I want to start off by saying giving in the Christian life is not so much an external action. Something that we do out of guilt or obligation, but really what we do in response to the love of God and the generosity of God. A generosity that we try to imitate as we seek to be more like Jesus Christ. We know we do serve a generous God. The Bible is filled with verses that suggest God is indeed very generous. Starting with the early chapters in the book of Genesis where Moses writes “God said, ‘I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. It will be yours for food and to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground – everything that has the breath of life in it – I give every green plant for food.’ And it was so.” We see the generosity of God expressed first and foremost in the creation of the world and the creation of man. But we know that God was not somebody who just created and then stepped aside. God continued to be very involved in creation. He wasn’t someone who would create the world and wind it up like a clock and set it on a pedestal and then ignore it. No. He continues to be actively involved in his creation. To continue to create. To renew and to sustain the world. We see this in passages like John 1:16 that says “From the fullness of his grace, we continue to receive one blessing after another.” Or the way Eugene Peterson writes it as “We all live off his generous bounty. Gift after gift after gift.” We serve a generous God who just loves to give. The greatest manifestation of his generosity was expressed in the sending of his son Jesus Christ on this earth, an event that we celebrate obviously Christmas day. So if we desire to be disciples of Jesus Christ, ordinary people that are learning to live like Jesus Christ, and Christ is the incarnation of God in the flesh, then we too will seek to develop a spirit of generosity. In order to do that we have to push aside some false narratives about giving. Many of those false ideas are not only un-biblical but they create this automatic response within us that hinders our ability and our responsibility to give. When we begin to ween ourselves from some of these false ideas and their related automatic responses, we begin to be more generous people because we begin to see that not only is the kingdom of God that Jesus talked about a safe place to live, it is really a safe place to give. What I wanted to do today is talk about some of these narratives and the associated automatic responses that come with it.
The first idea that I think hinders a generous spirit is what I would call the It’s mine syndrome. A syndrome that starts very early in age, sometimes as early as 2 or 3 years old. If you have a child or grandchild that is 2 or 3 years old, before long somebody is going to take something from that child. And what is the response? It’s mine! Give it back. It’s mine! About that time the good parents try to get involved and try to encourage a more civil and positive response known as sharing. But some parents have success with it and some don’t, but the reality is no matter how successful we think we are, kids carry a certain amount of the it’s mine syndrome into the adult life. It begins to manifest itself in a sense of entitlement. I am entitled. Because I have this money, because I have these possessions, because I have this wealth, then I am entitled to use it any way I want for my pleasure. We see it manifest itself in all sorts of ways. An unwillingness to share things like your tools. An unwillingness to volunteer for a nonprofit with the church. Even a hesitancy to put money into the Salvation Army bell ringers. All the while, like a disappointed parent, God is sitting back and saying I wish they would just learn how to share.
I’ll stop right here and say that I know some of you may already be giving a little bit of internal pushback because you say I work hard for my paycheck and so I have a right to do with it whatever I want. In some sense that is true. In another sense it is not because as we are told in Deuteronomy, it is God who gives us the ability to create wealth. Deuteronomy 8:18 says “Remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you the ability to produce wealth.” God created us and God gives us the ability to produce the wealth, which basically means we don’t own anything. We are just simply stewards of God’s stuff. A few weeks ago I spoke on the parable of the talents and how the master went away and gave his stuff to his servants to watch over. The master came back and found that two of the servants did a very good job of investing his funds and doubled or tripled the money. The third servant took the money and buried it in the ground because he was afraid that somehow the master would lose money. The master referred to him as a wicked, lazy servant. Again to emphasize we are stewards of God’s stuff. When we realize that, the question becomes not how we can use our stuff to maximize our comfort and pleasure but how can we use God’s stuff to maximize his glory? That requires really a shift in mindset. When you begin to make that shift, you begin to breakdown this it’s mine syndrome and you find yourself starting to become a more generous person. That is the first false assumption.
