes
down to the Pelaponese, which is the southern
peninsula, and just as you cross the isthmus, you have the city of
Corinth. Paul, at the time he
wrote 1 Corinthians, is across the Aegean Sea, at the city of Ephesus. That gives you a geographical
orientation to the places that we are discussing.
1 Corinthians 16:1, Paul says:
Now concerning
the collection for the saints,
The now concerning here in the Greek is peride, which indicates a new subject. Paul, after founding the church in
Corinth, which is covered in Acts 19, at the end of his second missionary
journey went on to Ephesus, and while he was in Ephesus, he founded a school,
and stayed in Ephesus a couple of years, was training pastors and evangelists who were taking the gospel throughout
the Roman province of Asia. (map) What we
call the western part of Turkey.
We usually think of Asia as being much further east, but this was the
Roman province of Asia, and Paul sent out evangelists and they established
churches in places like Colossi, Laodicea, Sardis, Philadelphia and Thyatira, all
those various churches were established during this time period while Paul was
in Ephesus. While he was in
Ephesus, he received a letter from the Corinthian church with a number of
questions. There were also some
problems that he learned about so he wrote the epistle of 1 Corinthians in
order to answer these questions and straighten out some of the problems. So each time he addresses a new
question he does it with this Greek phrase peride, so the last question he
is answering in the letter had to do with finances. And the Corinthian church had been taking up a
collection. It is apparent they
know what he is talking about when he says, now
concerning the collection.
It is not an indefinite collection, he is not talking about a collection
of money as a principle, he is talking about a
specific collection they are already familiar with. That he had been working for over a year in churches in
Galatia as well as in Rome. In Romans 15:6 he mentions the fact that he had urged them as well, to participate in this collection
to take money back to the church in Jerusalem. Jerusalem was an impoverished church, the believers there
were going through various problems, there had been famines in the past, and so
the church could not support itself.
So Paul was going around to the different churches he had established,
in Galatia, the church in Rome, the churches in Madedonia,
and in Achaia and he was instructing them to periodically take up a collection
to send back to Jerusalem. This
had been going on for a year, and so there is a question from the Corinthian
church as to what to do. So he is
answering the question, and he says,
1 Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I
have given orders to the churches of Galatia, so you must do also:
Now there are a couple of things we
ought to observe here. First of
all, he has given them instructions about how to collect money from the
congregations. So there is nothing
wrong with taking up a collection. Different churches do it different ways,
some folks pass a plate, some folks have an offering box in the back or side of
the church, in which people put their offerings, the Scripture does not dictate
one way or another,
just that there is a regular collection of money for the support
of the local church as well as missionaries.
For over a year Paul had been giving these instructions to
them and the word he uses is an interesting word, it is the Greek word diatasso, which means to command, to appoint,
to ordain, or to set an order. It has the idea of giving specific instructions and mandates
to a local church. So Paul is not
afraid to talk about money, and he uses a very strong word when he does
so. He says,
I gave you specific orders, specific instructions as to how to handle this
financial situation. Then we come
to verse 2 where we learn what those instructions are.
2 On the first day of the week let each one of you lay something aside,
Now, in that culture it was typical
that a worker would get his weekly pay at the end of the week, so at the
situation was such, that after you got paid on Friday, then on Sunday when the
church gathered, you would put aside a certain amount of money that would be
stored up, and to do this over a lengthy period of time, it has been going on,
we know, for over a year, so a couple of observations are in store.
First of all, Paul recognized the
principle of having planned giving.
It is something you should think about, it is between you and the Lord,
but it should be planned, regular and consistent. Another thing that we note here is that Paul recognizes that
the legitimacy of taking up a collection for specific purposes, for specific
situations or specific problems.
