The second most uncomfortable subject
Deuteronomy 14:22-39
Two Weeks ago we talked about the membership pledge and how it is only through the person of the church…“the body of Jesus Christ” that we will ever come close to the appearance of perfection. It is through the church that Christ lives in this world.
We looked at how Paul talked about the church as being like our physical bodies; they are made up of many unique and necessary parts.
In our pledge as members of a church (parts of the body) we promise to be involved in ministry in four ways, prayer, presence, gifts and service.
The first topic was prayer, and how we are to pray without ceasing.
We should be praying for ourselves and our families and that is just the beginning because there is a big world out there.
-There are children that are hungry or worse suffer with “curable” diseases.
-There are people suffering loss and helplessness from un-curable problems.
-There is a war going on and we hardly notice.
When a Virginia tech happens we should be talking about it with God.
Prayer for this world is the absolute minimum we have committed to give.
-- We also talked about presence.
Not just answering the roll at church but, being interactive. Using your gifts for the church, preaching, teaching, encouraging, and giving of ourselves.
Presence means involvement and the offering of your spiritual gifts for the health of the church.
I also reminded you that as a church member, we are all called to work together for the benefit of the Body of Christ…Not just a few people working together but we all join in the ministries of this local church and in a small but necessary way in the work of the general church.
The thing about our promise to be faithful is that it is not long before we can be over whelmed with what membership means.
We become overwhelmed when we realize how limited our resources are.
Even the resources of our whole church are tiny compared to the need just in our community.
None of us is likely to be able to solve the problems of our world. War, violence, theft, accidents. In facts, if we are at all honest, we really don’t do very well at solving our family problems and often not even personal issues.
When we open our eyes to the problems around us, it is easy to slow to a halt and just try to maintain what we have and forget about the things we cannot see or that we can ignore.
It is easy and even normal to think, “What difference can we really make anyway? “
You are absolutely right, neither you nor I or our church as a whole can do anything significant.
But, I heard a story that by Loren Eisley... (I lee)
I awoke early, as I often did, just before sunrise to walk by the ocean’s edge and greet the new day. As I moved through the misty dawn, I focused on a faint, far away motion. I saw a youth, bending and reaching and flailing arms, dancing on the beach, no doubt in celebration of the perfect day soon to begin.
As I approached, I sadly realized that the youth was not dancing to the day, but rather bending to sift through the debris left by the night’s tide, stopping now and then to pick up a starfish and then standing, to heave it back into the sea. I asked the youth the purpose of the effort. "The tide has washed the starfish onto the beach and they cannot return to the sea by themselves," the youth replied. "When the sun rises, they will die, unless I throw them back to the sea."
As the youth explained, I surveyed the vast expanse of beach, stretching in both directions beyond my sight. Starfish littered the shore in numbers beyond calculation. The hopelessness of the youth’s plan became clear to me and I countered, "But there are more starfish on this beach than you can ever save before the sun is up. Surely you cannot expect to make a difference."
The youth paused briefly to consider my words, bent to pick up a starfish and threw it as far as possible. Turning to me he simply said, "I made a difference to that one."
I left the boy and went home, deep in thought of what the boy had said. I returned to the beach and spent the rest of the day helping the boy throw starfish in to the sea.
Even as people that claim to be Christians, we can be over whelmed.
It is all too easy to remember that we are expected to trust in God sometimes.
It is not perfection or ability or size of what we bring to God that can make a difference.
It is our faith and trust in God that makes even the smallest of successes a victory for God.
If we stop planning and doing and never try we are failing our commitments to our church and ultimately to God.
We have to trust him to bless our limited abilities and resources.
We have to trust Him to help us in our inherent weakness and doubts.
-- So this week we are continuing our review of the pledge to participate in the ministries of the church.
In general, we are talking about the last two points of the membership pledge.
But today we are specifically talking about the giving of money.
The subject of money is the second most uncomfortable subject that people prefer not to talk about at church. The first being our own death.
As Americans we have all kinds of choices.
There are some things we have to do, pay taxes and obey laws as a cost of our citizenship.
In ancient Israel there was an obligation too. God defined what the Jewish people were expected to give to the temple which includes supporting the Levites and the poor.
We call their gift a tithe, which means a flat 10% off of everything they made.
If you were a sheep herder then every 10th lamb that went through the gate was marked for God. No picking and choosing.
If you were a farmer every 10th basket of grain belonged to God and was to be set aside.
If you were a merchant, 10% of your “gross” profit was to be set aside for God.
