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1 Chronicles 29
Garrison Keilor, who used to have a radio program about life in small town America called Lake Woebegon days, wrote this lovely short story called, The Collection.
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Next week at church we are having a special offering towards our building fund. So do be careful if you start writing out a cheque during the sermon!
There are lots of things that God cares about. The church building fund is just one of many things God is passionate about us supporting. You have to balance up what you give to people who are suffering and need help in Australia, what you give to people in poverty and lacking in opportunity overseas, what you give towards the outreach of our church to people around here, and what you give towards supporting God’s missionary work all over the world. God calls us to be generous towards all the things he is passionate about. So there are lots of offerings to God that we make.
What we are asking you to give though is not a user pays fee. Its not like we’ve calculated what it costs to run the buildings which is about $220/day then divided that amongst 160 members of St. Thomas’ and said we’ll send you a bill for $1.37/day which is $41.10/month or $495/year but we’ll give you a 10% discount if you pay up front in advance ! No, what we are asking you to do is to make an offering to God.
In 1 Chronicles 29, the people of God make an offering towards the building of God’s temple and the next day they have a great party to celebrate –
…they made sacrifices to the lord and presented burnt offerings to him – a thousand bulls with a thousand rams and a thousand lambs, together with drink offerings in abundance. And they ate and drank with great joy in the presence of the lord that day.
It is a great privilege to give money to God’s plans, and there is real joy to be found in building something for God together.
If 1 Chronicles was being written today it would say: they made offerings towards God of their money and of a thousand pork dumplings and 500 bowls of chicken and corn soup and numerous sweet sticky rice delicacies and they sat down to have lunch together in the presence of God with great joy in the foyer of their new multi-purpose buildings!
We are going to have a slap up Cantonese style lunch next week to celebrate all that we are building together, of which these actual buildings are just a small part.
So what we’re going to do today in preparation for next week is reflect on 4 basic principles from the passage about making an offering to God’s work.
#1 We need leaders who lead the way in generosity
You can see this principle emerge from David’s own giving and in the giving by the leaders of Israel.
King David provided for the temple not just out of his official wealth, but also out of his personal treasures of gold and silver. And then he asked other leaders to do the same. We heard in the passage that, the leaders of families, the officers of the tribes of Israel, the commanders of the army, and the officials in charge of the king’s work gave willingly… And the people rejoiced at the willing response of their leaders, for they had given freely and wholeheartedly to the LORD.
There is no other way to lead in the bible except by example. We need a vicar and vestry members and home group leaders and youth group leaders and play group leaders, and any other kind of leaders we have, who have settled on a glad response about how much they can give.
Imagine if I had this kind of conversation with Chris or Kian Gee after church over coffee, where I was saying:
I certainly am interested in the St. Thomas’ building fund – in fact just yesterday I was praying for one of those millionaires to join our church.
Do you ever catch yourself thinking there are lots of people here who could afford to give a lot more than me?
The point the passage shows us is that we need people who lead by their example of giving willingly to the LORD.
So it would help us if the vestry and the ministry staff worked out how much in total they were committed to for the building fund and announced that to us to encourage us. Chris, there’s a challenge for you for next week’s notices!
#2 We must be willing to offer our whole lives to the LORD today
In verse 5, David didn’t ask the leaders of the community who wanted to join him in giving something to help build the temple, but rather he said:
Now who is willing to consecrate himself today to the LORD?
(repeat)
He issued them a challenge to set apart their whole life for God’s service and follow his example and give a small part of it away now.
Any offering we make for our gift Day next Sunday is really just the tip of the iceberg. The deeper question God is asking us on days like this is: who is willing to set apart their whole life today to the LORD?
There is no giving, no offering to the Lord, that is pleasing to him, that is not part of a wholehearted struggle to offer everything about our lives to his service.
The third big principle that David shows us is that
#3 We need to constantly remember that everything in heaven and on earth belongs to God already
In verse 11, David praised God before the whole assembly of the leaders of Israel, saying:
Yours O Lord, is the greatness and the power
And the glory and majesty and splendour, for everything in heaven and earth is yours.
There is no space for pride in our giving because as David prays in verse 12:
Wealth and honour come from you; you are the ruler of all things. In your hands are strength and power to exalt and give strength to all.
We are not giving to God. He has given to us so that we might be able to offer our lives back to him in service. David knows this and he models the right attitude for us, as he prays in verse 14:
But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand. We are aliens and strangers in your sight. Our days on earth are like a shadow… O Lord our God as for all this abundance that we have provided you for building a temple … it comes from your hand and all of it belongs to you.
The offering that we will give is really only what comes from God’s hand to us in the first place. It is already his and we will just return it. God entrusts us with a long term loan of his stuff in order to take us into partnership with him in his work.
Fourthly, we see in this passage that:
#4 God looks for willingness and honest intentions in our giving
David shows us that God is always concerned about the integrity of our motives in giving.
I know, my God, that you test the heart and are pleased with integrity. All these things I have given willingly and with honest intent. And now I have seen with joy how willingly your people who are here have given to you. O Lord God keep this desire in the hearts of your people forever and keep their hearts loyal to you.
We don’t give just to be like other people or to be better than other people. It is not an opportunity to show off before others. It is an opportunity to examine our hearts before God and to give back to him.
The story is told of a small country church last century that was struggling financially. The church needed quite a lot of work doing on it. They were struggling to pay the minister, and they could only just pay the heating bill that came in at the end of winter. For the last three years the giving had been declining little by little each year. When it got near the time for the church AGM the treasurer resigned and no one could be found who was willing to take her place.
At the AGM all of a sudden the local mill owner stood up and said: “I’ll become the treasurer”. Everyone was shocked because he was capable man who understood figures, and the finance report had just been presented. “I’ll be the treasurer” he said, “on one condition – that you give me absolute control over the books for one year and no one asks me any questions until the AGM next year when I will give you a full account of my job.” It was a strange condition, but they were desperate and everyone agreed and the mill owner was duly elected treasurer.
Things soon began to pick up around the church. The minister got paid. Tradesman started to appear to fix the leaking roof and repaint the church. And at the AGM the following year the treasurer got up and declared that all the bills were paid and the church had a major surplus in the bank awaiting their decision on how it should be spent. Well everyone was flabbergasted and wanted to know how he’d done it. Had there been a major bequest from someone who belonged to the church in the past? Had someone secretly given a huge donation?
No, he said to them, “it was simple really. You all kept giving as you normally do to the church, and each week when you brought your wheat and your corn to the mill to be ground up into flour I just deducted 10% of what you ended up with and kept it to sell later on. Then I put the proceeds into the church account and set about fixing things up.”
It’s a great story but it lacks one vital ingredient – God’s people giving willingly to his cause.
With all the things that God wants us to give to we’re not called to do just the minimum we can to seem like we fit in. God wants to stir up our desire to offer our whole lives, including all our money, in his service.
When God looks at our giving I pray that he may he find us honestly working out how to be generous towards everything that he cares about.
Let’s pray together:
