I Sacrifice So That I Can Grow Series

Aaron Siebers. The 27-year-old Denver man, a Blockbuster employee, was skateboarding yesterday afternoon when he fell and ripped his uniform pants. Due to work last night--and concerned about getting "written up" by Blockbuster superiors for not wearing his work-issued khakis--Siebers came up with a harebrained idea. Instead of just calling in sick, he stabbed himself in the leg and showed up at work claiming to have just been attacked by three Hispanic males. Siebers, who told cops he was assaulted as he walked toward the Blockbuster in Edgewater, had a deep stab wound in one leg and several other minor cuts on his face and stomach. As investigators began hunting for the assailants, they reviewed surveillance video from outside a Target store where Siebers claimed the attack occurred. The footage, however, showed no such assault. Confronted by cops, Siebers, pictured in the below mug shot, admitted that he had stabbed himself. He told investigators about the skateboarding accident, the resulting ripped pants, and how "he did not want to lose his job so he stabbed himself in the leg," according to an arrest affidavit sworn by Officer Shawna Naumann. As a result, Siebers was named in a criminal complaint charging him with filing a false report and obstructing police, both misdemeanors. (thesmokinggun.com)

Now that is what I would call commitment to keeping your job – I mean are you dedicated enough to stab yourself for your boss?

We have been talking about commitment in the sense of giving to the church for the last 4 weeks – and I am not going to ask you to show me by drawing blood! This is the final week of our series “Saving for Life” which has been our stewardship campaign for the church – this week you should be turning in your intention cards about giving to Forest Dale for 2010 – those little green slips of paper are a challenge to all of us to give consistently and sacrificially. There is more to this that just wanting to increase our budget as a church – there is some incredible things which happen to us when we decided to something sacrificially.

I. The Decision to Give

A. I will warn you that doing anything sacrificially will have an effect on more than just yourself. Doing anything sacrificially means people will question your intelligence because it will cost you more than most people are willing to pay. If you choose to sacrifice people will consider you….

1. A Fool – your little decision won’t make a difference in the growing tide of wrong.

2. A Waste – throwing away perfectly good things which you could have used doing something fun.

3. A Pain – why put yourself through all of that when it isn’t necessary.

4. A Wacko – Why would someone do something against their own personal interest and happiness?

*And when it comes to making a sacrifice with your money then the attitude is generally this – what do I get out of it? If you aren’t getting something financial or beneficial for your sacrifice then most people will consider it worthless. But In the strictest sense, sacrifice is about giving without an expectation of return – in its purest form to sacrifice means to give up for the love of something.

B. An incident in the book of Luke changed the way everyone looked at giving sacrificially.

1. It happened when Jesus and his disciples were sitting near the temple treasury where everyone would enter to give their tithes and offerings.

2. To get the full impact of this story takes a little description of the Temple during Biblical times.

Listen to this explanation I found researching some of the practices of the Temple.

“One of the notable features of the Court of Women was the glazophylakion or “treasury,” thirteen trumpet-shaped receptacles placed there to receive the offerings of the faithful for the maintenance of the temple and its ministry. One day the Lord called attention to a poor widow whom he saw casting her last two coins into the treasury. Now let me continue on what the research said - the coins (lepta) were so small that they had no strict equivalence in the imperial monetary system, and because they would not be familiar to Mark’s readers at Rome, he explained that two of them were needed to equal a single quadrans (12:42).” Now originally I planned on using the reference to this story from Luke 21 but during this week I decided to look at the same incident recorded in Mark because it offered a few more details. Mark 12: 41-44 Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. 42But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a fraction of a penny. 43Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. 44They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.”