So Ancient Israel had a flat tax, which was relatively easy to figure. It cost the rich just as much as the poor. Except for one detail, you gift was to be given at the beginning of the season, right after the lambs were born and at the beginning of the first harvest.
Not at the end of the year where unexpected losses cold be calculated in. The tithe was a gift of faith of a full season of blessing.
The Jews call it the First Tithe or First Fruits and it was given to support the temple worship and the Levites which were not given land or other inheritance by God.
Then the bible describes the Second Tithe in Deuteronomy 14,
22 Be sure to set aside a tenth of all that your fields produce each year. 23 Eat the tithe of your grain, new wine and oil, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks in the presence of the LORD your God at the place he will choose as a dwelling for his Name, so that you may learn to revere the LORD your God always.
The second tithe was to be set aside so that the family had the resources to attend worship.
--God expected them to have the resources available out of what He had provided so they could attend the enjoy worshiping God in Jerusalem.
They were to make worshiping in the presence of God a priority.
Tithes for the poor - Deuteronomy 14
28 At the end of every three years, bring all the tithes of that year’s produce and store it in your towns, 29 so that the Levites (who have no allotment or inheritance of their own) and the aliens, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns may come and eat and be satisfied, and so that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.
So the Jews simple flat tax may actually be 20% if the wolves stayed away and the crops survived all season. Then every third year the tithe is gathered in their local towns to provide for the poor.
Now this giving is commanded, no choice, if they want to be an active participant in the Jewish community. Basically you participate or the community will ignore you because of your dispbedance.
So it is like our tax system not being voluntary.
And then by Jesus’ day, all the people were also paying other taxes for the government, the kings and later the Greeks and Romans.
Even though this would have been a personal burden, God did not drop his expectation of giving as worship.
Perhaps, you are wondering why I am pointing to what God expected of Israel.
--We are different because of the sacrifice of Jesus, Right?
We gentile Christians don’t have to keep the law. Jesus never mentions a tithe in any of the NT.
So we are off the hook, we are only expected to give what we feel like giving. Right????
In the NT we do have some hints as to proper giving.
One hint is that Jesus was never attacked by the Jewish authorities for not giving his tithe to the temple.
It seems that when they were searching for any means possible to discredit Jesus, that would have been an easy target.
So it is only reasonable to think that Jesus and his disciples tithed and held a good standing in the temple and synagogues.
Another hint that we can find in scripture comes from Mark 12 when Jesus is watching the people as they come forward to make their offerings. The time when the widow gives less than a penny to the treasury while others gave large amounts.
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."
--- The widow’s gift is small financially but, huge in generosity.
Jesus is not interested in the amount of the gift but, in what remained in the hands or bank account of the giver.
Let me say that differently.
God is not interested in the size of your gift. He does not require a tithe of a specific percentage.
He is interested in your generosity to the work of the kingdom and what you do with what you have left.
When we come to faith and join a church body.
We are committing to be a living part of the body of Jesus Christ in this world….
Our pledge is to His lordship.
Our pledge acknowledges that He is the owner of everything.
What we have, we agree to give to Him freely.
-- I figure that at this exact moment you have just joined one of two groups.
Either you just turned me off and won’t hear another word, or you are listening even mere carefully because I sound like I might start medaling.
It sounds like I am talking about YOUR Money!!!
The Bible, Jesus, explains that the stuff we have here, our home, our cars, our time, our talents don’t hold any direct eternal value.
When I say God owns everything; you need to understand that I mean that he owns YOU.
And if He owns you then everything you have is really His.
We think if we earned the money, or bought the house, we own it. It is ours forever, right.
Technically in our culture, no one has a right to take something you own from you.
-- On April 4th of this year, the “Times India” news paper reported that a wealthy farmer in that country was buried in his vintage Morris Minor automobile. He loved his car and the family agreed to his request to be buried in the car.
A massive grave was dug with an excavator and the car was decorated with flowers and the owner’s body was placed inside and buried.
Tell me, it is about 6 weeks later, do you think that man is really the owner of the car of is he just an occupant?
Is there anything that any of us has in this world, which we will own in 500 years?
The only thing you really own is what you can take with you into eternity.
That means that you are only a steward of your car and clothes and aftershave and even your money because, none of us can take earthly things with us.
All of the stuff that we enjoy here is raw material for God to use and reuse as He sees fit.
We are just using it -- blessed with it right now.
If you fail to realize that you are just a steward and are accountable for your use of what God has given you, then you will act like you are the owner.
You will make choices that satisfy you and will have no reliance on God for direction.
You will never make a generous gift because what ever you offer will be based on your wealth always holding something back, which denies Lordship.
