Introduction
If you have
been coming to this church since the beginning of September, every sermon
you’ve heard so far has been about giving! You might be wondering to yourself,
“is this actually all they ever preach about at All Saints’?” And let me
reassure you that the answer is yes.
We preach
about God giving us his Son, about his Son giving us his Spirit as well as all
spiritual blessings and gifts; we preach about us giving thanks, about giving
up sin, about giving help to those in need, about giving our best in worship and
giving Satan hell. Giving covers just about everything.
Actually,
from next Sunday the theme is living by faith. But giving and faith are closely
related. A couple of weeks ago I heard a true story about a pastor who was
asked to take on the leadership of a large church in a big city that did a lot
of welfare work. And for all that social action the church engaged in they
received from the Council the sum of £120,000 a year - which kept a lot of
Christian mission going.
The pastor
himself, I won’t name him but some of you will have heard of him, came from an
upper class and wealthy family and had a private income from that so he didn’t take
a salary from the church. But one day, the Lord said to him “Give away all your
money. I want you to live by faith.” So he gave away his share of the family
fortune. He didn’t tell the church about it though. They still thought he was
well off.
So it was challenging
to his faith; even more so when he later married and had two children, and he
still didn’t let on that he was basically penniless - but he proved God’s faithfulness
and provision. The Lord supplied all his needs.
Sometime
later, the Council asked the church to extend the nature of its social work by opening
its premises for a Gay club. The pastor said “I’m very sorry but we can’t do
that.” The Council said, “If you refuse, we will withdraw the £120,000 annual
grant for all the other welfare work you do; the drop in, the ministry to the homeless,
the rehab for alcoholics, the support for pregnant teenagers, the youth outreach,
the lunch club, the days out for the disabled...”
So he spoke
to the church and said “A few years ago the Lord told me to give away every
penny I had. I’m still alive and I’ve got enough; enough for my family and some
to give away. Now the Council are going to take away most of the income for our
work here. But we’re not going to stop any of it. We’re going to trust the
Lord. I’ve proved I can do it and now we’re all going to do it.”
The church
didn’t cut a single thing – and now they are free from all the strings and
conditions and limitations that the Council insisted on.
It’s like
Hudson Taylor said: “When God's work is done in God's way for God's glory, it will
never lack God's supply.”
Harvest
Today is
Harvest Sunday and, you know what, God is a God of harvest. Did you know that there
is a harvest coming and we are going to get to reap it? I believe that. And I
believe that the more we sow and plant, the more we will harvest and reap. It’s
a biblical principle.
The harvest
of answered prayer comes after planting prayer.
The harvest
of loved and healed people comes after planting kindness towards everyone we meet.
The harvest
of souls coming to new faith in Jesus and discovering they’ve got a new family
in Christ comes after planting invitations to Alpha and to church to find out
more.
The harvest
of a properly resourced church making an impact in the community comes after planting
financial giving.
There was a
prophetic word at prayer breakfast yesterday about muck spreading. “Money is
like manure; pile it up and it stinks, but spread it around all over the place
and it makes everything grow.”
New shoots,
new growth, new life, only come after we sow in faith. There’s no harvest
without sowing.
Here’s a
courgette, or is it a marrow? I don’t know, but it was given to me this week by
someone at Saint Mary’s School in Long Newton. It was grown in the school
garden. We can admire it and marvel at it. But we all know that it would not be
here at all if someone hadn’t planted in the earth many months ago a seed smaller
than your fingernail.
The Tithe
Today, I want
to talk about the principle of tithing. Tithing means God gives me this (giant marrow) and I respond by
giving back this (modest courgette) for his work.
Tithing means
I give back to God, as an acknowledgement of his prior provision, the first
tenth of what I have already received from him.
Right from
the first book in the Bible, there people giving a tithe, 10%. And every time
they do, it is a spontaneous response to some kind of prior blessing from God.
So Abraham,
in Genesis 14, right after the Lord gives him victory against his adversaries, and
is blessed by Melchizedek the priest, gives a tenth of everything he has.
In Genesis
28, Abraham’s grandson Jacob has a spiritual experience, an encounter with God.
There’s a vision, and the presence of angels. He says “Surely God is in this
place!” Then he makes a decision right there and then about how he is going to
live his life from now on. “If God be with me and will watch over me on this
journey I am taking and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear so that I
return safely home, [in other words, if I can see blessing in my life] then Lord…
of all that you give me I will give you a tenth.”
The Law of
Moses mentions tithing a lot. Leviticus 27.30, 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.” So the first tenth of the harvest
wasn’t the people’s to keep. It was set aside to share.
What was tithing
for? Deuteronomy 14 explains it was for three reasons; firstly it was a way of thanking
God for the abundance of his provision. Secondly, it was to give an income to
the Levites who served the Lord in worship and had no land. And thirdly, it was
to give emergency relief to the poor.
All the way
through the Old Testament, this was the basic, standard benchmark for giving.
In the last
book of the Old Testament, which was written about 450 years before Christ, it
is still there. In Malachi 3.10 God says “Bring the whole tithe into the
storehouse, that there may be food in my house.”
Malachi lived
at a time of low rainfall and failing yields. The harvest was becoming an
annual disappointment. Every year it was Groundhog Day. Wheat fields were
patchy and dusty with dry, withered plants. Cattle and sheep were becoming bonier
and scrawnier. Why were things not going right?
God said,
speaking through Malachi, that it was due to spiritual neglect. All through the
Bible there is this simple principle: when God’s people honour him and put him
first he provides and blesses. And the reverse is true. When God’s people don’t
honour him and put themselves first, he is silent, his presence disappears from
worship and he withholds his blessing.
