Get On God’s Team—Here’s My Giving
Proverbs 3:1-12 2 Corinthians 9:6-15
We are in part 3 of our encouragement for us all to get on God’s Team where ever we are today. The purpose is do the work that Christ died for in order to reach others for God. The first week we looked at getting on the team by giving God our service. The second week we looked at getting on the team by giving God our time. Today we are going to get on God’s team by giving God our money.
Let’s play a game of jeopardy and see how many of the question you can answer correctly .
• Who does The Bible calls the richest person up to his time. (Answer: Who was Solomon).
• What does the bible call the root of all kinds of evil? (Answer: What is the love of money- 1 Timothy 6:10).
• Who gave 50% of the wealth he had to the poor on the day he got saved. (Answer: Who was Zaccheus.-Luke 19:8).
• Who said, “You Should Have Given A Tithe without neglecting justice and the love of God.” (Answer: Who was Jesus- Luke 11:42).
• Who gave the largest offering ever in the Bible? (Answer Who was the poor widow—She put in all she had to live on, two copper coins)
One thing we learn from the poor widow is that God is always more impressed by the smallness of the amount we have left after giving than God is impressed by the amount we gave.
Let’s do one more game. I am going to give you a million dollars and the opportunity to bid on three things. If you are not the highest bidder, you will automatically lose the item you are bidding on. Let’s get ready to bid.
• What’s the most you are willing to bid for your eyesight?
• What’s the most you are willing to bid on being able to move your body from the neck down?
• What’s the most you are willing to bid on having a sound mind and being able to think straight and clearly?
Think for a moment about how much you valued each one of those things. Now think, how much did you pay God to make those things possible for you? How much are you willing to give to God today out of appreciation for these and so many other things God has made possible in your life.
All of a sudden, God asking us for a penny out of each dime we manage to get doesn’t seem that much? Why is it that we have to lose something to appreciate having it in the first place. Wouldn’t life be richer if we could appreciate what we now have now, and joyfully give thanks for it, paying whomever we can for making it possible.
Getting on God’s team is partly about knowing where our victories in life actually come from. It’s knowing where our blessings come from. When we read like we did in Proverbs,” honor the Lord with your wealth”, do you see it as an opportunity to get on the team with our giving, or do you see it as an attack on our possessions.
One thing I do know about God, is that God is good, and God wants to bless us. Even in the verse in Proverbs, God had a good reason for telling us to honor the Lord with our wealth. The verse goes on to say, Proverbs 3:10 (NIV2011) 10 then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine.
God is saying if you can honor me with your giving, I can give you more than what you would have had in the first place. I will also see to it that you have a good time celebrating it.
The writer of Proverbs knew that some of us would have a hard time believing this so he wrote earlier in the verse, Proverbs 3:5-6 (NIV2011)
5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; 6 in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.
Two things need to happen for you to get the kind of return God wants to give you with your money. The first is to trust God and quit trying to figure things out your self. Your math is not God’s math. The second thing is to recognize that your money is tied to every other area of your life. What you do with money, determines what you experience in life?
I have seen God do things with money in my life that I could have never done on my own. My wife and I have always been tithers. Even in seminary, when we didn’t have a lot of money, we gave 10% of our income to the Lord. We were at a small Presbyterian Church, and because we tithed they thought we were rich. It wasn’t that we were giving so much. It was that others were giving so little.
After I finished seminary, I wanted to go to Law School. I had to choose between staying at small little church in Boston, that could not pay me a ½ time salary at minimum wage, and a tuition free scholarship offer from Emory University Law School in Atlanta Ga.
Pastor Toby had finished seminary, so we were free to leave the area. If I had relied on my own understanding I would have left Boston and gone to Emory. Instead I decided to trust God and stay put right where I was and serve in this little church. Not only did God bless us with a wonderful opportunity to pastor together and to watch this church blossom into a wonderful congregation, God opened a door I never could have seen coming.