The second false idea when it relates to generosity is the idea of scarcity. Scarcity in general is the idea that there is only so much stuff to go around in the world, so I better get my hands on the stuff before everybody else does. The stuff could be something as simple as an apple. If I have one apple that is good, but two apples are better. In some cases a whole bushel of apples is better because I don’t know when I might run out. Although that might be smart economics, it really is the very thing that got Adam and Eve in trouble in the garden. We know the story and we saw it in the scripture that they were given everything they needed for survival and more than that. They were given most everything they needed for their pleasure. And God says you can have anything you want. You can eat of any tree in the garden, but whatever you do, do you see that tree in the center of the garden? Stay away from that tree. Don’t eat it. Don’t smell it. Don’t touch it. With a little bit of prompting by Satan, they became disobedient and ate from the forbidden fruit. Because of that, their life has never been the same. I know this might be a bit of a stretch, but as I thought about it, I was thinking that Adam and Eve in some sense were the very first hoarders. A hoarder is just somebody who takes more stuff than they need. It is just really a matter of degree. I would suggest we all have hoarder tendencies within us, including me. If you don’t believe it, allow me to just go through your house, garage, and basement and see how much stuff you have that you really don’t need. I would also suggest that this hoarding tendency is linked back to original sin. Adam and Eve had everything they needed. When they ate from the forbidden fruit, they not only lost their relationship with God, but they lost God as the primary caregiver. The person who would care for their needs. They not only got kicked out of the garden. Fear kicked in. They were fearful that they would not be able to provide for themselves. What we see all through history is this sin being carried out. This concept of fear that I can never provide enough for myself. All the people down through history spend most of their time trying to possess. Trying to get things in their hands like wealth, money, possessions, and the power that goes along with it just so they can create some sense of security that they lost in the garden. But as we know, if somebody is seeking security or significance out of people, places, things, or money, they are never going to be satisfied. They can never get enough. Because of that we see all sorts of symptoms of that insecurity. We see various degrees of hoarding and greed and crime related to theft of things and money. What happens is we become less generous and less giving. The reality is if we are kingdom people, the concept of scarcity does not exist in the kingdom. Scarcity does not exist in the kingdom of God. It is God who has been trying to break us of that idea ever since we left the garden. Some of you remember the story in Exodus where the Israelites had just gotten released from slavery. A couple million went out into the wilderness and they began walking and ended up in the wilderness for 40 years. They couldn’t really provide for themselves. They had to depend on God for their needs. God said I will provide for you, but I am only going to provide enough for each day. So he provided this thing called manna. This white, flaky stuff. The word manna means what is it because they didn’t know what it was. Exodus reads like this: “When the Israelites saw it, they said to each other, ‘What is it?’ For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, ‘It is the bread the Lord has given you to eat. This is what the Lord has commanded. Each one is to gather as much as he needs.’” Just as much as he needs. If you remember, the ones that took more than they needed, it rotted and had maggots all over it. Maybe God was trying to teach something to them and he is trying to teach something to us that we need to trust God for our daily needs. In fact, we do recite the Lord’s Prayer and we say “Give us today our daily bread”. Give us what we need just for today. But for some reason we feel like we have this need to accumulate. To consume as much as we can. There is a guy named James Byron Smith and some of the information I am speaking today I gleaned from some of his books. He writes “Why do we try to consume more than we need? Because we believe there will not be enough for everyone, so we need to take all we can. This is a narrative of scarcity. The scarcity narrative, however, can be replaced by the sharing narrative once we realize the economy of the kingdom.” This is key here. We are kingdom people. I have been emphasizing the last couple months Jesus invited us into the kingdom of God. We are kingdom people. We live differently. We see things differently. In the kingdom of God, there is no scarcity. When we begin to embrace this idea what happens is we demonstrate it by exhibiting generosity within a culture that lives within a posture of scarcity. Then they see something is different here. We speak to the idea that we serve a God not of scarcity but a God of abundance.
The next thing we have to consider, which is somewhat related to this idea of scarcity, is the false notion that if I give, I will have less. From the world’s perspective that makes mathematical sense. If I have $100 and I give $10, then I have $90 left. If I have ten hours of leisure time and I give two, I have eight left to give towards leisure. We have to remember that God’s principles of math are not quite the same as ours. When we give, God tends to give back more than what we gave. Jesus suggests this in Luke 6:38 when we writes “Give and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap.” There is a principle related to this passage. It is called the principle of release. What it is saying is when you let go of our stuff, God let’s go of his stuff. He lets go of his reservoir of stuff, and it begins to flow back towards you. When you think about this passage, it can be translated several ways. What did Jesus mean when he was using this phrase? The idea of “pressed down” some suggest was meant to convey the idea of pressing down on olives and extracting the very valuable olive oil. They would be hearing this and saying that means something good is going to come to me. You are suggesting that if I give, this expensive type of olive oil or something equivalent is going to come to me. When he goes on and says “shaken together” the idea is that you have grain in a vat and you think it is full but if you shake it together you can get more in there. Kind of like when you are cooking and you have a cup of flour and if you shake it, you can get more in there. It is intended to convey a picture of abundance. A picture that suggests that when we see some blessing from God, we think we have it all, and he is just saying there is more to come. I am filling it up for you. Filling it up so much that it is going to pour out onto your lap.
