Spiritual fitness chapter 3; generosity. I’m going to talk about money this morning – aren’t you glad you came? Well, let me start by saying two positive things.
1) Money isn't everything, but at least it keeps you in touch with your children when they leave home. 2) If you think nobody cares you are alive, just miss a couple monthly payments – and you’ll soon find they do!
Sometimes people complain that the church is always banging on about money. “Christians should stick to preaching the gospel” they say. And who can argue with that? Of course we should prioritize proclaiming the good news about Jesus. The only thing is it costs money to do that and, as most of us know, it doesn’t grow on trees. Incidentally, how ironic is it that those people I know who think that money does grow on trees are the ones who have a hard time getting out of the woods?
But anyway, Christians are followers of Jesus - and Jesus had more to say about money than almost any other subject. In all his many references to money, 9 were to do with resourcing ministry, 15 were illustrations of a spiritual principle and 35 were direct challenges to discipleship.
In other words, when Jesus confronted someone about how serious they really were about following him he usually did so by bringing up the subject of money. You’ll be familiar with some of these.
“Go and sell all that you have, and give to the poor, and you shall have wealth in heaven; and come, follow me.”
Or this one: “No one can serve two masters; either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will hold to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” (By the way, that’s why Billy Graham once said, “A cheque book is a theological document; it will tell you who and what you worship.”)
And another challenge from Jesus: “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle that for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Different Ways to Give
I can guess what some of you are probably thinking. Today’s theme is generosity and generosity is not just about money. And of course that is correct. In the dictionary, “Generosity” is defined as “readiness or liberality in giving and freedom from meanness or smallness of mind or character.”
So I can be generous in many different ways.
I can be generous with my thoughts. If someone passes a bit of gossip on to you about Auntie Mabel, you will be generous in thought if you choose to believe the best about her instead of fearing the worst. Has anyone let you down lately or disappointed you? You will be generous in thought if you let it drop instead of harbouring a grudge. Abraham Lincoln was good at this. He once said, “I destroy my enemies by making them my friends.”
I can be generous with my words. Every time you encourage someone (when you say to them “that was really good, you have really blessed me today”) or every time you thank them (“I just want to say thank you for what you do or for what you said”) or every time you pray for them you are being generous with your words.
I can be generous with my time. Possibly the biggest challenge we face as a church, with many who lead busy professional lives, is being generous with our time.
I think it was Stephen Cherry, who heads up training in the diocese, who once talked about an experiment someone did during a training day on the Good Samaritan. When it came to about midday the students were sent out in two separate groups in two different directions for lunch and both groups were told to come back at 1:30pm. Now, for each group there was a staged “accident” with fake blood in which an actor pretended to faint and hit their head. The first “accident” happened in front of the first group shortly after they broke for lunch. And, of course, everyone gathered round to see what was wrong, speak to the young man who had fallen and call for help. The other “accident” for the second group was staged 5 minutes before they were due back. And no one stopped - not primarily because they were hard hearted or uncaring - but because they didn’t want to be late; they didn’t have time.
I suspect that being generous with our time is the biggest challenge we face. A tithe of my waking hours; that is to say 10% of the all the time available to me when I am not asleep, works out at 11 hours a week. I suppose that most of us would find it more challenging to give 10% of our time than 10% of our income.
So I want to stress that staying spiritually fit by practicing generosity is not just about writing a cheque every month. In fact just writing a cheque every month might actually be the problem.
That is what Jesus was saying in Matthew 23.23. “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, such hypocrites! You give one tenth of your spices - mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law - justice, mercy and faithfulness.” In other words, you have been generous with your money but you have been mean with your thoughts, your words and your time.
There is no doubt about this; these religious leaders were scrupulously open-handed with their money. They made painstakingly sure that they gave away one tenth of all their earnings. They would have been absolutely mortified by the very idea of giving any less (even down to 10% of their herb garden – you can just picture them with a ruler and scissors on the parsley bush).
But the gospels tell us that they made a parade of their generosity. They announced with trumpets the act of putting their envelope in the offering so as to be noticed by others. Jesus says, “when you give… do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.”
I have a friend in Canada who said once that that’s his church treasurer’s favourite Scripture. He says it’s the fastest Bible verse in the West. Your left hand does not know what your right hand is doing. So the right hand puts a whole wad of bank notes into the offering before the left hand has a chance to say, “Oh no, not that much!” I’d just like to make it clear that I don’t think that that interpretation is the right one!
Tithing
Where did the Pharisees get the 10% figure from? They got it from the Law of Moses which mentions it a lot. Leviticus 27, for example, says: “A tithe of everything from the land, whether grain from the soil or fruit from the trees, belongs to the Lord: it is holy to the Lord” (Leviticus 27.30). Deuteronomy 14 explains that the tithe existed for three reasons; firstly to acknowledge the abundance of God’s provision; secondly, to give an income to the Levites in the temple who had no other way of earning a living; and thirdly, to assist the poor who had fallen on hard times.
And Pharisees also knew about our first reading from the Prophecy of Malachi which says, “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house.” Malachi was written about 450 years before Christ, a time when God’s people were rebuilding Jerusalem which had been in ruins for decades. By the time Malachi prophesied there was a city wall with its gates crucial for security; there were new houses and there was a completed temple. The nation was back on its feet again after years of exile in Babylon.
