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First Fruits Giving is "Thanksgiving", not "Charity"
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Firstborn are Dedicated as Spiritual Leaders
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Levites replace Firstborn as the Spiritual Leaders
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Response is to give First Fruits
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First-Born Animals
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First Fruits/Crops
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Levites are also commanded to tithe
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Our First Fruits giving is a response of thanks to God for His First Fruits
gift of Jesus
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FIRST FRUITS GIVING
Scripture Reference: Portions of Exodus 11-13, 32 & Numbers 3
Rev. John Terpstra
11/22/99
When I think about the word "stewardship" I get shivers up my spine. And those are matched by the shivers that went up your spine when you found out that the deacons were going to start a stewardship program, or that I was about to begin a series on stewardship. You thought,
"It's a good time to go to Hawaii or Grandma's or just take a little break from church while we do the stewardship thing."
Stewardship - it's the cod liver oil of personal health. I've got to take it
"at least I did when I was a kid" but I despised it. Stewardship has that
"oh no, look what's coming now" feel to it. There are some pastors who wonder about what they do about stewardship.
God's people wonder what in the world is this thing called stewardship and how should I think about it, and how should I respond to it.
It's interesting the way people talk about stewardship and talk about the bringing forth of the offering. Some churches are more user-friendly, and they talk about ?we are now going to receive your gifts? and try to be very calm about that and very kind. Or ?we urge you to bring forth your offering? and try to use some very careful, kind, passive language.
It's more of the Reformed way, or the Lutheran way or the Episcopalian way. Then there is the Nazarene, the Baptists and the Assemblies and they take the COLLECTION. Some of them
don't even use that nice of language. They just say,
"We're going to pass the plate now! And if it ain't full, we're going to pass it
again!" Somewhere in the middle of that is how we think about offering. Is it just out of the goodness of our heart as
we're touched by God's gospel? Does it feel like there our deacons are collection agency representatives who feel they have to try to convince that we ought to give or else? Give or die!
Because I am so convinced that stewardship is misunderstood in the church of Jesus Christ I have committed myself to and have already found great joy in coming to a better, healthier understanding of what stewardship is. That joyful, acquiring and managing and using, and then sharing with others all that the Lord God has placed in my care. And then returning the first portion of that back to Him as a thankful response for what He did to me when Jesus Christ gave His life for my sin. I began to understand that my bringing of my first
fruits - of my time, of my ability, of my financial blessing - back to God is simply a response to something He already gave me.
What is it we're doing when we return a portion of God's blessing back to him. Think about the words we use. We call it charitable giving. Is it really charity? Charity is the giving of a gift to someone who really doesn't ?deserve? it. They haven't earned it. So when we bring our
"gifts", are we really being charitable? And to whom? God? Are we saying he doesn't have it coming to Him. That it's not His. It's ours, but out of the goodness of my heart,
we've decided to give something to God. It's charity to God. We need to stop calling our gifts charity. Charity is on the other side. Charity is what God gives to me and to you. Charity is the goodness of God, the owner of all, the Creator of the universe, who said ?Here.? Grace and charity is the same word in the Bible. He says, ?Here is my charitable giving to you. Here's my universe. Here are the birds, the goats, the rivers, the mountains, the streams. All for you.? What we give back to God is not charity. Our word ?thanksgiving? is the exact, right word. We give a thanks to the giver. The best word is offering. The Bible says what you and I give back to God is an offering to Him. An offering of our heart. An offering back of our blessings because we are so struck by what He gave us.
I want to explain in a little further detail where first fruits giving comes from. What is it rooted in? I am convinced that you and I know why God has created this system of giving us everything and inviting a thank offering back. We understand how that works. I think that messages like this won't be needed to be given very often. The story is told on the bluish-purple sheet, and the references
I'm going to make right now, you will also find right there. You may look them up now or look them up later.
God's people were given a land. The land of modern Israel. But after a time they found themselves enslaved to the Pharaoh of Egypt, and after 400 years, God said, ?It is time for My people to leave the land of slavery and return to the land of promise. The holy land that
I've entrusted to them?. In a very direct encounter between Moses, the spokesperson of God, and Pharaoh the king of Egypt, after a series of ten plagues, came that last one in which God promised that the firstborn children, the sons of the Egyptian empire would be taken as a punishment for their sin of disobedience. For enslaving those that God wanted free there would be punishment. Pharaoh did not believe, and that night the angel took the firstborn son of all the families of Egypt and they wailed from the Pharaoh himself, down throughout the empire. And God passed over the doorposts of His people, and their firstborn children were spared. The story of the plagues is told in Exodus 11.
In chapter 13 the story continues. God says to the people, ?From this day forward, the firstborn of your womb belongs to me, as your reminder that you live by grace, that your freedom was wrought by My hand. The firstborn son of your womb you must dedicate as a special child to My work, and I will work through those children as they are raised up into the leaders of the people. They will serve as special instruments and spiritual leaders of the people.
Then a very tragic story happened. It's told in Exodus 32. Moses, some months later, is on top of Mt. Sinai, and God has given him the law, the words that will instruct the life and lifestyle of His people. And the people are untrusting down in the valley, and they call upon Aaron, an assistant to Moses and say, ?Give us something to look at to worship?. And he says, ?Give me all your gold?. And he crafts a golden calf, and the people bow down and worship to the calf. Moses descends the mountain and gazes upon the sin of idolatry in the valley and is infuriated with the people. He races down and says, ?There will be a
judgment for your horrible sin of rejecting the Lord God, the one who has freely redeemed you. Anyone who is willing to stand with the Lord, walk forward and you will be the instruments of God's
judgment upon the rest of the people. One of the twelve tribes of Israel stood forward named the Levites, from Levi, one of the twelve sons. The Levites walked forward, and God said that they would be instruments of My
judgment. Grab your sword and move among the people, and blood was shed and 3,000 of the people died that day. And God said,
"By your obedience, you Levites have set yourselves aside as My special instruments of grace. You will now be the leaders of the people. You will be in charge of the festivals. You will be in charge of the teaching. You will be in charge of their offerings. You will be My representatives on earth as you lead My people into truth and
service."
Then sometime later, and this story is told in Numbers Chapter 3. Sometime later after 40 years of wandering in the wilderness for their disobedience, God is about to bring His people finally into the Promised Land. That story is told in the book of Joshua. But now in Numbers 3, God says, ?No longer will I require the firstborn son of every family to leave their home and serve as My religious leaders. Now is the time
I'm going to let you keep your firstborn, and I will take only that tribe of Levi. There will be an exchange. You owe Me your firstborn, but you may keep them because
you've given Me one tribe. And he said, ?Count off.? The people of Israel counted the firstborn sons of the entire nation, and there were 22,000. He said, ?Levites, count off.? They counted off, and there were 22,273. He says, ?There's going to be an exchange here. The Levites will come and be the servants of God. The firstborn will return home. But just so you get the point, it's going to be one for one. So as the 22,000 stepped forward, there were 273 extra Levites, and God said you need to pay for them too. And you will pay for them at the rate of five shekels per person.? So five shekels for every one of the 273 added up to 1365 shekels, and the Levites came plus that additional offering to compensate, and from that moment forward, the Levites were the ministers of God, and the firstborn children went home.
When they came to the Promised Land they had allocated land for each of the tribes. From Dan to Beersheba, little plots of the nation Israel were assigned to Benjamin, to Manasseh, to Ephraim, to Judah, Dan,
Issachar, Reuben - all of the twelve sons each got a portion of land, except the Levites. They got nothing. God said, ?The Levites will be your ministers. They will be the spiritual guides of the nation.? The people said, ?How will we care for them?? And that's the Numbers 18 story. God said, ?Here's the plan. Because I redeemed you from Egypt at the cost of the firstborn sons of Egypt, and because I spared your sons, and yet you now have your sons as home, and I have taken the Levites, whenever you harvest your crops, the firstborn of your animals and the first fruits of your harvest, you bring to the Levites as your thank offering. And that's how
I'll provide for you. They get no land. They get no animals. They are your pastors, your ministers, your spiritual guides. They will teach you. They will care for the poor. They will guide your personal lives of service. And you will support them. You will support the ministry I do on earth by bringing your first fruits for them.? It even goes on to say a special word of instruction for the Levites, as it would be to me as a Levite or a pastor among you. God said a special word to the Levites. He said,
"You're my special ministers. You live on the first fruits of the rest of the nation. But even you live by grace alone. Even you were redeemed. So you Levites, when the tithe comes from the people and your storehouse then is full, you tithe as well. You take the first and the best of everything you get from the people's land and animals, and you turn that over to Me, and you may not use that. You may use none of that for your personal use. You return that back over to
Me."