For example, we have some things that are coming up here. We have a pastor’s conference in March,
and there are various people who have asked questions, if there is a way to financially contribute to help support that. We are hoping that we can provide a
number of things for the pastors while they are here so this does not become a
financial burden for them. Many
times these men are unable to come to conferences because they are pastoring small churches and they do not have the financial
resources to travel across the country or stay in a hotel room or pay for their
meals, so we are trying to provide a scholarship for them in terms of hotel
rooms, and to provide breakfast and a noon meal for the pastors and so we have
got about half the money set aside already that we are going to need for that,
but we need more. So there is a
precedent in Scripture for collecting money for specific tasks. Further down the road, as a church we
are going to have to buy property, so we need to start setting money aside now
for that future time when we want to buy property, when the time comes, we
don’t want to say, okay, we need to raise 4-5 hundred thousand dollars in the
next couple of weeks, let’s do it now.
We need to plan on it ahead and take a certain amount of money each week
that is set aside for the purpose of that eventual purchase of property. That
is what we do every month at the end of the month, after we balance the books,
whatever comes in, for now we are following this procedure, whatever comes in
above and beyond our monthly expenses, we are setting aside 50% of that amount
for the future purpose of property.
For now we are using some of that just to finish dealing with things
that have to be done with this new property. That is how we are approaching that. There are also things that people
can do individually in terms of their own financial planning, estate planning,
things of that nature, in terms of giving to the local church or for various
missions.
So Paul is not at all reticent about
telling people how they should go about giving and how this should be
prioritized in their lives.
2 On the first day of the week let each one of you lay something aside,
Notice he did not say lay 10% aside,
he said lay something, it is indefinite, it is between you and the Lord as to
how much you give.
storing up as he may prosper,
That is the guideline; it is proportional giving, in
proportion to how the Lord has prospered you. It is a response to God's grace in your life; it is an
expression of gratitude.
Then he concludes that verse by saying:
that there
be no collections when I come.
Paul recognized the wisdom of this,
that if they take up a collection every week over a period of a year that the
amount that he is going to have to take back to Jerusalem is going to be much
greater than if he took up a collection when he showed up. There would not be very much at that
time, so he recognizes the principle of long term planning in giving to a local
church.
That is the background for
understanding 2 Corinthians 8, so turn with me now to 2 Corinthians 8. Here, Paul is pointing out the example
of the Macedonians in giving, and this is under the inspiration of God the Holy
Spirit, to point out the basic principles of giving.
1
Moreover, brethren, we make known to you the grace of God bestowed on the
churches of Macedonia:
What had taken place between the
previous epistle and this epistle, is that apparently the Corinthians, the gift
had not been picked up yet, and they had fallen off in their contributions to
this need in Jerusalem, so Paul is having to encourage them again to continue
with what they had originally started, to stay with the original plan. And he is going to encourage them by
way of the example of the churches in Macedonia. As we look at this, we recognize
that the motivation is going to be their understanding of the grace of God and
their gratitude for God's grace.
So verse on reads:
1
Moreover, brethren, we make known to you the grace of God bestowed on the
churches of Macedonia:
2 that in a great
trial of affliction the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded
in the riches of their liberality. 3
Now this gives us an idea of what
was going on. None of these
churches were wealthy, not by our standards at all. They were made up of people who were from the lower echelons
of society, though there were some aristocrats, there were some who were fairly
well to do, the vast majority of believers were not people who were wealthy,
yet they were willing to give and to make sacrifices. Now the concept of sacrifice, as we study this, does not
necessarily entail the killing of an animal. Sacrifice, if you look in Webster’s, there is an excellent
definition in the English, is an act of offering to a deity something valuable,
the act of giving up something or setting aside something of value, such as
time, money or energy in order to do something else. That is what the sacrifice is. It is recognizing, sure, I could take this money and I could
use it to go out to eat, I could use it for whatever personal pleasure I might
want to use it for, but I recognize that this is needed in other places, it is
more important for it to be used by the Lord, there are people who have need,
there are ministries that have need, so a decision is made to give a certain
portion to the support of local churches, and support of missions. What we see in this example with the
Corinthians is that they are not giving out of the excess they have, they do
not look at their paycheck, and after they pay all the bills, decide, okay, I
want to give this much, they look how much the Lord has provided and what the need is and they make a
decision to give a certain amount, and having made that decision, they are
going to adjust their other expenses in order to make that possible.