But there was a problem; low rainfall and failing harvests – not just once but two years running, then three, then four... The crop yield was becoming predictably disappointing. Cattle and sheep were becoming thinner and thinner. Why? Why were things not going right?
It was all due to spiritual neglect. Here’s a principle that runs right through the Bible; when God’s people honour him and put him first in all things, he restores, he provides and he blesses at all times. And the reverse is true. When God is silent, when his presence disappears from worship and when he withholds his blessing it is because God’s people have put themselves first and honoured themselves above him.
In Malachi’s day, across the land, worship had become tired and stale. The people were half-hearted and the priests, with no real vision, were just going through the motions. God’s people were drifting into relationships with godless spouses from pagan nations. Men were being unfaithful to their wives. Marriages were falling apart. The most vulnerable people (widows, orphans, immigrants and the poor) were being overlooked and forgotten. The nation was in a sorry state because it was becoming disconnected from God and failed harvests were a direct consequence.
Notice in Malachi 3 that the people are completely unaware that there is any kind of problem.
Verse 7; “Return to me” says God.
So they look at themselves, shrug their shoulders and say, “Return? What do you mean ‘return’? How? It’s news to us that we have actually gone anywhere.”
Verse 8: “You are robbing me.” Says God.
So they look at the dry fields and empty barns and say, “Robbing? Wh…? How does that work that we are stealing from you?
Verse 9: “In tithes and offerings. You are under a curse - your whole nation - because you are robbing me.”
And what single solution does God prescribe to lift the curse on the nation? It comes in v10. “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house.”
Don’t you feel a bit sorry for these people? At first sight, it looks as if God is being a bit harsh on them. If yours is an agricultural economy and your harvests fail disastrously year after year, your country falls into recession and your reserves dwindle to perilously low levels. I guess the people of Malachi’s day were saying, “Now let’s be sensible, watch the pennies and cut back on non essentials.”
If that were all, then yes, someone might well say that God is being a bit severe. But God promises big things here to those who faithfully give back to him their first fruits, not their last fruits. 1 Corinthians 16.2 in the New Testament says the same thing: “On the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with your income...” Not “See what’s left for the Lord after you’ve covered all your outgoings.”
God likes to turn upside down our accepted wisdom about generosity. Many people tend to think that everything we have is ours and we can decide how much of our stuff we give away – if anything. But the Bible teaches that, if Jesus is Lord, everything we have is his. And under Christ as we give without counting, the more he seems to bless without counting.
So God speaks about opening up the floodgates of the sky and tipping down rain on the land to bring about a harvest so abundant that the people wouldn’t have anywhere to put all the grain. This is the promise of God for a generous people.
But I want to say also that there is no compulsion from God over this. The New Testament angle on this is, “Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” (2 Corinthians 9.7) Under Christ you are free to tithe. The difference is that under Moses you were not free not to tithe.
Does it work? I resolved a long time ago never to preach on something that wasn’t a reality in my own life. In my years as a Christian, there have been times when I have tithed, times when I have given less and times when I have given more. The only time our bank account has ever been overdrawn is during the time when we gave less. The rest of the time God has blessed us abundantly; we have never lacked for anything we needed and our four children are walking with God. Blessings all mine and ten thousand beside.
How does this work? I don’t know. But it does. As the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken Colonel Sanders once said, “There's no reason to be the richest man in the cemetery.” So let me quote from three wealthy businessmen each of which were multi-millionaires and each of which had a gift of generosity and who gave away most of what they accumulated before they died.
Sir John Templeton, the stock investor and chairman of the Templeton Fund: “I have observed 100,000 families over my years of investment counselling. I always saw greater prosperity and happiness among those families who tithed than among those who didn’t.”
John D. Rockefeller, the oil tycoon: “I never would have been able to tithe the first million dollars I ever made if I had not tithed my first salary, which was $1.50 per week.”
Robert Gilmore Letourneau, the engineer and inventor: “I shovel money out, and God shovels it back ... but God has a bigger shovel!”
Test Me
And then God says something truly shocking in v10. “Test me…” Time and time again God says in the Bible, “Don’t test me.” But here God makes an exception. Why here? Because putting God to the test in the area of our money stretches and exercises our faith. Putting him to the test in any other way is saying, in effect, that God has to justify himself to us while we sit around with our arms folded.
Do you want to do an experiment to see if God can be trusted or not? Here it is. Step out in faith. Give him back the first tenth. See if he disappoints you in return.
For any of you who have never done this, let’s be honest - it’s quite daunting. What if it doesn’t work for me? What if this is just for the Old Covenant and now we are free from the Law? Is this irresponsible given my situation? What if God is calling me to give only in other ways? I have asked the same questions.
So our treasurer John Belmont would like to help us put God to the test. Here’s the deal. He will arrange, for anyone who wants to, a three month tithing trial. You tithe and pray during that time that God will bless you in your life and provide for all your needs financially. If, at the end of that time you can conclude that he has blessed you and provided for you (and I think he will) then you’ll have grown in faith and released resources for the kingdom.
And if for any reason you feel he has not blessed you and allowed you to get into trouble financially then John will refund you. There’ll be no questions asked, no judging, no pressure, no assumption of failure, no guilt… you’ll get your money back and that will be the end of it. His details are on the notice sheet.
“Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not drop their fruit before it is ripe,” says the Lord Almighty. “Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land,” says the Lord Almighty.
Preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 7th March 2010
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