This morning, our topic is "Seeking God Through Giving". As you know if you’ve been attending this church for very long, we don’t emphasize giving. We don’t take an offering, we don’t pass the plate. We just have a basket in the back for contributions. I don’t look at the giving records, so I don’t know how much any one of you gives, whether it’s a lot, or a little, or none at all. And in over a year, this is the first time I’ve spoken on the subject. Why is that? It’s not because we’re embarrassed to talk about it, as if it were somehow in bad taste to discuss something as "vulgar" as money. In fact, Jesus spoke about money quite a bit. He taught more about money than he did about heaven. But we know that many people are skeptical of churches. Many people think that ministers just want their money. They turn on the TV, and if they happen to come across a religious program, sometime during that show they will hear an appeal for money. They get letters in the mail from religious organizations asking for money. So, in order not to reinforce those negative attitudes, we don’t make a big deal of giving. And to anyone who may be a first-time visitor with us today, let me make a special appeal to you. Please don’t feel any expectation to give. In fact, we’d rather you didn’t. What we want most this morning is not to receive something from you, but to give something to you.
Having said all that, I couldn’t put it off this sermon any longer. It’s not that the church is in any critical need; we’re doing fine financially. But I had to speak on giving because of this sermon series. Today is the fourth in our series of five messages on "Seeking God." The goal of these messages is to help you develop the spiritual habits that will help you in your quest to know God. And I couldn’t claim to have adequately treated the topic of knowing God without at some point addressing the issue of giving. Because giving financially is a necessary spiritual habit for anyone who wants to know and experience God. It’s an indicator, a barometer, of our desire to know and follow God, and it’s also an important means by which we come to know Him. Our giving reveals what’s in our heart, and it can also change our heart. So as much as we might wish it to be otherwise, our giving practices are central to our walk with God.
As you ponder that, let me remind you of the promises we’re relying on throughout this series. We have God’s promise that this desire, this quest, to know Him will be rewarded.
"And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him." -- Hebrews 11:6 (NIV)
"And so I tell you, keep on asking, and you will be given what you ask for. Keep on looking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened. For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And the door is opened to everyone who knocks." -- Luke 11:9-10 (NLT)
You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. -- Jeremiah 29:13 (NIV)
God can be found. God can be known. God desires that we find Him, and know Him, and experience Him, and have fellowship with Him. All we have to do is seek Him. Earnestly. Diligently. With perseverance. With all our hearts. God is not known by the idle, or the lazy, or the merely curious. God is known by those who are willing to do whatever it takes, suffer any hardship, make any sacrifice, pay the price, because they are convinced that the knowledge of God is worth whatever they may have to give for it. Do you believe that? If you do, then these messages will give you a map and a compass for the journey. But the desire and determination has to come from you. So this message, and this series, is only for those who want to know God. I hope that includes you.
So what does giving have to do with all this? After all, knowing God is something exalted and spiritual. How does something as crass and ordinary and worldly as a twenty dollar bill factor into that process? How is giving a "spiritual" habit, and not just a financial habit? It’s spiritual because it’s an act of faith. When you give to God, you’re saying, "God, I trust you to provide for me, not this money. I’m not trusting in this money to protect me and give me security, Lord, I’m trusting in you instead to do that. I’m trusting in you to give me pleasure, and not in this money. For all the things that money can bring, I’m trusting you instead." It’s also spiritual because it’s an act of worship. Worship is attributing worth to God; it’s "worth-ship". Worship is saying that God is great, and worthy of our praise, and adoration, and service. So when we give our finances to God, we’re saying that he’s worthy to receive all that we are and all that we have, even our money. And giving a portion of our money to God reminds us that all of it, and everything we own, really belongs to Him, because we belong to Him. That’s why giving is a spiritual act.
Does God really care about money? The answer is "no". No, God doesn’t have the least interest in our money per se. It makes no difference to Him whether we are rich, or poor, or somewhere in the middle. God isn’t impressed by wealth. He doesn’t bow, and scrape, and genuflect before wealth, and neither should we (although we should show respect for the wealthy, just as we show respect for the poor). And He certainly has no need for our money, as if He were somehow dependent on us to finance His projects, as if His ability to carry out His purposes in the world were dependent on our generosity.
"Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him? For from him and through him and to him are all things." -- Romans 11:35-36 (NIV)
"To the LORD your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it." -- Deuteronomy 10:14 (NIV)
"If I were hungry I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and all that is in it. -- Psalm 50:9-12 (NIV)
Everything we think we "own" really belongs to God. It’s not ours, it’s His. Bank accounts, houses, automobiles, computers, retirement plans, stock portfolios -- all His. We’re not the owners, we’re just the trustees. We have temporary stewardship of the things God gives us, and we are responsible to manage it according to His wishes. [Example: managing the assets of a trust according to the wishes of the originator of the trust]. So our money is all His anyway. "But I earned it!" you say. Listen to this:
"You may say to yourself, ’My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.’ But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth." -- Deuteronomy 8:17-18 (NIV)
The eternal God who brought the earth and the universe into existence by His Word, the God who even now sustains all of Creation by His own power, that God does not need a few copper coins from our pockets. He created the mountains from which the metal for those coins was mined. He created the trees which supplied the wood pulp for the paper in those dollar bills. When we give, we are only returning to God what He has first given to us, like a child giving his father a Father’s Day gift which he purchased with his allowance. So please, let’s not think we are doing God any favors when we give. God does not need our money.