You often see something like this
when you go to other cultures, whether it is believers or unbelievers, and I
have been in places when I have been on travels in Kiev and in Russia, when
people will open up their home to you and invite you to dinner, and they will
spread out an enormous feast, and what you don’t realize is that they have taken the entire weeks
budget for food and spent it in that one meal, so they have literally gone
without food for several days in order to have the resources to put together this particular meal. And that is the idea we have here in
Macedonia, that in great trial of affliction, it was not easy for them to give
as generously as they gave, they had to set aside a number of personal comforts
in order to do that, but they were motivated to do that by their joy, their
mental attitude, their inner happiness, their happiness in life was not
dependent on what they had or what they did, it was dependent upon their
service to the Lord. So their
mental attitude is grounded in an orientation to grace. Because they are oriented to grace,
they have happiness and stability that is not based on what they have, or the
amount of money in their bank account, and Paul goes on to say out of the
affliction of the abundance of their joy, their tremendous mental attitude,
plus their deep poverty, this is their circumstances. There are many people who use their lack of financial
ability as an excuse for not giving, not supporting local ministries, and yet
here is a classic example from the New Testament period of a congregation that
did not have anything, and yet, Paul characterizes their gift as the riches of
their liberality, the riches of their generosity. They understood grace, and this is the foundation, as we
will see, for their giving. So in
verses 1-3 we see that they give, not from their excess, but they give from
their poverty. In verse Chapter
9:5 we see the basis, the motivation for giving, orientation to God's
grace. Paul says,
5 Therefore I thought it necessary to exhort the
brethren to go to you ahead of time, and prepare your generous gift beforehand,
which you had previously promised, that it may be
ready as a matter of generosity and not as a grudging obligation.
The point is that it is motivated by
grace. It is motivated by
gratitude, and as they come to understand the Word of God and all that God has
done for them, then they give very generously. Back in verse 3, Paul says that he bore witness, that they
gave, not only according to their ability, but beyond
their ability. They were freely
willing, there is no oppression, there is no guilt manipulation, Paul is not
trying to use any gimmicks to get money out of them, it
is based on their relationship with the Lord.
Now this phrase, For I bear witness that according
to their ability, yes, and beyond their ability,
That does not mean that when they
gave beyond their ability that they went into debt to do it. What it means is that they gave beyond
what you would expect them to give.
Because of what they had, what their resources were, you might expect
them to give only a certain amount, but they were willing to give up in other
areas, so they could give even more.
You do not want to get into debt. You need to be very careful about this in giving. Frequently I make the point when I
teach on giving is that too often believers today get caught in traps related
to indebtedness, credit card debt is just out of control. We carry debt on credit cards, on our
cars, on our homes, all of these things, and then, when we hear of certain
financial needs, and we would really like to help, but we don’t have the
financial resources because we are strung out on debt. So you should manage your finances in
such a way that you are able to pay off all your credit card debt every month,
so that you can go from month to month, and if needs come up that the Lord
brings to your attention, you have not hamstrung yourself by getting into
debt. I taught that several
years ago, and recently I was talking to someone, and they said, you know, it
has taken me three years, but I am out of debt on my credit card of this
month. I said, really, what
encouraged you to do that, and they said, you did. Amazing, somebody listens to me every now and then. He said, it really hit me when I
realized how it hindered me in being able to properly give to the local church
and other ministries because I was having to pay off
this enormous credit card debt. So
I made it a point to pay it all off and get out of debt. This is something we should all pay attention
to.
The motivation for giving is our
orientation to God's grace. The
Macedonians recognized that giving was partnership with other believers in
serving the Lord. In 2 Corinthians 8:4 Paul says:
4 imploring us with much urgency that
we would receive the gift and the fellowship
that word is koinonia for
partnership,
and the
partnership of the service, or ministering to the saints.