As a side note, churches and people and pastors can take a passage like this and use it to manipulate others. If you give to this particular fund or this particular ministry, somehow you are going to be blessed ten times over financially. Don’t get me wrong, I think that could happen. I really do. I have seen that happen. I am not saying that is wrong, but I also believe that when he talks about “given to you”, he is not just talking about material blessings. He is talking about all sorts of blessings that will come to you in many different ways that you weren’t even expecting. How many of you happen to recognize this family at all? I didn’t think so. If I mentioned December 2 San Bernardino, CA, the lady in the middle was one of the 14 victims that were killed in the massacre on December 2 in CA. When that first happened, there was a lot of stuff being posted on Facebook. Somehow, I came across a GoFundMe type account that was collecting money for this family. Their goal was $100,000. Frankly, I don’t like giving online like that. If I do give, it is usually somebody I know. But something prompted my spirit. I said give something. So I gave $25. The price of a meal or three cups of coffee at Starbucks. It was not that big of a deal. What it did was it all of a sudden created this connection between me and this family. I started reading the emails attached to the GoFundMe account. I started learning things about the family that I didn’t know and most people in the news didn’t know. I learned that the family is Iranian, which being stereotypical of me, I assumed maybe they are Muslims. They aren’t Muslims. They are Christians. She was a Christian who in 1969 left Iran because she was being persecuted by Islamic extremists. Isn’t it ironic she was killed by Islamic extremists? Then I read that she was a chemistry major and loved her kids and just a giving woman. All this kind of stuff. Stuff I would not gain any access to had I not given any money. I don’t say that to draw any attention to me. It is the illustration that came to my mind about how simple it is and how little it takes to bless somebody. When you bless somebody with something as small as $25, you get back a lot more. I could have gotten a meal for $25, but now I have a connection to a family on the other side of America and I know how to pray for them and everything that I couldn’t have gotten otherwise. What I am saying is that as Jesus says “Give and it will be given to you.” Not necessarily financial but the joy that comes from knowing that you have helped out somebody. I know there are also people who would say Chuck that could have been a scam. There are a lot of scams on the internet. That is true.
But what is also true is that if you have this attitude, you are guilty of what I would say is the fourth fallacy related to giving. In other words that I get to decide who is worthy of my giving. This is a tough one. Anybody familiar with Jesus’ words that say “God helps those who help themselves”? It would be a nice response, but he really didn’t say that. Benjamin Franklin said that, and it was a very unbiblical statement. Because as we know, God doesn’t just help the people that can help themselves. God is one who decides to help people who can’t help themselves. We could look at dozens of passages about that. Psalm 146 says “He, the Lord, upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets prisoners free, the Lord gives sight to the blind, the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down, the Lord loves the righteous.” God helps those who can’t help themselves. We should help those who can’t help themselves. So often what do we do? We are very quick to judge. We have the judge meters on. It might be somebody who is not dressed as nice as us or they are sitting on the side of the road. Or it could be people because of the color of their skin or their ethnicity, we automatically make value judgements that say I don’t have to help that person because that person is not worthy. It relieves the guilt from us, but it also hinders generosity. It really perpetuates the false notion that if I dress nice, if I get a paycheck, if I am living in middle class America, then I am somehow more worthy of those blessings, which can be totally wrong. We have to be careful about this idea that I get to select who to help. Because, again, we have been given, we have been blessed for the reason to bless others. Blessed to become a blessing. To extend the blessing that has been given to us. If we don’t know who to give to and we are afraid to give to the wrong person or whatever that is why we have the church. That is why we have a church that can actually use the collective wisdom and determine what the valid ministries out there are. Do the homework and cover it in prayer and that sort of stuff. What we do is bring our tithes and offerings to the church that help support the various ministries that the church supports.
