"Develop First-Giving"
Rev. Howard Vanderwell
Hillcrest CRC, Hudsonville, MI
February 16, 1997
Text: Proverbs 3: 9-10
We come now to the fifth and the final message in this series on financial
stewardship, Free to Give. When I began the very first of those five messages
I told you there were four goals that I had in mind and wanted to accomplish
in this series. The first one was to focus on Biblical principles for giving.
I have tried to do that. We have with this morning now put 17 of those
principles together, they are printed in a booklet that looks like that
which is available if you'd like it for your continued study at the information
booth. Let's agree therefore that if you don't like some of those principles,
your argument is not so much with me but with the word of God.
Secondly, I wanted us to examine our practices for giving. I am very
heartened and encouraged by your responses last week and personal conversations,
the cards you turned in and in addition to personal conversations indeed
indicate that many of you are examining your own personal practices.
My third goal was to examine our motive for giving. I said there are
four different motives for giving, three very inferior motives. You can
give because you're manipulated, backed into a corner. You can give in
a disguised way, that's behind so many of the fund raising practices that
are popular today or you can give in a way that is begrudging, obligatory,
I've got to, therefore I will and all of those are inferior. The way that
God calls us to give is freely and voluntarily. That's Biblical giving.
Fourthly, I had as a goal that we would experience greater freedom in
giving and I don't mean by that giving more only, I mean giving with a
greater spirit of freedom. Sensing the joy and the privilege of participating
in the ministry of God's Kingdom in the world. Those last two, of course,
the motives for giving and the spirit in freedom in giving whether we have
accomplished those or not only you can know before yourself and God.
I have been impressed with two things while I've worked through these
scripture passages. There are two spirits that ought to be behind our giving.
The first spirit is that of gratitude. Most of the principles of giving
are established in the Old Testament and they were established when God
led Israel out of Egypt and its slavery through the poverty of the wilderness
and into the lush land flowing with milk and honey and the Promised Land
and then He said to them, "now, when you get to all of that prosperity,
let your heart be overwhelmed with gratitude and let your giving flow from
that". It comes from gratitude, Secondly, giving ought to come out of a
sense of vision for ministry, think and watch and imagine what is being
done and can be done in the world. The gospel is preached, the church is
spread, children are taught, youth are counseled, hurting people are helped,
God's children come and worship. Keep in mind the vision of ministry that's
happening because of our giving.
Well now let's turn to Solomon and these two very powerful verses. Notice
how Solomon here is telling us handling wealth requires wisdom. Solomon
had both and he's talking about both. Both wealth and wisdom, both of those
are side by side in the book of Proverbs and in Solomon's life. I said
a few weeks ago, wealth is what you have when you possess more than the
basic necessities of life. If I'm in a position to eat three good meals
today, then I'm wealthy. If I'm wearing some clothes and I have another
change of clothes at home, at least one more, I'm wealthy. According to
95% to 98% of the people in the world, you and I are incredibly wealthy
because we have far more than the basic necessities. Solomon did too. Listen
to the words. "With your wealth, with your crops, with barns that are overflowing,
with vats brimming over with new wine". Perhaps you know the story of 1
Kings 3 where God promised Solomon he would indeed be an extremely wealthy
individual. He had wealth, but he's talking about wisdom. As a matter of
fact that's the theme of the book of Proverbs. The sense of discernment
and how to live skillfully and practically in the circumstances God's put
before us. He said in chapter 1 that "all begins with the fear of the Lord".
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge or of wisdom. But these
too, Solomon says, are not equals. He does not put wisdom and wealth side
by side at all. He said wisdom is superior to wealth. If in the providence
of God you manage to have both of them give thanks to God. But if you are
to live with only one of them, pray that you will not live with wealth
without wisdom. Pray that you will live with wisdom without wealth.
Listen to him in Proverbs chapter 16 vs. 16 "how
much better to get wisdom than gold, to choose understanding rather than
silver". We all know examples. The news is filled with them, of
people that hit it big on the lottery but they do not possess the wisdom
to handle it and it has destroyed them, ruined their lives. We all know
and have heard plenty of stories of these celebrities and athletes in our
day making preposterous salaries and don't have the wisdom to handle it
and it runs away with them and corrupts them. I can tell you many stories
from my ministry of parishioners of mine who have become very wealthy and
have had wisdom and they have done so much good and many, many other parishioners
who have gained wealth did not have wisdom and it damaged them. And so
Solomon would say to us extraordinary wisdom is necessary if we are going
to handle our wealth well.