So giving is a way in which we
become partners with one another in achieving certain goals. When we look at someone who comes to
the Lord on the mission field, we are on the mission field,
we are partners with that by virtue of our financial support. Sometimes you see somebody go on the
mission field and they are there in a particular are for 10, 15, 20 years and
one person gets saved. And it may
cost $50 – 200,000.00 to support that that missionary for all that time,
but that one soul is worth it. And
over time we never know what the fruit of that ministry might be. So we need to become excited about the
opportunity of being participants of the ministry, whether it is with the local
church or with various missions.
But the foundation for giving is
then given in verse 5
5 And not only as we had hoped, but they first gave themselves to the Lord,
and then to us by the will of God.
So the foundation and the priority
in their giving was first of all their relationship to the Lord, and secondly
the giving. Wee, giving is not a
means to spiritual growth, a means to spirituality, it
is the result of our spiritual growth.
As we learn more about the grace of God, we learn more about what He has
done, we learn more about how He is working through various ministries around
the world, then we are motivated by our relationship with the Lord to get
involved financially with these ministries. We don’t get involved with those ministries thinking that
somehow we are going to gain favor with God and impress Him with our
generosity.
Let’s skip down to verse 9. In verse 9 we see again that the
foundation is understanding God's gift of
salvation. Paul says to the
Corinthians:
9 For you know the grace of our Lord
Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that
you through His poverty might become rich.
So the standard for giving is what
Jesus Christ did on the cross.
John 3:16 For
God so loved the world that He gave His only Son.
That is the standard for
giving. It is a standard that goes
beyond measure, it is generous, it is based on
love. So giving is directly
proportional to our personal love for God the Father, and is indeed in this
passage a test for our love for God.
Verse 11 stresses the importance of
consistence in giving.
2 Corinthians
8:11
but now
you also must complete the doing of it;
See,
they had made this commitment initially that they were going to take up the
collection weekly for the saints in Jerusalem, but somewhere along the line
they stopped and quit taking up the collections. So now Paul is challenging them to complete what they had
started.
that as there was a readiness to desire it, (you were very enthusiastic at the
beginning, but you have lost that enthusiasm) so there also may be a completion out of what you have.
Finish the task. This is one of the important things in
any ministry. There are two types
of givers, those that give every week or twice a month, or whatever your
pattern is, there are those who give every month, and that is needed, because
ministries run on monthly bills just as everybody’s household does. Every month you have certain bills that
come in that are consistent. You
need to have that regular consistent income that you can count on so that you
can pay those bills, so you can plan and budget for the future. But then, there
are also one time needs, needs for computers, needs for special projects,
whatever it may be, and there are folks that like to give large amounts of
money to one time type of needs or gifts.
You need both. And we have
been blessed with people who provide for this church in both ways. Both are necessary and if you are
someone who gives, you need to recognize that it needs to be consistent so that
people who are in charge of planning for the church have some concept of what
is going to be coming in so we can make plans for the future, so consistency is
important.
Volition is also important. Verses
12 and 13 emphasize this; sometimes there is a desire, but God has not
prospered you so that you can give.
I think there are a lot of folks who would give a lot more if they had
it. Sometimes we think, if I just won the
lottery. Well, are you consistent
with what you already have, or what you are already giving?
2 Corinthians
12&13 Paul says:
12 For if there is first a willing
mind, it is accepted according to
what one has, and not according to
what he does not have.
God honors a desire, even if He does
not give you very much in terms of resources in order
to give.
13 For I do not mean that others
should be eased and you burdened;
So Paul goes on to talk to them.
Let’s close by looking at the last
point, which is that grace means generosity, and this is laid out in 2
Corinthians 9:6-10.
The principle of sowing and reaping
is laid out in verses 6 and 7. Now
too many people have taken this out of context, and they want to give in order
to get. This is known as the
health and wealth gospel. That if
you give God 10% He will return over a hundredfold.
