If you go all the way back to the day of Pentecost, you remember on the day of Pentecost of course there would be at least a million or maybe more, pilgrims in the city of Jerusalem. They were there for the feast times. They would come in. They would move into the city. And there were no inns or hotels or whatever to take care of them. And so they would stay in the homes of the people who lived there. And the government, the city, the actual religious community of the city would provide money to help those people accommodate strangers. There would be available water and food for them and so forth. And they would just move in during the feast time. And of course when Peter preached and 3,000 were saved, some of those 3,000 were the strangers in the city. And then, the only church was the church of Jerusalem. So they didnt want to leave. They wanted to stay. Well that left the city with these rather poor people with no resources and no living there. And then the church grew thousands more, thousands more, thousands more. And so there were in that church, many who had no source of income and had left everything to come, and had stayed because the church had been born there. Additionally, the Gospel always had a marvelous, and sort of high percentage appeal to the poor people, the people without resources. And so the church in Jerusalem was filled with people who had no resource. Paul then, as he traveled around in the Gentile world, made a collection of money from all these various churches to take back to support the poor saints in Jerusalem. This was a thing he was doing for years. Now additionally, he realized that there was a tension between the Jewish church and the Gentile church. And so he wanted to conciliate that. And he figured if he could get the Gentile church to give a great amount of money in an act of love to the Jews, that there would be a conciliating of the Jewish and Gentile elements of the church. So he had a theological perspective in mind, as well as a very economic and a very pragmatic perspective in giving them that which they needed for physical help. So Paul was moving around receiving this money. He also had in his heart that he would not just take the money back from all these churches, but he would take representatives of each church so they could personally extend their love in the act of giving in the gift, which he eventually did. Now in that process, he here calls on the Corinthian church to be a part. And he says, I want you to give your part to this collection just the same as everybody else in Galatia has done. And Galatia by the way, is not a city, but its a territory with many cities. So hes saying is, I told them. Im telling you to get a collection. Now he tells them how to do this, verse two. And here, we come to the very practical part. This is of course, part of the work of the Lord, giving to the needs of those saints, and conciliating by an act of love. On the first day of the week, let every one of you, and the Greek text says, put into the treasury, according as God has prospered. Now we are told then, that giving is to be done on the first day of the week, thats Sunday. Thats why at Grace Church we take our offering, receive our offering on the first day of the week because thats what the Bible says. Paul, writing under the inspiration, gives us a standard, or a principal, to receive our gifts upon the first day of the week. It says, Let every one of you do this. And it says, You are to put it into the treasury. The word there is thesauridso. We get the word thesaurus which means a treasury. Youve seen a book called a thesaurus which is a treasury of words. And every Pagan temple had a treasury. And thats the same term that is used here. It is a place to hold money. It referred to the chamber, or the treasure chest, or the warehouse, or the storehouse that was very common in the temples of those days. Every temple would have its treasury, its thesaurus. And so he is saying, You are to bring your money and put it into the treasury. Now some people have tried to tell us that this is a private bank account or a private safety deposit box, or a private sock in your closet, or whatever. But it cant be that because the second part of the verse says, So that when I come there be no offerings. Now if it was everybody had it in their own private place, the one thing theyd have to have when he got there was an offering to collect it. But hes saying, I dont want to have any offerings when I come to collect this. So Im going to ask you to be sure that youve already given it, and its placed in the treasury, and its there when I come. Now this gives us a tremendous standard for giving. The work of the Lord demands, to begin with, a perspective that says every Sunday, every first day, I give to the Lord. And I place it in the treasury. The treasury is that deposit which is held by those who lead in the church, so that when any needs comes up there doesnt have to be a special collection, but rather, it is already there and available. And I am to do that every week. I remember a man said to me, he had just joined the church and he said, Well Im new. And