TEXT: Psalm 89:6
TITLE: A GOD WHO ALWAYS GIVES AND WANTS US TO BE GIVERS LIKE HIM.
There are many people in the world who view God more as a taker rather than a giver. Many believe they would end up loosing more than gaining if they gave their hearts to Christ. Many think of God as being a demanding Being. They think of God as having a lot of rules to go by and that He forbids a lot of fun.
Trying to prove that God is a giver is sort of like trying to prove that Billy Graham is an evangelist, or that Michael Jordan can play basketball. It should be so obvious that no discussion is needed.
Jeremiah 24:7 – “…I will give them a heart to know Me…”
Ezekiel 11:19 – “Then I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within them, and take the stony heart out of their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh.”
Matthew 11:28 – “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy and I will give you rest.”
Luke 11:13 – “ If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the holy Spirit to those who ask Him.”
John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
John 10:28 – “And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand.”
John 14:27 – “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”
Revelation 2:10 – “…Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life.”
Throughout Scripture, we’re taught that, among other things, God’s generosity is wonderful and that it continues on into eternity.
Ephesians 1:6 says, “Now all praise to God for his wonderful kindness” (TLB). Notice, Paul doesn’t say, “minimal kindness.” He isn’t suggesting that God’s kindness will do in a pinch if no other kindness is available. On the contrary, God delights in lavish giving.
God doesn’t run out of generosity. Lamentations 3:23 says God’s mercies are “new every morning.” God’s kindness is not like the sunset – brilliant in its intensity, but dying every second. God’s generosity keeps coming and coming and coming. When you wake up tomorrow morning, there will be no less generosity to greet you than there was the morning before. Ten years from now, God’s generosity will still be knocking people over with its lavishness.
The last verse of the hymn “Amazing Grace” says:
When we’ve been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we’d first begun.
One of the most difficult things about life on earth is that almost as soon as something good starts to happen, it’s over. You look forward all week long to a visit from some old friends: the next thing you know, they’re headed out the door, saying “good-bye.” A bride-to-be dreams for months about her wedding – but the ceremony is over in less than an hour. Parents get excited about giving the kids their Christmas presents – but the sounds of paper tearing and children squealing are silenced before breakfast.
That’s not the nature of God’s generosity. Ten thousand years after the celebration starts, we won’t have used up any time at all! God’s generosity will extend all throughout eternity.
From the moment you meet the true God, you will discover that He is a giver. The more you learn about him and the longer you live in relationship with Him, the more frequently you will find yourself on your knees worshiping Him for His incredible generosity.
But somewhere along the path of your spiritual journey, you will awaken to another realization about God: He wants to turn you and me into generous people. He wants us to become givers. And that’s a tall order for some of us.
Ill. Think for a moment of a child who has a splinter in their hand. The splinter hurts, but when the child sees the needle and tweezers that will be used to take it out, the child gets the impression that the cure would be worse than the injury, so the child keeps their fingers clamped shut.
To get the splinter out you have to pry back each of the child’s fingers, then hold them open while you move as quickly as possible to remove it. If you allow the child to keep their hand closed, the cut might become infected. To heal the child you have to get the hand open.
God faces the same dilemma with us. He knows that most of us by nature are tightfisted people. He knows we will experience a deep, satisfying kind of joy when we open our hands to the needs all around us, but to show us that joy, he often has to pry back our selfish fingers, one by one.
How does He do that? We have a case study in Luke 19 when Jesus opened the hands attached to a “clutcher” named Zaccheus.
Zaccheus had an advantage over most clutchers by being “employed” as a tax collector. In those days, tax collectors had the official license to become legal extortioners. They were allowed to charge you the government’s going tax rate, put whatever percentage they thought they could get out of you. If you didn’t pay the tax as well as their own take, you went to jail.
Zaccheus went into a dinner with Jesus bearing all the signs of a man, who has clutched his fist so tightly, it was practically frozen that way. Yet before Zaccheus put down the napkin used to wipe the last bit of food from his lips, he had vowed to begin giving half of his earnings to the poor.
