Scripture: 2 Corinthians 5:17
A wealthy man was very near death. He was sad because he’d worked so hard and didn’t want to lose all of his riches. He wanted to take them with him, so he pleaded with God and finally was allowed to bring one bag with him to heaven. Overjoyed, he loaded his suitcase with gold bars. Upon arrival in heaven he’s checking in but Peter tells him that he can’t bring the bag in. He insists that he had permission, so things were checked on and it was found that he did have approval from God to bring one bag. When the bag was opened to see what was so needed by the man, Peter exclaimed, “You could bring anything, and you brought pavement!?!”
Currently, we’re between sermon series and next Sunday we’ll be starting 2 Samuel (picture). Because many are new at Grace, maybe you wonder what our philosophy on giving is.
Please turn to 2 Corinthians 5:17 (p. 908): “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” The bottom line of that verse is that a born-again Christian is to be different. Our new life in Christ radically changes every sphere of our being. If there’s not a big change, Scripture teaches that it may be because there’s no salvation. There should be lifestyle changes when someone becomes a Christ-follower. Our behavior and worldview should radically change and that includes our view towards money. This morning then we want to take some time to work through Biblical Insights on Giving and what it means to have a believer’s beliefs about money.
Most pastors don’t like preaching about the subject of money. I don’t. I also don’t like preaching about hell or other pet sins, like pride. Yet, if I don’t teach what Scripture says about these things, I’m failing my calling. So, as we work through these Biblical Insights on Giving. I want to do that by answering some common questions. If you’re taking notes…
1. Who should give?
All believers should give to the Lord. Giving is the privilege and responsibility for those who have received God’s gift of salvation. It’s for family members of God’s forever family. The church shouldn’t expect unbelievers to give because giving is an act of worship.
Based on Scripture, it’s wrong for churches or ministries to appeal to unbelievers for funds. 3 John 7 mentions Christian workers who “went out for the sake of the Name, accepting nothing from the Gentiles.” That’s why at Grace we don’t have spaghetti dinners or bake sales where we solicit funds from the lost. An unbeliever’s greatest need is God’s free gift of salvation. We don’t want to confuse them from the gospel’s message that
God’s gift of grace is free. As sinners, nothing we can do will please God. We don’t want to confuse a lost person into thinking that they can earn points with God by giving.
Unbelievers will gripe that the church is always after their money. Sadly, in some churches that’s true. The Bible teaches though that if someone has not given their life to God in response to His giving His Son on the cross for their sins, then God doesn’t want their money. He wants their heart.
Giving is a thank offering to God. A lost person can’t give such an offering. Giving is for believers and should be done by all believers. Poor Christians as well as rich should give. In 2 Corinthians 8:2, Paul writes about a group of believers who were in “extreme poverty,” yet who gave generously. Just because a believer can’t give much, they’re not exempt.
If you’re a professing believer and don’t give, something is wrong. It may be that you have a problem with faith and trusting God. Or you worship gold instead of God. Or, worst of all, you really don’t know Jesus.
My day starts the same way every day. Jane and I kiss every day. We continually tell each other we love each other. We look for ways to be thoughtful. Why? Because I don’t want Jane mad at me, giving me the silent treatment? No. Hopefully, you know why. We do it because we love each other. I love doing things for Jane. Jane loves music. I listen to it, but I don’t love music. Going to concerts isn’t my thing but Jane is “my thing.” So, if going to a concert makes Jane happy, guess what? We’re going!
Friend, if you don’t give, please don’t fool yourself into thinking that you love Jesus. Our actions reveal our heart.
2. Why should I give?
“I’m so depressed and I can’t get any dates,” the very overweight man told a friend. “I’ve tried everything to lose weight.” “I think I can help,” said his friend. “Be dressed and ready to go tomorrow at 8 a.m.” The next morning, a beautiful woman in an exercise suit knocked on the man’s door. “If you can catch me, you can have me,” she said, as she took off. He huffed and puffed after her. This routine went on every day for the next five months. The man lost over 100 pounds. He finally felt confident that he’d catch the woman the next day.