Ive just joined. And Im going to write you my check for the whole year. And I said, Well, have you ever read 1 Corinthians 16:2? And I opened my Bible and I said, What does that say? Upon the first day of . . . Oh. I said, You see, we dont want your check for the whole year. Some people say at the beginning, Well I got that out of the way, wrote that deal for the whole year. You say, whats wrong with that if hes decided how much hes gonna give? And then some people will say at the end of the year, Well lets see its December 28thand Im gonna write my check for the whole year. Cover that thing and so forth. Now I want you to know, its better to do that than to do nothing. But the right way to do it is every week. You say, Well whats the difference? The difference is that if you give every week, then you face the fact of giving every week. And you face the reality of stewardship every week. If you just determine what youre gonna do and do it all in one shot, or wait till the end and give what you give then, youre only responding to the impulse at one point in time, and you ought to be listening to the Spirit of God every week of your life about this matter of giving. And I know in our own family, we set aside a certain amount to give all the time. We purpose in our heart. We do that regularly week by week, by week, even if we put the check in every two weeks. None the less, we work through every week what were going to give, and then as God lays it on our hearts, we will change that and alter that as we feel the Spirit of God directing us to give more, as God lays it upon our hearts. And that happens all the time. And Im reluctant to use myself as an illustration. But just recently, I felt in my heart that I should, I dont know why, I just felt that I wanted to give a gift of X-number of hundred dollars extra to the church because the Lord seemed to lay it on my heart. And my response initially was, Well the Lord then if you want me to do that, then you provide that. Thats an easy kind of commitment, right? And then, through a totally unexpected avenue, I received that exact amount given to me. And then I said, Now Lord, Im just gonna check back in and make sure I had that right impulse, right? I mean it was easy before I had it. Now its a little tougher. There was a little question in my mind, and so I gave. But you see I am forced to face every week, every week, every week, the leading of the Spirit of God in my life as I give to His work. That has to be a constant pattern for me to respond to the Spirit. And so every one of us is to do that, faithfully every week. And I believe the intention is that we give not only enough to meet the current needs, but enough so that theres a surplus so that when another need comes along and I collect collection for the poor saints, you dont have to take special offerings. Its there and you can use it. We are to give that way. You say, Well, how much are we to give? Well basically, were to abound in the work of the Lord. So whatever you determine to give, you ought to give more because you ought to overdo it and do as much as is possible. You say, Now wait a minute. I dont have much. Well, then the Macedonians would be your illustration, 2 Corinthians Chapter 8 it says, Out of their deep poverty, they gave liberally. Or the widow who had only a tiny little bit, and gave it all. And if youre wondering about percents, thats 100%. And Christ exalted her over the others. So whatever it is, it should be more. Dont just give as little as is possible and get by. The whole purpose and principal here is to abound, which means you give more, and more, and more until youve given as much as is possible at the limit. You see the difficulty is we are so trapped in the materialism of our era that we find ourselves not giving, not because we have to meet our needs, but because we dont want to lessen our ability to purchase luxuries. Thats a big difference. So we must be committed to giving. Now he says, When you give, you give as God has prospered. You say, Well how much is that? Well theres no percent given. May I tell you there is no percentage given ever for giving in the New Testament. May I say this, there is no percentage for giving ever in the Old Testament either. Did you know that? Theyre the same. There is no percentage required for giving in the Old and New Testament in the matter of what we choose to give the Lord, none. Well you say, Well what about 10%? What about the tithe of the Old Testament? What about it? Ten percent was required to support the Levites. It was called the Levites tithe, or the Lords tithe. And basically what it funded was the national government. You see Israel was a theocracy. They were a nation. They were an entity as a nation. God was their head. Under Him was the high priest. And under him were all the thousands of priests. And the thousands of priests ran the country. And they had to be supported. And so when you gave your 10% every year, that went to pay the salaries and support the livelihood of the priests. And by the way, the priests had to take a tenth of all that they received, and give it to the high priest for his