And I have talked to people over the
years who have been suckered by these religious frauds
who tell them that if you give, God will return it tenfold or a hundred
fold. So they have taken all their
money out of their bank account, and given it to a ministry thinking that God
will, sometime down the road, return that investment to them ten fold or a
hundredfold. That is not what this
is talking about. It is talking
about the fact that a person who sows sparingly, and your giving may not be
financial, it may be in terms of you life, your energy, your time, it can apply
to many different areas, that if you sow sparingly, then the return is going to be sparing, but if you sow bountifully, if you give of yourself, give of
your time, give of your treasure, then you will reap bountifully. It may not be in the same kind. You may give generously financially,
and not see any financial return. But
it will be returned to you in other ways, so the principle is laid out in verse
7:
So let each one give as he purposes
in his heart,
Not 10%, not 15 %, what you
determine, between you and the Lord.
not
grudgingly or of necessity;
There should never be guilt
manipulation when it comes to taking up a collection in church. I don’t have near enough time to tell
you some of the things that I have seen in this regard over the years. It is just incredible the manipulation
that takes place in churches to get money out of peoples pockets. We need to
learn to relax and trust God the Holy Spirit to move people and to provide the
resources. God’s work in God's way is never going to suffer for God's
resources. We need to trust Him
and He will provide. The attitude
is one of joy. God does not want
people giving and then saying, well I wish I didn’t have to give that money; I
would rather use it some other way. God would rather you use it in some other
way. God wants your orientation to
be towards His grace and to be giving joyfully, because you recognize
everything that God has done for you.
Verse 8 states:
And God is able to make all grace abound toward
you,
God is going to take care of you,
God is going to provide for every one of us, and as we give, and as we are
involved in financial giving, then the Lord is going to take care of us because
He is the One who sustains us in every area of life.
And God is able
to make all grace abound toward you, that you always having all sufficiency in
all things, may have an abundance for every good
work.
God is always going to supply
everything that we need.
This is concluded in verse 10:
Now may[c] He who supplies seed to the sower, and bread for food, supply and multiply the seed you
have sown and increase the fruits of
your righteousness
So Paul is praising the
Corinthians because of their desire to give, but they have fallen short, and
they haven’t come through with it, but now he is challenging them to move
forward.
What we have learned from this is
the foundation for giving is our understanding of the cross. Giving is a result of our gratitude
towards God's grace. There
is not a set amount in the church age; it is proportional
as God has prospered each one of you.
And yet, it is the gifts of the congregation, gifts of individual
believers that has sent missionaries throughout all the
world. You cannot imagine how many
missionaries have gone out from Britain in the 19th century and the United
States in the late 19th
century and 20th century that have taken the gospel all over the world, and most of the
gifts that support most of those ministries, the camps, the seminaries, the
churches, are not the big gifts, $1,000.00, offerings or $5,000.00, the gifts
from wealthy individuals, those are great, those are needed, but the vast
majority have been the gifts of ten dollars here, fifty dollars there, thirty
dollars here, eighty dollars there.
Faithful saints consistently giving the support to local church
ministries out of out of their gratitude for what God has done.
Let’s bow our heads in closing
prayer.
Father, we do thank you for Your grace, that You gave us everything at the cross, that
You sent Your Son to die for us.
And as we think about all You have provided for
us, not just in our salvation, but for our spiritual lives, and all the
tremendous, infinite blessings that You have given us, we realize how little we
give back. Father we pray that You
would challenge us in this area of giving, to be honest before You in our own
lives that we might recognize and look at it as a barometer of our own
spiritual growth.
Father, there may be someone here
this morning who is unsure of their salvation or uncertain of their eternal
life, and they need to respond to Your gift to them, which is eternal
life. Jesus Christ came to die on
the cross for your sins, He paid the price for your sins, He paid the penalty
in full, so that all that is left for you is to receive the gift, to accept the
free gift of salvation through Jesus Christ by believing on Him. Simply
trusting in Him for your eternal life.
This is your opportunity to make your salvation certain. Right now, right where you sit if you
believe Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins, then God knows what you
are trusting, and at the instant you put your faith alone in Christ alone, you
have eternal salvation, and it can never be taken away from you. It is a permanent gift that is always
yours. Now Father, we pray that You challenge us with the things we that we have studied
this morning. We pray this in
Christ's name. Amen.