That morning he whipped open his front door to find a very overweight woman in a jogging suit waiting for him. “Your friend said to tell you,” She began, “that if I can catch you, I can have you.” When it comes to giving, motive is everything.
A Christian gives because they’ve been given so much. We give because God first gave to us. We want to please Him. In giving motivation is everything.
A. There are wrong motives for giving:
Pride. If you give so others notice or to be honored by people for your generosity, you’re giving for the wrong reason.
Guilt. We shouldn’t give because we feel guilty or because we have so much. If we’re not being good stewards of what God has entrusted to us, then we should repent and give from the right motivation.
Greed. Luke 6:38, “Give, and it will be given to you,” is wrongly used to manipulate people to give so that they’ll think they’ll get if they give. Jesus doesn’t promise that. He’s stating a principle that if you’re a generous person, God and others will be generous toward you. But you may give and be poorer financially because you gave.
Prosperity Theology is heresy. Yet according to a recent Lifeway Report, 52% of American Protestant churchgoers say their church teaches God will bless them with more money if they give to their church. The Bible doesn’t teach that. Then, 3 in 4 churchgoers (76%) believe God wants them to prosper financially and 45% believe that they have to do something for God in order to receive material blessings from Him. If that’s true Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates (picture) must be generous givers because they’re the richest people in America.
Pressure. Responding to high-pressure tactics of Christian fund-raisers is another wrong motive. We’re not to give “under compulsion” (2 Cor. 9:7).
Power. Money is power. Some people threaten to take their money elsewhere if you don’t do what they want. That’s not how Christ’s church is to function. It’s a sin to use your money to try to buy spiritual influence.
B. Here are some right motives for giving:
I give because God has been so generous to me. This is the primary motive for giving. God has given me so much. Everything we have was given to us by God. That begins with salvation. God gave His Son to provide for our salvation and has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ. He “richly supplies us with all things to enjoy” (1 Timothy 6:17). Because God has given so generously to us, we want to respond by giving generously back to Him.
I give because I want to please God. Out of response to God’s grace in my life, I will want to please God by pursuing various spiritual goals:
I want God to be glorified. God is glorified when we give from the right motives and in the right way (2 Cor. 9:13). God’s glory is to be the overarching goal of the Christian life.
I want my heart to be right before God. Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:21). Your heart follows your treasure. If I want my heart focused on the things of God, I must focus by investing in His work.
I want God to be my master. “You cannot serve God and money” (Matthew 6:24). Generous giving loosens our grip on money.
I want my life to be used by God (2 Cor. 9:10). God could have chosen to work without us, but He didn’t. He could have used angels to spread the gospel but instead He chose to use us. It takes money to advance God’s work. If you don’t give, God will use someone else, but you’ll miss the blessing of partnering with God.
I want to store up treasures in heaven. Investments on earth are insecure; investments in heaven are secure and eternal. There’s no more sound investment than that of reaching people with the good news of Christ. God credits money which we give to further His kingdom as fruit to our account. He’ll reward us for it someday.
I want my faith to grow. God will provide money for you to give if you’ll trust Him for it. If you’re willing to be a faithful channel for God’s resources, He’ll provide the funds for you to give. But if you bottle it up and keep it for your own comforts, the flow will dry up. Ask God to give you money to give. Then make sure you give it!
I want to be a worshiper of God. Giving is a sacrifice that pleases God. King David knew the connection between giving and worship. He said, “I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God which cost me nothing” (2 Samuel 24:24). Personally, I like to give enough so it pinches my lifestyle. If it’s cheap and easy, it’s not worship. Worship is costly. Because God has given so abundantly to me and because I want to please Him, I’m motivated to give cheerfully and generously to His work.