In Malachi’s
day, worship had gone stale. Everyone just went through the motions. God’s
people were drifting into foolish relationships with partners from pagan
nations. Marriages were falling apart. The most vulnerable people (widows,
orphans and immigrants) were being overlooked and forgotten. The nation was
becoming disconnected from God and poor harvests followed.
But 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.
What single
solution does God prescribe to lift the curse on the nation and bring it into a
new era of blessing and abundance? “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse," he says, “that there may be food in my house.”
God actually says
in v10 “Test me…” Time and time again God says in the Bible, “Don’t test me.”
But here, he makes an exception. God stakes his reputation on his competence to
provide. “Come on,” he says, “you can try me out for size.”
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.
Tithing has
been a useful rule of thumb for many Christians – and it has at times in my own
life. Kathie and I have only been in the red at one time in our 33 year
marriage - and that was the time we weren’t tithing. Otherwise, we have never
lacked for anything and have always had some left over.
How does this
work? I don’t know. But my personal testimony is that it does.
I have never
met anyone who told me they tithe and are broke. Let me quote three wealthy men,
each of whom gave away most of what they accumulated before they died.
John
Templeton, Christian stock market investor: He renounced his US
citizenship, to allow him to release an additional $100 million to charity that
he otherwise would have paid in income tax. This is what he said: “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, Christian oil tycoon: widely considered to be the wealthiest
American of all time. He said, “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
Gilmour Letourneau, Christian engineer and inventor: On his grave there is the
inscription from Matthew 6.33 – Seek first the kingdom of God and his
righteousness and all these things shall be added to you. This is what he said:
“I shovel money out, and God shovels it back ... but God has a bigger shovel!”
Not Under Law
Having said
all this, I need to say that the tithe is part of the Law of Moses and, as
such, is as voluntary for us under the New Covenant as circumcision or eating
kosher food. Tithing may be beneficial, but it is not binding. It may be commendable
but it is not compulsory. Some churches make tithing a condition of membership.
I don’t think they have any right to do so.
When Jesus
came, the religious leaders (in Luke 18) made painstakingly sure that they gave
away one tenth of all their earnings. They would have been mortified by the
idea of giving any less (even down to 10% of their herb garden – so they were
going round with a ruler and pair of scissors to give exactly 10%, not 11, not
9, of the herbs in the window box. And they were absolutely sincere in their
prayer “I fast twice a week” (they did) and pray every day (that’s absolutely
true as well).
But Jesus
said (v14) that it was completely useless because, when they talked about their
good spiritual habits, they were exalting themselves.
There was a
famous Rabbi in the first century called Simeon bar Yohi. One of his prayers
has been recorded and it’s very similar to what we find in Luke 18. His prayer
goes, “Lord if there are but two righteous men on earth, it is my son and I.
But if there is only one, it is I”.
Look at the
Pharisee’s prayer in v11-12. His prayer was basically “Lord, I’m fine. I’m
great.” The most common word is “I”. It was all about him and how good he was.
He was really talking to himself… And he didn’t get an answer to his prayer
either. Why not? Because he didn’t ask for one.
Jesus
fulfilled this Law of having to tithe because he gave, not 10, but 100% at the
cross and in doing that he abolished forever the mandatory 10% tax on faith. That’s
Old Testament living. You are not to be oppressed and burdened under the weight
of that law. You are under grace.
But the New
Testament still carries a promise of blessing to those who faithfully give back
to God their first fruits, not their last fruits.
A study from
Duke University recently found that more than 40 percent of actions people take
every day aren’t actually decisions but habits.
When I was
learning to drive, every manoeuvre I made was a decision. Mirror, signal, turn,
clutch down, gear change, clutch up, accelerator… But after a while, all that
became automatic. I never think to myself now, “Brake, clutch down, gear
change, clutch up…” It’s almost subconscious now. It’s a habit, not a series of
conscious decisions.
It’s the same
with giving. 2 Corinthians 9.7 in the New Testament says “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.”
God doesn’t
want gifts given resentfully or grudgingly. There is no pleasure in receiving a
Christmas present from someone who complains about how much it cost as they
hand it to you!
In the New
Covenant, God doesn’t set the standard rate and apply it across the board;
instead everyone decides in their heart what is right to give.
Then 1
Corinthians 16.2 says “On the first day of every week, each one of you should
set aside a sum of money in keeping with your income...” There it’s gone from a
decision to a habit. It’s the first day of the week, or of the month, or
whenever, but notice it’s the first
day.
So it’s not;
“Let’s see what’s left for a nice tip for the Lord after I’ve covered all the
bills.” Some Christians think that everything we have is ours and we choose how much of our
stuff we give away – if anything. But the Bible teaches that, if Jesus is Lord,
everything we are and have is already his.
Christians
are incredibly generous people. In 2012, the most recent figures I have, Anglican
churches alone (not including other churches in this country) donated more
money to outside charitable organisations than was raised by Children in Need. According
to the 2012 National Church and Social Action Survey Christians
offer 98 million hours of unpaid volunteer work on social projects every year -
and that’s outside of church-based
activities like lunch clubs and youth groups.
Ending
Let me end
with a lighter story.
The old
Southern Baptist Wally Criswell once talked about an ambitious young man who
told his pastor one day that he'd promised God a tithe of his income. They
prayed for God to bless his career. At that time, he was making $40 per week
and tithing $4. But after a few years his income increased and he was giving
$500 per week.
So he called his pastor to see if he could be released from his
tithing promise. It was getting a bit expensive. The pastor said, "Look,
honestly, I don't see how you can be released from your promise. You made a
solemn vow to God remember. But, I’ll tell you what. If you like, I’ll ask God
to shrink your income back to $40 a week, then you'd have no problem tithing $4
would you?!”
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 25 September 2016
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