So, you might think this lets us off the hook. If God doesn’t need my money, then He won’t mind if I just keep it for myself, right? Wrong. God doesn’t need your money. But what He does want is your heart. [Example of a father being pleased by the gift his children buy him, using the money they received from Him]. He wants your love. He wants your devotion. He wants your worship. And according to the Bible, there is an unbreakable connection between your wallet and your heart. First, your giving is a barometer of your love for God. It’s a very reliable indicator of the state of your heart toward Him.
"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. I am not commanding you, but I want to test the sincerity of your love by comparing it with the earnestness of others. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich." -- 2 Corinthians 8:7-9 (NIV)
"Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver." -- 2 Corinthians 9:7 (NIV)
Giving to God isn’t a matter of obligations and percentages. That’s how we relate to the IRS. We carefully calculate our taxes using charts. Very few people pay their taxes cheerfully. Most give "reluctantly" and "under compulsion". But giving to God is not like that. Giving to God is a matter of the heart. We give to God out of love, and gratitude, and thankfulness for what He has done for us. We give to God as an act of faith and an act of worship.
I don’t know how to say this, except bluntly. If you are giving little or nothing to God, then most likely, you have little or no love for God. You might say, "But I can’t afford to give much: I don’t have much." Or, "I have to pay child support, or alimony" or "I’m legally obligated to make payments to my creditors." And that’s OK. Listen to what Paul says:
"Now finish the work, so that your eager willingness to do it may be matched by your completion of it, according to your means. For if the willingness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what he does not have." -- 2 Corinthians 8:11-12 (NIV)
It’s not the absolute amount of your giving that matters, it’s the relative amount. It’s not how much you can give that matters. What matters is how much of a sacrifice it is for you to give it. "The amount of the sacrifice required to make the gift indicates the amount of the love contained in the gift." To put it another way: "It’s not how much we give that counts; it’s what we have to give up in order to give it that counts." So let me ask you a question: That offering you put in the basket every week or every month -- what did you have to give up in order to give that money? What desires of yours went unfulfilled because you made that offering? What sacrifices did you have to make? If your answer is, "not many", then it isn’t much of a gift, regardless of the dollar amount. On the other hand, if the sacrifice is great, then the gift and the love are great, even if the amount is small. Let’s look at an example:
"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. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a fraction of a penny. Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything--all she had to live on." -- Mark 12:41-44 (NIV)
Does that mean we can put just a couple of pennies into the offering basket, and Jesus will be pleased? Yes, it does. If that’s all we have to live on. If you are financially strapped, so that you are barely making ends meet, and your gift, although small, represents a real sacrifice, then in God’s eyes that is an enormous gift. On the other hand, if you are more well off, and the dollar amount of your gift is high, but it comes out of your surplus so that you don’t really feel it, then in God’s eyes, it’s a small gift. What makes a gift small or large, what indicates the amount of your love, is not the magnitude of the gift itself, but the magnitude of the sacrifice it represents. God values sacrificial giving, because when we make a sacrifice in order to give, we are saying to Him, "God, I love and value you more than this thing I’m giving up. You are more precious to me than even this."
But if all you are giving to God is what’s left over after you’ve made sure you have everything you want, and your children have everything they want, then you might as well keep your wallet in your pocket. If you are giving to God last, you might as well not be giving at all.
Not only is our giving a barometer, or indicator, of our love for God; it’s also a means of drawing close to God. Giving is a way for us to deepen our love and devotion to God.
"’Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.’" -- Matthew 6:19-21 (NIV)
What is Jesus saying here? That your heart will follow your treasure. The more you invest in something, the more you will care about it, the more devoted you will be to it, the more you will love it. If you invest your time and money in the pursuit of things, then those things will have your heart. But if you invest your time and money in the things of God, then God will have your heart. So do you want to love God more deeply? Do you want to know Him more intimately? Then give sacrificially. Give something up in order to give to God. And your heart will follow the gift.
In closing, let me answer a question you may be asking. Doesn’t God want us to have any good things? Own homes, drive cars? Does he want us to give all our money to him and be poor? No.
"Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment." -- 1 Timothy 6:17 (NIV)
God doesn’t insist that we divest ourselves of all our possessions. He doesn’t want every Christian to live in poverty. He gives us good things, and he wants us to enjoy them. But the best thing, the greatest "good thing" that He wants us to enjoy, is Himself. And He knows that the only way for us to know and enjoy Him to the fullest is by putting Him first. One of the most important ways that we put God first is by giving sacrificially to Him of what He has first given to us. If we do that, then our hearts will follow our treasure; and our experience of God will become deeper and deeper, and sweeter and sweeter.
(For an .rtf file of this and other sermons, see www.journeychurchonline.org/messages.htm)