3. How should I give?
There are some basic principles of giving:
I should give in a pre-planned, systematic way. 1 Corinthians 16:1-2 “Now concerning the collection for the saints: as I directed the churches of Galatia, so you also are to do. On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper, so that there will be no collecting when I come.”
“As he may prosper” implies that whenever I have income, I give. “The first day of the week” suggests regular giving. They’d give when they came to a worship service. Giving right away when you get paid helps keep God’s values anchored in your soul, otherwise money can crowd it out.
2 Corinthians 9:7 gives another insight, “Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” “As he has decided in his heart” implies praying and thinking about it – advance planning, not giving on impulse. In response to God’s grace, each person or family should sit down and determine a fixed amount they believe honors God and that He wants them to give. Then, follow through systematically. You shouldn’t wait until you come to church and think, “Oh no! I haven’t given for a while. I’d better drop something in.”
When I was a kid, my older brother periodically dropped by the house. I was about 11 or 12 and one day when he dropped by. It happened to be my birthday. After visiting with my Dad, he headed to his car, saw me and said something about it being my birthday. So, he stopped, pulled out his wallet and gave me $20. Do you think that meant a lot to me? No. To be honest, I was a little hurt that I was just an afterthought.
I should give first before my other financial responsibilities. Proverbs 3:9, Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your produce.” Scripture teaches the principle of “firstfruits.” Our temptation is to give if anything is left over, after all of our bills are paid. Satan often makes sure there’s nothing left over. Giving first makes a statement about my priorities. It’s a step of faith that I’m trusting God to meet my needs. When you wait and give last, you either won’t give or will give very little. You’re tempted to spend the extra on yourself! Give the first fruits, off the top, and trust God to meet your needs.
It’s important that I give sacrificially at times. The norm is, “as God has prospered.” At times God wants us to give more than we believe we can afford. In 2 Corinthians 8:3 Paul writes about a group of believers who gave “beyond their means.” So, you regularly give but an opportunity to give comes along and the Lord impresses on you, “I want you to stretch and give more.” Or, some extra money comes your way, and the Lord says, “I want you to give it all.”
There’s a church of 400 members in Thailand where every member tithes. For them, tithing is sacrificial. The members all make the U.S. equivalent of 20 cents a week, plus their rice! But because they give sacrificially, they support their own pastor, have sent two missionaries out to other hard to reach areas, and generously help other poor. One other fact you should know: each member of this church has leprosy! All believers are to give from biblical motives in line with biblical principles.
4. Where do I give or to whom should I give?
We’re inundated with so many requests for giving. How do we sort them out and determine which ones to give to and which ones to ignore? Here’s some basic guidelines.
A. Give to destitute family members. This is your first priority. To fail to take care of your family makes you worse than an unbeliever. 1 Timothy 5:8, “But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” This verse is talking about your immediate family: spouse, children…aged parents. It doesn’t include a lazy, irresponsible family member who won’t work, squanders money or is an addict. It’s a “widow indeed.” (1 Tim. 5:3-16). That refers to a godly woman without family to care for her. The church must help them. But widows with families are to be cared for by their families. So, it’s not right to deprive your own family of the basics of life in order to give to others.
B. Give to your spiritual family. The New Testament teaches the local church is God’s plan for worship, evangelism, and discipleship. It ought to be next in priority for giving after destitute family members are cared for.
The local church is where we worship and are fed spiritually. It’s our spiritual family that invests in our spiritual growth, so it needs to be a priority in our giving. The church supports workers sent to evangelize and plant new churches in places where the gospel has not yet gone.
C. Give to needy persons. We should give to help meet physical needs: food, shelter, medicine, etc. The New Testament also give an order of priority here. First, we help believers, our spiritual family. Second, we help others as part of our witness, offering assistance in the name of Christ. At Grace we have a Deacon Care fund for this purpose. As you give to this fund at the end of Communion, it’s used to help the needy. So, the general priority for giving moves outward from immediate family to your spiritual family, to helping the needy – believers and unbelievers.
5. So here’s the BIG question – how much?
Let’s be honest. This is the #1 question for most of us. We think, “How much do I have to give?” That’s the wrong question. Let me illustrate.
Christmas is around the corner, so I want to get Jane a gift. How do you think Jane would feel if she knew that my approach to getting her a gift was “How much do I have to spend to keep her happy? What’s the minimum?” While Jane may never know my selfish thinking, God knows.
Motive is everything when it comes to giving. A believer’s question should be, “How much can I give?” Please don’t give to pay bills. Give because you’re so thankful to God for saving you and you love God, so it’s a joy and privilege to give to the One who gave His Son for you.
We give because we have a new relationship with the Holy Spirit. Romans 8:14 says, “For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God.” The Holy Spirit leads believers into godly living. Everything we have belongs to God. But it’s easier to follow a set of rules. Just give your 10% percent and that takes care of it. But God wants us to be led by the Spirit, motivated by love and gratitude, as we give in worship. In fact, it’s a little scary. It means that I’m not the accountant of my life, He is. I’m not living by rules but a relationship with my Father.
Give as God has prospered you. How much should you give? How much has God prospered you? In the New Testament, they gave according to their ability, in some cases beyond their ability. The general principle is to give as God prospered you.
When God entrusts you with more money, instead of spending it on more stuff that you have to protect from moths, rust, and thieves, ask, “Lord, how do you want this money used? After all, it’s all yours.”
As God gives you more, consider increasing the percentage you give, not just the amount. If you have enough to live comfortably, invest more where God pays eternal dividends.
Here’s the catch: we need to start giving where we’re at and not put it off until someday when we’re financially secure. The Macedonian Christians gave when they were in deep poverty (2 Cor. 8:2). Jesus commended the poor widow who gave all she had to live on but wasn’t impressed with the large gifts of the rich because they had so much left over (Mark 12:41-44).
6. Givers are blessed and will reap eternal rewards.
Heaven is not the reward for being a giver. Heaven is God’s free gift based on Christ’s giving Himself on the cross. Heaven is for those who have accepted God’s free gift of salvation and those who’ve received God’s gift of eternal life will reap rewards in heaven in proportion to their stewardship of what God has given them in this life. Unlike our investments in this uncertain world that can be lost, our investments in heaven are secure from loss. “Instruct those who are rich in this present world not to be conceited or to fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy. Instruct them to do good to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is life indeed (1 Timothy 6:17-19).
How can you put a price on an investment that yields eternal dividends? If you give in worship to God, you’re storing treasure in heaven. And as we give to further God’s work, we’ll be welcomed into eternal dwellings by our friends who are there because we gave here so they could be there.
Conclusion
Somehow, we wrongly believe that you have to have a lot to be a generous giver. God doesn’t look at the amount, He sees your heart. I love this story by Eddie Ogan. Let me close with it today. She writes:
“I’ll never forget Easter 1946. I was 14, my little sister Ocy 12, and my older sister Darlene 16. We lived at home with our mother, and the four of us knew what it was like to do without many things. My dad had died five years before, leaving Mom with seven school kids to raise and no money. By 1946, my older sisters were married, and my brothers had left home.
A month before Easter, the pastor of our church announced that a special Easter offering would be taken to help a poor family. He asked everyone to save and give sacrificially. When we got home, we talked about what we could do. We decided to buy 50 pounds of potatoes and live on them for a month. This would allow us to save $20 of our grocery money for the offering. Then we thought that if we kept our electric lights turned out as much as possible and didn’t listen to the radio, we’d save money on that month’s electric bill. Darlene got as many house and yard cleaning jobs as possible, and both of us baby sat for everyone we could. For 15 cents, we could buy enough cotton loops to make three potholders to sell for $1. We made $20 on potholders.
That month was one of the best of our lives. Every day we counted the money to see how much we had saved. At night we’d sit in the dark and talk about how the poor family was going to enjoy having the money the church would give them. We had about 80 people in our church, so we figured that whatever amount of money we had to give, the offering would surely be 20 times that much. After all, every Sunday the Pastor had reminded everyone to save for the sacrificial offering.