A year later after my agonizing decision. God had me make another decision. Only this time the option was “do I go to Law School with all expenses paid and a $300 monthly check in Boston where we could continue to pastor the church” or do I turn it down. You see, my sowing my tithes and my willingness to acknowledge God’s sovereignty over all areas of my life caused by barns to overflow and my vats to fill over with new wine.
Young people start the tithing process while your check is small. First because if you are faithful in the small things, you will be faithful in much according to Jesus. Second is that you don’t know what your giving today is buying you in the future. If you get on God’s team with your giving early on, God is going to do some amazing things in your life opening doors for you to go in for free when others have to pay all kinds of money.
In our New Testament reading in 2 Corinthians, the apostle Paul is encouraging the Corinthians to Get on God’s Team with their giving. There had been a severe famine in Palestine, and the Christians in Jerusalem were having a difficult time making ends meet.
This tells us that, just because you tithe does not mean that you won’t go though some tough times financially. Tough times are the means God uses to discipline us and to draw us closer to Him.
Paul had asked the other believers outside of Palestine in Greece, Asia Minor, and Macedonia to take up an offering to be sent to Jerusalem to help the poor saints out in Jerusalem.
The church in Corinth had boasted about how much they loved God, how they had all the spiritual gifts, and what they were going to do to help out.
It turns out, they had been talking about what they were going to do for quite some time, but so far they had not done anything in terms of collecting the money. The Corinthian church had quite a few influential people, and they had money.
In contrast, the church in Macedonia was made up of believers who were undergoing severe persecution for Christ. Many of them were poor and struggling themselves. Paul lets us know in chapter 8, that when he looked and at how bad off they were, he was going to exempt them from sending in a offering.
He was not even going to pass the plate. But the Macedonians insisted that an offering be taken up so that they could help their brothers and sisters in Jerusalem. The Macedonians didn’t look at what they had, they looked at the God they served. It makes a difference if our giving starts with our God and not ourselves.
The word of God tells us the Macedonians first gave themselves to the Lord and then to the cause. They not only shocked themselves at how much the offering came to, they completely surprised the apostles with the size of the offering.
Paul writes in advance to the Corinthians to let them know what the Macedonians had done. Paul had boasted to the Macedonians about the Corinthian church. After the size of the poor people’s offering, Paul told the Corinthians to get busy with their gift. Some of the Macedonians had wanted to go to Corinth with him to see what the Corinthians were going to give and how they measured up.
In chapter 9, Paul is saying “now don’t you all embarrass me and don’t embarrass yourselves by not having the offering ready when I get there.” So now we find instruction on what it means to get on God’s team by our giving.
When we you give our lives to Christ, we are in essence giving him everything we are and everything we have because we are declaring that Jesus Is Lord over our lives. Our salvation is not dependent on the things we do but on recognizing His lordship over our lives.
You recognize that without Jesus’ death and resurrection, you would have no hope of being saved or having your sins paid for. You should joyfully make the exchange of what you have for what you have received. Whatever we give for the cause of Christ, should be done with joy in our hearts, and not as a reluctant obligation.
Can you imagine being in love with someone and they bring you a beautiful gift for your birthday. You say, “thank you”. Instead of saying you’re welcome, the other person begins to say, “well I really didn’t want to buy it for you in the first place. It cost way too much money, and I had a whole bunch of the things I could have used that money on.
But since I had to get you something for your birthday because that’s what you’re supposed to do on birthdays, I went ahead and made the sacrifice.” How many of you know this relationship is headed for trouble?
God’s word gives us some giving principles in.2 Corinthians 9:6-9 (NIV2011)
6 Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. If you are planting a garden and you want to grow tomato plants, corn, collard greens, and beans, what you grow is dependent not on what you want, but on what you actually plant.
If all you do is plant a half a row of tomatoes, you can forget about eating corn, collard greens and beans. The only thing coming up is tomatoes, and if you did not put in enough tomato seeds into the ground, you’re not going to get very many tomatoes. You can pray, but God is going to say no.
God asks us to plant seeds and give him the chance to multiply them in ways we never could have imagined. There are times when God is saying “won’t you trust me just a little bit?” Won’t you give me something to work with.
Who would you rather believe? The Ohio Lottery Campaign that says, if you just spend a $100 a week on lottery tickets, you might win the jackpot Powerball even though your chances are a good 1 in 292 million. That means if you played 10 tickets each day, you would be practically guaranteed a win if you live to be 80,000 years old and the same number always came out.
Compare that to what God says in Malachi 3:10 to God’s people. Malachi 3:10-11 (NIV2011) 10 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.
11 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.
God is saying, I can bless your life in such a way that you wouldn’t believe it. God says I can even stop bad things from ever reaching you so that you go on being blessed without knowing I’ve blessed you.
God’s blessings don’t just come in money. God can bless you in your relationships with other people. God can bless you with good health. God can bless you in your walk with the Lord.
Pastor Rick, are you saying I have to tithe to get God’s blessing and to get on God’s team. I’m not saying that at all. Jesus told us that we should tithe. He never insisted that tithing was necessary to go to heaven.
He showed us, He loves us and is willing to die for us, whether we ever tithe or not. If you recall when Jesus was on the cross, there was a thief there on a cross who recognized that Jesus was the Son of God.
On the cross, this thief recognized that Jesus was his only hope for salvation and eternal life. He cried out to Jesus, “Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
Jesus didn’t respond, “Sorry I know your giving record, and I know you never tithed.” Jesus said, “today you will be with me in paradise.” Giving is not about getting into heaven. Giving is about letting your light shine to get as many others in heaven as possible with you.
The more you focus on your life in heaven, the more you will give away. Jesus tells us to put treasure in heaven by giving it away on earth.
In verse 7 Paul gives us another truth and that it is that we are created with a personality that’s at different spots when it comes to giving. Some of us are born with a nature that is eager to share. Some of us are born with a nature that’s as stingy as you can get.
Some of us look for ways to give to others and some of us look for ways to hold on to everything we got. We are quick to say this is mine. The challenge in the body of Christ is to still accept each other as being on God’s team though some of us need a lot of growing in our giving.
When the Holy Spirit comes into our lives, He begins to change the personality we have with the fruits of the spirit. Now depending on where we started on the giving continuum at birth and how open we are to the Spirit, it affects how we are willing to give on God’s team.
If we were stingy to start with, to tithe is going to be a tremendous struggle and sacrifice. If we were generous to start with a tithe is not a sacrifice at all. Actually in order for our giving to be a sacrifice, we would have to give 25% instead of 10%.
Even though Paul is talking about a special offering, I think the principle here applies to our regular giving as well. “7 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.”
Paul is saying each of us needs to take this matter to God and have an honest conversation with God about our own personal giving. Once you have read what God expects of you and desires of you, make up you mind what you are going to do and go ahead and do it. Whatever you pledged, give it as you said you would.
Your giving on God’s team should be flowing out of genuine love from you heart so that you are cheerful about contributing to the work of Christ at the level you are contributing.
But you do know that if you sow sparingly you will reap sparingly. If you sow abundantly, you will reap abundantly. We all have something to say about what we can expect from the future. The thing is, God knows what we are going to need, and God is able to provide for us in ways we can’t imagine.
God’s purpose in having us become great givers is not for us to be poor without anything. God really is desiring to enrich our lives. We see in verse 8:
8 And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. God wants to take care of us and God wants us to help him to take care of us by doing our part with our giving.
2 Corinthians 9:10-11 (NIV2011) 9 As it is written: “They have freely scattered their gifts to the poor; their righteousness endures forever.”
10 Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness.
11 You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.
Our giving goes back to our glorifying God by others giving thanks for the way we used what we have to be a blessing on God’s team. Everybody should be a blessing in someway to someone who can never bless them back in return. Ask God who are you going to bless before 2020 is over because God has been good to you.
Remember, no matter how much we give, it never measures up to what God gave to us. For the Scriptures tell us. John 3:16-17 (NIV2011)
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