But that brings me to my fifth fallacy which is that a Christian must tithe. This is one that I know I may be stepping on some toes here. As a side note, a tithe is just a fancy churchy word that means 10%. In modern terms, it means ideally a Christian should give 10% of their income to the church. It finds its biblical basis all through the Old Testament in several passages. One of the passages that is most clear comes out of the prophet Malachi “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house.” Thinking about the context, this passage is given from God through the prophet because they lived in an agricultural society. There were a lot of poor people. They got most of their income in the form of crops. So they would bring the crops into the storehouse to help support the widows and the orphans and even the pastors that worked at the temple and that sort of thing. Now in modern times we have associated the church with the storehouse. When you bring your tithe and your offering in that money is used to support the ministries that go out to the homeless and the poor and the widows and orphans and to support the overhead in the church including the pastors’ salaries and that sort of thing. I would suggest some of you are saying tithe is an Old Testament concept so I have been told I really don’t have to abide by that. I would say that is true. It is primarily an Old Testament concept, but I would also say that I could probably make a pretty good case that tithe is also a New Testament concept in that many people practice tithing in the New Testament, including Jesus. I can make a case. But yet, I would stop short of telling any of you that you must tithe. I cannot demand it. No one can demand it of you. I don’t care what any church says. They cannot say a Christian must tithe because to do that is to fall back into legalism. It is to fall back into the law. The law that says if you do this, God will do that. We are not a people of law. We are a people of grace. The grace that has flowed down from heaven into us into our hearts through the love of God and our giving is an expression that comes out of the heart. To further make my point, it is Paul who writes in 2 Corinthians “Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” This flies in the face against the idea that we must tithe. Also, when you take away the idea that you must tithe, then you take away all the silly questions that revolve around the issue of tithing and the silly notions. Silly questions such as do I have to tithe on the gross of my check or the net? Who cares. Do what springs from your heart. There is no requirement. There is not one requirement. If you can find it, tell me where it says you must tithe on your gross paycheck. It is not there. It also gets rid of the silly notion that if you do tithe 10% that somehow you are not obligated to give more. The reality is there are some people that because of the season of life or the situation they are in, maybe they are just not able to tithe. But we also have people that tithe who are in a position that could give a lot more. Not just 10% but 30%, 40%, 50%. Bill Gates gives 90% of his income away. But you have to keep that in perspective. If we asked somebody who makes $10,000 a year to tithe that is $1,000 and that leaves them with $9,000 to live in Pittsburgh. If we say the same thing to somebody who makes $100,000 and they give $10,000, they still have $90,000 left to live. They aren’t going to live as paupers. So be careful of wrapping this idea of giving and generosity around some sort of number. It gets back to generosity like anything else in the Bible, it really boils down to a heart issue. Jesus always wanted to get to the heart of the situation. What is going on inside here? What are those automatic responses that you are feeling that are keeping you from being a generous person? Begin to filter through those things and think through them and then begin to ask yourself how have I been blessed by God. How has God blessed me? What should my response be? In some people it may be a few bucks. In some people 5% and some 10% and some 50%. Whatever you do, you do it with a cheerful attitude. What you begin to realize as you take your mind off of this 10% figure, the question becomes not how much of my money should I give to the church or whatever but how much of God’s money do I keep? It puts it on the other perspective. The reality is everybody in this room, I don’t care what your income level is, including me, we keep too much. We keep too much. That is why as a church we have to wrestle over $50 or $500 and whether or not we can afford to paint the children’s nursery. We wrestle with stupid things because everybody in this place keeps too much. If you give more, we wouldn’t have to wrestle about it. We would be wrestling about what new ministries we can be excited about. My point is that we are blessed to be a blessing. When we keep more of God’s money than we should, we not only miss out on a blessing for ourselves, but the opportunity for the church to be a blessing to the community and to the world. We are about done here. What I wanted to do like I did last week is give you a picture of what giving looks like. To give you an idea of what it looks like to be blessed through giving. I have asked a couple that most of you know, Graham and Marilyn, who are probably the most giving people, I think many of you would agree, in the church. Not only with their money but also with their time. I asked them to come up and take a few minutes and share how they have been blessed over the years through their giving. Would you please welcome Graham and Marilyn.
(Graham speaking here.) When Chuck first asked us to give our testimony on giving, I was hesitant. Most of you know that I was an orthopaedic surgeon until one year ago when I retired. My sense was that many would say it was easy for them because he is an orthopaedic surgeon. They have it made. Of course, Marilyn quickly said you can do this can’t you? The more I thought about it, the more I realized that there is a story to tell. In fact, all of us should have a story to tell about how we honor God for what he has done for us. First of all, you must understand that when you hear about how much orthopaedic surgeons make on average, because of my patient population, I was one of those who brought the average way down, but that was my personal choice. However, our story goes back for both of us to way before we even met each other. We were both raised in a strong Christian family. Both of our parents were ministers. Fortunately for them and for us, we elected not to become rebellious minister’s kids. We both learned early in our lives the value of giving back to the Lord. We were trained to give 10% as instructed in the Old Testament and, as Chuck has alluded to, is probably strongly encouraged in the New Testament. It was whatever we earned. Summer jobs. Winter jobs. Whatever. It was the first thing we gave off.