The day before Easter, Ocy and I walked to the grocery store and got the manager to give us three crisp $20 bills and one $10 bill for all our change. We ran all the way home to show Mom and Darlene. We had never had so much money before. That night we were so excited we could hardly sleep. We didn’t care that we wouldn’t have new clothes for Easter; we had $70 for the sacrificial offering. We could hardly wait to get to church!
On Sunday morning, rain was pouring. We didn’t own an umbrella, and the church was over a mile from our home, but it didn’t seem to matter how wet we got. Darlene had cardboard in her shoes to fill the holes. The cardboard came apart, and her feet got wet, but we sat in church proudly, despite how we looked. I heard some teenagers talking about the Smith girls having on their old dresses. I looked at them in their new clothes, and I felt so rich.
When the sacrificial offering was taken, we were sitting on the second row from the front. Mom put in the $10 bill, and each of us girls put in a $20. As we walked home after church, we sang all the way. At lunch, Mom had a surprise for us. She had bought a dozen eggs, and we had boiled Easter eggs with our fried potatoes!
Late that afternoon the minister drove up in his car. Mom went to the door, talked with him for a moment, and then came back with an envelope in her hand. We asked what it was, but she didn’t say a word. She opened the envelope and out fell a bunch of money. There were three crisp $20 bills, one $10 bill, and seventeen $1 bills. Mom put the money back in the envelope. We didn’t talk, but instead, just sat and stared at the floor. We had gone from feeling like millionaires to feeling like poor white trash.
We kids had had such a happy life that we felt sorry for anyone who didn’t have our mom and dad for parents and a house full of brothers and sisters and other kids visiting constantly. We thought it was fun to share silverware and see whether we got the fork or the spoon that night. We had two knives which we passed around to whoever needed them. I knew we didn’t have a lot of things that other people had, but I’d never thought we were poor. That Easter Day I found out we were poor. The minister had brought us the money for the poor family, so we must be poor.
I didn’t like being poor. I looked at my dress and worn-out shoes and felt so ashamed that I didn’t want to go back to church. Everyone there probably already knew we were poor! I thought about school. I was in the ninth grade and at the top of my class of over 100 students. I wondered if the kids at school knew we were poor. I decided I could quit school since I had finished the eighth grade. That was all the law required at that time.
We sat in silence for a long time. Then it got dark, and we went to bed. All that week, we girls went to school and came home, and no one talked much. Finally on Saturday, Mom asked us what we wanted to do with the money. What did poor people do with money? We didn’t know. We’d never known we were poor.
We didn’t want to go to church on Sunday, but Mom said we had to. Although it was a sunny day, we didn’t talk on the way. Mom started to sing, but no one joined in and she only sang one verse. At church we had a missionary speaker. He talked about how churches in Africa made buildings out of sun-dried bricks, but they need money to buy roofs. He said $100 would put a roof on a church. The minister said, “Can’t we all sacrifice to help these poor people?”
We looked at each other and smiled for the first time in a week. Mom reached into her purse and pulled out the envelope. She passed it to Darlene. Darlene gave it to me, and I handed it to Ocy. Ocy put it in the offering plate. When the offering was counted, the minister announced that it was a little over $100. The missionary was excited. He hadn’t expected such a large offering from our small church. He said, “You must have some rich people in this church.”
Suddenly it struck us! We had given $87 of that “little over $100.” We were the rich family in the church! Hadn’t the missionary said so? Deep down, I knew that we were actually a rich family.”
God is so generous to us. You and I show that the Spirit has done a work in our hearts when we’re generous in return. Are you generous? Do you give to the Lord out of love, gratitude and worship? How’s your retirement program in heaven going? Are you storing up treasures there?
What does God think of your giving? Does it please Him? Because that’s what really matters. Is my Savior pleased with how I’m investing what He has entrusted to me?