So that principle of the first fruits, reminding the people of their salvation, their redemption from Egypt., and then the way God provided for the ministry He did in the world by the first gifts of the people, all is linked together through those texts. This goes on for years and years throughout the Bible times.
Then one day a little baby is born whose birth we again anticipate. After 33 years of active ministry, the time comes as He receives the call from His Father, the time has come for Him to go to Jerusalem and to complete His mission on earth. Jesus makes His way into Jerusalem, and it just so
happens - or it is orchestrated by God - that as the people once again are reliving the Passover story in the month of Abib, which is the first month of the Jewish year, on the 14th day, they reenacted the Passover ceremony. They reminded themselves of their redemption at this annual festival. That's right. We live by grace. We were freely redeemed by God. That's right. So they cut the neck of the lamb. They offer a sacrifice to God. They dressed up in Passover garb, meaning they were ready to run, ready to leave. As they are reenacting the Passover on the 14th day of the last month, in 33 AD, in that particular year, one of their own was being nailed up on a tree, and His side was being speared. His blood was being shed, as the Israelite people were reenacting Passover on a Friday evening. Then Saturday was a Holy Day. It was their Sabbath, their Holy Day. And Jesus was in the tomb. On the first Sunday after the Passover, as they had done for centuries, the Jewish people responded to the great story of the Passover by bringing a first fruits gift to the holy
temple - their thank offering for the story and reality of salvation. On Sunday morning as they all make their way to the holy places with their first fruits offerings, God does the most amazing thing He's ever done in the history of the universe. He reached into a tomb, and He lifted His only begotten Son out of the tomb, and gave Him new life. The Bible calls Jesus our first
fruits - our gift from God. The timing of that is miraculous. The people come forward to give to the Lord, the Lord reaches into the tomb and gives the risen Lord to us.
So the tie between the giving of my first fruits, my best to God, a small token of the first fruit God's given to me in His Son. The match between redemption and first fruits is complete. The match between my undeserving salvation and God's great gift of Jesus, is now complete. They just go together. That's why
I'll never apologize to myself and to talking to you about the importance of our being persons who give our best, and returns thanks to God. I don't know any other way that I want to live than that way.
Let me close with just a few comments. Just let me string together a few words that have reminded me of the way I was raised and how this teaching comes together.
I'd walk into my mom and dad's bedroom once in a while, and Mom had the lower dresser with the mirror and dad had the higher bureau. All week long when I walked into their bedroom, I saw a little envelope that said ?First Fruits Offering? or ?Offering?,
I'm not sure what was on the top. It sat there all week. I never knew what that was all
about - until I studied first fruits giving. Then I realized that every time dad deposited his check in the bank, the first check he always wrote was to the church. He put it in a little envelope, put it on the bureau, and it sat there until the next time of worship. I thought that's incredible! He was always ready. He understood that principle. And he just waited for me to understand it. I think that is what I would recommend to you. Anytime God blesses you with your compensation, your paycheck, make the next line in your checkbook a first fruit gift to God. There are other parts in Deuteronomy where God says to the people, ?Don't sit down and eat the blessings of the land until
you've set aside God's portion.? That's maybe a way that we together in a nonagricultural society need to practice it. I don't farm. But what I can do is to take the blessings that God gives me and make sure I return a first portion to Him.
There's a phrase that I hear every once in awhile "God calls us to count our blessings." I guess what that says to me now that
I've studied it is not count it so I can say "Look at what I've got". I think the phrase ?Count your blessings? means count them so you can determine an appropriate amount to use as your return thanks to God. That's why God wants us to know what we have. Not so we can brag about it or show it off. But so we can know how to return thanks to Him. Giving and
gratitude - they go together.
My final comment this morning is just this. This principle of returning thanks to God is intended to be life changing for me and for you. It has the possibility of being life changing for Immanuel Church. When I said to you at the end of last Sunday's message that I was so touched by this that I was thinking about the times in my life, the weeks in my life where I thought there's no way, God, that I can return thanks to you right now. I?m struggling. I?m looking for ways to meet my obligations. That has never brought an ounce of joy, blessing, or success to my life; and therefore, I decided I wanted to make sure that I responded to His teaching in my own life by returning special gifts to Him as a sign of repentance and faith.
I also want to share with you that this exact same sermon I would feel compelled to give to you if right now this congregation was $50,000 ahead in what it had pledged. It makes no difference. We have to understand the connection between our gifts and His gift. And when we do, we are just so pleased to bring joyfully the fruit of our hearts.
Amen
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