dissemination throughout the country to meet the needs of the people. So you were giving to support the government of that nation, which was a theocracy, a rule by God through His priests. Then you gave a second 10%. And the second 10% was called the festival tithe. And it went to fund all the religious convocations in the land, all the great religious festivals and meetings. So that was 20% or close. And then you were to give a 10thevery third year, which was called the welfare. Thats Deuteronomy 14. The second was Deuteronomy 12. You were to give the welfare tithe every third year which was for the widows, the poors, and the strangers, and so forth in the land. And that would bring it up to about 23% or so. Then you had to pay a half sheckle temple tax. You had to leave the corners of your field and any gleanings you dropped in the field for the profit sharing of the poor. And by the time you were done, you were somewhere between 20 and 25%. That was not free will giving. That was not what you chose to give to God. That was taxation. And the base was about 20 or so percent. Its interesting that prior to that in the pre-mosaic time in the Bible, that when Joseph set up a taxation system, the first one we know about in human history in Egypt, he set it at one fifth, which is 20% to prepare them for the famine. And its also interesting to note that the base tax rate in America right now in our day is 20%. So that has been a pretty common standard throughout all of history as weve experienced it, that theres a basic tax situation that were to respond to. Jesus said now, when you come into the New Testament, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesars. And Paul says, The government is ordained by God, so pay your taxes, tax to whom tax is due, custom to whom custom is due, tribute to whom tribute is due. But dont ever confuse that with giving to the Lord. In the Old Testament it said again, and again when they built the tabernacle, they build the temple, Whatever each man willingly in his heart desires to give, so let him give. It says give generously. In the Proverbs it says, were to give the first fruits. Were to give whatever is in our heart to give. Thats always been the standard, Old Testament or New Testament. So we are to pay our taxes. But thats not what hes talking about here. Here hes saying give. You say, How much? Whatever the Lords prospered you. Well John are there any principals that I should follow? How do I know how much? Well first of all, it ought to be sacrificial. It ought to be sacrificial as the illustration of the Macedonians indicates. They gave out of their deep poverty. There ought to be a sense of sacrifice like the widows might. She was the one Jesus honored and exalted, because she gave everything she had. And because God has given us the greatest example of giving, and He gave, and He gave until He sacrificed His own Son. So giving is to be sacrificial. Giving also is to be realized as an investment. Youre not giving it away. Youre investing it with God. In 2 Corinthians 9 it says giving is this, You sow and you will reap. In Galatians 6 it says, Whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap. And in 2 Corinthians 9 it says, You sow sparingly. You reap sparingly. You sow bountifully. You reap bountifully. In other words, youre going to get a return on what you sow. You sow a little, you reap a little. You sow a lot, you reap a lot. Whenever you give to God you are investing with God, and God will give you a dividend on that investment. People say, Well I dont have enough. Well maybe the reason you dont have enough is because you dont give enough. Because if you gave, God would give you back. And the Bible says in 2 Corinthians 9, Hell not only give you bread for your food, that is take care of your physical needs, but hell increase your spiritual riches. So to begin with, we need to do as much as is possible to the very limit in terms of our giving. People say, Well were in economic problems and so forth, and so on, and all of this. And that isnt the issue. The issue is that no matter what kind of economic problems we have, we all have still the mandate from God to do more than were doing. Its not a question of need. All of us are more well healed than any society in human historys been. And we are to plan carefully what we are to give as God has prospered us, sacrificially investing with God. And Jesus said in Luke 6, You give and Ill give back to you. Press down. Shaken together and running over. Remember that verse? Luke 6:38. I always think of crackers when I read that verse because of those little boxes. I like those little cheese crackers. And you know you get that box and you shake it a little bit, and all the crackers are in the bottom, and its half empty. But the Lord says, When you give to me. Ill give back. Press down. Shaken together, and still running over. I like that. So God is not doing as little as is possible, but as much as is possible. And thats the way we are to respond. Generosity.
Posted on: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 22:44:32 +0000
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