Giving To The Almighty God

Series Title: Caught Up In Giving

Sermon 1: Giving To the Almighty God

Text: Ex 35:4-19 (KJV)

4 And Moses spake unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, saying, This is the thing which the LORD commanded, saying,

5 Take ye from among you an offering unto the LORD: whosoever is of a willing heart, let him bring it, an offering of the LORD; gold, and silver, and brass,

6 And blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats’ hair,

7 And rams’ skins dyed red, and badgers’ skins, and shittim wood,

8 And oil for the light, and spices for anointing oil, and for the sweet incense,

9 And onyx stones, and stones to be set for the ephod, and for the breastplate.

10 And every wise hearted among you shall come, and make all that the LORD hath commanded;

11 The tabernacle, his tent, and his covering, his taches, and his boards, his bars, his pillars, and his sockets,

12 The ark, and the staves thereof, with the mercy seat, and the vail of the covering,

13 The table, and his staves, and all his vessels, and the shewbread,

14 The candlestick also for the light, and his furniture, and his lamps, with the oil for the light,

15 And the incense altar, and his staves, and the anointing oil, and the sweet incense, and the hanging for the door at the entering in of the tabernacle,

16 The altar of burnt offering, with his brasen grate, his staves, and all his vessels, the laver and his foot,

17 The hangings of the court, his pillars, and their sockets, and the hanging for the door of the court,

18 The pins of the tabernacle, and the pins of the court, and their cords,

19 The cloths of service, to do service in the holy place, the holy garments for Aaron the priest, and the garments of his sons, to minister in the priest’s office.

Subject: Giving To The Almighty God

This is the first Sunday of the month of December. December is the month in which we celebrate the coming and the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. It is during this month of December – during what we call the “holiday season” in which Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years are all celebrated – that it has become the custom of the land to honor one another with gifts. In other words, this is the time of year, like no other time of the year, that most of us get ceremoniously caught up in the spirit of gift giving.

I use the phrase “caught up” because when we use this phrase, it affectionately means that we have lost control. Let me give you an example. When a man tells his friend about a relationship he had with another woman, and he tells him that he just got caught up in the moment, what he is saying is that for a moment he lost control over his mind, over his body, and over whatever else he had, and was “caught up” with her. Have I got a witness in here? I’m just keeping it real.

Let me give you another example. When your child or my child gets picked up by the cops for shoplifting and they tell you that they just got “caught up” with the wrong friends, what they’re telling us, before we commence to beating the living daylights out of them, is that they lost control over their own minds and assumed their friends identity to commit something that you and I didn’t teach them to do. Am I right about it?

Let me give you one more example close to home. When church folk say that they got “caught up” in the spirit, what they’re essentially saying is that they lost control of themselves, and all the yelling, all the screaming, all the shouting, was because they got out of the way and let the Holy Ghost have its way. And just like those other instances, when we get caught up in the spirit of giving, we give like we’ve just lost our minds. Have I got a witness?

We give and we give until it hurts. It hurts our pocketbooks because after Christmas we ceremoniously find ourselves caught up in a struggle to pay our bills that we neglected so we could give. It hurts our feelings because oftentimes, most of us will give what we want for ourselves, but in return, we receive what we don’t want. Don’t act like ya’ll don’t know what I’m talking about, as giving as WE are during this holiday season, some people just don’t give up to OUR standards. So it hurts when we do the grab bag thing and choose names, and WE try to do right by the person whose name we chose, but someone else gives us something that looks like it was something they got last Christmas and didn’t want to keep. Giving can even hurt our pride when, because of financial constraints, we can’t give the fine gifts that we would like to give. Am I right about it?