What happened? Jesus opened Zacchaeuss’s heart, He opened his mind, and then he opened his hands.
What Zaccheus was to have would be a personal encounter with Jesus that would make him a giver instead of a taker. It totally transformed his life.
Just imagine, for a moment, that you are Zaccheus. Imagine being the man whom everyone hates to see coming their way. Little kids whisper when you walk by. The faces of wives and husbands turn red with anger every time you knock on their door. When you turn your back, you hear the muffled four-letter words cast your way, followed by sadistic threats.
And then a man tells you He’ll not only be your friend, but he’ll treat you like a member of his own family. And not only will he meet with you – you who have spent a lifetime having doors slammed shut in your face – but He’ll do so publicly, even at the risk of alienating his supporters. And then He’ll take your punishment and pay for it Himself.
You know you’ve done nothing to earn this Man’s favor. You know you’ve lived in such a way that he would be fully justified to treat you as an enemy, or at the very least, to ignore you. But He’s been so generous with His love. He’s been so generous with his time. And He’s talking so generously of the future that you’re absolutely stunned.
When we come in contact with a generous God and we contemplate His generosity to us it will cause us to become a generous person. When we consider all he has given to us how can we not be a giver ourselves?
Maybe, just maybe, Jesus let Zaccheus to an OT text in the book of Ecclesiastes. Solomon, one of the smartest and wealthiest men who ever lived, wrote, “I enlarged my works. I built houses. I planted vineyards. I made gardens and parks. I planted in them all kinds of fruit trees, and even made ponds o water to irrigate a forest.
“I collected silver and gold and the treasures of kings, and then sat back to ponder all that my hands had done. When I considered the energy it had taken to obtain all this, I concluded that all of it was wasted. It was chasing after the wind and all of my possessions were as worthless as a moldy piece of bread.”
Maybe Jesus went on to personalize Solomon’s teaching. “Zaccheus, something has got to change in your mind about the nature of ‘stuff’. It never delivers all that it promises. Even after you secure more of it than you ever could have dreamed, you’ll still have a hole in your soul.”
Maybe he ended this session by exposing his sin like he did the woman who had the 5 husbands.
“Let’s say, Zaccheus, that what you really wanted was a camel. You stayed up at night thinking about how much easier your life would be traveling from village to village, if only you had a camel to ride on.
“And then, one day, you had earned enough to buy that camel and you did so. Curiously enough, scarcely a week had gone by when you found yourself lying awake once again because you began thinking about buying a new coat. It gets cold at night! And how much easier life would be if only you could earn enough to get that new coat, so you turn the screws on one family here, another family there, and finally you extort enough money to buy a new coat.”
“Will that be enough?”
“Does it stop there?”
Zaccheus is sweating now. This prophet is telling his story! He knows!
Jesus goes on. You keep buying and spending more, which then raises the bar of what has to be earned the next year. So you work a little harder, take a few more risks, inwardly wince at what you have to do to get ahead, and pretty soon you’re out of control.
“Zaccheus, I’m telling you, it’s insanity. Marriages suffer, spiritual lives suffer, character suffers, and pretty soon, a vibrant, fully alive image-bearer of God gets reduced to an earning-and-spending machine. You deserve to be more than that, Zach.
Slowly, Zacchaeus’s mind grasps the wisdom of Jesus’ words. Zaccheus feels something shift inside of him. He makes new plans. Instead of lying awake at night plotting ways to extort more money, he vows, with the eager voice of a child, to find new ways to give some of it away. “Fifty percent of all that I have I am going to give to the poor!” he announces. “I will also give back four times to anybody I have cheated.”
With a softened heart & a renewed mind Zacchaeus’s hands were finally opened. But now what about yours? Are you ready to become a giver?
Conc. When you look at your hands do you like what you see? Or do you wish your hands looked a little bit more like the open hands of Christ or Zaccheus? Remember, if God needs to change your hands, he doesn’t usually start there. He starts with your heart, and that means He wants to overwhelm you with his own generosity first. It’s His nature to be generous, and He wants it to become ours. The transformation begins to happen when we first open up our hearts to His goodness.