So when we were first married, while I was in medical school and Marilyn was working at Mellon Bank and obviously with not a lot of money, we decided together that we would always first give back to the Lord 10% and hopefully more if we could. That has continued through today and we have been blessed because of it. However, as we studied scripture more, we realized that we were going to be challenged throughout our lives as to how much to give back to God. You have probably heard the statement ascribed to one of the Rockefellers, a very wealthy man, when he was asked how much money would be enough, he said just a little bit more. How many of you think about money frequently? It makes no difference what level of financial stability or financial instability you are in. Satan is always going to challenge you to become more greedy. Marilyn and I decided early in our marriage that we would depend on God to meet our needs no matter what the circumstances, and he has been more than gracious to us. So we, because of our gratitude, try to give back to him faithfully. How many of you like to give money away with a smile? Frankly, that is a challenge for all of us, but we must remember the words that Paul gave to the Corinthian church, which Chuck already mentioned. “Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” He also in 1 Corinthians 13 said “If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.”
I went on in my career and was decently compensated and began to have problems with some of the scripture that we would read. In fact, in three of the gospels, Christ talks about the rich man and the camel and the eye of the needle. In Mark it states “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” Fortunately, after that statement, he also emphasizes that there is no way man can ever do that. It is only God that, through his grace, will allow us to get into heaven. As an aside, some particularly in the western world think that because they are poor, these recommendations do not even apply to them. Marilyn and I just got back from a six-week mission trip in the country of Niger. In eight of the last ten years, Niger has been last on the UN development index. The other two years it was next to last. I dare say that just about everybody in that country thinks every one of you is very, very wealthy. I think you need to look at that statement in the scripture in a different way.
I have been talking about money to this point. However, we have all been given a variety of gifts. In Romans, Paul says “We have different gifts according to the grace given us. If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. If it is serving, let him serve. If it is teaching, let him teach. If it is encouraging, let him encourage. If it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously. If it is leadership, let him govern diligently. If it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.” Marilyn and I have been blessed but as have all of you with different gifts to use for his kingdom here on earth. Giving of one’s time is always a challenge. How many of you are too busy to serve? I remember in grade school I was told how much harder junior high would be and then I was told how much harder senior high would be, then college, then medical school, and wow wait until you start to work. Actually, they were right. They were all harder, but strangely enough, I somehow found good ways to waste time and still get everything done. I must admit, in high school, I never did finish Moby Dick. Learning when to say no can be a challenge, but I dare say most of us tend not to say yes as often as we should. Ministers are always asking for volunteers. They have to ask because they would faint and hit their head if everybody walked up and said I would like to help out. Great is the church that is filled with willing volunteers. As Christians, we need to be aware of our fellow Christians around us because only in that way can we know when and where we can help. Giving our time as well as our talents has not always been easy, and it never will be absolutely easy. Nevertheless, I have always felt that God was honoring whatever we were doing and giving us the strength to do what was necessary. Marilyn and I are both excited about what is happening in Bellevue Christian Church now. Both what has happened and what is happening, but it is going to take an ongoing active group of individuals to give of their time, talents, and money. Remember, as Chuck has pointed out, it is not yours anyways. It is God’s. We have both been blessed to serve in many ways here at Bellevue. As we move into this time of life of becoming mature, I like that word better, the challenge is not to say now I am retired and then retire from actively serving Christ. We need to continually pray asking how we can serve and ask for the strength to do so. We may well, in fact, sooner than we like, where physically we can’t do much at all. However, we and all of you can always pray. There is absolutely nothing better than a praying church. Let me leave you with these three last scripture verses to encourage you as they have encouraged us through our life together. “Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”
“But just as you excel in everything – in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness and in your love for us – see that you also excel in this grace of giving.”
“God is able to make all grace abound to you, so then all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.” If you truly love God for what he has done for you, there is joy in giving back what he has already given to you. Thank you.
(Chuck speaking.) I just wanted to get somebody up here that could give you an idea of what it looks like to be blessed by giving. As I closed down last week in the message on forgiving, what you have to learn about giving is it really is a discipline. It is a spiritual discipline. It takes time like any other discipline, and you have to train to be generous. I would suggest that as we close out this year and look into next year that you begin to train yourself. Include that in your training regimen to be Godly. If you are somebody who for some reason hasn’t given anything or doesn’t give on a regular basis, then maybe next year just challenge yourself to begin to give. Just test it out. Just begin to give and see how God might respond. Also, maybe if you are somebody who has given a small percentage, maybe God is challenging you to shoot for a 10% type tithe. Or if you are somebody who has been tithing on a regular basis, maybe set the bar out there even higher. Begin to raise the amount of giving that you give and see what God does for you. We are blessed to be a blessing. It is a blessing to have all of you here. I am looking forward to a blessed 2016. Let us pray.