Well, let's look at these verses and lets pull out of them three more
Biblical principles that He's setting before us as a way of carrying out
this wisdom. The first one is this. Handling our wealth well honors God.
Look at the first three words. Honor the Lord, that's his concern. Handling
our wealth well honors God. Now that ought to be the aim of our lives,
the totality of our lives. Because God has been so good to us, has prospered
us so well, has cared for us so lovingly, so fatherly and because He's
dealt with us in the unspeakable grace of Jesus Christ. Because He's Lord
of our life, we ought to want to honor Him in everything. But, how do you
honor God best. You sing songs of praise to him, you worship well, you
maintain a good marriage and you train your children in the fears of the
Lord. You have a good witness for others and you make sure you can speak
your testimony to other. All of that honors God. He's not talking about
any of that here. He said "honor the Lord with your wealth". If you have
wealth, there is a way in which you can handle it in which you will honor
the Lord well, however, the counter side is there is another way in which
you can handle that wealth and you will bring dishonor to the Lord. Honor
the Lord with it. How do we do that? Let me venture three suggestions for
you.
One, we honor the Lord by managing its use, the use of what we have.
How faithful are you at paying your bills? How responsible are you? How
fair in debt are you to other people? Are you a person of your word? Does
your use of all that you have represent a value system that is Biblical,
that expresses priorities properly, that expresses concern and compassion
for other people? Are you an impulsive buyer? Are you extravagant in your
purchases? Do you spend more on your toys than you do on the care of the
poor? Does plastic run away with you? We honor Him by our management of
what we have.
Secondly, I suggest to you we honor Him by the managing of our giving.
Do you tithe or are you robbing God? If someone was to examine it, does
your giving show that you have genuine generosity to other people, gratitude
to God and a vision of ministry in you spirit? What are your motives? Do
you give only when you're backed into a corner or do you do it voluntarily
and cheerfully? We honor God in the way we manage our giving.
I venture a third suggestion. We honor God also by making a statement
at the end of our lives in the distribution of our estate. All of us wonder
how much we'll need for retirement before we pass away and we're always
concerned about that. But all of us assume, unless medical bills chew it
all up, that we'll have something to pass on and we assume most of it will
be passed on to our children. A good many people are telling us lately,
that's a time when we need to make a very significant statement about our
priorities and about the honor of the Lord in our lives. So
increasingly we're being told it is very appropriate to honor our Lord
by designating a portion of our estate for the Kingdom of God. The words
often used are "pass it on to a child named charity". The suggestion is
that if you have three children in your family, then instead of distributing
whatever is left of that estate to your three children, make it four and
make the fourth child a charity or church of your choice. I can tell you
we're in the process of making that change in our Will right now and I
encourage you to do the same. It honors the Lord. Handling our wealth well
honors God. (Topic: Will)
The second principle that Solomon has here will be found in the very
next line of verse 9. God claims the first of our increase. Honor the Lord
with your wealth with the FirstFruits
of your crops. Those two lines are
repeating the same thought and adding some additional information to the
first line. When Solomon wrote that, "with the FirstFruits
of your crops",
that was familiar terminology to Old Testament people. They always talked
about first and FirstFruits
. They knew that God has spoken to them about
the day when they would get in the promised land and that [blank on tape]
their crops would produce a lot and their trees would produce a lot and
their herds and flocks would produce a lot and they were told bring the
firstfruit to the Lord. Why the first? They knew the first was usually
the best, the highest quality and so they brought the first to the Lord
as a way of honoring Him. But they knew also that when you bring the first
to the Lord that is an expression of your priorities. It is an expression
of the fact that you believe God has claim on everything, owns everything
and has the prior claim on everything within our lives, our generosity
as well. Imagine what it says to the Lord when you offer him leftovers.
I suspect He's hurt. Of course, there's another principle out here in the
FirstFruits
idea and it is very practically a very healthy, necessary safeguard.