You may claim that Jesus is Lord, but is it really true?
When Jesus witnessed the widow’s gift, it was not at his direction that she make such a sacrifice, in fact it was not even the Law of Moses that required her to give all she had.
God does not require any of us to suffer to satisfy the church’s needs. When I say suffer I mean real hunger, or something that would damage your health or make you homeless.
He only expects that the body of Christ respond consistently to His consistent blessing.
How blessed are you?
Have you camped out to protect your flock lately?
Have you worked daylight to dark in your garden with no other source of food and livelihood?
I don’t know about you, but I have to admit that I am very blessed. I have it so easy because I have a bank account.
I have absolutely no doubt that I can expect three meals a day for as far as I can see into the future.
Unfortunately, most of the people in this world today don’t have it half that good.
Most of the world lives day to day, meal to meal.
God expects us to use our gifts, whatever they are, time, talents, and money to build the body of Christ. To enable the body with God’s help and direction to do something to change the problems of this world.
Let me make sure that you understand something;
God does not need your time, your talents or your money.
He wants you!!!!
If he has you, really has you, then you will offer some what he has given you, the surplus, back to his work.
One day a beggar by the roadside asked for alms from Alexander the Great as he passed by.
The man was poor and had no claim upon the ruler, no right even to lift a his empty hand.
Yet the Emperor threw him several gold coins.
The attendant to the emperor was astonished at his generosity and commented, “Sir, copper coins would adequately meet a beggar’s need.
Why give him gold?”
It is said that Alexander responded,
“Copper coins would suit the beggar’s need, but gold coins suit Alexander’s giving.”
With all that you have, what should your giving be?
I am not going to tell you that God expects you to give a set percentage of your income.
If I did, I am not sure that you would like the number I came up with, because I would base it on Jesus’ descriptions.
I suggest you look up his recommendation if you have 2 coats or lots of possessions. His direction starts a lot higher than 10 or 20%.
So, it is not the size or the value of the gift that is important to God – What God views as important it is what you do with what you keep and spend on yourself.
Is it proportional to God’s generosity to you?
It is not that you are generous on the outside but how you really feel o the inside.
---- Ending doe St Luke ----- All Glory be to God
Today you have opportunities that we will talk about specifically.
And you need to prayerfully consider all three and decide what God is calling you to do as his steward.
First, I need to tell you about something that you may not know.
The church has normal on going bills.
-As a church we have Sunday school materials that we get for the adults and young people and it averages about $10 per student every quarter.
-The church has heating and cooling and other utilities to pay.
-We as a church support other ministries with apportionments.
-We also have an obligation to pay the people that serve the church.
I doubt that those things surprise you, what might be new information is that the budget contains nothing for outside ministry.
-Nothing for reaching out to un-churched people to invite them a relationship with Jesus Christ and nothing to encourage new people to join the body of Christ.
-Nothing to help the local people with real needs.
Our budget is only set to just pay the bills because the normal giving is not consistent.
When people go on vacation, they tend to not worry about missing their regular giving to the church.
However, the costs for having a place of worship to meet and the basic operations that that requires do not go on vacation or miss a Sunday.
They are consistently and available to the members and dependant on those members for support. Support means dependant on your giving for operation and for ministry.
We have to kinds of giving, tithes and offerings.
Think of tithes as being the consistent giving that you and your family make to help you church meet its budget and basic ministries.
When I use the word offering, I mean additional giving. An offering is normally more sacrificial. It is over and above what we commit to the normal ministries.
This morning we have two and perhaps three offering opportunities….not opportunities to rob Peter to pay Paul…
But offering over and above….one is a yearly giving we talked about last Sunday to assist the ministries of Wesley Woods which serves seniors. You had a handout in you bulletin for that ministry.
The second opportunity for an offering to God is in the ministry we talked about a couple of months ago. The majority of response cards indicated the churches desire to help the orphan children in Kenya.
We set today as the day to gather that offering.
The third offering opportunity is the Bishop’s initiative to save Simpsonwood retreat center which is briefly described on the back of the bulliten.
Here is my final thought for you today.
Have you been responding in proportion to the blessing God has provided to you?
Do you tithe – give to the on going support of the church to keep it healthy and available in this community?
Are you willing to consider special offerings that may require digging deeper from your resources to help the poor, sick, aged and lost?
God wants this body of Christ to be healthy and responsive. He wants it to act as the living hands of Christ to a hurting world.
I hope you will prayerfully consider what God (your Lord) is calling you to do as his good and faithful steward.
All Glory be to God