We're all in a mind in a world like this that if you don't set aside His
part first chances are great that by the time you get around to it a good
bit of it is going to be gone and you'll find yourself saying "well I just
don't know how I can afford that".
Let me tell you the story from our house. You have a right to know what
happens at our house. You don't have a right to know the details and the
dollar signs, the percentages, that's our information, privately as yours
is to you. But the giving that
we practice at home is going through three stages and I wish someone explained
all of that to me when I was a young man, nobody did, nobody taught me,
nobody set it out and I had to learn by hard experience. Stage one: we
had one checkbook. I got paid every other week and we put that check in
the checkbook and we paid our bills and when we got done paying all of
our bills we said, "now, let's see. Is there enough left that we can tithe
the way we want or not?" Sometimes we did, sometimes we couldn't and didn't
and didn't feel very good about it. Stage two: a number of years later,
we still had one check book, but we had a discussion about it and decided
we needed to reverse the order of things. We put the paycheck in the checking
account and then we had decided ahead of time how much we were going to
give to church and to other Kingdom agencies and then we wrote out those
checks first. Then we paid our bills. That was much better. However, in
weeks when it was tight, as it often was, it was terribly easy to fudge
things. That led to stage three where there are two checkbooks, one for
the general fund and one for special FirstFruits
giving. I get paid once
a month. As soon as that paycheck comes, right off the top comes the amount
that we have designated and decided together that we will give to the Kingdom.
It comes off, goes into a special account and there's a covenant between
us nobody will ever touch it for anything else. Then we proceed to pay
all the different agencies that we would like to contribute to, the church
first and then we go ahead and pay the rest of our bills. That's freedom
and I want to tell you it's a whole lot more fun doing it that way and
I think that honors the Lord better. God claims the first, you see, of
our increase, not waiting to see if there's anything left. (Topic:
Material Management)
Thirdly, go on to verse 10. The third principle that Solomon says there
is this one, those who honor God will be blessed. Listen to him. "Honor
the Lord with your wealth, with the firstfruit of your crops, then ? "
that's a conclusion. Something's going to happen. That's a promise. Then
you're barns will be filled to overflowing and your vats will brim over
with wine or we read the very same words in New Testament terminology in
last week in II Corinthians 9:6. "Remember this,
whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly. Whoever sows generously
will also reap generously". He's not just talking about spiritually
there. He's talking about materially as well. That's a hard thing to deal
with and that's a hard thing for me to explain to you because there is
a very delicately fine line to be drawn. If you give more generously to
the Lord so that claiming this promise you'll get more back and you'll
be better off than ever and have more than ever, it will kill the whole
spirit of your giving and you've destroyed the heart of it. Don't do it
for that reason. But, if you give to Him generously because you have the
spirit of gratitude and you have this vision of ministry to be done and
your generosity is stirred by those two motives, God said, "just leave
the rest to me and I promise you, you will be blessed". You who sow generously,
you will reap generously. Now I know that contradicts every kind of math
that people know. It does and it contradicts all kinds of human wisdom.
Solomon came back to it later on chapter 11. One man gives freely and he
gains even more. Another withholds unduly but he comes to poverty. To us
today that makes no sense. But it's God's math. Those who honor God will
be blessed. So the whole idea that Solomon has in mind here is when you
get your paycheck, or when you get paid for babysitting, or when you get
a return on your investments, before any other claim is made, any other
claim of any kind, you will be honoring God best by setting aside the FirstFruits
for Him of what you have decided to make it.
So in that light, I encourage you to take two more actions and they'll
be printed out in the booklet like they're printed out in your sermon outline.
Make some arrangement to rewrite your Wills so that the church and the
Kingdom agencies would be included in it and a God honoring testamentary
will be given at the end of your life. Secondly, write out some commitment
of some revision that you need to make and have been thinking about as
God has led you in recent weeks in the managing of what you have or in
the method of giving that you're involved in. I am very pleased that we
can end this series of sermons here because what is the one message of
this table. If you take everything that this sacrament is about and you
narrow it down to the bottom, bottom, bottom line, what is it? It is this.
God gave us the first and never the leftovers! AMEN
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